Driving a Customer Experience Culture

Driving a Customer Experience Culture?

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Building customer loyalty in an increasingly competitive and demanding industry, like medical device, has created a shift where organizations are reallocating focus from being seen only as a product-centric organization to also being known as a customer-centric organization. By going beyond surface-level interactions and driving a culture built around improving the customer experience at every level, organizations are delivering differentiated experiences to customers and building loyalty in new ways.??

We recently sat down with Whitney Reynolds, Vice President, Global Customer Experience at Teleflex, to discuss what Customer Experience (CX) means to Teleflex and why the company has focused its time and resources to establish CX as a differentiator.????

Teleflex: What is customer experience and why is it important to Teleflex??

Customer Experience is about delighting the customer throughout their entire journey with our company. This helps build loyal customers that champion our brand.??

At Teleflex, we aspire to deliver exceptional - every time, with everyone, everywhere, every day – and we do this through our words and our actions and by educating and empowering employees on what it means to deliver exceptionally.??

We champion an intense focus on radical simple. Radical simple is a concept that helps us focus on making it easy for our customers to do business with Teleflex by anticipating their needs. Whether that is a clinician that wants access to clinical education or a hospital buyer that requires real-time information regarding orders, we want to simplify how our customers get what they need when they need it.??

This belief powered our investment in platforms like myTeleflex.com in the United States for order management and Teleflex Academy globally for clinical education.??

Customers routinely shared that they want on-demand access to manage orders. Through investment in myTeleflex.com, we put the customer in control, enabling them to perform actions like placing orders, tracking deliveries, or finding a sales rep. They can access the platform anytime or anywhere to support their needs.?

Teleflex Academy is a digital platform that provides clinically relevant education that empowers clinicians to increase their competency, no matter where they work.? Knowledge is a powerful catalyst that can help reduce complications, improve healthcare practices, and advance care. Partnering with industry experts, we established Teleflex Academy to educate healthcare organizations and individual clinicians. Teleflex Academy provides a broad range of compelling course materials and is available 24/7.?

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Teleflex: How does Customer Experience fit into the culture at Teleflex??

At Teleflex, our Core Values put people at the center of everything we do.? Our focus on Customer Experience helps bring this to life.???

In support of our Core Values, we are committed to giving our colleagues around the globe the tools they need to support our customers and the patients they serve.? This includes the customer experience tool kit that advocates the use of the Customer Experience CARE principles. These simple tips remind us how we should treat each other and our customers.??

We Connect personally, taking the time to understand what our customers value and what success looks like to them.? We Anticipate needs, always thinking about what comes next and taking proactive steps to stay ahead of the curve.? We Resolve things quickly and make people feel heard.? And we surprise and delight, to Exceed expectations and earn trust and loyalty.???

Ultimately, at Teleflex, we firmly believe that Customer Experience is directly related to - and is a byproduct of - our Core Values. This belief drives our customer-centric culture and advances our purpose to improve the health and quality of people’s lives.?

Teleflex: Earlier, you referenced the entire customer journey. Beyond a sales representative, what are the various touch points that a customer would have with Teleflex??

As part of our strategy to deliver a differentiated Customer Experience, we have put the customer at the center of our decision-making and aligned ourselves around their journey with Teleflex.? This commitment required us to understand and map each customer touchpoint. A touchpoint is any customer interaction that can influence their perception of Teleflex. Each individual touchpoint is part of the overall customer journey, and these are areas where we can surprise and delight our customers and ultimately build loyalty.??

Touchpoints range from identifying needs to evaluating products. Touchpoints include the decision to buy, the process to order and use of the products, the clinical support and service we provide, and how we manage the overall relationship.? We use customer feedback to rank each touchpoint in order of importance.? We also define what success looks like for the customer, who at Teleflex owns the experience and the metrics we use to measure performance.???

The customer ranking has served as a roadmap to train our colleagues on our customers’ most important touchpoints and how they can deliver exceptional in the moment.? We leverage touchpoint feedback to drive improvements and quick wins that build momentum.? Colleagues across Teleflex see the excitement and impact of their work, which drives our broad organization to look for ways to improve the Customer Experience.?

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Teleflex: How do you know what’s important to your customers? Where does the feedback come from??

A cornerstone of Customer Experience at Teleflex is our listening program. We regularly engage with customers and ask, “What are we doing well” and “Where can we improve.”? The listening program includes a closed-loop feedback mechanism, where we engage with customers to acknowledge their feedback, learn more, and take action.? This process ensures that customer voices are heard, fueling our customer-centric culture.??

The Teleflex Customer Champions program is also an important source of customer feedback.? Champions come from departments across the business and serve as advocates for customer-centricity within Teleflex.? They listen to customer needs, identify areas where we can improve, and help ensure that the customer always has a seat at the table when making decisions.?

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Teleflex: How do you know if you are doing CX right? How are you measuring customer experience??

In addition to leveraging the customer listening program for feedback, we also use the listening program to measure CX effectiveness.? We ask every customer, at least once per year, for their feedback.? This survey includes how likely they are to recommend Teleflex to a colleague or business contact.? This score, known as the Net Promoter Score (NPS), is used to measure customer loyalty, as well as to drive improvement, reinforce best practices, and reward and recognize colleagues.??

This past March, we heard from over 1,200 customer contacts representing Buyers, Clinicians, Supply Chain, First Responders, and others who interact with Teleflex at one of our touchpoints.? We were pleased to see our positive results continue to climb.? This shows that a focus on customer experience is necessary and extremely important in building trust and loyalty, and delivering value for our customers and our company.??