One of the pieces of advice I always give clients, conference delegates and members of my network is ...if you can get out of the way of your customers and staff you will deliver a better experience.
This is so important. Customers and front-line colleagues always have insights into the experience you deliver and that insight should drive significant improvement. It's a mathematical certainty that their input improves the probability of more successful outcomes across every known metric. It's a sure thing in betting terms.
Stakeholder engagement through a shared storyboard is the essence of best practice.
It starts with your post-it notes and develops into your road shows and becomes your customer journey maps. It is a crucial part of the process and the more easily you can share the story of your experience with all your appropriate stakeholders then, the more engaged they will be. What is "it"?.....it is the story. The idea that you are trying to grow in the minds of your stakeholders comes from that story. That story becomes the experience.
So......More engaged equals better aligned and that equals better outcome...so this is all very solid ground. All of this leads to improved ROI and reduced cost.
When you look at where, to focus the best return, any 1st-year student in business science will tell you that improving the first part of any process increases the overall likelihood of success. In motor racing, they say you can't win it at the corner but you can lose it. If you can't share your storyboard effectively and make it the centre of the dialogue....then your stakeholders won't be engaged. Your experience just crashed into your customers' expectations at the first corner because you haven't got the stakeholder engagement.
So what does good look like?
Good looks like continuous social communication with a broad range of stakeholders throughout the onward development of new experiences through the sharing of stories that can be connected to your digital world. Key stakeholders such as colleagues and customers can be easily engaged. Developing experiences journey maps etc. are iterative social processes if done properly.
Good is recognising that the story is a CX Tool every bit as important as the journey map or mission statement and acting accordingly.
Good means engagement plus. Measuring the amount of that engagement is standard in CX projects using CX Foundation project management best practice. In simple terms answering the question - how much have your customers and colleagues been involved(?) isn't difficult so you don't need a consultant to guide you. None, a little a lot....keep it simple!
Now imagine you can do it digitally on any device easily and free.....would that change your experience of developing a storyboard? I feel sure it will have an impact on every experience you deliver.
I have had so many kind comments here on LinkedIn about my new job as a director of theexperiencemanager.com and I thank everyone for the kind wishes.
We have built, free for life, easy to use, easy to share, mobile-friendly platform independent digital storyboarding for everyone. It is a much better way to tell a story in the digital age. I am confident this is going to improve your next CX project and that you will agree with me....that simple things that work are important.
However, I am saying "go try these tools" as the Chairman of the Customer Experience Foundation. CXFO is the oldest CX organisation in the world and is a network of some of the greatest experts in the world in more than 20 countries. I think these tools will help create better customer experiences.....and that excites me.
Let me know what you think....have a go
