Co-creation Can Enhance Overall Customer Experience

Co-creation, which is a design methodology that directly engages the consumer in finding their desired experience with a particular brand, is vitally important to elevate and enhance the overall customer experience.
Customer co-creation allows a brand to engage the customer in defining this level of differentiation. Often brands take an inward approach when defining their customer experience, but customer co-creation allows the brand to take an outward approach ensuring that the final desired experience is not only reflective of the brand promise, but that it also resonates deeply with the most important audience—your customer.
 
Loyalty360 hosted a webinar on Thursday titled, “The CX Payoff: How to Get the Most Out of Your Most Important Customers,” which was presented by Bond Brand Loyalty

Morana Bakula, Bond Brand Loyalty’s Director of Customer Experience, said that co-creation gives brand decision-makers a different type of insight—one that is authentic and human.

“We’re all trying to decode emotion in Customer Experience,” Bakula said. “There is no better way for a brand to understand emotion than to hear it and see it come directly from a loyal customer.”

During the webinar, Bakula, Scott Robinson, Bond’s Vice-President of Loyalty Solutions, and guest speaker Kerry Bodine, co-author of “Outside In: The Power of Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business,” offered a process for CX Design.

“The steps are simple, but certainly not simplistic,” Robinson said.

Those steps are CX Design, Implementation, and Measurement.

“Then you need to embed the CX into your organization, ensuring that all of your brand representatives are empowered and enabled to deliver that experience,” he added.

CX Design includes co-creation, journey mapping, and creating a CX playbook.

Implementation includes evangelize, educate, and engage.

The third step is ongoing measurement.

Bodine said co-creation can be applied to many problems because it:

Allows a brand to engage the customer in the process of defining their desired experience.

Uses projective journey-mapping and other generative techniques (“We’re working with customers to envision what the future could be with your brand,” Bodine said.

Provides insights at deeper level than traditional research methodologies. (“How the experience should play out and feel for your customers,” she said.

Gives brand decision makers a level of insight that is truly authentic and human. (“We focus so much on storytelling in co-creation workshops,” she added.

Bodine offered some Dos and Don’ts
Don’t treat co-creation like a focus group. DO facilitate an interactive—and fun!—session.
Don’t just go-it-alone!
DO recruit employees and customers to co-create together. “Your employees really play a critical role in this process,” Bodine said.
Don’t trust you’ll remember everything.
DO create detailed artifacts and notes.
Don’t leave insights in the room.
DO share insights across your organization.

Journey Mapping

Journey maps are diagrams that visualize the actions, thoughts, and feelings of a person or group over time.

Journey maps expose the bright spots in the current experience, create visibility to the touchpoints that can be improved, and a provide clear understanding of the moments in the customer journey that would “wow” or truly differentiate the brand.

Create a purpose-driven mindset among all of your brand representatives that engage with your most valuable customers.

Train all brand representatives with the right skills, knowledge, and behaviors to deliver the brand experience with consistency at every interaction.

Treat “learners” as consumers.

Engage the mind and the heart.

Use storytelling as a way to train.

Recognize and reward your brand representatives.

Continue to invite your customers and your representatives to evolve the experience.

Measure the success of your efforts to determine if you’ve moved the needle.

Track key CX measures of success in your loyalty program over the next year.

Survey your most important customers—ask them to tell you how you’re doing.

CX Playbook

The CX Playbook is a way to record all of the insights gathered during the design process.

This is a unifying Customer Experience document that can be shared across the organization with all brand representatives.

It articulates a CX purpose statement.

Provides the CX Narrative.

Defines the Moments of Theater (MOT) (“Wow” moments that make customers feel valuable.)

Provides a list of behaviors for each MOT.

“It’s an anchor document to move into the implementation piece,” Bakula said.

Attendees responded to two poll questions during the webinar:

In your organization, how high a priority is creating a better Customer Experience for your Loyalty Members?
A. Top Priority 27%
B. Very Important 50%
C. Somewhat Important 20%
D. Not Very Important 0%
E. Not At All Important 2%

To what degree do your brand reps make your Members feel special and recognized?
A. Extremely Special 4%
B. Very Special 15%
C. Somewhat Special 51%
D. Not Very Special 21%
E. Not At All Special 9%

It’s very important to focus and deliver with your best and most loyal customers.

Many brands focus on the program itself, but under-index on the experience a member has when they interact with a representative of a brand, Bakula noted.
 
CX for Loyalty Members Matters
Program satisfaction is 2.9X higher among members whose program experience is consistent across all touch points.

Program satisfaction is 2.7X higher among members whose program representatives make them feel special and recognized.

“Having that consistency in each channel is extremely important,” Robinson said. “The need for consistency is paramount.”

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