Beyond Satisfaction: The Transformative Effects of Positive Customer Experience

A high level of customer experience is a strong revenue driver for any business and as such should be a top priority within any growth strategy. However, it’s been more challenging to achieve during the Covid years (2020-2023) in particular, as the emotional elements of a great experience have been diluted with shortage of staff, supply chain and product availability.? At the centre of a first-class customer experience, is how the customer/client actually feels when they buy from or work with your company, and this of course comes directly from the people they deal with in your organization. ?

Better customer experience can drive millions of dollars in revenue benefit. Forrester Research demonstrates that companies that move from below average to above average in the customer service index (CXi) are likely to have more customers who are willing to buy from them again. They found that if only a fraction of customers make another purchase in the same year, the effect on revenue can range from $15 million for retailers, to as much as $788 million for wireless service providers. Hotels and airlines also rank highly in terms of benefit from above average CXi.? It may appear to be more relevant to the hospitality sectors perhaps than some other corporate environments, however as one leading UK-based client in the Construction industry told us, they specifically wanted access to our case study for a top luxury London Hotel and to experience our methodology because they were keen to achieve a level of customer experience that replicates the standards of service in the luxury hotel market. Most importantly, they contacted us (Walking TALL) as they wanted to add a level of personality that they had not focused on before.? They added that the Construction industry has not focused on this much needed area of business and brand reputation traditionally and they wanted to break the mould.

Create your own spreadsheets to show the difference it would make to your revenue if even 5% more customers were to purchase again from you, or perhaps 10% were to recommend your company to their contacts, resulting in a purchase or contract. Creating a first-rate and consistent customer experience can achieve significant impact to the bottom line.

We have to be mindful also that customer experience needs to be a special experience now in order for it to really make a difference. The bland and the basics are not enough anymore. As Shaun Smith from Smith+Co says ?“Price sensitivity has increased and it now takes a unique customer experience which goes beyond satisfaction and creates a real bond with the customer in order to regain the competitive edge”.

You may agree that this is obvious. However in our work with large organizations around the world, we constantly find there is insufficient focus and appreciation of the real impact of a great customer experience, and how to maintain consistency with this. There is generally a lack of effective employee training in this respect, particularly at customer touch-point level. Often companies providing customer-service training at these levels, fail to reach the depths of what will make the difference to embedded behaviors. The level of understanding of what it is that I am expected to do and why is it important to me and the business is therefore missing. In addition, leaders and line managers are unaware of how to clearly promote and encourage the importance of living the brand with their teams, and how to effectively engage their talented team members.? Yet arguably all this represents the biggest opportunity for business growth and increased market share facing organizations today.

My latest book, Corporate Brand Personality, was written to provide a thought-provoking look at how people behavior could be diluting your corporate brand significantly more than you think; some ways of measuring that and some options to address this potential imbalance.? My content is based on several years of experience in helping organizations to improve the people brand element of their corporate brand and as such increase the level of top-quality customer experience needed.?

?Our Walking TALL methodology is focused on managing the people element of your brand and internalizing the values for individuals.? Walking TALL has been utilised by many global organizations to motivate and engage their people to ‘live the brand’ and provide customer experience that get remembered. It is based on defining an individual’s core authentic brand, refining that brand and packaging and projecting it effectively in a way that reinforces the corporate brand and values.?? The only way we can really get individuals to ‘live the corporate brand’ is by addressing the ‘what’s in it for me’ factor and giving them something that they themselves can make sense of and utilise in their everyday lives and interactions, not just at work.

Corporate branding today is about more than it has been before. We have always had the Corporate Brand definition in the middle (example: Mercedes the brand); then Customer Experience at the next level with the specific product and the service (example: Mercedes SL 500 and its performance as the product, the car showroom, customer service etc). Now there is effectively another layer needed to maximize corporate brand investment – that of authentic people behavior (the attitude of the car salesperson, their interest in you the customer, their behaviors, how they make you the customer feel, etc) that will ultimately become more and more powerful in defining who your company is, what you stand for and whether I want to do business with you or not.?? My approach addresses that additional external and critical layer – the personal brand of your people and the personality of your corporate brand. It looks at the considerations, refreshed focus and new practices needed to achieve the necessary balance in our demanding and challenging business world.

?In summary, if we can ensure that our leaders and employees are aware of and equipped with the tools to build their personal brand, and to appreciate the authentic impact they individually have on the customer experience, then we have increased our chances of creating a consistent customer experience that propels us above the competition, that gets talked about and remembered.

To discuss Walking TALL programs for your organization, email [email protected]

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