What Really ROX

Return on Experience offers a new way to measure success

“The customer is always right” might be a relic of a different era of commerce, and anyone who’s dealt with some pretty demanding and ill-informed purchasers knows the sentiment was never strictly true. But organizations do find themselves struggling to strike a balance in doing right by customers while still delivering the ROI shareholders expect in an era that emphasizes constant growth.

To deliver sustainable profits over the long term, advises Sujay Saha, the founder and president of strategy and transformation firm Cortico-X, businesses would do well to remember the old adage that if you serve your customers well, you serve your business well. To do that, Saha suggests they place a renewed emphasis on ROX, return on experience that builds loyal customers – and employees – for sustained success.

The Virtuous Cycle

ROX, Saha explains, starts with pride. In evaluating their purpose, organizations need to make emotional commitments to the values they hold dear.

Next, they need to instill this pride in the influencers within the organization and among their customer base. These brand ambassadors internalize that pride and spread the message far and wide.

As a result, this pride begins to influence behaviors toward customers from within the organization, and by customers who connect with the values the organization is putting forth. Employees buy into the newly re-established organizational pride and treat customers accordingly. Seeing this, customers feel a sense of loyalty to the brand, and public perception improves.

This turns into drivers of value such as customer and employee satisfaction, proxies of things like a Net Promoter score that indicate the direction the company is headed.

Completing the circle are the measurable results in outcomes, specifically financial results driven by a higher ROX.

“It’s truly a holistic way of looking at the organization all the way from thinking about pride-building, to driving influence, to generating the right set of behaviors, to hopefully creating the right value within the organization, which is then tied to the outcomes that keep the organization on a sustainable path,” Saha told BOSS. “It’s a virtuous cycle, because great outcomes and great sustainable business create more pride.”

Taking the Steps

If delivering ROX sounds like a sound strategy for your organization, Step 1 is acknowledging the need to live up to stated values.

“We may have been saying what we have been saying, but we will walk the talk,” as Saha put it.

That requires a level of specificity akin to a brand promise that customers and employees can relate to.

“It’s extremely important to do it in a way that fosters empathy for all sets of stakeholders across the board,” customers, shareholders, and employees, he said, “cultivating that empathy not only within the organizational culture, starts with the top leadership and encourages all employees to understand the perspectives and experiences of their colleagues.”

The next step is implementing protocols and policies that permeate throughout the organization. In creating products, solutions, and strategies, in sales and marketing, customers are at the epicenter of everything.

“You’re sharing all along why this matters,” he said, “why it matters not just because it is the right thing to do, but it also helps the organization in driving a sustainable future, which is very much what we want to be driving towards.”

That message needs to be shared not just internally to make sure employees as brand ambassadors understand the why of it all. The organization needs to be open in the media and in the market, evangelizing to customers – and to partners throughout the supply chain –about the promises you’re making and why.

“To drive that balance check around all of this, you need to have the right discipline and a structure to make sure that you are truly measuring and adjusting course as you go along,” Saha said. ROX “becomes that engine that actually makes sure that the organization stays on that track.”

Designing ROX

For better or worse, many aspects of the customer and employee experience are quantifiable. There are observable metrics that tell a story well beyond surveys.

“There are platforms that actually help you in measuring and seeing how people are navigating the digital experience, on an app, on a website, on a desktop; not with the intention of monitoring these people, but to actually understand where they are finding challenges,” Saha said.

Businesses can then identify the areas they need to improve to lessen the friction in the shopping experience.

“The intangibles are becoming more tangible in today’s world.”

And while there is so much data to provide insight, Saha warns, numbers can’t tell you everything.

“As you design this, design ROX, don’t read this as a quantitative exercise, a mathematical exercise. Tie it back to the vision of the company. Understand why you are doing what you’re doing.”

For ROX to really be successful, there needs to be a return on customer experience, employee experience, and leadership experience. Leaders should instill a sense of purpose in the culture that catalyzes a social movement within the workforce. Workers that are committed to the brand values cannot help but deliver an excellent customer experience.

“If organizations do it right by focusing on bringing purpose and profit together,” he said, “what will happen is not just a sustainable business that runs very nicely for a long period of time, but a company that creates a long-term impact on society.”

That can make for some very good returns.