Can an engineering-led organization be a leader in CX too?

Ziba’s relationship with Daimler Trucks North America goes back several years, starting with a suite of digital tools that provided greater visibility and control of their customer’s experience. But after several successful projects, it was time for something more fundamental: a shift in how DTNA looks at customer experience, to bring it to the center of their process. Daimler’s CEO saw this as the next big move for the organization, and asked Ziba, as a trusted partner, to help make it happen. Another digital tool wasn’t going to be enough. What DTNA sought was nothing short of organization-wide transformation, where employees and executives were trained to provide world-class experiences to their customers, and empowered to come up with new ones.

Ziba responded with an extensive CX optimization phase, followed by an immersive program designed to activate a new CX focus across the entire DTNA organization—as well as their extended Dealer Network. Working with representatives from all levels of the company, we designed and facilitated Daimler’s first CX Day, creating tools, protocols, and a prioritization strategy to make it a success. Customers from around the country were flown into DTNA headquarters for a 24-hour interactive session, focused on identifying and solving their most pressing pain points. We also created an entire CX curriculum, to help them problem-solve in a very complex B2B and B2C experience model. This included organization-wide learning resources, awareness campaigns, and a DTNA CX website with 34 customized, ready-to-use CX tools and templates. Over the next three years, Ziba partnered with the CX initiative group to focus on the most pressing CX improvements, developing strategy-lead research to guide and train their internal experts, as well as workshops to teach design thinking and insight identification across business units.

DTNA reached their initial goal of training 2020 DTNA employees as CX experts and ambassadors—across all silos and levels of the organization—ahead of schedule. They also established VP and Director of CX roles, to activate its next level of digital CX transformation to support these efforts. Customer and dealer satisfaction scores have improved every year since. Longer-term, the new CX focus has prompted innovative new ideas from within the DTNA organization, leading to several new features and offerings for DTNA customers. And CX Day? It’s now an annual event.