How to Deliver a United One-Company Experience
In my Daily Dose video series, I explore the topics that chief customer officers must grapple with on a daily basis. Join me as I discuss what I’ve learned over the course of my 35-year career, so that you can more effectively do the work that needs to be done.
Today’s video is an excerpt from my online course, inspired by my book, Would You Do That To Your Mother? Click here to learn more about the course and enroll.
The following is a lightly edited transcript of the video below.
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Here’s a “hot potato” experience you may have had. You’re at a restaurant; while eating your meal, you want another drink. You can’t find your waiter, so you flag the waiter at the next table and make your request. “I’ll tell your server,” you’re told—and bounce! He disappears. Your meal gets cold and you enjoy your meal less, because you have to wait for the waiter who’s getting paid to serve you to bring you that drink.
Make Mom Proud restaurants, instead, choose a teamwork model—where how people are paid doesn’t impact service. Their team pulls together, because in the end, fulfilled customers will come back to benefit them all.
SHOW UP AS A TEAM TO YOUR CUSTOMER
This is our opportunity to show up for customers as one company, pulling in the same direction to support their needs. But sometimes, we lose our customers in the silo “Bermuda Triangle.” It’s a topic I spoke about in another recent episode of Daily Dose.
This happens when we get busy doing our individual tasks, when we haven’t knit together all of the points that a customer moves through in trying to get something accomplished. And when training, metrics, process, and pay don’t unite people as a team. As a result, the customers are bounced across our organization charts, or passed between our partners and ourselves.
WOULD YOU PASS YOUR MOM AROUND LIKE A HOT POTATO?
Andrea was so excited to be purchasing her new home. She saved for seven years to finally have the down payment and to build up her credit rating to qualify for a loan. After doing research, she found a mortgage company, whom she felt very comfortable with. But what she didn’t realize were the many moving parts that all were interdependent of one another: between her realtor, her mortgage broker and her escrow company.
With the date for closing provided to her by her broker, she arranged to take a week off work to make her move and settle in. She orchestrated that, on the date after her home would be hers, the movers would move her to her new home, where later in the day a furniture store would deliver her new sofa and bedroom set for her home. But on the night before her move, she was informed that a slip in the flow of paperwork between the mortgage and escrow companies would delay her closing by at least one day and maybe two. Three forms needed to be verified, and some information one office needed had not been supplied to the other.
Would you pass your mom around like a hot potato? What Andrea really needed in this situation and what all customers crave, is a close-knit team that works on their behalf. We don’t want to have to personally navigate through the maze of who does what to figure out all the pieces.
ELIMINATE THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE MOMENT
Make Mom Proud companies proactively build bridges for customers, both inside their company and with external partners. They get rid of that “Bermuda Triangle” moment that happens in the handoff between silos and partners: pulling together rather than working separately boosts everyone up. But this doesn’t happen overnight, it takes building a desired experience that unites actions and delivers experiences customers want to have again.
Customers return when organizations are tailored to the customer’s experience and because of memories of great service. So think for a minute: are there any Bermuda Triangle moments in your company? Do you unite how people work together and build bridges across the silos and with partners to deliver a one-company experience? Do you deliver one stop accountability to customers, so that no matter who they encounter in your company, they will never experience that bounce?
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This article was originally published on Customer Bliss, where you can find more articles about implementing customer experience strategies. On my site, you can find out more about how I coach CCOs to lead customer-driven growth. Also, feel free to connect and find more industry news on Twitter @JeanneBliss.