Putting Google’s HEART framework to build your Client Centricity Program
A decade ago, Google’s researchers, Kerry Rodden, Hilary Hutchinson, and Xin Fu, published a paper on how to measure the UX of web applications. Their principal objective was to clarify how product goals can be mapped to metrics in order to improve the customer experience. This was the genesis of Google’s HEART framework.
Since then, this has gained popularity among product managers (PMs) and IT companies building products or applications. They use the HEART framework to improve UX. But I’m not going to talk about it in that context. Let’s take a step back and look at this HEART framework from the perspective of any business, and how we can use it to build client centricity.
What is Google’s HEART Framework?
HEART is an acronym for Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention and Task. These are the five broad themes or lenses through which the success of client centricity and client management frameworks can be examined.
Happiness
How happy is your client? How happy are the decision-makers? How happy is the buyer of your service? How happy are the users of your services? How happy are the influencers?
While NPS is still a popular way to measure satisfaction, you can certainly explore other ways to collect quantitative data around satisfaction, for instance through referenceable clients.
Engagement
How engaged is your client in the short term? How much do users interact with a product or service?
We need to recognize that not all engaged clients are happy. For example, if they are reliant on your organization and you are failing to meet their expectations, their engagement with your organization will be high! They will have multiple reviews, too many reports, frequent visits to your site, etc.
Thus, measuring engagement alone can be misleading.
Engagement can also increase when you offer a wider range of products or services or multiple value additions. Mapping the client journey (CJM) can be helpful to improve positive engagement.
Relevant metrics would be collaboration projects, number of interactions, breadth of engagement (across different departments of the client’s organization), duration of such engagements, etc.
Adoption (Penetration)
How penetrated are your services in client’s organization? What is your share of wallet of the client’s business? How much are your existing clients willing to use your products, services, or applications? Are they regularly using it? Is it out of pressure or because they find it useful?
Relevant metrics can be the share of the client’s wallet, the adoption rate of your services, the adoption rate of new features, services, value adds, processes, integration between the client and your processes, the product ranges of clients where your services or products are used, the conversion ratio of sales, etc.
Retention
How many clients do you retain long-term?
Relevant metrics include client churn rate, contract renewal rate, cost of retention (discounts towards retention), etc.
Task
How convenient or easy is it for your clients to work with your organization? How complicated are the processes and policies? How agile is your work force’s mindset?
Prof. Clay Christensen introduced the concept of ‘Jobs-to-be-done’, where he stated that all clients and customers have jobs to be done, and it is about how we, as vendors, can make their lives easy. And clients (and their employees) would prefer those products or services that make their lives easier.
For example, your client wants you to change a design parameter for some specific reason, but your employees don’t easily accept the change. Instead, they resist, highlight difficulties, propose complicated solutions, put clients in bureaucratic loops, etc.
Metrics can be improvement in a client’s productivity (after your association), time to complete their tasks in your touchpoints, channels, or systems, etc.
I hope, by now, you can see the benefit of viewing your client centricity and client success program through Google’s HEART framework. If you are looking for any specific guidance in this area, please do contact me at Business.Support@collaborat.com
Inspiration is contagious like COVID!
I’m an artist at living – my work of art is my life.
– Suzuki
Be passionate about designing customer experience. Take personal interest in finer details of your product/service, even if its too insignificant for your role.
| If a picture is worth 1000 words, a prototype is worth 1000 meetings. |
| – Tom & David Kelley |
It’s best to create a culture to experiment, test & pilot the hypothesis rather than deliberation, debate & finalize!
| Mind is never a problem, mindset is. |
| – Narendra Modi |
All employees are good, any mind-block that makes someone pro or anti to a change is due to lack of clarity. Communicate beyond barriers to build strong bridges and change mindsets.
| The more you engage with customers the clearer things become and the easier it is to determine what you should be doing. |
| – John Russell |
| Set it as your personal target to interact with at least 1 customer everyday, even if it is in an informal manner. |
| _____________________________________________________ |
| A little rain each day will fill the rivers to overflowing. |
| – Liberian Proverb |
| Leaders need to repeatedly and regularly connect with employees to emphasize the importance of customer experience. It’s not a one time fan fair event. |
| _____________________________________________________ |
| The customer is not always right, but they are always your customer! |
| – Shep Hyken |
| It doesn’t matter who’s right, any way. Not all customers will fit into ideal customer profile. This agile mindset is the starting point for customer delight. |
| _____________________________________________________ |
| Don’t confuse customers who are to your company with customers who are loyal to your loyalty program. |
| – Sky |
| Not all customers are loyal. Don’t get misled by rewards redemptions and impressions rates to gage customer engagement. |
| _____________________________________________________ |
| Use your good judgment in all situations. There will be no additional rules. |
| – Nordstrom’s employee manual |
| Processes, control measures, audits & automations should empower your employees to serve customers better and not meant to turn employees into robots that follow rule & script books. |
Building an excellent rapport and loyalty with customers isn’t another management fade. It is about building trust and that cannot be done overnight. We all know this and there is nothing new about this.
Here’s what we need to know about building Customer Loyalty. It is not merely about your genuine desire or interest in the customer. That innate desire has to translate into reality that is only possible by ‘Engineering the Customer Experience’.
‘Engineering The Customer Experience’ is about building processes, systems and practices that will ensure that customer interactions are meaningful and delightful not because of that one employee or that one day or that one product or that one touch point, etc. It should be independent of all these factors.
Thus Engineering The Customer Experience means, there is consistent & seamless service delivery, by design. For that to happen, we need to see every customer interaction as an opportunity to build or break the customer trust.
There are many aspects that go into Engineering the Customer Experience for delivering superior customer experience (CX). In this article, let’s talk about Touchpoint Efficacy and what parameters are important.
Customer Touchpoints are literally those activities when the organization gets in touch (ie.,contact is established) with its customers or vice versa. When you walk into a store to understand the product features and brands available, that is one touch point. Following week, you make up your mind and come back to the same store to make the purchase, that’s another touch point. In this case, both these touch points use the same channel – the store.
Usually we spend our resources to design our channels very well, but we hardly focus on designing the touch points. We assume it would be taken care!
Here are 6 to evaluate the Efficacy of Customer Touch points:
- Least Customer Effort/ Max Productivity : Is the touch point reducing the effort needed by customers to interact with the organization? Is it making the customer more productive? Think about complicated sign-up process to make an online purchase or parking difficulty in visiting a store.
- Transparent : The information provided in the touchpoint, communication that happens, etc., should all be transparent to the customers. Illogical policy deflections, needless iron walls, make it sound rigid and opaque system that works in the interest of the company and against that of the customers.
- Risk Free – Whether its sensitive customer information handling, processing or storage customers won’t want to take on unnecessary risks. This equally applies to health and safety aspects too. Most touch points are meticulously designed to make them risk-free for organization, but not always for customers.
- Fun & Image Friendly – Would the customer willingly associate with something that is not representative of his/her social image. Millennial weigh fun equally as image. For example, while waiting for the phone to be serviced, is there an element of fun there!
- Personalized – There is lot of difference between a 20 something filling up an online form vs a 60 something doing the same. Personas differ and so do customer expectations on how they are serviced.
- Purposeful – Lastly and most importantly, any touch point should deliver what it is supposed to do. This is last in the list because, most often, organizations focus on this and miss the above 5 points. That’s why this is last in the list, though ideally it should be on the top.
You can use the Touchpoint Efficacy Checksheet to rate and compare various touchpoints across the journey or benchmark competitor touchpoint against yours.
Customer Experience Quotes
Here is one of the most inspiring Customer experience quotes to delight customers and customer retention.Do not be in a hurry to tie what you cannot untie.
– English Proverb
Take away for CX Professionals
Overpromising is a bad strategy when it comes to customer retention.
Author is an expert in customer retention. If you are looking for Customer Experience (CX) firm in Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi and across India, contact us.
Customer Experience Quotes
Here is one of the most inspiring Customer experience quotes to delight customers and customer retention.All looks yellow to the jaundiced eye.
– Alexander Pope
Take away for CX Professionals
Introspection is an effective tool to arrest customer churn.
Author is an expert in customer retention. If you are looking for Customer Experience (CX) firm in Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi and across India, contact us.
Customer Experience Quotes
Here is one of the most inspiring Customer experience quotes to delight customers and build customer loyalty.Profit in business comes from repeat customers; customers that boast about your product and service, and that bring friends with them.
– W. Edwards Deming
Take away for CX Professionals
Repurchases reduces your sales and marketing costs by more than a quarter.
Author is an expert in customer loyalty. If you are looking for Customer Experience (CX) consultant in Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi and across India, contact us.
Customer Experience Quotes
Here is one of the most inspiring Customer experience quotes to delight customers and build customer loyalty.Customer satisfaction is worthless. Customer loyalty is priceless.
– Jeffrey Gitomer
Take away for CX Professionals
Satisfaction is transactional. It’s future value is far lesser than Loyalty.
Author is an expert in customer loyalty. If you are looking for Customer Experience (CX) consultant in Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi and across India, contact us.
Customer Experience Quotes
Here is one of the most inspiring Customer experience quotes to delight customers and build customer loyalty.Loyal customers, they don’t just come back, they don’t simply recommend you, they insist that their friends do business with you.
– Chip Bell
Take away for CX Professionals
Loyal customers are your best brand ambassadors.
Author is an expert in customer loyalty. If you are looking for Customer Experience (CX) consultant in Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi and across India, contact us.
Customer Experience Quotes
Here is one of the most inspiring Customer experience quotes to delight customers and build customer loyalty.I don’t like the food, I love it.
– Ratatouille Movie
Take away for CX Professionals
Love is blind and so is loyalty!
Author is an expert in customer loyalty. If you are looking for Customer Experience (CX) consultant in Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi and across India, contact us.
Customer Experience Quotes
Here is one of the most inspiring Customer experience quotes to delight customers and build customer loyalty.There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
– Milton Friedman
Take away for CX Professionals
Customer loyalty has to be earned.
Author is an expert in customer loyalty. If you are looking for Customer Experience (CX) consultant in Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi and across India, contact us.
Customer Experience Quotes
Here is one of the most inspiring Customer experience quotes to delight customers.Friendship lies not in smiling faces but from smiling hearts it flows.
– Tiruvalluvar
Take away for CX Professionals
Build a bond of trust with your customer and that’s more than a delight.
Author is an expert in customer centricity. If you are looking for Customer Experience (CX) firm in Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi and across India, contact us.
Customer Experience Quotes
Here is one of the most inspiring Customer experience quotes to delight customers.Hitch your wagon to a star.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Take away for CX Professionals
Aim to wow your customers and you will.
Author is an expert in customer centricity. If you are looking for Customer Experience (CX) firm in Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi and across India, contact us.
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