KT Ellis, Senior IT Product Manager at Dutchie, has been working to support CX organizations for more than 20 years, mostly in the SaaS space. In their current role at Dutchie, they act as a strategic partner, leading system/capability roadmap planning and using data to tell stories and make decisions. They partner with business leaders and the engineering team to drive improvements, automations, and enhancements and actively look for ways to scale. In every interaction, they strive to actively listen, surface disconnects, re-frame problems, and push boundaries.
KT shared some excellent advice and insights gained from their professional experiences that can help companies undergoing large or small digital transformations do so with more ease. Here are some key takeaways from our conversation.
A digital transformation doesn’t have to be a major overhaul
The term “digital transformation” sounds powerfully overwhelming. But it doesn’t have to be.
Some changes, KT said — like implementing a Glance Guided CX solution — can take a few hours and make a huge impact.
It’s also important to understand that the CX digital transformation doesn’t start and end in the call center. Every part of the business contributes to the customer experience. KT said that no matter what your role, your actions create the customer experience. Improving the customer experience means growing the right capabilities to make an impact.
Go back to the basics of customer journey mapping
Pinpointing the right opportunities requires going back to the basics: customer journey mapping. It’s easy to get wrapped up in your specific team’s projects, but you have to step back and see the big picture.
“Within our own siloed functions, we can optimize all we want,” KT said, “But it’s not until you see how the customer crosses from one function to another and what that handoff looks like and what their experience is that you really start to understand some areas that you can improve in.”
It doesn’t matter if you’re a startup or a large enterprise — it’s always important to break down the walls and collaborate. A disjointed internal experience will yield a disjointed customer experience.
Focus your roadmap on capabilities
Try not to be mesmerized by shiny new technology if it doesn’t make sense for your business.
Instead of starting with a tool and seeing how it fits your business needs, we need to start the other way around. Look at your processes, at what capabilities you want to gain or grow. Outline changes, improvements, etc. that you want to accomplish and gather all of your business requirements.
There’s no need to retrofit tools. Tools should seamlessly add to your existing processes and customer experiences.
Create a system so you don’t let ideas slip through the cracks
KT has a system in place that prevents them from letting ideas go to waste. Anytime an idea or proposal is made, they put them in their “backlog.” Then they have dedicated time each week to go through their backlog — prioritizing, determining level of effort versus benefit, etc.
This helps ensure all ideas are considered and accounted for and makes it easier to determine “what’s next?”
Prioritize the customer experience from day one
For smaller companies and startups, KT’s advice is to prioritize customer experience from the beginning. If you set up your systems and processes in ways that you know can scale, it can support your organization now and in the future.
A spreadsheet may be an “OK” solution now, but what about when you reach your goals 5 years from now?
Doing the legwork to set things up for where you want to be means you don’t have to be as reactive. You’re giving your organization space to grow. Customer experience is a major point of differentiation. It’s much cheaper to keep an existing customer than attain a new one. Invest now so you can keep both customers and employees happy.
Happy customers and happy employees = happy profits.
Want to learn more? Watch the webinar replay to hear KT share tips on deploying a competitive customer experience across your enterprise using the latest technology.
