Elevating customer experience at Abbott Laboratories

We were asked to partner with Abbott Corporate Marketing to elevate the awareness and maturity of customer experience strategy within the organization. Abbott had made a lot of strides in terms of consistent branding at key customer touch-points but had not looked at experience in terms of customer journeys and applied true customer experience methodologies. We developed a plan to begin the CX journey by achieving three important milestones:

1. Demonstrate CX Practices for a key initiative

2. Developing a CX Playbook with input from key stakeholders around the company

3. Developing a model for an Abbott CX Index to measure customer experience

Demonstrating CX – Abbott Talent Acquisition

Abbott HR identified the improvement of recruitment of R&D Scientists and Engineers as something that was incredibly beneficial to the company. We conducted the following activities:

• Competitive Content Analysis

• Insight development from interviews with recruiters, employees and lost candidates

• Journey definition from candidate segmentation

• Current state journey mapping for each candidate segment

• Future state opportunity identification, prioritization and ideation

Value to Abbott HR:

• Identification of competitive content opportunities

• Deeper insights about each candidate segment

• Current state journey maps defining the unique needs of candidates and Abbott’s role at each step of the journey

• Definition of Abbott’s unique value proposition to allow for better candidate targeting and improved recruiting communication

• 54 future state opportunities overlaid onto the candidate journeys

• Sketches for key, prioritized opportunities

• Validation of on-going Abbott HR initiatives

We are currently in the process of finalizing design and printing of the Playbook. It will also be distributed globally in an interactive PDF format. Future workshop strategy and development is being discussed.

Developing an Abbott CX Index

Corporate Marketing had some success with using playbooks to encourage Abbott employees to sign-up for more advanced workshops. We created a CX 101 playbook to create awareness, develop a baseline of CX understanding and encourage sign-up for future workshops. The content included in the playbook was as follows:

• Introduction to Customer Experience (CX)

• Getting Started & Case Studies

• Play 1: Empathy and research Insights

• Play 2: Mapping Customer Journeys

• Play 3: Synthesis and Problem Framing

• Play 4: Ideation and Prioritization

• Play 5: Prototyping and Testing

• Play 6: Measurement and Continuous Improvement

• Play 7: Operationalization and Planning

We are currently in the process of finalizing design and printing of the Playbook. It will also be distributed globally in an interactive PDF format. Future workshop strategy and development is being discussed.

Developing an Abbott CX Index

Corporate Marketing wanted to begin the process of measuring customer experience by developing a new CX Index. We conducted the following activities:

• Interviewed key CX measurement SME’s to develop a clear POV

• Conducted a workshop to uncover the vision for the Index

• Identified 5 key internal and external measurement areas of CX

• Created a map to connect the 5 areas to the measurement types

• Developed a concept for the dashboard views

• Defined a maturity plan

“The best practice of CX measurement is that the score itself is important but is less valuable than the insight that helps you make continual improvements—and drive higher scores.”
— Abbott CX SME

We determined that the best way to begin to implement the Index was to start with CX maturity and measure CX Excellence through an internal survey that would look at:

• The perceived value of CX

• The perceived CX priority within the company

• The CX priority within the division/group

• Exposure to customers (directly and indirectly)

• CX tools and processes

• Cross functional work practices

• CX Measurement

• Connection of CX to employee incentives

• Successful CX case studies

• Top area where CX can benefit the division/group

• Preferred learning methods

• Known CX supports within the company

Abbott is currently determining the way to execute a survey and tie it to future CX Playbook workshop development and sign-up.