Managing the Customer Experience

In a world of e-business, the channels for connecting with customers have become splintered, reflecting a new and more complex reality. Customers can use your website, obtain information to compare your company with others, and to contact you by email.

They can call your call centre, go through 4 or 5 levels of IVR, hold for 25 minutes and still be disconnected before speaking to a real person. Their experience of interacting with you can be satisfactory, but rarely satisfying. Has the interaction been designed to engage the customer or merely to keep your costs as low as possible?

Customer Experience

Have you researched how customers would like to be treated when they interact with your organization?

If not it is highly likely that you are not doing the things which will create satisfied customers. It is crucial to know what sort of experience your customers want when they interact with you so defining the required customer experience is the starting point for any company intent on long term success.

Successful organisations are increasingly allying their brand with the experience they provide to their customers. The branded customer experience expresses the essence of what the company is about. For customers it is not only a guarantee of consistency and quality but also often a differentiating lifestyle statement.

Companies as diverse as Starbucks and BMW; Sony and Midwest Airlines not only make great products but also have changed the way their customers live their lives.

These companies have created customer loyalty which lasts a lifetime and they have done it by delivering a branded customer experience tailored to their customers’ needs in a way their competitors have found very difficult or impossible to emulate

Service Transformation

Once you know the required customer experience you can re-align processes and train employees to deliver that experience. This is the start of transforming the service you deliver to your customers and is a journey that will eventually reach all parts of your organisation. A successful service transformation programme will reduce costs (by eliminating failure) and build revenues from returning (satisfied) customers.

There are 3 major supports for successful service transformation. The first is the product or service you offer.

Does it do what it is supposed to do?

Is it reliable, safe and economical?

If the basic product is unsound then it must first be improved if transformation is to be successful. A good product hardly confers advantage in today’s market – there are lots of good products around – but a poor product certainly detracts.

The second support is the processes and systems which surround the product for delivery and support. Customers are not impressed when they order a blue car which arrives a month after it was promised and then turns out to be red.

There is nothing wrong with the product, but the processes and systems involved with ordering, scheduling and delivery certainly need attention. Similarly, your BMW was a great car when it left the factory but if the local agent cannot look after it to the necessary standard you are unlikely to buy another when the time comes for a replacement.

The final support comes from the people involved in making, delivering and maintaining the products.

Organisations that deliver their brand promise through their people are in prime position to reap those elusive benefits of satisfaction, loyalty and growing revenues and profits.

Building Loyalty

Studies in many industries are consistently showing that highly satisfied customers are loyal customers. This means that customers stay with you and do increasing business over the years, which is very profitable. Why is it so profitable? Because winning new customers is expensive ‘ sales, marketing and system setup costs ‘ and only moves into profit when the customer has been with you for some time and these initial coats are recouped. A major study showed that superior customer service created up to half the profit of most successful organisations.

But there is even better news. Loyal customers not only do increasing business with you but they also tell others about their satisfaction. Referrals are orders you never had to win, and the most cost effective way of growing business. Many businesses never advertise ‘ particularly in the hotel and restaurant trade ‘ growth comes entirely through repeat business and referrals.

Introducing a Customer Services Function