Almost every organisation today has customer-centricity as part of their strategy however, many are unclear on what it means to be truly customer-centric or how to achieve valuable outcomes.

How can you embed a customer-centric way of working into your organisation, from strategy to the frontline customer experience?

‍CX Toolkits are the answer.

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CX Toolkits are an accessible resource used to embed the voice of the customer into teams and organisations.

They are tailored to each organisation to help: 

• Create a common CX language to drive cultural change
• Bring clarity to strategic prioritisation
• Inspire product and service innovation and development
• Support frontline service interactions

A CX Toolkit contains two key parts: Customer Insights and Design Tools.

Customer Insights create an understanding of customers, their context and their needs. Customer Insight is the evidence base that builds empathy and drives focus for ideation, prioritisation and decision-making. Some examples include personas or segments, customer mindsets or Jobs-To-Be-Done frameworks.

Design Tools are the tailored techniques and frameworks that, when used in conjunction with Customer Insights, help teams respond to customer needs and make decisions that will deliver consistent, customer-led experiences. Some examples include Service Blueprint frameworks, CX and Design Principles, and Prioritisation Frameworks.

Over the last decade, CEC has worked with several clients to co-design CX Toolkits. These represent a foundational investment in CX that fuel evidence-based strategic choices and drive the adoption of new or refreshed products, services or experiences.

There are three indicators a CX Toolkit would bring value to your organisation:

1. You’re missing key knowledge of who your customers are.
2. Your product, service and customer experiences are inconsistent.
3. Your CX team isn't delivering tangible value at scale.

Indicator 1: Key knowledge of your customers and their needs throughout the customer lifecycle is lacking.

Without a thorough understanding of its customers, an organisation can't make customer-led decisions or decide what to invest in to drive customer-centric outcomes; this leads to missed opportunities for continuous improvement, growth and innovation.

Sydney Water wanted to bring to life what it meant for their team to have "Customer at the heart". Together, we designed a CX Toolkit that defined 'customers' as not only the people who held a Sydney Water account, but all people affected by a water-related problem and who needed to be informed of related impacts, report an issue, or receive assistance. This new definition of who their customers are is underpinned by an improved future state service experience for Sydney Water.

Indicator 2: Experiences across product & service offerings are inconsistent.

A loss of trust and decreased customer loyalty and advocacy can result from inconsistent experiences across an organisation’s channels, products and services. This is often the result of siloed operations, misaligned efforts and an incomplete view of customer needs.

An organisation oriented around the customer, however, is best positioned to offer consistent, integrated and seamless customer experiences. This, if done well, drives long-term customer advocacy.

Last year, headspace engaged The Customer Experience Company to uncover the true needs and behaviours of its customers – young people across Australia – to improve the impact and value of its mental health and wellbeing services.

In response, we developed several CX resources. Our CX Toolkit included: an Openness Mindset Model, a Customer Needs Framework, and a Proactive Health Maintenance Journey map - all of which enabled headspace to build a common language around young people’s needs, to design and deliver initiatives that serve the unique needs of young people.

Additionally, our Prioritisation Framework set out a straightforward decision-making process for assessing the value of potential initiatives for young people, the organisation, and its stakeholders. With these tools, headspace is best able to orientate around their customer and prioritise the delivery of services to make the greatest impact for young people across Australia.

Indicator 3: The CX team isn’t delivering tangible value at scale

As is often the case, established CX teams can be constrained in their capacity to drive human-centred design at scale. This becomes particularly complex in operating environments that are traditionally tech, engineering or product-led.

We have found that to effectively scale customer-centric ways of working across an organisation there must be a shared view and common language around the customer, a shared understanding of the tools and language of CX and access to CX leaders to provide guidance.

CEC supported the Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA) which was struggling to instil customer-centricity into strategy and product development. We helped to develop a CX Toolkit that has set the foundation for consistency of practice across the Australian digital health system. This customer insight and design methodology has given ADHA and its partners an understanding of their customer’s needs and a practical and tangible way to deliver genuinely desirable solutions.

The CX Toolkit has also set a baseline for organisational CX maturity, allowing ADHA to assess against and build its organisational capability over time.

"Our CX Toolkit, created with CEC, has been invaluable in improving our design processes agency-wide. By enabling structured and purposeful divergent and convergent thinking, the toolkit laid the foundation for optimising our CX."
– Darian Eckersley, Director of Experience and Service Design, ADHA

Without foundational clarity provided by a CX Toolkit, customer centricity may remain an empty promise, with teams failing to deliver tangible outcomes. If you suspect your organisation is displaying these indicators, CEC can help. With expertise in Customer Strategy, Experience Design and Digital implementation across Private, Government and Not-For-Profits, we can craft a CX Toolkit to enable your organisation to reorient your to customer-centricity. Get in touch below to talk with our team.