One question that often arises is after the survey results are presented is “how do I create and operationalize a strategic plan, based on the insights gained from the survey?” One of the best tools for this is a strategy planning table, which has these sections: goals, strategies, tactics, and metrics.
The first step is to determine what your goals are. Profitable growth most often comes to mind which, for a customer experience focus, can be subdivided into acquiring new customers and retaining existing customers.
Next we determine the strategies for obtaining these goals. These strategies come from the survey results and will vary from winery to winery. Suppose one of our areas of weakness is in responsiveness, from timely response to voice mail messages to timely response to email messages. Failing to respond even occasionally leaves a bad impression on customers. One strategy, in support of our goals, should be to improve responsiveness.
Several tactics in support of this strategy come to mind.
· Communication from senior management establishing the importance of responsiveness.
· Communication from senior management establishing accountability, perhaps via variable compensation
· Creation of new work processes to ensure that all voice mail messages and email messages are responded to before end of day.
· Creation of processes to measure percent on-time response rate.
· Training the workforce on these new processes
· Etc.
Based on the above, our simple Strategy Planning Table would take the following form:
Strategy Planning Table for Improving the Total Customer Experience | |||
Goals | Strategies | Tactics | Metrics |
*Increase customer acquisition *Increase customer retention | 1. Improve responsiveness to in-bound communications | 1.1 Senior management communication 1.2 Tie to variable comp 1.3 Create new email / phone processes 1.4 Training | 1.1 Daily % response rate |
Of course, this is just a bare outline. There will be more strategies, supporting tactics and metrics.
One of the most important concepts here is that you can’t manage what you don’t measure. Without closing the loop via metrics, strategies and tactics are worthless. Survey your customers again to find out if you really did “move the needle” and provide a competitively superior experience in areas that they care about.
