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The Customer Experience Professionals Association annual Member Insight Exchange kicks off this morning in San Diego, CA, at the Hotel del Coronado.

The next session I’ll be sharing is by Joe Wheeler, Executive Director of The Service Profit Chain Institute. I last heard Joe speak about 10 years ago, and he’s always got great stories. Looking forward to hearing his presentation, which is titled, “Just Tell Me What You Are Feeling! – Uncovering the Actual Emotions of Your Most Valued Customers.”

Joe Wheeler will be announcing a new capability that The Service Profit Chain Institute will be launching July 1, 2013. There are great tools for automating customer experience mapping and enterprise feedback, but we’re missing tools to map emotions. The new tool with use facial recognition to read the emotions of your customers.

The truth is, what makes a brand powerful is the emotional involvement of customers.” -Charlotte Beers

The Service Profit Chain Institute has a six-step process for how they work with clients called the Customer Experience Workout. They built a platform to simplify.

Business Case
Define the potential financial gain to be achieved by improving the customer experience.

Collaboration
Engage colleagues, key stakeholders, subject matter experts, and customers in the work of improving the customer experience.

Mobility
Leverage mobile devices to capture insights and media about the customer experience at key touchpoints.

Technology
Uses leading edge facial expression technology to capture the emoitnoal repsonse of customers to potential improvements in the experience.

Execution
Applying Experience Blueprints that translate new design strategies into operational, product/service, and behavioral changes in the experience.

Monitoring
A simple dashboard that links to the organization’s existing customer measurement system.

A Proven Process: Seven Principles of Customer Experience Design
1. Experience design starts with Leadership Alignment:

  • Understand the current experience
  • Define the brand platform
  • Design the customer experience
  • Deliver to exceed customer expectations
  • Measure to continuously improve and innovate

2. Establishing the Business Case:

  • Start with the results
  • What would the experience look like to achieve those results
  • Establish baseline for key segments
  • Conduct sensitivity analysis specific to customer behaviors
  • Determine costs assocated with influencing customer behaviors
  • Calculate the NPV from each customer experience improvement

3. Map the Current Experience:

  • Define the touchpoints
  • Describe the customers’ actions at each touchpoint, add photos and rich media to elaborate
  • What is the customer thinking or feeling during this experience

Finalize the draft of the experience map, and then involve your customers

4. Define the Brand Platform

Brand position: what the brand stands for.
Brand promise: the unique value that is delivered.
Experience theme: the unifying cues that bring to life the brand promise and evoke the emotions we want the customer to experience.

If you don’t pay attention to your theme, to the cues, you can crush your brand.

What is your “Central Narrative?” The story that the customer is telling about them and you. Do you know what story your customers are telling about your brand?

5. Design the Customer Experience

6. Deliver to Exceed Customer Expectations

7. Measure to Continuously Improve and Innovate

Thanks, Joe, lots of great tips and advice. Good luck with the new platform launch!