Here’s a typical conversation we have with businesspeople when trying to gauge the level of customer experience maturity at their company:

Forrester analyst: “Do you have a customer experience strategy?”

Manager: “We sure do!”

Forrester analyst: “Great! What’s in it? What’s the intended experience that it describes?”

Manager: “Well, uh, hmmm… You know, maybe we don’t have a customer experience strategy.”

The fact is, people at most companies are in the same boat as that manager (or director or VP or SVP or…). Why? For the most part, it’s because it never occurred to them that customer experience – like other business disciplines such as marketing and branding – requires a strategy to keep it on track.

Here’s why your organization needs a customer experience strategy: Without one, you’ll tend to mix and match best practices that may be great for someone but don’t align at all with the customer experience that you want to deliver.

People love those genius bars in Apple stores, right? And Apple is known for delivering a great customer experience. So why doesn’t Costco put genius bars in their stores? Simple: A genius bar provides an experience that aligns with Apple’s overall strategy of differentiating through innovation but flies in the face of Costco’s overarching strategy to be a cost leader.