Why you need a customer experience vision

The startup's customer service leader was frustrated with her company's founder.

She had been asked to build out the customer support team, but had been given very little direction or resources to do it. "I want your team to deliver wow experiences," was all he said.

Wowing customers sounds great, until you realize it's incredibly vague.

• What makes an experience a wow?
• How exactly do you deliver it?
• Why is it up to the support team?

Going for wow is also a terrible business strategy, but that's a different story.

What the customer service leader really needed was clearer direction. If you want your employees to get obsessed with customers, you have to give them more than a well-worn, empty platitude like "wow."

You need to give them clarity.

Why employees need clarity

I arrived about 30 minutes early for my presentation. Instantly, I could see something was wrong with the room.

Perhaps you can spot it, too.

Now here's the amazing thing: multiple employees allowed this to happen. Each one did their job precisely as asked.

• The salesperson sold the room based on the requested capacity.
• The hotel banquet staff set up the requested 50 chairs with tables.
• The A/V team set up the requested projector and microphone.

What all of these employees lacked was clarity about why they were doing those tasks. Watch the short video to hear me share more of the story:

Most employees naturally want to do a good job. They seek clarity about what a good job looks like and how their performance will be evaluated.

The hotel employees did their job correctly because they were given a set of tasks, but didn't understand why they were doing it.

You might be wondering if the employees' supervisor saw this set-up. He did.

The supervisor dutifully checked to ensure the requested number of tables and chairs were set up in the correct configuration. They were, so the supervisor considered it a job well done.

What these employees needed was clarity about what they were ultimately trying to do for their customer. It's the clarity provided by a customer experience vision.

What is a customer experience vision?

A customer experience vision is a shared definition of an outstanding customer experience that gets everyone on the same page.

Let's use In-N-Out Burger as an example.

The fast food chain has a cult following and is known for great-tasting burgers and friendly service. It even beats out the legendary Texas chain, Whataburger, in Texas.

In-N-Out has operated under the same customer experience vision since it was founded in 1948.

Give customers the freshest, highest quality foods and provide them with friendly service in a sparkling-clean environment.

Walk into any In-N-Out Burger location and you'll see this deceptively-simple vision guiding everything employees do.

• The burgers are fresh (never frozen) and are cooked to order.
• Invariably friendly employees always greet you with a smile.
• The store is always very clean.

This vision doesn't just guide store employees. It serves as a compass to point other departments in the same direction.

• Supply chain ensures no store is more than a day's drive from the in-house patty making facilities, so food is alway delivered fresh.
• Marketing has maintained a simple menu of burgers, fries, shakes, and soft drinks.
• Corporate development only opens company-owned locations and doesn't franchise.

Unlike that pillar of failure, In-N-Out employees have a clear understanding of what they're expected to deliver for their customers: quality, friendliness, and cleanliness.

Customer-centric companies almost invariably have some form of customer experience vision to guide employees.

You can see more examples here.

How do you create a customer experience vision?

Most people are surprised to learn a great customer experience vision can be written in just two hours, plus a little pre-work.

Here's my step-by-step guide.

There are a few reasons it can be written so quickly.

First, a great vision should articulate what's already there. Imagine what your customers experience on a good day, when everything is clicking. A customer experience vision should describe that.

Second, the process generally works efficiently when you get the right people in the room to write your statement. It has to be a cross-functional group of employees rather than a group of executives.

Third, using the right facilitator can help you run the process smoothly and avoid common pitfalls.

Do you have a question about creating your own customer experience vision? You can contact me directly and I'm happy to help.

Customer Obsessed shares practical advice for building a customer-focused culture. It draws upon lessons from The Service Culture Handbook.