Servant Leadership Online: Upgrade to user-centered digital experience.

Customer service, user centered design, and servant leadership, they are at the heart of winning digital experiences.

Think about your guests and their experiences in the real world. When a guest visits your home, how do you welcome them? When someone in whom you take great delight, comes to your place of business: how do you honor their visit? Where is the welcome mat? How do you greet them? In what ways do you honor their arrival? How do you walk them through the experience of visiting your place in space and time?

When someone arrives, what's the first thing you do? What's the way that you celebrate the arrival of someone important?

Now, consider your customers on the web -- with the immediate opportunities that the web provides to click away and go elsewhere -- why would you let your web experiences for customers be any different?

On your websites, do you greet your guests with honor? Do you meet them at the door (your home page) and walk them to the places they want to go? Do you guide your guests, do you learn about them and what they want? Do you celebrate or feature their unique needs, unique ways of accessing content, and do you provide ways to get them what they need when they need it?

Here is a customer service message that a friend received today on a major Telecomm site. "You've completed the payment transaction. Thank you for your payment. Do not call customer service. They cannot help you speed up the process. We have charged you $25 for using our online portal to pay." Do messages like this appear on your website or in stages of your digital transactions?

Study the interests of your guests and build sites that make your online guests feel welcome. It's called: 

• user experience testing,
• digital experience design
• customer centered design
• and analytics-based product analysis.

It is the present and future of great software and digital technology. At the heart of all good web experiences is a commitment to customer service, user centered design, and servant leadership. Your customers want to know that they are loved. They want to feel safe in making purchases. They want someone to champion the things for which they are searching. Ultimately, online audiences want to be able to get online, find what they need, be served in ways that delight them, and move on to their next experiences. Great companies map out and solve customer needs before a potential customer arrives at their web site. Great companies plan whether web, mobile, app, or or other digital platform is most appropriate for which time of the day for a particular segment of customers. They create delight for their audience by learning the ways that the audience accesses, investigates, consumes content, and buys online. 

When you consider your digital experiences, you need professional insights about online experiences: customer perceptions, customer ways of finding and consuming information, as well as the features, modes, and ways of drawing attention that motivate positive customer action. Technologists, coders, and web problem solvers can get every piece of your digital tools technically correct. But if you create terrible user experiences, if you do not have a servant leadership mindset, if you do not honor your guests when they visit, how will you keep them? Do you know how to build attractive forces and positive, reinforcing messaging into your digital experiences? It's time to learn.

Solution:
Talk holistically with your team about customers, service, and your expectations of how to treat guests online. Hire an expert to walk your team through the process of improving customer service experiences. Invest your dollars, time, and energy as a team in creating energizing experiences for customers. Neglect this and your competitors will eat your lunch.

1. What does good service look for you online?
2. What kinds of service do you provide customers online?
3. How do you treat your guests online?
4. Is it time for a tune-up?

See you on the web,

Chuck Kirkpatrick
Digital Experience and Product Strategy Consultant

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Chuck Kirkpatrick has worked as a digital strategy and e-commerce consultant for over 15 years. His work includes projects with Fortune 100 media, technology, and healthcare companies and digital brands of many kinds. He previously served as E-commerce Senior Product Manager with Angie's List and Director of Digital Operations at Gannett.

Have questions about digital strategy? Reach Chuck at [email protected].