Delivering a consistently good customer experience requires the execution of a hierarchy of sequenced requirements, analogous to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, critically though, each level must be satisfied before the next becomes important (an intelligently personalised email cannot make up for lack of stock, and a friendly call centre agent cannot make up for a regularly incorrect credit card statement).

Ellipsis Hierarchy of CX

Meeting Customer Needs

Reliably keeping promises builds trust and enables a relationship between the customer and the organisation. First, find out what is important to customers and then find out how you are delivering against this and fix the most important worst-performing services first. The aim is to highlight the gaps that exist between what organisations think are important to a good customer experience and how customers often disagree.

Make it Easy

The concept of using customer data combined with an automated customised experience has been around since Peppers and Rogers formalised ‘1-1 Marketing’. This concept ensures relevance, ease and personalisation. Minimising complexity requires companies to dynamically adapt to individual needs and preferences. We often get asked about the role of loyalty programs in the CX hierarchy and to answer a complex question simply…loyalty programs aren’t mandatory; they don’t make up for poor service / product quality but they do help personalise the experience. So if at all, programs tend to help at this stage of the CX pyramid.

Make it Enjoyable

Customers who take quality for granted, and quickly get used to being treated personally, now look for something more to distinguish a supplier worthy of their loyalty. If the customer experience is different and enjoyable enough, customers will talk about it. The goal is to design a customer experience that creates emotional connection, with advocacy as the objective. Tools that are often applied;
o Net Promoter Score measures how well you are doing at this level.
o Customer journey mapping will emphasis the optimisation of the customer experience.
o Gamification, which overtly introduces fun.

But this type of advocacy only works if the foundation is working. If you have destroyed customer trust with poor quality, broken promises or unfair charges... then you have destroyed the emotional foundations of advocacy.