Why do so many cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence in­ten­tions and strate­gies to im­prove ser­vice de­liv­ery in Trinidad and To­ba­go fall flat? Poor im­ple­men­ta­tion. Un­doubt­ed­ly, a ma­jor goal of busi­ness­es in this coun­try would be to de­liv­er a su­perb cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence. The first prob­lem with this as­pi­ra­tion is that some busi­ness­es just don’t know where or how to start. In oth­er words, they have the de­sire but lack the im­ple­men­ta­tion ex­per­tise to get the job done. The sec­ond prob­lem is ig­no­rance about the many mov­ing parts that in­flu­ence and im­pact the fi­nal out­come of a great cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence, which keeps cus­tomers com­ing back for more.

A log­i­cal, sys­tem­at­ic im­ple­men­ta­tion plan dri­ves ser­vice ex­cel­lence. It is the knowl­edge and ex­per­tise need­ed to com­bine mul­ti­ple in­gre­di­ents in the right alche­my to pro­duce a con­sis­tent­ly in­cred­i­ble ex­pe­ri­ence.

Of­ten, in­ef­fec­tive im­ple­men­ta­tion starts with the fail­ure to cre­ate and com­mu­ni­cate a clear fi­nal endgame. A good start­ing point will in­clude ask­ing the ques­tion, “What does an ex­cep­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence mean to the cus­tomer?” A well-de­fined an­swer to this ques­tion should elu­ci­date, in gran­u­lar de­tail, how both the trans­ac­tion­al and the ex­pe­ri­en­tial el­e­ments of his or her jour­ney should un­fold.

When the trans­ac­tion­al as­pect of the jour­ney ex­e­cutes flaw­less­ly, this is known as cus­tomer suc­cess. This means that the cus­tomer re­ceived the cor­rect prod­uct to suit his or her needs, the pay­ment so­lu­tion worked ef­fi­cient­ly, and the re­quest­ed on­line sup­port was swift and seam­less. Achiev­ing suc­cess with the hard out­comes of a cus­tomer jour­ney sets the stage for a suc­cess­ful emo­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence, known as the “feel­ings” side of the ex­pe­ri­ence.

Clar­i­ty on the hard and the soft­er out­comes of the im­ple­men­ta­tion is cru­cial to es­tab­lish­ing a foun­da­tion­al vi­sion for ser­vice trans­for­ma­tion. It po­si­tions all eyes “on the prize.”

An­oth­er flaw that be­dev­ils ser­vice trans­for­ma­tion ef­forts is the fail­ure to es­tab­lish and, more im­por­tant­ly, in­te­grate new stan­dards of care in­to ex­ist­ing hu­man re­sources and op­er­at­ing sys­tems. If this is over­looked, there’s the like­li­hood of not be­ing able to tie met­rics to per­for­mance out­comes. Af­ter all, we know that “what gets mea­sured, gets done.”

Dis­re­gard for cul­tur­al fi­nesse im­pairs ef­fec­tive im­ple­men­ta­tion. Long-es­tab­lished norms and prac­tices form the cul­tur­al ta­pes­try of a busi­ness. Some are use­ful, oth­ers dys­func­tion­al. Wise im­ple­men­ta­tion ar­chi­tects are care­ful to en­gage the pow­er of wide­spread em­ploy­ee con­sul­ta­tion to sup­port the dis­man­tling of norms and the in­tro­duc­tion of a new or­der of busi­ness. This re­quires a lev­el of fi­nesse so that the very in­di­vid­u­als who are ex­pect­ed to own the new norms and prac­tices be­come strong cheer­lead­ers of the new cus­tomer-cen­tric cul­ture.

Be­hind every well-de­signed im­ple­men­ta­tion are ser­vice trans­for­ma­tion ex­perts who know and un­der­stand that log­i­cal se­quenc­ing is at the heart of an ef­fec­tive roll­out strat­e­gy. Adding a phased ap­proach to this se­quenc­ing en­ables an or­der­ly group­ing of com­pat­i­ble ac­tiv­i­ties that, in turn, cre­ate the build­ing blocks for tran­si­tion­ing from the ex­ist­ing to the new sta­tus quo of ser­vice ex­cel­lence.

Whilst a well-planned and ex­e­cut­ed ser­vice im­ple­men­ta­tion in­ter­ven­tion is the dream of every busi­ness that un­der­takes this am­bi­tious jour­ney, pro­vi­sion must be made for the un­fore­seen chal­lenges that show up be­fore, dur­ing and af­ter the im­ple­men­ta­tion. The abil­i­ty to adapt to the un­known, whilst al­low­ing its roll­out strat­e­gy to re­main on course, will be one of the crit­i­cal suc­cess fac­tors that cre­ates a win for the busi­ness.

Es­sen­tial­ly, get­ting to the oth­er side of a ser­vice im­ple­men­ta­tion suc­cess­ful­ly re­quires a busi­ness to plan for what it can see and to adopt an ag­ile re­sponse sys­tem for what it can’t see. In oth­er words, it’s about plan­ning for the re­wards, whilst be­ing pre­pared for the risks.