Build a CX Flywheel to Crush It in Business
Most businesses think in terms of outdated funnels. Customers are often shuffled from marketing to sales to customer service. This creates an unpleasant customer experience (CX).
The CX Flywheel places the customer at the center and relies on all company teams to attract, engage, and delight them. But what exactly is a CX Flywheel and how can it help your business crush it?
Before we can answer that question, we need to understand what is a flywheel effect and how it improves your customer journey.
The flywheel effect occurs when your business achieves small wins and over time those wins start to gain momentum.
Similar to the momentum created by a flywheel on a rowing machine, the growth of your business starts to take on a life of its own and then becomes driven by perpetual motion.
Going from good to great
This concept was first developed by Jim Collins in his classic business book Good to Great.
Collins explains that no matter how dramatic the end result is, good-to-great transformations never happen overnight.
In building a great company, there's no single defining action, innovation, or lucky break.
Instead, the process resembles a relentless pushing of a gigantic, heavy flywheel that with every turn, builds momentum until the point of a successful breakthrough.
At first, it takes a lot of effort to get the CX Flywheel moving but once it starts spinning it only needs minimum effort to keep it going.
CX Flywheel touchpoints
A CX Flywheel uses the same concept above but is designed to improve the customer journey resulting in increased revenue, referrals, customer loyalty, and more.
This hybrid marketing flywheel is made up of specially designed building blocks which are called touch points.
These touch points are strategically placed at just the right intervals along the customer journey to prevent friction and provide the push the flywheel needs to increase its spinning action.
Our platform provides several touch points to optimize the customer journey. However, knowing where to place them depends on several factors because every business is different.
For these touch points to be successful you need to peel back the layers and dig deep into the business operations.
Only then can you determine what type of touch points are needed and where to place them along the customer journey to achieve the best results.
Exploring the CX Flywheel
Let's take a deeper look at the layout of the CX Flywheel to get an idea of how it works.
In the center of the above diagram is the Review Dingo platform. It's the foundation on which everything revolves. You'll notice the CX Flywheel is divided into two major sections:
The Marketing Cloud starts when the lead searches for your business. This marks the beginning of the lead journey.
The Experience Cloud starts when the customer purchases your products or services. This marks the beginning of the customer journey.
Close to the core are 3 stages that are vital to every business, to be found, be chosen, and be the best.
Let's break this down...
Be found
It starts with the lead journey, if prospects can't find you online then you'll never have a chance to turn them into customers.
Listings management will help with this. It removes duplicate listings and ensures your name, address, and phone number (NAP) is synced across 50+ directories.
As a result, your business will rank higher in the search results so you can be found by prospects searching for your products and services.
Another way to be found is having a search engine-optimized company micro-page showcasing your customer's positive feedback and listing your company details.
Be chosen
Review generation is a must to build the social proof needed to be chosen. It also helps your business be found as ratings and reviews play a big part in local SEO. Review generation also needs an element of negative review suppression to be successful.
In step 5 of launching a CX Strategy, I talk about making it easy for website visitors to choose your company by placing Review Dingo's Webchat and click-to-contact buttons in plain sight to capture their details as part of an omnichannel communication strategy.
Done right, it will turn your company website into a highly effective lead-generation machine designed to convert visitors into leads.
Be the best
Here's where the customer journey begins. You want to be the company that everyone wants to do business with.
This is can be done through surveys, ticketing, insights, and referrals in the form of touchpoints to enhance the customer journey.
Making these improvements takes time but if done right, I guarantee, your business will grow beyond anything you've ever imagined.
Identifying areas of friction
Friction is the CX Flywheel's worst enemy. If not dealt with immediately, it will bring your flywheel to a grinding halt.
It's important to spot and remove friction when and wherever it occurs. An example would be if calls from your customers are not being answered and there's no way to leave a message.
Everything in your CX Flywheel could be working perfectly but if this one issue is not resolved it will slow the momentum causing serious problems in your business.
There are many ways to spot friction. For example, what your customers are saying in online reviews and surveys, or recurring issues that appear in support tickets.
The importance of experience
The trick is how to apply these touchpoints to your business to get the best results. It's not so much the tool you use, although it really helps to use the very best, it's how you use the tool that makes the difference.
For instance, you wouldn't give a hammer to a politician to build your house. Instead, you would want it in the hands of a skilled carpenter, right?
If you really want to be successful, you need the best tools in the hands of skilled experts that know it inside out and are capable of applying it to your business.
You need a team with years of experience to get in the trenches, analyze your business processes and build a flywheel that actually works.
And it doesn't stop there because a successful CX Flywheel needs constant tweaking. For instance, the default messaging that comes with our platform is effective but won't give you the best results because every business is uniquely different.
Same with our default settings. At Review Dingo, we are continuously AB testing and trying new approaches to maximize our customer's results.
That's why we're able to get a 99% occupancy rates while maintaining profitable street rates for U-Stor Self Storage.
There are no shortcuts, no single defining action, and no lucky breaks. Just hard work and applying our past experiences until we achieve success.
If you're looking for a dedicated team to build a successful CX Flywheel and are serious about being the best business in your local area, contact me for a personalized demo.