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Guest Post: How to Enhance Customer Experience Through Change

This week we feature an article by Ricardo Saltz Gulko, managing director and co-founder of Eglobalis. He shares 5 habits of companies that went through dramatic transformation and still managed to improve the customer experience. Over the last few months, most businesses have had the opportunity to reconsider processes, products, and people. For some, it […]

This week we feature an article by Ricardo Saltz Gulko, managing director and co-founder of Eglobalis. He shares 5 habits of companies that went through dramatic transformation and still managed to improve the customer experience.

Over the last few months, most businesses have had the opportunity to reconsider processes, products, and people. For some, it has been a monumental and frustrating struggle, while others have been able to plan and execute deep changes that have improved adoption, satisfaction, safety, and (most likely) loyalty and growth for years to come.

No one wants global events like this nightmare pandemic to occur in the first place, much less ever again. However, the struggle to adapt over the last few months has created a new urgency to reimagine business models so that they become more capable of change.

Fortunately, there is no mystery to it. We have precedent in most industries and in some of the world’s largest corporations. These successful transformation initiatives have built a strong case for a few organizational qualities shared by simplified, flexible, adaptive businesses.

5 Habits of Companies that Improve Customer Experience Through Change

Prioritize human needs (customers, partners and employees).

In the past, the motivation was more value, better experiences, and revenue generation. Now, this old model is showing its age in many industries! Employees, partners, and customers expect more from the organizations they support and interact with. Measuring value in terms of value-added to your humans including partners, customers and employees is no longer a radical experiment; it actually motivates organizations to adapt more quickly, create products and services that humans are eager to adopt, and as a consequence, grow.  One nice example is the simple case of digital transformation.

Accept that change is every day from now forward.

Digital transformation (in fact any kind of transformation) is not a matter of a project or a limited time period. It is a continuous force that continues even if life were to suddenly stay the same. After we overcome the pandemic, there will be something else — with a different buzzword but also requiring us to transform, simplify, adapt, disrupt and comply.

Transformational programs do not have an end date. The challenge lies in understanding today’s changing reality and employees and customer insights and needs, so that you can equip your people with the right skills and tools. It will require continuous onboarding and ongoing training, as well as good communication of the vision with customers, partners and employees, so that people align, collaborate and evolve together. Nothing is static, thankfully.

Revise culture starting with the C-Suite.

Adaptation is often required at every level in order to align the organization with external change. Thus, every level of the organization, from C-Suite down, needs to be practicing a continuous regimen of adaptation. Bring implementation and how to execute it together into the discussion. Question, challenge the complexities efficiencies and evaluate how the group achieves its objectives. Follow through with practical implementable proposals. Gather feedback and re-evaluate. When this cycle is practiced at every level, change becomes commonplace in every corner of your organization.

Hire adaptive people, and don’t just “empower” them; give them real power.

You need talent to develop the right kind of experience in order to instigate adoption and deliver a great customer experience. The more prepared and highly skilled your talent is, the easier it will be for them to:

  • Process new information
  • Adopt new behaviors
  • Adapt technologies for human needs and collaborate
  • Design better solutions to intuitively instigate adoption

The caveat here is, in order to capitalize on that talent, you need to give teams real decision-making power and freedom to create. Structure teams (as agile processes often do) in multicultural, diverse and inclusive groups. This ‘’still modern’’ governance structure has been shown to outperform traditional models frequently in organizations of every size and industry, including Microsoft, SAP, Spotify and others, often leading to better interactions, creative output, practical ideas, collaboration, loyalty, and trust, ultimately delivering real innovation, simplified human experience and growth.

Let simplification and sense of simplicity generate innovative ideas.

What you are really looking for is not a set of tasks anymore but for people to use their free minds to imagine better ways to do things. Easier said than done, I must admit, but very possible for any company. As the groups comprising your organization explore new ways to function, it will help to set simplicity as an aim and magnetizing force. Simplicity makes it easier to create, to explore ideas and to solve issues objectively. Simplification does not happen overnight but helps organizations change more quickly when prioritized at every level of activity.

Now You Are Ready to Respond to Change and Challenges

Some of the above habits, such as simplification and adaptive culture models, will likely require time to start seeing improvements. Others, such as the prioritization of humans should start now. If you have not already, start to address needed changes. Use these first examples as opportunities to observe how your model works or does not work. Evaluate outcomes; change the platform of status quo and consensus mindset; and develop the right skills to execute on your future.

The next version of your business will have different abilities, practices and capabilities. But most importantly, you will have developed real experience with transformative power and continues ability to generate adoption, simplicity and growth.

Ricardo Saltz Gulko is the Eglobalis managing director, a global strategist, thought leader, CX practitioner, and keynote speaker in the areas of simplification and change, customer experience, experience design, and global professional services. He currently works with tech global companies aiming to transform themselves around simplification models, culture and digital transformation, customer and employee experience. 

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