How to deliver Experience-Led Growth (XLG): a blueprint for getting started

by
Dave Ascott

It’s getting harder for companies to grow profitably. We know focusing on customer experience (CX) drives long-term growth but that message isn’t always well understood, according to a 2023 report by Forrester.

That’s why Experience-Led Growth (XLG) can be powerful for brands who are looking to transform their growth strategy. Treating your customers well is the best path to profitability, not least because they bring their friends along too.

In this article, you’ll learn how to implement and deliver XLG to shift your customer acquisition, retention, and expansion toward customer experience. We’ll show you:

The challenges of getting buy-in for CX initiatives
How to create a direct link between customer experience and results
The four core areas you need to focus on to build an Experience-Led Growth strategy
Whether XLG is a good fit for your business
The three steps to get started with XLG now.

The XLG Challenge: Experience Can’t Be Connected to Results

In a 2022 report, Forrester found that the fundamental challenge with CX initiatives is that it can be hard to link the customer’s experience with business outcomes. This makes stakeholders less willing to back CX activities required for XLG.

Businesses need a growth strategy that provides a way to get closer to their customers and turn customer feedback into profits.

There have been three main blockers to achieving this:

It’s difficult to effectively connect business objectives with improving the customer experience
Businesses take different approaches to achieving long-term profitability. Some focus on growing the number of new customers, while others emphasize customer retention or repeat purchases. Success relies on a combination of these elements.
Experience is not easily measured, like other common performance metrics
One reason it is difficult to link experience to business objectives is that experience cannot be measured in the way that other metrics can. Different customers experience the same thing in different ways.
Improving the customer experience does not align with standard organizational structures
A 2023 study by MyCustomer found that because most businesses are built around functions such as product, marketing, and customer support, CX is never the remit or responsibility of one team. It is impacted by many teams across the company.

So, How Do You Crack the Code for XLG?

These challenges can make improving the experience appear intangible, impossible to align on, and difficult to connect to business objectives. For an Experience-Led approach to be successful it must recognize and address these challenges to create a direct link between experience and results.

To unlock the benefits of XLG, any organization must achieve these three breakthroughs:

Create a direct connection between improving the experience and business objectives
Genuinely understand the experience
Map the customer experience to your organizational structure and ways of working

Building an Experience-Led Growth Strategy

An XLG growth strategy is the blueprint for any organization to overcome these challenges and successfully achieve XLG. Following this ensures all of the required processes are in place and each individual element is functioning effectively.

A continuous unbroken connection from customer experience to business outcomes is fundamental to achieving profitable growth. The four core areas that build success with XLG are:

Understanding the customer’s experience
Enabling action
Taking action
Measuring impact

Understanding the Customer’s Experience

The first link is ensuring we understand the customer's experience. This means understanding the customer’s perception of their experience. Different types of customers have different needs and expectations.

This is achieved in two ways:

Creating a robust architecture that captures the breadth and complexity of the customer’s experience at all stages of the journey with your organization.
Accurately translating raw feedback data into a quantifiable, digestible format that the organization can use to extract insights and make decisions.

Enabling Action

Understanding what is important to the customer is only the first step; connecting this with what the business is trying to achieve is the next. Analysis should go beyond simply fixing problems or addressing things that customers don’t like.

Taking Action

The previous links in the chain have identified which elements of the customer's experience should be targeted. Now, businesses need to prioritize the specific actions that should be taken to positively impact the customer’s experience.

Measuring impact

Once action has been taken, progress is tracked by measuring the impact of the implemented changes. This identifies whether the changes have had the desired impact on the customer’s experience.

XLG Alignment

XLG is a continuous process; it is not possible to “fix the customer’s experience” all at once. Customer expectations are continuously evolving and so is your competitor’s offering.

Is Experience-Led Growth a Good Fit for Your Business?

Before considering the finer details, it’s important to understand whether you will find XLG effective. XLG is most powerful for businesses that are reliant on the choices and behavior of their customers to be successful.

Getting Started with Experience-Led Growth

Any organization can evolve into an experience-led business, regardless of where they are starting from. Three steps are essential to get started:

Understand your current XLG maturity
Create your roadmap to close the gaps
Implement best practice for each

Conclusion

An XLG growth strategy is the blueprint to make long-term profitable growth a reality. It makes it possible for any organization to align around the experience of the customer to unlock profitable growth.