Customers don't want us to hide the word "change"

Organizations and companies in every industry are striving to gain a deeper focus on understanding their customers' experiences. In healthcare, insurance, banking, media, finance and education, budgets are being realigned to support building a digital modern business model that promotes innovation, ideation, and better ways to engage and delight - each and every day. That starts with dusting off the word "change" and putting it back into your everyday vocabulary. Build for change. Plan for change. Adapt to change. Respond to change. Simply put, customers don't want us to hide the word "change" anymore.

The expectations for an elegant customer experience are increasing exponentially with each passing day. Whether we know it or not, the change is already here. And to manage change better we need to stop guessing, and start asking what matters to our customers, realizing that their list may shift daily in a changing evolving world.

One company that is making it part of their job to ask what matters to their customers and build based on those expectations is Workday. As Virgin Voyages, a new Workday customer described, "Workday is simple, elegant and modern, and we want to give our employees the same level of experience we give our customers." Virgin Voyages is deliberate in building a customer experience that sets them apart from their competition in the hospitality industry. That is why they chose Workday as a digital enterprise tool to delight their employees, who will in turn delight their customers, as their expectations continue to change of what an open sea voyage should be.

In the tides of change, one thing remains constant for customers - they expect their providers to listen, understand and anticipate their needs. And when it comes to technology, consumers want providers to conceive of the ideal, not limit to the conceivable. That is why listening matters and capturing feedback matters even more. And guess what? It doesn't all have to be done by one team. In fact it is often too big of a job for one team to do well. So, ask yourself, how are you doing at listening and capturing feedback to build for the change?

Customer Experience (CX), to be effective and impactful, requires the strong support and partnership of Organizational Change Management (OCM). In fact, CX in a lot of organizations is an OCM role in disguise. Both roles contain key ingredients to a success - empathy, discipline, consistency, attentiveness, and charisma. In the event that these strengths are not native to your CX team, know that all is not lost, because all of these ingredients can be supplied by really strong change management consultants. How can you plant a seed for great partnerships with CX and OCM to anticipate the impact of change and thrill your customers at every pass?