How to deliver the best experience to your customers? Focus on consistency and team management

?If you want to provide amazing customer experience, it all starts with a vision. And one of the first thing to understand in order to have the right vision is actually quite simple: you can only deliver experience to your customers if you remain consistent in doing so.

Quality and consistency are indeed inextricable when it comes to customer service and the reason behind that is because a service of quality is a service provided at all times and under all situations. Providing amazing experience to customers starts indeed by aiming for consistency with the right vision on how important it is to do so.

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Consistency is undoubtedly one of the most difficult part when it comes to delivering the quality of service you are aiming for as it require a perfect structure, organization and internal communication but also a team perfectly aware of them. But above all that, it mostly requires perfect skills, a strong vision and the perfect approach when it comes to handling customers. ?

As a business or as a business owner, before even starting to speak about ways of going above and beyond your clientele’s expectations, you must ensure that everyone within your team is well aware of the basics to follow when it comes to customer care. But also the different processes you have in place when it comes to managing expectations, handling difficult customers or managing successfully the journey of each customer.

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One thing is sure, you simply cannot get your team to do it if you do not share the correct vision to your team. Your team needs to understand that great and consistent customer service can bring so much to a business in terms of retention, loyalty or revenue. For instance, improved customer satisfaction in itself can increase by 25% the total revenue a business can generate from clients each year. And this figure does not include the many referrals, recommendations and feedback you will get from those loyal and happy clients which will bring you additional business opportunities moving forward.

All of this is definitely something you want your team to understand. Communicating about this during meetings, 121s or appraisals is therefore key. As I always say before any of the course I deliver, you cannot get an audience to understand the “what” if they do not understand the “why”. And you definitely need to share the right vision to your team not only on the “what”, but also on the “why” by making it about how much amazing customer service will bring to a business.

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But if you really want your team to get fully committed in delivering amazing customer service, sharing the right vision may not suffice. You also need relate the business success to the team’s success by using different tools such as internal promotions, bonuses or rewards so team members can relate a vision to a benefit. So after the “what”, the “why”, you have now answered the “what is there for me”.

It is proven, rewarding your team on great customer service delivered by making it clear right from the beginning is key to get them to really and consistently do it. My first ever Hotel I worked for was a Four Seasons Hotel, and this is one of the first thing I learned about customer service: take care of your team, so they take care of your clients. And rewarding them on your amazing customer service achievements is such a great way to do so.

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However, making your team feel involved in delivering great customer service doesn’t necessarily have to be something related to what your team will get as it can also be related to performance or recognition. For instance, getting team members involved in specific meetings, doing a point systems recognising team members who received positive feedback or including customer care in the performance management (such as appraisals) are such great ways to get your team fully involved in providing the best experience to customers.

Last but definitely not least, you also need to make sure you get help from an expert and trainer in customer service to communicate and transmit this vision to the team, but also to highlight how important this “part of the job” is for the company. You also want them (and yourself too) to have the right skills in order to handle customers successfully as previously mentioned. And there is nothing more important than receiving training regularly on the importance of customer service in order to do so.

One of the first thing I aim for when I regularly train front line employees on customer service, is making sure every attendee understand how important she/he is in terms of providing great customer experience. As I always say, in the eyes of customers, if you are their main point of contact and the main person helping them throughout their journey, you then entirely represent the business in the eyes of these customers.

Whatever your role and position is in the company, you are the main representative of the business in the eyes of the customers you are mostly in touch with. In fact, it is sometimes the first entry roles who are the most in charge of handling and dealing with customers. Hence the importance of understanding that each role are important in a company so you treat, manage and support everyone fairly.

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Remember, customer service cannot be outstanding one day and poor the other. Therefore, the key to success in customer service is not to be able reach out a certain level of quality, but actually being able to maintain it in the long-term. And when it comes to consistent customer service, not only the "emerged part of the iceberg" is important. The emerged part being what the customer sees.

If you take the example of a watch, in order to have the watch indicating the time, there is a?precise and sophisticated mechanism inside the watch. It is exactly the same when it comes to customer service. To understand what an experience of quality delivered to your clients is, you must first of all see this experience as a result. A result of a system in place that keeps the team and the company performing well.

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An outstanding customer service is definitely a result of a great organisation, communication and basics in place within the business. I could write pages on that and most articles will actually cover this topic at some points. But the main advice I could give you when it comes to the vision, is to include customer’s perspective and experience in any of your decisions, goal settings or strategies, as any of these will always affect your customers at some points.

Taking the example of internal communication, one of the goal behind successfully communicate internally is to?ensure that whoever within the team is in touch with a client or dealing with a specific request, the experience or the way it is handled remains consistent thanks to amazing internal communication. So every person involved with a specific customer have the correct information on the customer journey, preferences or the urgency in order to handle him/her successfully.

Need more advice? Feel free to reach out! You can also check my website or YouTube channel to get to know more about what I do.

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