How to Build an Experimentation Culture in Your Company

To create an experimentation culture, you have to change how your company thinks and works, not only which tools it uses. Teams need to test ideas with real customers across the whole customer journey, be rewarded for the value they create for the customer, and learn from each other instead of optimizing in silos.

With the right budget, patience and know-how, any marketer can bring in a certain number of new customers every month. That is a given. But that is quantity, not necessarily quality. Driving real, sustainable growth is a whole different feat, and simply optimizing a website or running the newest A/B test you come across on LinkedIn is not enough.

The real path to growth lies in an all-encompassing, customer-focused strategy that takes every stage of the customer journey into account. In this article I share how, and why, Conversion Rate Optimization has evolved into a broader Customer Value Optimization (CVO) mindset. That evolution created the need for a more experimentation-focused culture across the organization, and for emerging technologies such as AI that can improve customer research and optimization.

A narrow focus on website analytics or individual touchpoints is insufficient in the face of growing customer demands and more complex digital experiences. Companies have to maximize every stage of the customer lifecycle, from acquisition and awareness to retention and advocacy. At the core of that transformation is a basic shift in the company's culture and way of thinking.

Why is optimization moving from CRO to CVO?

In my work as an experimentation consultant, I have seen the conversation around optimization evolve dramatically in recent years. A few years ago the request was solely about conversion rate optimization: "Please do my A/B testing on my landing pages and my checkout."

Today the demands are more nuanced. I get more and more questions like "Can you help optimize the full customer journey, including personalization, AI, and experimentation throughout the whole funnel and products?" and "Can you help us continue to optimize the product?"

This change in focus from CRO to CVO signals an important shift in perspective. Leading companies understand that optimization needs to happen across the customer lifecycle, not just on a website or in a single conversion funnel. This holistic, customer-centric approach stands in stark contrast to the siloed, channel-specific optimization of the past.

I see the traditional CRO mindset quickly becoming outdated, as businesses realize the limits of focusing only on website metrics or single touchpoints. My prediction is that CRO will become a term that covers experimentation throughout the customer lifecycle. If you want the full method behind that lifecycle view, Omniconvert publishes its Customer Value Optimization methodology, and the customer data side of it is what Nexus by Omniconvert is built for.

Why does an experimentation culture need outcome-driven goals?

At the heart of the shift toward CVO is a growing emphasis on experimentation and on data-driven, customer-centric decision-making. It is a crucial evolution, as businesses realize the limits of relying only on intuition or "best practices." And experimentation is much more than CRO: it also means optimizing the product, optimizing referrals, or optimizing ads to bring more people to the website.

This experimental mindset requires a fundamental change in company culture and in how teams approach problems. Rather than making decisions based on assumptions or "what we think the customer wants," organizations are starting to embrace a more rigorous, data-driven way of understanding and serving their customers.

However, this is not happening everywhere yet, because many organizations are still stuck being output-driven instead of outcome-driven. I still see lots of product teams whose goal is to complete a number of story points, instead of a goal related to adding value for the customer and reaching the business goals through that.

Too often, businesses get caught up in vanity metrics or internal goals that have little to do with what customers actually need. True customer-centricity requires a shift from optimizing for the business to optimizing for the customer.

Consider this example. The manager of a product team gets a salary raise because the team completed its story points and released a number of new features. That manager could easily see experimentation and customer research as slowing the process down and putting the raise at risk. So he leads the team to deliver as much output as possible, efficiently, instead of outcome. This is where the challenge lies.

Driving lasting cultural change is notoriously difficult. I'm not blind to the obstacles companies face in moving to a more experimental, customer-centric way of working. Changing minds and ways of working requires behavioral change, and that in itself is very hard. Think of personal goals: losing weight, saving more money, drinking less, or quitting smoking. They all require behavioral change, and many people feel overwhelmed trying. Now we are trying to change how our colleagues, and entire organizations, think and work.

How do you motivate teams to embrace experimentation?

So how do you pioneer this cultural change? In my mind, creating humble, likable authorities inside the company is the first step. These are people who respectfully work within the status quo while advocating for the advantages of innovation and customer-centricity.

You have to be passionate but humble. You have to show respect. You have to show interest in your colleagues and try to accomplish their goals with experimentation, instead of trying to accomplish your own. This is a crucial distinction.

Too often, optimization specialists or "customer champions" take an adversarial approach, positioning themselves as the experts who know better than their colleagues. Be careful: this is a recipe for failure. If you are the customer champion in your organization, position yourself as a collaborative partner, not an authoritarian figure. Rather than pushing the product team to change, figure out how to align the new objectives with the existing ones.

1. Learn the internal motivations

   Audit how the decision-makers are evaluated and paid. People are unlikely to be open to an experimental, customer-centric approach if their pay and promotion depend on output metrics such as feature delivery or website conversions. If their goals are strictly output-driven, expect an uphill swim.
2. Connect experimentation to their goals

   Position experimentation and customer-centricity not as a burden, but as a way to help colleagues reach their own goals more effectively.
3. Don't be pushy

   Show respect for how the team works today and take a real interest in the people you work with.
4. Start small and demonstrate success

   Pick experiments that can show value quickly and visibly for the team that runs them.
5. Work your way up

   Use those early wins to gradually influence higher-level decision-makers, and, over time, the goals and incentives themselves.

How do you break down silos and collaborate?

Driving this cultural change takes more than changing people's perspectives. It also means dismantling the divided thinking that holds back many large businesses.

With some of my clients, I see this happening as we start to collaborate instead of running separate experiments. So much more is understood. We learn what works where in the full customer lifecycle and on the full customer journey.

This cross-functional approach is crucial. It lets departments talk to each other and gain a holistic view of the customer experience, which reveals optimization opportunities that were previously overlooked. What would happen, for example, if email marketers and digital performance teams started working together to uncover insights that inform the entire customer journey? You can use each other's theories and help each other, basically optimizing the optimization process.

And if you document all your learnings as well, you get a rich database of what drives your customers, what their needs and goals are, and how you can optimize each step in the full lifecycle. For ideas on where to start testing, see these CRO experiment ideas for eCommerce.

Fostering this level of collaboration isn't always easy, particularly in large, siloed organizations. That is why it is critical to find and support internal champions: people who can help remove obstacles and promote alignment within the company. Ultimately, the objectives dictate the result. It is about finding common ground and proving that everybody can reach their goals more effectively with an experimental, customer-centric approach.

How do education and internal evangelism drive the change?

Promoting cultural change takes more than rewards and alignment. It also takes a concentrated effort to inform and inspire everyone. I can't overstate the need for solid internal training and education, so that everyone understands the fundamentals and benefits of customer-centric optimization.

There is a concept in Daniel Kahneman's book Thinking, Fast and Slow called System 1 and System 2 thinking:

• System 2 is our rational brain. To make a change, System 2 needs to know how to change, so it needs to be smart enough. You need to educate System 2.
• System 1 is our fast, intuitive, primal brain. It needs to be motivated enough. It drives much of what we actually do, if it is motivated.

This dual approach, educating the rational mind while appealing to the emotional, intuitive side, is critical for sustainable change. To make change happen, you have to make System 1 and System 2 work together. So the learning process needs to be fun and engaging, not dry and prescriptive. And while you train your teams, be patient and don't get frustrated, because this is not going to happen within a week.

To change behavior, you can change the environment people work in:

• Change the incentives. Just as you change something in your pricing to change customer behavior, you can change what people are rewarded for.
• Change the social environment. Bring people together, get them involved, and make it fun.

It's right there in plain sight: when something is satisfying and fun, people do it more often. That is how you change habits. One of the key elements of my approach is making learning enjoyable. Internal concept competitions, for example, that reward the most creative and customer-focused submissions can spark the interest and enthusiasm of the entire company. I have found that by appealing to people's natural desire for recognition and reward, companies can spark the cultural shift toward innovation and customer-centricity more successfully. The goal is to make the process interesting, enjoyable and ultimately worthwhile for everyone involved.

How do you use data and AI for experimentation?

No discussion of optimization and customer-centricity is complete without the role of data and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence. I see them as crucial enablers of the experimental, insight-driven approach behind effective Customer Value Optimization.

With AI becoming more and more popular, clients ask me how to use AI within CRO and experimentation. My answer is that CRO itself should move toward the marketing teams and be embedded in product teams, moving away from the narrow CRO funnel.

I envision a future where AI and advanced analytics play a central role in the optimization process, freeing human specialists to focus on higher-level strategy and decision-making. The potential ranges from automating the analysis of user reviews and survey data to producing hypotheses and optimizing the delivery of personalized experiences.

But I'm the first to tell people that technology isn't enough on its own. It must be paired with a solid understanding of what customers want and how they behave, and with an eagerness to test and iterate often. Even as AI becomes more capable, human judgment and insight continue to play a crucial part in the CVO journey. So integrate all these elements into your strategy. For a closer look at how a data-driven approach works in practice, read data-driven CRO.

Where do you start building an experimentation culture?

The future of optimization and customer experience depends on adopting a holistic, experimental mindset. Channel-specific, segregated activities are a thing of the past. The most successful companies are the ones that can:

• eliminate internal barriers,
• promote cross-functional collaboration,
• and continuously improve the end-to-end customer experience.

For this to happen inside your company, you will have to go through a fundamental shift in mindset and culture:

1. Move from output to outcome

   Instead of relying only on output metrics, adopt an outcome-driven, customer-centric approach built on thorough experimentation and data-driven decisions.
2. Get every level on board

   All organizational levels, from the C-suite to the front lines, must embrace and evangelize the change, before and during it.
3. Build internal education

   Create extensive, engaging education and training programs so everyone understands the fundamentals and benefits of Customer Value Optimization.
4. Empower humble, likable authorities

   Give the people who help colleagues succeed through experimentation the room to lead the cultural shift.
5. Experiment across the whole journey

   Combine data-driven optimization, customer research and experimentation across the full customer journey, and document what you learn.

The companies that manage this will be the ones that flourish in the coming years. Adopting a customer-centric, experimental mindset has enormous benefits, but it is also a formidable challenge. So when you think about the future of your own company, ask yourself: are you ready to move past the CRO bubble and into the bigger, more influential field of Customer Value Optimization? The route may not be simple, but the opportunities for growth have never been bigger.

If you want a single platform for that work, Omniconvert Explore lets teams run A/B and multivariate tests, personalization and on-site surveys across the customer journey. It is built on 70,000+ experiments across 7,000+ websites.

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