In my earlier posts about customer experience (CX) prioritization, focusing on Forrester’s beginner-level and intermediate-level models, I covered the use of criteria around customer impact, business impact, and (when you get to intermediate) feasibility as a means of determining which CX-related projects you should pursue or put to the side. Moving up to advanced mode requires taking that approach up several notches.

First, the highest level of CX prioritization goes beyond three categories: The sweet spot is five. In addition to customer impact, business impact, and feasibility, advanced CX prioritization layers in risk and return on investment. Consider risk to be a cousin of feasibility; it’s the category where you explore more aspects of the potential impact to the business of doing (or not doing) a project. ROI adds value to the conversation because it shows that CX leaders are thinking in the business terms that their executive colleagues and bosses care about, and it opens doors with key stakeholders, such as finance, who want to see financial impact as part of the consideration set.

Second, it’s time to consider that not every criterion or category is equally important. In the beginner and intermediate CX prioritization models, each criterion has the same weight as every other criterion. This simplicity was by design — to keep the model from becoming overly complex for that phase of CX maturity. Once you reach an advanced state of CX prioritization, it’s time to start determining which criteria deserve greater weight and which categories matter more.

We have fresh research and a whole new downloadable tool that you can use to establish your advanced prioritization approach within your own firm. You can customize the weights for each of the categories and criteria to fit how your company should be making decisions. Is ROI still new for you? Dial down the weight of ROI to 5% or something else that keeps it in the conversation but lowers its impact on decisions. Is customer obsession your new obsession? Dial up customer impact to reflect its importance to your choice of projects to pursue. In a sense, this is the prioritization version of a sound equalizer: Adjust the knobs and dials to reach your optimal settings.

Get in the game by reading my latest report, “Advance Your CX Prioritization With Forrester’s Modeling Tool,” and download the advanced prioritization tool to use with your own firm. If you have questions about prioritization or want to know how to use any of the CX prioritization models from beginner to advanced, schedule an inquiry and let’s talk about how to choose which improvements and initiatives you should put atop your to-do list.