There is an African approach to driving customer experience (CX) transformation. If you understand and accept that in Africa overall business performance comes before overall customer satisfaction, your job is half done if you want to drive CX transformation.

The question now is how do you get the business to be customer-focused? Are global CX methodologies applicable to Africa? What is the African approach to driving CX transformation?

Meaning of CX Transformation 

Beginning with a definition (to put my opinion in the right context), CX Transformation means to modify|alter|remodel how you do business to improve your customers’ perception about your business leading to increased operational efficiency and business (customer) profitability.

When it comes to the types of transformation, there are different categories but I would like to focus on what I call the broad and subcategories and how these inform my definition of CX Transformation as well as my perspective on what CX Transformation should replicate. The broad category type is the rigid and no rigid type of transformation while in the subcategory you have rotation, translation, dilation, and reflection. (reference: study.com).

In modifying, altering, or remodelling how you do business to improve your customers’ perception, increase operational efficiency, and business (customer) profitability, it is best to adopt a non-rigid + dilation approach. This means that you are not altering the shape (the essence of your product/service – the problem you are looking to solve) of your business, but you are adjusting its size holistically which means transformation should impact all aspects of your business or product.

Bottom line, somethings have to change. How do you know what needs to change, when, where, and how? What type of transformation have you adopted and why?

Having established the meaning of CX Transformation and the transformation type category it falls into, it is important to highlight the characteristics of CX Transformation.

Characteristics of a CX Transformation

If you are looking to radically modify how you do business to improve customer perception and increase your profits + competitive advantage, below are some of the features I have identified over the years in my practice of customer experience management that is peculiar to an effective CX transformation program.

1. It is precipitated by a PROBLEM a business has.
2. There is a specific GOAL in mind.
3. It is connected to a business’ COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE.
4. It is extremely RADICAL requiring a change in people (attitudes, actions, reactions, mindsets, perspectives, etc), culture, language, processes, and systems
5. It requires a 360-degree PARADIGM SHIFT
6. It requires the involvement of EVERYONE from senior executives to the lowest cadre of employees in an organization
7. It requires a lot of LEARNING and RE-LEARNING of the new direction your business is going

Every business at some point needs to look inwards i.e. business performance evaluation and if you do this right, you will always see areas for improvement. In identifying the need for CX Transformation, there are 3 indicators and I have listed them out below as rhetorical questions.

1. Revenue Performance. Are you having challenges or spending more time, money, and resources winning new customers or are you having a hard time retaining the ones you have?
2. Competitive Advantage-Performance. Does your brand, service, or product lack stickiness? Are you top of mind & do people unsolicitedly talk about your brand, product, or service?
3. Employee Experience Performance. Are your employees excited about tasks, quick to execute tasks satisfactorily, collaborate seamlessly, & stay in your organization?

If your answer to any of the above questions is NO, you are in dire need of a CX Transformation.

Where Do You Start? 

In an African context, you don’t start with the customer and end with the customer. You start with the business and end with the business.

When you lead or design a CX Transformation program in Africa, you solicit feedback from not just customers but from the business & employees. In fact, business comes 1st, employees 2nd, and customers 3rd.

A continent-specific way to design a CX Transformation program is to ask yourself the following questions

1. What is the current problem the business is trying to solve?
2. What are employees’ opinions on the problem that exists?
3. What are your customers’ opinions about the specific problem as it relates to your product, service, people, processes, systems, and brand?
4. What is your competition doing in this space? (This is relevant if you have an unusual churn rate).

Why CX Transformation Programs Fail In Africa.

Over the course of my career in customer experience management, I repeatedly hear business owners & leaders complain about CX Transformation programs ‘not working’ causing them to abandon such programs.

In my opinion, CX Transformation programs fail in Africa for the following reasons.

1. Adoption of foreign CX Transformation success stories & technology without putting in the work to identify & design a CX identity that is business-specific and unique to our operating environment
2. Lack of practicality
3. Lack of commitment to the degree of transformation required
4. Impatience & the hunger for quick results
5. Lack of structure & governance behind the program thus program outcomes are not sustained
6. Over-complicated programs. The tendency to design complex programs & then get overwhelmed by the magnitude of work to be done leading to programs being abandoned
7. Leading with technology & an idea of the problem without conducting proper diagnostics & letting the data direct the design of the program

How Do You Drive CX Transformation In Africa?

Here are tried and tested tips driving CX transformation in Africa. 

1. Start with the business goal & not the voice of the customer (VoC). This will give you a business-specific perspective & executive management alignment
2. Measure the current state against the business goal by conducting a CX/voice of business (VoB) diagnostics. VoB = VoR + VoC + VoE *VoR: voice of revenue & VoE: voice of employee*
3. Use insights gleaned from the VoB to frame an achievement trajectory
4. Use data & insights from VoB to prepare & get approval for a CX transformation strategy proposal
5. Hold workshops with stakeholders & frontline representatives to redesign experiences, processes, policies, etc
6. Articulate & communicate actions, responsible parties, timelines, KPIs per stakeholder, etc
7. Design & maintain an engagement calendar for customers, employees, & stakeholders throughout the period of the transformation
8. Repeat & report diagnostics at milestones sharing progress in the current state versus previous & projected
9. Celebrate the wins, learn from the misses, reward, recognize, keep going & be agile
10. Make CX improvement a lifestyle

In summary, to transform CX in Africa, you have to put in the work, create your own identity and give your organization time to evolve and grow into CX maturity.

deBBie akwara 

Customer Experience Entrepreneur (CXPreneur), Founder & Principal Consultant, Niche Customer Experience Consulting Firm, Author, CX Conference Speaker, CX Thought Leader & CX Influencer and Co-Founder, Customer Experience Professionals West Africa (CXPWA) Network.