Insights From our CX Audit Practice
- The AHA Group
- Feb 17
- 2 min read
Through our CX Audit practice, we’ve learned a lot about the current state of customer experience across industries and geographies. What are some of these major themes?
1. Leadership teams that welcome an audit are some of the most courageous and visionary teams - and that’s actually very rare - in any industry. For every client that is a “Yes, we welcome a deep dive”, there are many companies that aren’t ready to hear the results of an audit. We all know that growth can be uncomfortable, but great results start with teams that embrace knowledge.
2. Most companies have a significant “Reality Gap” between what they believe they deliver to their customers, and what they actually deliver to their customers. Before you can deliver anything extraordinary, you must close down that gap. Ironically, most executives we speak with don’t think that they even have a gap – right up until their revenue, results, or retention takes a nosedive. Reversing a negative result is a lot harder than course-correcting before the impact hits the bottom line.
3. Most companies are still measuring the wrong things in CX. Our view is that experiences must be designed to drive ROI. That’s why our CX Audit has a 22-metric framework, and we score experience impact on the presence of eleven core criteria. If CX isn’t driving revenue, retention, referrals, higher $$ per basket, or creating a competitive moat around your offering, it isn’t worth the investment. No one has resources to waste on just having “happy customers”. That’s just a sentiment. Not a behavior. Hard metrics tell the story of truly happy customers.
You can read more about our audit process and results on our new website: www.ahaexperience.com, and if you missed the announcement yesterday in my LinkedIn post, I will link to the press release about our relaunch and restructuring into The AHA Group below in the comments.
We are just getting started with the exciting announcements over the next few weeks! We’ve been working on some client projects with brands that you know and love - several of the most recognizable in luxury around the world. The experiences we’ve designed have lessons and take-aways for businesses in any industry!