Like many organisations, you have probably set about achieving excellent customer experience as a one of your key strategic directions or priorities.

That is fantastic because we all know that happy customers recommend to others, which contributes to increased popularity, an enhanced reputation, a more positive workplace and a healthier bottom line.

While we have all been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, losing sight of building a better customer experience in the short term can potentially cause more harm than good.

So, where do you start on your quest to achieve excellent customer experience, or how do you reignite your current customer program? Well it can all be as straightforward as determining whether your organisation is actually customer ready.

How do you know if your organisation is customer ready? An honest yes or no answer to these five questions can help you decide:

1. Has your Board and Executive determined your strategic customer aspiration statement and vision?
2. Have you completed an organisational customer-ready assessment?
3. Does your current organisational maturity enable your customer program?
4. Does your language or tone of voice reflect a focus on customer?
5. If you reviewed all your projects, would they all lead to a better customer experience?

If you have answered no to any of these questions, you may not be completely customer ready and that puts the success of your projects and initiatives at risk. Before you get too far along with the operations of a customer program, take a breath and shift into strategic gear.

I would recommend you start by getting your Board and Executive together and have them develop a collective leadership commitment to achieving excellent customer experience. That should include an agreed customer aspiration statement and vision, reflecting where you are now, where you want to be, how you want to get there and over what time.

That way you have unwavering leadership commitment and a clear path and direction to achieving your customer vision.

From there, your strategy, operations and budget are aligned to enhancing your understanding of and authentic engagement with customers current and potential.

That’s Black can develop an interactive and engaging customer workshop specifically tailored for your Board and Executive that can kick off or re-energise your customer program, resulting in a clear customer aspiration statement, a customer-ready assessment and a recommended action plan for next steps.