CX Book Gems #21: "Customer What?" by Ian Golding
Book summary of "Customer What?: The honest and practical guide to customer experience" by Ian Golding.
This week’s book is Customer What?: The honest and practical guide to customer experience by Ian Golding.
📘 Book Summary
In Customer What?, Ian Golding provides a hands-on guide to transforming customer experience (CX) by cutting through assumptions and misconceptions, and explaining how organizations can successfully implement a CX transformation that genuinely benefits customers, starting with a readiness assessment and focusing on both employee and customer engagement. The book emphasizes that customer centricity begins with the employees and stresses the importance of aligning the organization’s culture with its CX strategy.
The customer experience road map and the business road map need to be one and the same.
💎 3 CX Gems
1. Ensure your business is ready for CX transformation
Golding emphasizes that businesses must be truly ready to embrace customer experience management before diving into a CX strategy. This readiness involves understanding and acknowledging the importance of CX, committing to action, and ensuring continuous improvement in customer interactions.
Not every organization is ready to become customer centric – even if they say they are, or think they are.
2. Engage and align employees first
A successful CX transformation begins with employees, not customers. Employees’ engagement, motivation, and alignment with the company's vision directly affect how customers are treated. A positive employee experience translates into a more seamless and positive customer experience.
The raw materials – people, culture, business model, resources and commitment – should always shape your approach.
3. Use journey maps and personas to drive change
Golding advocates for using customer journey maps and personas as essential tools in the CX transformation process. Journey maps help clarify customer interactions with the organization, while personas provide deeper insights into different customer types and their unique needs.
Until you actually change, amend, replace, redesign or improve a touchpoint in your customer journey, nothing will change for your customer.
✅ 3 Actionable Tips
Before launching any CX initiatives, conduct a thorough readiness assessment of your organization. Focus on four key areas: how CX is acknowledged, awareness of CX drivers, commitment to action, and a dedication to continuous improvement. Use this assessment to decide on the best approach and pace for the transformation.
Invest in creating a strong internal culture where employees feel connected to their roles, colleagues, and customers. Ensure that all employees understand the impact of their work on the customer journey. Regular communication, recognition, and opportunities for employee development will enhance engagement and, subsequently, the customer experience.
Create detailed customer journey maps to visualize and track customer interactions with your organization. Develop personas based on behavioral insights rather than demographics to help your teams empathize with different customer segments. Use these tools to prioritize customer experience improvements and focus on creating impactful, personalized interactions.
Golding’s practical insights into CX transformation serve as a helpful resource for CX leaders seeking to implement or refine their CX strategies. His approach balances short-term priorities with long-term cultural changes, emphasizing that true customer centricity comes from an organization that puts its people and customers at the heart of everything they do.