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.
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