Create an Incredible Customer Experience

Customers require incredible experiences when they go shopping. They get into a shop to have a shopping experience as opposed to buying commodities. Customer Experience Management has gathered momentum in today’s businesses. The buzzword nowadays is the creation of customer experiences in order to remain profitable.  There are a lot of elements that go into creating an incredible customer experience. Too many organizations think they are awesome when in fact they are average or mediocre. They spend lots of money advertising that they have superb customer service but in actual fact when you visit their business premises you will be left wandering. What can a business do to create incredible customer experiences? I propose the following six aspects that need to be looked at before you start to make noise about how great your customer service is:
 

1. Change the paradigm. There is need for a paradigm shift in how everyone in your business views customer service. You are in business of providing customer service, end of story. Forget about what industry or line of business you are in, the only authentic business that you are in is the delivery of incredible customer experience. Everyone in the business has to understand this and be willing to walk the talk. Do not tolerate the ill treatment of your customers, they pay the salaries remember! Treat them as the boss because they truly are the boss.

2. Have a Customer Service Strategy. Do you want to be better than your competitors? In fact, do you want to outpace them in such a way that they are rendered powerless to compete? Then you should have a powerful customer service strategy. Competitors can imitate your products or match your prices but there is one thing they cannot match – incredible customer experience. No one can compete with your business in this arena. This will help you crush your competition, increase market share and dramatically improve revenues.

3. Eliminate stupid policies and procedures.  Look at the stupid policies and procedures that drive your customers crazy and eliminate them. It does not reward you to enforce policies that do not add value to your customers but makes it difficult for them to do business with you.

4. Hire only the best employees. When making hiring decisions go for the best people only. Do not hire anyone mediocre to work in your business because they will deliver mediocre service to your customers.  You deserve the best employees you can get so search for them until you find them. The best employees are always highly motivated, love their jobs and are passionate about customer service. They can contribute towards creating incredible customer experiences. Remember, it is people who deliver incredible experiences to your customers and not machines. So get it right the first time by hiring the best employees only.

5. Empower customer service employees. Employees should be empowered enough to bend the rules in favour of customers. It is folly to recruit the best employees and stifle them with rules and regulations that hinder service delivery. Management should demonstrate by their actions that they allow their employees to do everything they can to create incredible customer experiences. Employees should not fear making decisions which makes customers happy. They should not be punished if their decisions end up prejudicing the business, let them learn from their mistakes and do better next time. 

6. Train and keep training employees. Training is crucial for your employees to continue delivering incredible customer experiences. Once off training programs are not enough to equip employees with all they need in order to do well in customer service. Train them every 3 – 4 months to keep the momentum going.

If you use these strategies and many others you will be able to continue to provide incredible customer experiences to your customers.

How to Create a Superior Customer Service Strategy Part 3 – Deliver Plus One Percent

In last week’s article we discussed the second part of this 3 part series on the creation of a customer service strategy. These principles discussed here are based on an all-time customer service book by business authors Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles called Raving Fans. In it the authors discuss the principles of customer service based on what we call the 3D Approach to Customer Service Strategy – Decide, Discover and Deliver.

We explored the aspects involved in discovering what your customers really want having exhausted the first part of deciding what you want in a previous article. In discover we looked at the various ways that can be used to find out what customers really want. Now it is time to marry decide and discover in deliver. You decided what you want and you also discovered what your customers’ want so what is left is to deliver what your customers want plus one percent in order for you to realise your vision. 

Delivery is the art of giving customers what you promised them and adding a one percent extra to wow them. Good ideas and good intentions are worthless without proper delivery. This is the reality check point, the point where you have to translate words into action. We call it the moment of truth. This is execution level, where your ideas are tested in real life to find out whether they can sustain your vision.

How do you deliver plus one percent? This translates into not trying to put every one of your ideas into play at one time. You will get overwhelmed. Doing too much at one time decreases the quality of the improvements. Instead, perfect your current services, and then each week improve upon this service one percent. Make an extra addition to what your customers expect, doing it one thing at a time.

This is sustainable and your customers will always look forward to doing business with you. They are constantly anticipating what you are going to do next and are prepared to enjoy the surprise. You must exceed your customers’ expectations, if you want them to come back again, and talk about their experience to other people. It is not enough just to meet their expectations. If customers receive only what they expect, they won’t go away excited or inspired by your service. We must give them more than they expect to WOW!! them.

Here are a few suggestions of what you could do in delivering on your promise:

·         Banish the dullness – take something you provide for customers that is usually presented in a boring way, and deliver it in an unusual, amusing way.

·         Be a star - demonstrate any special skills in ways that will WOW customers.

·         Be a friend – be there for customers in times when they would least expect it.

·         Melt away problems – remove problems from customers by taking ownership and making them your problems instead of theirs.

·         Charm with care – do the spontaneous little caring things for customers that surprise and delight them.

As you do this and many other things that come to your mind ensure that you have in place a mechanism to measure your progress towards achieving your vision. Use customer feedback constantly. Give your customers questionnaires, feedback forms, suggestion boxes and anything that can assist you to hear from them what they think about what you are currently doing and how to perfect it. This information will help you to constantly deliver what you discovered from your customers and reach your decided vision.

In this 3 part series we looked at how to create a simple customer service strategy that can be implemented immediately to achieve world class results. Start doing this today and you can be guaranteed that you will succeed. Your business will be built centred around customers. Jeff Imelt, Chairman and CEO, General Electric was once quoted as saying, “at the end of the day, it’s about building your business around customers and finding ways to help them grow, that will make you succeed.” True to that adage building your business around a customer service strategy is the sure way to increase your bottom line and grow your business.

Go ahead and do it. Success is reckoning and it is around the corner. Remember to decide what you want, discover what you customers want and deliver plus one percent.