3 Powerful Ways to Use Customer Experience Stories for Growth and Innovation

Achieving growth in a world of accelerating change is hard. Period. The market shifts daily with news of emerging demographic and industry trends, innovative competitors, advances in technology, economic issues, government regulations, and other realities.

Customers now control how they interact with the crowded universe of specialized products, services, and programs. Although best practices in sales and marketing help to generate awareness and engagement, they do not change customer behavior, which is rooted in personal experience.

Leading-edge B2B2C marketers in diverse industries now realize they can forge a unique path to revenue growth by listening with empathy to the human stories of their customers and key stakeholders. It’s no longer a well-kept secret: Customer experience (CX) stories reveal emotions that drive behavior during critical touchpoints, forming memorable moments of interaction with a brand or organization.

However, no app unlocks, analyzes, and integrates deep customer insights into opportunities and initiatives that align with enterprise plans for growth! And you won’t find a solution in what you already know from static data, personas or trend reports.

The solution is a process–guided, agile, human-centric, and scaled to the complexity of your challenge. You will understand what matters most to your customers during multiple touchpoints and why. And you can start wherever you are by taking small, concrete steps.

Three proven approaches that enable growth-minded marketers to adapt to change by delivering customer-centric solutions inspired by human stories are:

Design Thinking | Customer Journey Map | Stakeholder Discovery

Design Thinking

Design Thinking is a process-driven approach, not a research method or tool, to solve real business problems through innovations that deliver meaning and value to customers. You can apply it to resolving specific challenges that involve products, services, programs, or processes. Design Thinking, which is structured around five key stages aligned with your unique situation and goals, uses diverse research and ideation methods appropriate to each stage:

• Empathy – Understanding why your customers or stakeholders behave the way they do

• Definition – Framing the actual problem to clarify and better understand it

• Conception – Exploring creative solutions to the problem

• Prototype – Developing a solution to test in the real world

•Testing – Using the prototype to evaluate and refine the solution

Customer Journey Map

Mapping your customer’s journey is a great way to visualize what people are feeling when they interact with your product, service or program at different touchpoints. After identifying which interactions matter most and the emotions driving great interactions, we can look for ways to create more memorable, friction-free experiences and, thus, change customer behavior over time.

Stakeholder Discovery

Don’t overlook your stakeholders! A stakeholder is an individual, group or organization that affects or is affected by the successful outcome of your project or initiative. Important stakeholders may be internal or external and will depend on your particular project or situation.

Understanding their needs, expectations, and emotional investment in your initiative will factor into its success. A one-to-one, in-depth interview with each of your most important stakeholders ensures that you:

• Gain new information that you did not anticipate

• Capture all relevant information, including diverse perspectives and concerns

• Gain buy-in and support

Always open for conversation on what we can learn from the stories of customers and stakeholders. You can reach me at https://BottomLineMR.com or email restillman@bottomlinemr.com.