7 Keys To Customer Experience

Despite the economic difficulties, there has been a significant uptick in real customer experience efforts. What does real mean? Efforts which address systemic issues like poorly designed interactions, broken processes, outdated business rules, insufficient customer insight and cultures that are far from customer-centric.

Here is some advice by Forrester’s Bruce Temkin for keeping your customer experience efforts on track:

1. Drop the executive commitment facade. It’s very easy for executives to say "customer experience is important." But it’s much more difficult for them to dedicate the time and energy required to make it a real priority. So, executives should either get actively involved in customer experience transformation or drop it from their agendas.

Start here: Develop a customer experience dashboard and manage the results with the same energy that you manage financial results.

2. Acknowledge that you don’t know your customers. When market research teams require long lead times and expensive projects to answer questions about customers, too many organizations go without this insight. But the path to customer experience success requires significantly deeper customer insight. So, companies need to develop voice of the customer programs that provide ongoing and continuous access to customer insights.

Start here: Create a voice-of-the-customer program with a cross-functional team that focuses on four "LIRM" components: listening to customers, interpreting the feedback, reacting to the insights and monitoring results from actions over time.

3. Keep from getting too distracted by social media. Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites may seem sexy, but they aren’t the only channels for customer feedback. Other channels like comments on surveys and calls into the call center can often provide even richer insight. So, companies need to learn from social media feedback, but not overreact to it.

Start here: Treat social media as one of many listening posts in a comprehensive voice-of-the-customer program that examines both structured and unstructured feedback.

4. Stop squeezing the life out of customer service. Forrester's research shows that consumers care more about good customer service than they do low prices. It also turns out that many customer service interactions are critical "moments of truth" that drive customer loyalty. But companies often treat customer service as an unwanted stepchild, focusing almost exclusively on aggressive cost-cutting. So, companies need to start viewing customer service as a strategic asset.

Start here: Measure customer service organizations based on how effectively they help customers instead of efficiency metrics like average handle times.

5. Restore the purpose in your brand. True brands are more than just color palettes, logos and marketing slogans, they’re the fabric that aligns all employees with customers in the pursuit of a common cause. They represent a firm’s raison d’être. Unfortunately, many companies have lost this sense of purpose in their brands. So, companies need to redefine their brand and embed it in the hearts and minds of all employees.

Start here: Translate your brand into promises you will make (and keep) with customers across every key touch point.

6. Don’t assume employees will get on board. Employees are often the most critical element of any customer experience effort. But firms can’t just hope that everyone will participate in these change initiatives. So, companies need to actively focus on engaging employees at every level across the organization in their customer experience efforts.

Start here: Communicate (a lot) about "why" customer experience is important and allow employees to participate in defining "how" to make improvements.

7. Translate customer experience into business terms. Research by Forrester uncovered a strong correlation between customer experience and loyalty. An average $10 billion company can generate $284 million of additional revenues from customer experience improvements. But most companies don’t fully understand the link between customer experience and business results. So, companies need to identify how customer experience impacts their financial results.

Start here: Engage the CFO to develop a model which shows the impact that customer experience has on customer loyalty.

How to scare off your customers - 10 tips

I love these ten tongue-in-cheek tips that will most certainly help a company lose its customers. There is great learning in this.



Top 10 Best Ways To Scare Off Your Customers

1. Pass the customer around.
Whatever you do, make it virtually impossible for the customer to get what they want when they call you. Voice jail is great. Callers love that. Or, if you have a live person answering the phone, be sure to make your callers repeat themselves to multiple people. Add that extra bit of oomph by accidentally cutting off the call when you make a transfer.

2. Buy a system, and then fit your strategy around it.
Find a complicated system that your own people cannot understand or utilize, so there's no possible way they can use it to improve customer relations. Feel good that you've purchased the best possible system, and just hope your staffers appreciate the investment.

3. Rely on completely automated phone technology.
Forget the people and buy the best automated technology, then put it in front of your customer service operation. It's best to make it really difficult for customers so that they get confused. If they fail to select an option, route them to a really poor-quality answering machine. Why spend a minute of staff time with callers who don't even know which option to choose?

4. Forget about training.
Just do what so many companies do today and put staff on the telephone without an iota of training. Better still, make sure they can't be easily understood and are good at arguing with customers. If customers know they won't get satisfactory service when they call, maybe they just won't bother wasting your time. (continued...)

5. Do not reward loyalty.
Forget about all those loyal customers who have been with you for years. Instead, go out of your way to attract new customers with better deals, and tell your existing ones they cannot have the same special offer, despite how long they have been with your company and how much they have spent. Why bother retaining customers when you can just find new ones? (Wireless phone service providers... can you hear us now?)

6. Ignore the millions of people with speech or hearing difficulties.
If you operate predominantly in the consumer sector, then ignore all those who may not be able to communicate effectively with you. After all, who wants another million or so potential customers?

7. Ignore customer feedback.
Why don't you develop your services and ignore what your customers want? Don't ask for input. That never helps and it just delays the roll-out of new products and services that you know your customers want.

8. Forget about third parties that work with your company.
We're talking about all those companies that work for you and communicate with your existing and prospective customers. Don't bother investing time to work with them. After all, if they cannot help a customer, then who cares? Or if they give the wrong advice and you get sued for misinformation, so what?

9. Forget cultural differences.
Make everyone do things your way, even if they cannot speak your language or have different ways of saying things.

10. Forget about service -- just sell, sell and sell.
Don't get distracted by nasty diversions such as customer care and outstanding service. Customers don't really expect it, so why bother? Just give them a low price and rotten service, and they will come back in droves.


Yes, that should just about do it! Simply follow these 10 steps, and your company will be well on its way toward losing those pesky customers.


From Jonathan Farrington's article on CRMDaily.com.

The cost of bad customer service

There are two types of costs that can be attributed to ‘BAD SERVICE’:

VISIBLE costs; for example:

• cost of complaints handling
• ombudsman issues and compensation
• re-work
• cost of incorrect invoicing
• commission paid to sales people for services later cancelled or compensated
• absenteeism and staff attrition
• Poor ‘word of mouth’ requiring increased defensive advertising resulting in higher customer acquisition costs etc…
  

And, INVISIBLE costs, for example:

• multiple contacts and hand-offs to deal with a single issue or complaint driving increased Customer Service FTE
• hidden Activities to deal with poor service problems
• lost sales due to lack of confidence in company service standards and ability to meet requirements
• lost revenue based the lifetime value of the customer when ‘churn’ is caused by service issues,etc…

The saying is: Quality is Free. Investing in Service Quality makes good business sen$e.

Becoming customer-centric requires courageous leadership

If you fully recognise that customer experience is not a nice to have but rather a must have, and if you understand that the time has to be now because your competitors are already working on their strategy, then there is really only one answer left. That answer is the root cause of the entire issue: lack of courage.

During his many engagements with clients, Lior Arussy of the Strativity Group identified one distinguishing factor among successful leaders. They were courageous.

Says Arussy: "Those leaders who successfully transformed their organizations to become customer centric were courageous in many ways:

• They had the courage to admit that their current value proposition was not good enough to differentiate them from their competition.
• They were courageous enough to recognise that the days of product centricity were over and that they needed to start collaborating with their customers.
• They were courageous enough and humble enough to listen to their customers.
• They had the courage to break down silos and fight against private internal agendas.
• They had the courage to align measurements with customer action outcomes.
• They had the courage to stand up to the naysayers and say "This is the new direction! You can join us or you can leave us."
• They had the courage to face change and overcome their fear of the unknown.
• They had the courage not to hide behind complacency.
• They had the courage to allocate sufficient funding to make customer centricity a real success.
• And most of all they had the courage to lead the charge! They were there front and center and lead by example. "
  

Arussy furthermore states: "The question of how to design and deliver exceptional customer experiences is not a marginal one. It goes to the core of your value proposition and ability to differentiate. Your customer experience is the reason you exist! Becoming customer-centric is not something you delegate – it is the strategy you lead!

As you plan for 2010, the first and only item on your agenda should be 'what are we doing for customers in the coming year.' Customers must be at the core of everything that happens in your organisation. From innovation to leadership up to and including employee engagement, it is time to take this question seriously. The time is now to be courageous and lead the charge."

Hear hear! I would like to add my two pennies worth: No organization rises above the level of commitment of its leadership...

Customer Service Moves Back Into The Spotlight

Forrester's William Band (my former mentor and leader at then Coopers & Lybrand Consulting) just published his Top Eight Customer Management Trends For 2010. I was pleased to read trend #5: Customer Service Moves Back Into The Spotlight.

Band observes: "We see a rising number of inquiries from clients about how to improve their customer service capabilities. How does customer service affects the bottom line? Forrester asked customers to rate their interaction experiences (the Customer Experience Index) based on whether they were:
1) useful — could they get what they needed to do done;
2) easy — or did they run into all kinds of hassles in the interaction process; or
3) enjoyable — or did they feel frustrated and disappointed in the interaction.

The results show that the higher the customer experience index, regardless of the industry, the more customers buy and the more loyal they are.

Contact center customer support needs to evolve to better serve customers who no longer rely on one venue for receiving information but instead engage multiple sources. In addition to checking a company's Web site and its brochures, many customers research information on products and services from social networking sources, such as blogs, and online user ratings. With customers now requiring more real-time support, it's essential to keep pace with their expectations and to respond to them in new ways."

10 Suggestions for sharpening Customer Focus

Here are ten suggestions from authors and consultants for how to create a culture of extreme customer focus in your organization:

1. Create a customer service vision. Much like creating a vision statement to direct the organization, you should also create a clear and compelling “customer service vision” that describes the level of service your organization aspires to deliver.
2. Exceed customer expectations. Show a relentless commitment to exceeding, not just meeting, expectations. Customers can’t tell you how to exceed their expectations, but they know it when they see it, they remember, and they tell their friends.
3. Continuous customer service innovation. Many companies have an ongoing product innovation focus, but rarely think about customer service innovations. Define specific innovation objectives and rewards for improving the customer experience.
4. Create superior customer value. Focus on creating superior value for your customers, and they will love you. This means know your competitors, technologies, and alternatives available. Match your offerings to your target customers better than anyone else.
5. Own the “voice of the customer”. The only critic whose opinion counts is the customer. Create strong, trusting relationships with your customers. Solicit feedback, communicate that feedback to the entire organization, and then be sure to take action on the feedback.
6. Be the expert on delivering superior customer service. Find out everything you can about how to deliver great customer service. Steal the best ideas, benchmark against the top performers, and make improving customer service a core competency.
7. Train every employee to be a customer service champion. Empower employees with the tools, training, equipment and support they must have to deliver excellent service consistently. Reward and praise those who deliver, and deal quickly with any employee who does not embrace the service values.
8. Destroy barriers to delivering superior service. Look at all systems, policies, procedures, reports and rules. Wipe out anything that creates roadblocks or frustrations in the effort to delight and amaze the customer. Stupid rules that make it hard for employees to serve superbly can kill your business.
9. Measure, measure, and communicate. Create a clear, specific, well-thought-out and over-communicated program for systematically collecting and communicating the most important customer service delivery measurements to the people who can then act on them. Make it easy for your people to win.
10. Walk the talk. Every level of the organization, starting at the very top, must be a living example of your service strategy. If you do not deliver excellent service to your internal customers—promptly returning phone calls, showing up on time for meetings, and acting professionally—there is no hope that your front-line people will deliver great service.