What to Know About Delivering Exceptional Customer Experience

A few weeks ago, I was nominated alongside Maame Efua Eminsah-Appiah to attend a training on “Delivering Exceptional Customer Experience,” organized by the National Banking College . A quick glance at the topic and I thought to myself, are they sure this isn’t going to be a training based off of some HBR, Hubspot or google article content? I had my doubts yet when we were given the opportunity to register and state our expectations, I studiously stated that I was looking forward to getting new knowledge and innovative ways to change the face of delivering customer service.?

Fast forward to arriving at the venue of the training and locating my class, I barely touched my seat when I was asked to introduce myself to the class. Was it on the spot, damn right it was but I took a breath and spoke up. The class kicked off after our facilitator Patrick Otieku-Boadu 's humble introduction and boy, was I pleasantly surprised?! You'd understand why as your read on.

At the end of each day, I came to the conclusion that most companies barely scratched the surface of what customer service and customer experience in its entirety was. If you’ve noticed, companies relegate customer service to a specific unit in the company and this shows to an extent that there’s no appreciation of the essence of customer service and customer experience to the business. It further denotes that there’s not been enough understanding on the subject matter and how to apply it to ensure that the customer is given an experience that leaves them satisfied and wanting more.

In the subsequent paragraphs, I would delve into some of the concepts, ideas and practices that stood out to me which I think when utilized would serve the interest of both company and the customer.?

It is worth noting that Customer Service is about managing the feelings of the customer. Taking this a step further is Customer Experience which posits that the company be proactive about managing the feelings of the customer rather than remaining reactive.?

Unlike considering the service to commence and end with the customer service representative, it would help if companies considered every touchpoint the customer interfaces as an opportunity to positively manage the feeling of the customer. This means that if you’re a Fintech like IT Consortium is, you should be interested in ensuring that every unit the customer/client interacts with from visiting your office, to the onboarding stage, project management stage, contract, development and sign off stage leaves the customer feeling valued and confident in choosing you as a service provider.

Now in delivering exceptional customer service and experience, it is prudent for the company to establish a service philosophy centered around who and whom we’re serving, what service we are offering and why we are offering that service. Next is to develop a strategy that determines how the principles will be realized. Such as how can we empower our internal customers to ensure that they give the customer a positive experience? Some principles that challenged my thinking at the time of the training are;

• Customers do the best they can with the resources they have.
• Every behavior of the customer has a positive intention.
• The service provider is the one that needs to be flexible.
• Everything is feedback.

These helped me look at customers in a different light and better appreciate where customers come from when they raise concerns that as a Client Service Specialist, I think they shouldn’t even raise. Knowing that customers are on different levels of the journey and do things differently impacts how I engage them. This also removes any stereotypes or biases I had while picking up their issues, reiterating the power of constraint release.

Another lesson that shaped my thinking is ensuring that in executing my daily tasks, I bear in mind that how I do what I do (output) must positively affect the way the customer feels. In delivering our daily tasks, we need to be intentional about making the customer feel safe, valued and confident in the service that’s being provided. In the long run, this impacts the company.

Additionally, when delivering exceptional service, we need to identify the moments of truth (the point in the chain where the customer encounters us) and the level of expectation of the customer (what the customer anticipates when they contact us). Once we are able to identify these, we can now shape the level of reality that we offer (what the customer actually experiences with us). As customer centric businesses that we all claim we are, we need to bridge the level of expectation and level of reality gap with the outstanding experience we offer to the customer. The kind of experience we give the customer determines their reaction and to a large extent influences the perception they have about our business and what they say to others about us.

“Responsibility equals accountability equals ownership. And a sense of ownership is the most powerful weapon a team or organization can have.” - Pat Summit.

Service accountability is yet an additional concept that struck me as I partook in the training. There is no doubt that we need to promote service accountability in the delivery of customer experience. The first step to realizing this is ensuring that we are the causal agents of great experience. This implies that we must be empowered to make things happen for our customers in a proactive manner. Additionally, we need to offer support to both external and internal customers rather than sabotage them. Sabotaging the customers - internal and external alike, comes back to bite you in a way you least expect. We need to endeavor to provide results rather than excuses. This reflects positively on our personal image and the corporate image.

Among the many exercises we did during the sessions, the one that carried weight for me would be identifying the various flashpoints (place, person, event or time) for which customers complain. Doing this exercise exposes you to risk points that are overlooked and that have great potential to harm the business and cost you the customer. I would recommend doing this exercise with your teams as well.

To wrap up, it is expedient that we understand and appreciate the fact that customers are not interested in having isolated experiences in the Customer Experience Chain. At no point in the chain should the customer feel weary, insignificant, uncared for, cheated etc. Rather, their anticipation of benefiting from the complete experience in the chain should be the reality we give them. In other words, leave the customer feeling great and wanting more at every point of interface.

PS: For more insight, you can get a copy of Mr. Patrick Otieku-Boadu’s book - Customer Service Delivery. You can also follow him on LinkedIn for content on People Management, Functional Leadership and a host of others. Special mention to Joel Larkai and his team.