Creating a level of customer service that is perceived as excellent by the customer cuts across many areas an organisation. Some are obvious: in core functions such as marketing, sales, service operations and delivery partners. However success may include other functions: technology, processes and data for key customer systems; finance for the necessary investment and returns; HR for learning, knowledge and skill development, and; the board for building the customer excellence approach throughout the organisation. The Customer Experience Health Check provides a sound basis for looking at current performance across ten key internal and external areas of a customer planning framework

1. Customer Experience Health Check
Creating a level of customer service that is perceived as excellent by the customer cuts across many
areas an organisation. Some are obvious: in core functions such as marketing, sales, service
operations and delivery partners. However success may include other functions: technology,
processes and data for key customer systems; finance for the necessary investment and returns; HR
for learning, knowledge and skill development, and; the board for building the customer excellence
approach throughout the organisation.
The Customer Experience Health Check provides a sound basis for looking at current performance
across ten key internal and external areas of a customer planning framework.
A first level health check uses your internal staff knowledge as a
barometer by asking them to think about their organisation and
state their degree of agreement with about 50 statements about
customer service excellence. The output can be presented as a
diagram with an overall health score for the organisation and for
each of the framework areas. The responses are combined to
create an overall Customer Experience Health Score and a score
for each area.
This can be used to start discussion and create a common vocabulary within Customer Service
Excellence Workshops. For example:
Does my organisation have a vision, mission, purpose, or other statement of overall direction
that clarifies its commitment to customer excellence and that is clearly understood by staff and
reflected in departmental plans and budgets?
Does the organisation understand the value that each customer segment brings to the company
in terms of the economics of acquisition and retention and the lifetime value to the company?
Do we understand where value is generated for the company?
Do we understand the current state of staff co-ordination to deliver customer excellence across
functions and the level of understanding of the impact they have on customers through the way
they collaborate to provide service?
Are new channels integrated with existing channels so that an individual can be recognised as
the customer independent of the channels used?
Do customer-affecting applications, such as order handling, work across the channels or have
silos developed over time that inhibit this?
Is there an integrated technical plan agreed across all functional departments for the use of
customer information?
Do we audit key customer affecting processes performed by suppliers?
Has my organisation introduced processes to provide relevant data, information and knowledge
to all appropriate staff?
The Customer Experience Health Check can be used to organise current and future external research
and, as improvement programmes are developed, a customised set of statements can be developed
to check progress at each stage of implementation and operation.