The Big “E” and Little “E” of Experience
Learn how experience-led growth can help companies meet their growth potential, stay agile, and succeed.
Christine Crandell, president of New Business Strategies, discusses the new buzzword in the business world – experience-led growth. And why, in today’s techno-savvy world where customers hold all the power, it is now more important than ever that marketers do not just provide customer experience, but rather, also meet their potential for growth.
Every organization has a strategy. Some strategies are better than others.
Some are relevant for years; others break down at the first sign of economic uncertainty. When the latter happens, leaders often react with knee-jerk decisions, creating a vicious cycle of under and over-investing that robs organizations of their true potential.
The last half century has seen rapid innovation advancements as well as economic and social volatility. Humans are outliving most companies, whose average lifespan is 21 years. The frustration of trying to chart a reliable course to sustainable growth has led most companies to give strategic planning lip service.
Why plan beyond three quarters when things are unpredictable?
Since companies need a plan to satisfy investors and give employees targets, the typical strategy process has been reduced to a corporate offsite hashing out financial forecasts and budgets. The focus, conscious or unconscious, is on short-term returns — a recipe for greed, not success.
Experience-Led Growth
Constant change demands that we plan and manage businesses differently. More than analyzing past results for future planning is needed; we need to understand what the future(s) will look like.
We need a deep understanding of evolving customers, target markets, technology, and socioeconomic and global political trends. Experience – customer, talent, stakeholder – is crucial to all these variables.
Most organizations view customer experience or experience management as tactical, so unsurprisingly, that experience’s contribution to the top and bottom line is elusive. Experience is not an engagement problem but a strategy gap. There is a big “E” and a little “e” of experience.
Big “E” Experiences are strategic elements that create long-term value and differentiation in how the organization competes in its chosen markets. An example is the transformation underway in the healthcare industry. Personalized patient care, lifetime health journeys, personalized medicine, and rapidly evolving consumer expectations are disrupting traditional provider delivery and revenue models. This will give rise to innovative business models and information and care ecosystems wrapped around individual patient needs—a sharp contrast to today’s model.
Many significant “E” trends are underway, from new supply chain models, agriculture, and financial services, to pet care. The most impactful emerging trends are in their formative stages. You won’t find them written about in popular media; you will find them with solid market research.
The little “e” in experience are tactics implemented to meet current and future stakeholder expectations. They typically include marketing/digital programs and cross-organization aligning workflows, technologies, and metrics. Little “e” operationalizes the big “E” s.
Experience-led growth is an approach integrating “E”xperience into strategic planning. Experience should be part of your raison d’etre. Experience elements should be in every organization’s vision and mission statements, as well as in their goals. Objectives, strategies and tactics should incorporate “e” activities that reinforce everyone’s OKRs or KPIs.
Starting strategy planning with the big “E” is a game-changer. Done correctly, you’ll be able to measure the impacts in terms of NRR, ACV, the share of wallet, customer lifetime value, and brand reputation. McKinsey found that Experience-led growth can increase the share of wallet by up to ten percent and cross-sales by twenty-five percent over time.
Yet, success in times of unpredictability requires more than making the experience a core tenet of your strategy. It’s important to shift the strategic planning process from a one-time event to a continuous effort. Consistently challenging the assumptions we make about the environments we operate in, both now and in the future, makes organizations adaptable and well-prepared for any eventualities.
See More: We’re Approaching CX Backwards
Make Unpredictability Your Advantage
Experience-led growth strategic planning defines an actionable plan that is focused, evergreen, and measurable:
- Plan only needle-movers initiatives.
- Develop alternative courses of action based on outside-in research.
- Institutionalized continuous internal and external scanning and evaluation.
- Implement efficient and flexible use of available resources.
- Ensure all talent participates in and owns the plan.
With your vision, mission, and goals in hand, the next step is to develop a prioritized list of measurable and time-bound objectives for the coming four quarters. And here is where planning for unpredictability differs; the secret sauce is to only plan for those things that are new and critical to success.
It’s human nature to want to plan for what is already working. Do not. It is already working. Plan for what isn’t working that is critical and new strategies. A strategy is great, but a plan is worthless if the entire organization is not bought in.
The Power of Alignment and Accountability
Sixty-seven percent of employees do not understand their role when launching new growth initiatives. Achieving alignment and accountability requires a two-way dialogue to ensure organizational buy-in.
Only through participative planning can we be sure everyone has the same understanding of what, why, by when, and how. Not only does everyone need to sing the same verse from the same hymn from the same book but with the same level of gusto. It sounds trite, but it is absolutely critical.
Successful companies are driven by a clear purpose, with shared values grounded in deep experience and trend research and have the capacity to succeed far exceeding those that do not. Organizations that embrace experience-led growth will meet their growth potential and be more agile.
Change is a constant and an advantage.
How do you plan your growth strategy to optimize customer experience? Share with us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn . We’d love to hear from you!
Image Source: Shutterstock
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