How to create a World Class Customer Experience

Most organisations are starting to realise that offering an exceptional customer experience is the direct route to profitability. After all we are living in a world of mass information. Thanks to social media we are now able to gather real-time intelligence on client ratings at the click of a button. If you have consistently great ratings on google and other customer feedback/review platforms this can only help your business. But what if you don’t for some reason? How do you address it?

Many organisations make the mistake of putting all their efforts into directly addressing customer complaints. This can range from apologies, to discounts, to special offers. Anything to entice the customer into coming back. Whilst in certain situations this will work it isn’t a long-term or sustainable solution. It’s a firefight. You have to remember that the client experience is a “symptom” of other underlying factors within your organisation. Address these root causes and your Customer Experience will largely take care of itself.

A Formula For Success

Employee Experience & Engagement + Culture = Customer Satisfaction = Profitability

It’s a great idea to remember this formula. It’s essentially the Service – Profit chain. A sequence of events that results in profitability. So, if your customer feedback isn’t as it should be, start by going back to the very beginning and examine your level of Employee Engagement.

Employee Experience & Engagement

It sounds simple but if your employees aren’t happy then what chance do they have of making your customers happy?

I find it quite sad that we often don’t find out an employee’s real reasons for leaving until they are half way out the door. Sometimes you still don’t find out because they are worried about jeopardising their reference. It’s one of those poignant moments in life when a relationship ends yet you could have done something quite simple (but important to the other person) to rectify it.

In most cases Staff Turnover will be one of the biggest costs to your organisation if your Employee Experience isn’t spot on. Work out how much it costs you on average per employee. Don’t just factor in, salary recruitment, induction and training costs. Think about the impact and disruption on customer service and retention. And the cost of having to go through it all again when someone good leaves 6 months down the line.

Many companies fail to put enough energy into Employee Engagement. They either don’t have the time or believe it will cost too much. Sometimes it’s pride – they believe they know their business best and have the delusion that everyone is happy. Some want to but just don’t know how to or where to turn. Why would they? After all this is a specialist, professional task.

The key is to fix roof whilst the sun is shining. Even if your employee experience is good, don’t rest there. Ask your employees what would make it “World Class”. Think strategically and realise that if you take the next step it will benefit your business financially in the long run. Strive to make it great. Simply put, offer a World Class Employee Experience.

Culture

The truly great organisations plan and engineer their business culture systematically. They don’t just allow it to evolve. They realise that their customers place a tangible currency on their culture and want to buy into and share your values and beliefs.

Spell out and communicate what your culture is. Define what World Class means to your staff and your customers. Make sure that whatever "goes up on that wall" really means something. I don’t mean a bland mission statement that no one cares about. It has to be a shared vision.

A world class culture will mean different things to different people but everyone has to have an input. All staff need to be part of its creation so they take ownership, buy into it with hearts and minds and live and breathe it.

You know when you’ve got it right when you can stop anyone in the organisation at random and ask them what the business stands for and they all give a similar answer.

To achieve this, “Openness” has to be one of your core values. – if staff only have an opportunity to say what they really think once a year on an anonymous basis, what does this say about your culture.?

I’m not talking about politics and trouble-making but a positive sharing of ideas and opinions. Many companies see it as threat and a potential source of conflict, so they take the safe route.

If you get these two stages right you are 90-95% of the way there. But if you have a strong desire to go the whole way you can fine tune your customer experience.

Customer Experience

To really get this spot on you have to move beyond the realms of surveys and feedback forms. This requires genuine personal engagement and interaction from your senior executives. It takes time. You have to approach your customers individually and engage them in a dialogue about what they like about your business and what you can improve. It’s not about the things they say but what they don’t say. The little nuances you can only pick up on in a private conversation.

Unlike the US we still inhabit a largely anti-complaint culture in the UK. Most people who are unhappy tend to just walk and it’s these ones that just quietly slip away that you have to address. This personal engagement and visibility from business owners is the most powerful way of preventing this from happening. Remember, the Customer Experience is part of your organisational culture NOT a department within your organisation.

Carl Gregory is Sales Manager for The OCM Group. He is an expert in leadership, behavioural change and organisational culture with a proven track record of helping companies increase their productivity and profitability.

The OCM Group are coaching and mentoring specialists who use this expertise to support our clients achieve their strategic goals. We don’t offer generic leadership, innovation or change programmes but instead identify and build the leadership capabilities required to achieve strategic goals through innovative coaching and mentoring programmes.