Surface Ripples

Customer Experience 101

“Customer Service” is usually one of the key training courses on which large organisations send customer facing staff.

Most of the time, this kind of training (depending on which level of worker it’s aimed at) instils the skills of greeting, selling, serving, handling telephone calls and complaints either face-to-face or over the phone.

What comparatively few organisations have yet to grasp is the concept of “Customer Experience” (CX from now on). This concept has been going for some time and encapsulates more how customers feel when they deal with an organisation. In other words, which emotions do they experience?

Many of us can produce “horror stories” of dealings with organisations that, if anything, embedded in us the resolve either to minimise potential dealings with them or better still, not deal with them at all.

Bernoff, Manning and Bodine in their book Outside In examine the entire process of CX.  There’s an organisation (the XM Institute) that collects data and organises training, seminars and conferences around the entire topic of customer experience.

One thing that has become clear is that a large part of customer experiences tend towards the “mediocre” level.  This means that, if we’re lucky, our customers will come away from having dealt with our organisation feeling what can only be described as “OK…” at Best.

The great news is that it takes comparatively little effort to up our game from “mediocre” to “good”. More’s required to go from “good” to “excellent” and remain at “excellent”.  This involves instilling a set of thought processes and mindsets into the very “DNA” of an organisation and its workforce to ensure that, no matter where the customer “touches” the organisation, they’ll find that the product or service was:

Able to fulfil the need described by the business’ catalogue, brochure or even reputation.

Easy to use.

Enjoyable to use.

Now ask yourself, how often can you say truthfully that experiences with various institutions and organisations “ticked” all three boxes?  If they ticked 2 out of 3, that’s not good enough and rates as a “low good” if you’re lucky.

What would it take to change it?

Is this happening in your organisation?

I deliver change in markets ranging from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management.  I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email. 

Labels: Customer Care, Leadership, Selling, Teamwork

posted by William Martin @ 13:14