CX, EX and ROX Blog

Consensus versus alignment: is there a difference? Does it matter? Where does it apply in your customer experience work?

Back in 2015, I asked a similar question about buy-in and commitment – and, importantly, why knowing the difference matters. Ultimately, you’re seeking commitment, not just buy-in. And yet, there’s a greater opportunity to get not just commitment, but alignment and commitment.

A critical component of a great employee experience is feedback – both from peers and from management. The iterative, continuous improvement that happens as a result of that feedback is important to an employee’s development, productivity, and engagement. But does that improvement really happen? Or is providing/receiving feedback more of a demoralizing exercise?

As companies strive to improve their customer experience, the desire to do more than satisfy customers is becoming increasingly important. 

But at the same time it is remarkable how few companies have a programme in place to capture the profits of turning someone into a brand advocate. This is an expensive oversight. It leaves companies with the investment for improving their customers’ experiences. But they miss out on the (financial) returns this generates.

I’ve been know to say, “You can’t transform something you don’t understand.” You don’t want to change things that are working well or that create value for your customers. So know the current state and what to fix and what to maintain before designing the future state. Know the current state so that you can make near-term fixes and improvements while you’re re-imagining and redesigning the future state, which can take some time.