Customer Delight - Employee Commitment - The Key Differentiator

I was prompted to write this article based on my experience on visiting three different banks over the last three days for getting the same requirements done and the entirely different experience that I had in each of these banks. What is interesting is that although the three banks operated in the same area and were governed by the same set of rules that are laid down by RBI, the experience was very different in each of them.

I had written an article in September on how it was important to translate operational efficiency improvements transparently for consumer delight https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/translate-operational-efficiency-improvements-consumer-rejo-francis/ , but during this experience I discovered how it is actually the employee commitment and employee knowledge on various rules and regulations that is the real differentiator in ensuring consumer delight.

So, what are some of the strategies that successful companies use to deliver consumer delight?

1. Treat your customer service as a second marketing department.

There’s a popular expression: customer service is the new marketing — based on research showing the power of customer service through online reviews, and their ability to drive new customers. Studies indicate 90% of consumers’ research online reviews prior to making buying decisions, and 60% of the buying process is already done before they reach out to a vendor. Two factors come into play here — quality of offering and customer service.

By incorporating marketing into support, and discussing advanced new product offerings, discount offers, requests for reviews, product feedback and upcoming releases as a part of all customer interactions, companies can take what is typically seen as a cost centre and turn it into a powerful profit centre.

2. Get to know your customer better than they themselves do.

The key is being able to anticipate customer needs—before they may even be aware of them — and to make recommendations that resolve issues in people’s lives.

By being proactive, companies become valuable allies in helping people lead better, happier, more productive lives, all of which lead to greater customer loyalty. By making helpful suggestions based on existing data, companies can not only improve the quality of the customer experience, but they can also simultaneously add substantial revenues to the bottom line as well.

3. Integrate customer support channels for ease of consumer

Learn how customers want to be supported in your market, and then focus on that channel. This can often be a chat or a phone call, depending on the issue. My previous article on 4th September explains this in more detail https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/translate-operational-efficiency-improvements-consumer-rejo-francis/ .

This is also available on my personal website https://rejofrancis.com/translate-operational-efficiency-improvements-transparently-for-consumer-delight/

4. Implement a balanced set of metrics.

First and foremost, metrics need to primarily serve the customer. However, all too often, it’s obvious to the customer that they primarily serve the company’s profits instead. Metrics must focus primarily on full and complete issue resolution and customer satisfaction, and then consider company SOPs and TATs and profitability goals.

How many times have we sentmails regarding our issues or raised tickets for issues and found later that those service tickets had been closed without any resolution being provided to us just to ensure that the company TAT target that has been set is met

5. Develop metrices which provide more personalised service for high value consumers

Most metrics do not have a provision to differentiate between consumers for the value they provide to the organisation. If this categorisation could be done it would allow companies to maintain high levels of service for loyal or potential long-term customers, while protecting profits and not wasting money and resources on prospects with little or no brand loyalty.

6. Understand and correct characteristic support issues of your market and product.

A great strategy is to research and determine the primary customer support challenges within a given vertical — for example excessive shipping time of replacement parts — and then work on finding ways to improve, reduce or eliminate existing bottlenecks.?Organisations could then ask customers who have a great experience to write a review afterwards. Companies that do this (think Zappos) are considered disruptive service leaders in their markets, and good reviews, like bad ones, spread quickly.

The impact reviews can have with regards to driving new business in today’s scenario can be substantial. In most cases, consumers follow the “Google model”—i.e., seek out the “best of the best” and hence there is huge difference between a 5-star and a 4-star rating when a consumer makes a search like this... This strategy is the key differentiator in highly commoditised and competitive markets and product categories.

7.Challenge existing practices and assumptions.

Today the problem is while challenging existing assumptions and practices almost all the time the new practices that are evolved are made for making a new report or defining a new SOP or new TAT which has very little to do with actual consumer requirement but of internal productivity and cost measures.

8. Make Customer Experience a part of the company culture

Any consumer facing executive can only be as efficient as their management allows them to be. Great customer experience comes as a mixture of top down and bottom up

A great strategy is to research and determine the primary customer support challenges within a given vertical and then work on finding ways to improve, reduce or eliminate existing bottlenecks.

Much can be learned from people who interact with customers on a daily basis. While reports will provide an visual overview, there’s no better research than sitting down regularly and asking those who interact with consumers what’s on your customers’ minds and how you can empower them to be better at their jobs and improve overall consumer experience.

While all these are important the actual differentiator are the People …

Coming back to my earlier experience, in the first bank which was a 57-year-old institution which had got into retail banking about 2 decades ago. The lady at the reception who handled the request knew the rules exactly, made me fill the right forms and asked me to hand over at a particular counter. She also gave me her landline number and asked me to call in case I faced any difficulties while completing the procedures that she had asked me to do online and at the ATM. I did face issues when I tried but the lady took me through and quickly helped resolve the issue.

The second bank a 115-year-old one where I had my salary account in my first job the experience was very different. There was no one in the reception and when someone did come, he helped me with the details and asked me to speak to a particular counter. The said counter person was too busy and asked me to meet the person in the next counter when she comes back from lunch. The person when she came was too busy on WhatsApp to really listen to what I wanted. She was gracious enough to collect the forms and said the same would be done by evening. I wanted a few more services which she never listened but said everything will be done once this is activated. This was on a Friday, and I went back and tried online to enable the services which she had said I could enable online. When I didn’t have any success on Friday and Saturday and then Monday, I finally got the bank number and called. After a few busy tones I was lucky to get a nice gentleman on the line. Maybe the manager. He called out and a lady came and took the call. She took all my details again and said server connectivity is not there…I thought that excuse had become obsolete in today’s world. Anyway, the lady was kind enough to call me after a couple of hours to say it had been done and just a few seconds before she called, I got a SMS informing my account was active. When I reminded about not being able to enable the additional services through online, she said she would place request for the same and it would be done in 10 days.

The third was an even classier case. This was a 90-year-old bank which has its head office very near to my native. My wife had been following up for resolving some issues with multiple people who had been coming to that branch without success as most of them never really knew what the actual process were or didn’t know how the said process could be implemented in the said banking systems. Anyway, this new lady helped resolve these 2-year cases in a breeze.

Am reminded about my article leadership from below published on 27th December 2019 which talked about how employees of Taj had behaved during the crisis of 26/11 and the above experience further reenforces the learnings and recruitment and employment processes which the Tatas had finetuned over years which led to this kind of behaviour from their employees when the same wasn’t expected from them.

The said article is available on LinkedIn https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/leadership-from-below-tribute-2611-taj-employees-rejo-francis/ or on my website rejofrancis.com https://rejofrancis.com/leadership-from-below-a-tribute-to-the-26-11-taj-employees/

I think its high time every organisation also identifies a different process while recruiting and developing people in consumer facing roles. However much we automate or bring in better SOPs and analytics the key differentiator for consumer delight is the person handling that responsibility…

Keep watching this space for more…