Client experience strategies are all the rage these days and for good reason—more and more customers are demanding customized solutions and requiring businesses to know them and understand them at a level we’ve never seen before.  Last week, I had the pleasure of facilitating a panel at the ITSMA meeting with the CMOs from Avaya, IBM and Thomson Reuters—where we talked about this growing focus on client experience and the demands that even b2b clients are placing on businesses.

We all agreed that embarking on a client engagement strategy is not for the faint of heart—it requires significant time, focus and resources and most importantly, it requires a commitment to stay in it for the long term.  Once you make your clients aware that you are moving an engagement strategy forward, they will hold you accountable to their demands and this can be overwhelming.

Here’s a way to think about establishing a system that allows you to gain and retain the trust you want from your clients throughout the transformation of your business:

Enlist clients to co-create your strategy.  Too often we are asked to help evolve an existing client engagement program that has never been vetted with clients.  Your clients want to help you out—enlist them in the ideation through to execution.  They will become your greatest advocates along the way.

Develop an internal steering group.  Client engagement programs take on a life of their own and without a formal management system they can feel out of control.  Spend the time up front to form an internal steering group that is accountable for program development through execution.  Individuals in this group should be executives and should own specific program pieces, and will need to assign teams to help drive execution.  Note: HR is critical to this group—in many cases incentive structures will need to change and keeping HR looped in early is important.

Bite-size chunks are easier to digest.  One of our clients summarized this need well when she said, “I feel like we were pushing a rock up a hill and now that we have momentum no one feels we are going fast enough.”  It is important at the start to create a clear set of steps that are manageable for you and your clients.  Keep in mind that once you gain momentum, the desire for you to move faster will emerge.The above three points have helped our clients to stay ahead and remain accountable throughout their client experience strategy development and execution.  Hopefully these recommendations will help you with your new Council journey.