Customer Focus is Key

Speaking on October 1 at the CXDay event, I tried to do two things… 

1) To stay focused on the topic of the day

2) To establish my concerns 

Someone said somewhere once that Customer Experience is what a customer looks for “after they have eaten well”. I found that both funny and disturbing. First off, good service is a right… it is owed every customer for reason of their investment in goods or services. Our major challenge in Nigeria is that. The prevailing culture of mediocrity has affected us as customers and we are more willing to accept, and make excuses even for, an organisations service failure. If customers held more companies accountable, if customers reacted more, if customers indeed voted more with their feet… perhaps there would be even better service.

A large part of the discussions was centred around the client and his return on investment (or not) in providing Customer Experience Management Initiatives. While the “science” is important, let us remember for whom we are doing this and what their (perhaps softer) expectations are. Let us remember that CX is not a sprint, it is a marathon, it is not transactional, it is a culture that thrives on building and sustaining mutually beneficial relationships. And let us also remember that the customer is not an ideal lab rat. He is idiosyncratic, spontaneous, easily affected, emotional, unique… just a regular guy! Let us always recognise and pander to his individuality.

Like my topic, “WORK, PEOPLE, CULTURE : Transforming Customer Experience Through Enhanced Employee Experience”, started to address there must be attention given to the employee who serve this customer that I just described. It takes creativity, solution-orientedness and a quest for successful outcomes to be that person. The employee must take responsibility for being a STORYMAKER! That’s what we preach in CentriCULTURE, and that is exactly what we teach. We take the concept of Attitude Management seriously and establish practical, activity-rich sessions during our training interventions that berth this belief.