Being intentional about the Customer Experience is one big leap

–   be ready to seize the moment to leave a (Positive) lasting impression

Being intentional about customer experience means that your business planning has a sufficient chunk of investment in time, money, effort, and energy, among others to plan and deploy your customer engagement strategy. Strategy is essentially planning for the future of your business.

It is great to have this grand plan that sets up the blueprint for future growth and sustainability. Today’s uncertain world is one where change outpaces any form of planning or learning. As a business not only are you depending on a well-crafted strategy to proceed, but the awareness to keep on track and make the necessary adjustments when things change, is just as important.

The volatile business environment makes it imperative that you respond to new developments quickly and astutely. Take the Covid-19 pandemic which plagued our world severely just a few years ago. Businesses had very little by way of responses from their existing strategies.

Everything had to change and so the experience agenda of many had to be revisited. Prices flew through the roof as shortages emerged, queuing was common in parts of the world where this practice was uncharacteristic. One well-known brand Gin 5 had answers for keeping its customers happy when the pandemic struck.

By creatively developing their brand of sanitizers they engaged their customers with a solution that showed that they cared about their health and lives. Who would place a premium on gin when lives are at stake? The need then was to develop a solution resonating with the public in times of distress.

They came up with a branded version of sanitizers, named ‘Gintizer’ to keep the brand visible. Fast forward following the initial scare which led to lockdowns and shortages in sanitizers and so, unsurprisingly, they bounced back very quickly having kept their loyal customers happy even in the difficult times.

Note that customer experience is about customer empathy. Therefore, by showing that they cared when it mattered, they convinced their customers that their motivation wasn’t just to make profits. Out of this have emerged many other variations of their products.

According to research carried out by Opportunity Insights, a Harvard-based economic tracker, as of May 2021, the number of U.S. small businesses that were opened decreased by 33.8% compared to January 2020. Small businesses were the hardest hit as needs changed suddenly in response to the demands of the time.

Paradoxically, while many businesses suffered disruptions, it also opened up many opportunities, prominent among these was the new virtual environment and the possibilities that this has opened up for both pioneers and laggards, such technologies as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and WebEx to name a few have emerged and remained in our ecosystem.

According to CX advocate Lynn Hunsaker, “Intentional Customer Experience means you know what you do, and more importantly, why you do it, and you bake the what and why into all aspects of your business — policies, processes” This includes hiring and reviews and rewards.

Here are a few tips on being intentional about CX. First, endeavour to listen and address the details that will see the needs of the customer taken care of promptly. Second, be aware of the evolving needs of customers and position yourself to address them in anticipation.

Third, every encounter with the customer leaves an impression, be prepared to deliver positive outcomes at every opportunity. Fourth, focus on building lasting relationships. When customers know that you care they won’t be leaving in a hurry. Fifth, support your employees to do well with customers. When customers are happy they will keep coming back.

Customer experience does matter

The average business thrives on the customer’s interest in their product or service. Apple is very particular about designing its products and services such that they are simple and easy to use. This principle contributes to a positive customer experience. as customers develop an emotional attachment to the brand.

They have developed a set of guidelines for their employees to follow in engaging with customers. It includes an Apple acronym designed for them to follow when engaging customers.

The steps include the following: Approach, Probe, Present, Listen, and End. Did you notice that these words spell out Apple, and are easy for employees to follow?

That businesses are dependent on customers consuming products and services, is something we must realize to enable us to position ourselves and serve them in ways that make them want to come back for more.

We must realize that the experiences a customer has with a business matter greatly. Consider the last time you ate at a restaurant.

You will recall the experience of your arriving at the restaurant, how you were greeted by the host or hostess, the interaction with the waiter, and when you received and ate your food, and left the restaurant. What stays with you vividly is how you were treated throughout the engagement. the best and worst parts of that experience are our clearest memories.

If the host was rude but you were compensated with a significant discount each of the different situations will contribute to your total experience. Can you see how our interactions with the business directly influenced our opinions about it? We make conclusions about the business based on our experience with anything the business engaged us with ranging from the facilities, people, and products.

Our experience determines whether we will return or not or whether we will persuade others to interact with or steer clear of them. In our best interest as a business, we must strive hard to address the customer’s need no matter how trivial it might seem.

Customer needs are changing

There was a time when a customer’s expectations of service or brand were fairly simple. This is not the case anymore. Today’s volatile world has switched the “baton” to the customer. Customers have much higher expectations today than yesterday’s customers.

Today, customers in a restaurant would expect to enter a very clean facility, be greeted nicely by a host or waiter who would accommodate their seating requests, and remarkably remember their order and anticipate their every need, receive their food order exactly as they ordered it, receive their bill with a courteous thank you for coming and perhaps a gift (chocolate, mints, etc.), as you walk out the door.

I am intrigued these days when I purchase an item from a vendor and hear them thank me after I have paid for the product. This may seem over the top however if we gloss over it customers won’t be impressed. Customer expectations these days are excessive. they want an experience that is simple and memorable.

Although this differs for each business, however, the bottom line is that people want to be the centre of our attention, “to be valued, heard, taken care of, respected” etc. it’s an endless trail. Today’s businesses have moved from a product-centric approach focused on performance to a customer-centric approach.

The latter approach (customer-centric) requires that we prioritize the experience. We must embrace the reality that customers these days are ever-changing, complex people deeply impacted by unpredictable external forces.

It requires that we attune ourselves to the forces that most profoundly affect our customers’ lives, such as technology, health, culture, and their personal experiences (we must stay clear of their private lives for sure). Following the COVID-19 pandemic which forced us to accept different approaches to meetings, we now have a plethora of business engagements and interactions taking place virtually

 Cease the moment

Any encounter with your brand especially when it’s a first encounter leaves a lasting impression in the mind of the customer. Therefore, in customer experience, we are very particular about that encounter and have even dubbed it as the “Moment of Truth”. A simple English definition is very revealing and resonates with the CX meaning aptly.

It describes it as “an occasion when something important happens that tests someone, or something and that will have an effect on the future”. We experience moments of truth on the customer journey depending on how the customer feels from the encounter at any touchpoint.

In CX terms Moments of Truth “Are critical make-or-break interactions between the ‘connected’ customer and the enterprise where customer satisfaction, and possibly the success or failure of the service, is determined”.

The make-or-break situation could happen at any stage in the customer journey. take this example of an airline where immigrants from Fiji were traveling to Australia to find work. They found out much to their surprise that the airline only offered meals when you paid for them. Very disappointed they resigned to their hungry fate. The cabin crew member went to chat with a colleague about the situation.

A passenger in the Business Class section overheard the conversation and offered to pay for the travelers to have a meal. He was the son of a retired pilot of the airline who had passed on. They declined saying it wasn’t fair to him but he insisted that were his father alive he would have done the same.

And so the Fijians had a hearty meal and boy even clapped for the airline not knowing where providence had come from, but perceiving that the crew had taken the initiative for which they were grateful. Ceasing special moments to make extraordinary calls for the customer leaves an indelible mark in their minds. Making sure that they are positive moments is well worth it.

Drive the experience for business growth

The customer journey begins with an awareness of the brand where the customer learns by whatever means that your brand exists and will serve their need. They go on to research everything they can about you (findability) and if the process is painless, they can then learn a bit more about you from others (reputation).

If they are happy with what they have learned at this stage they will go on to transact business with you (purchase). If everything goes well and the customer leaves satisfied then there is a high probability that they will come back. More importantly, if the experience is positive then they are likely to inform others about you.

A customer’s experience with your brand determines their opinions, which includes the decision as to whether they return and continue to engage, and whether they encourage or discourage others from engaging with your business.

Hence the need to be intentional about the experience. the reality is that “customer experience” happens even if we are not aware of it. One of the most important aspects of business growth is the experience that customers have when they engage with your brand.

Customers who have their needs and expectations met by your organization will become loyal and help drive growth for your business through referrals.

Knowing your customer’s need puts you in poll position to drive a response that will match their expectations. It also means that the experience agenda must be driven efficiently with a close alignment to business strategy. Your CX goals must be driven such that aiming at business performance triggers the customer agenda alongside it working towards a mutually beneficial support.

You win as a business with an eye on how you take the customer along. Your KPIs must be designed to drive performance within the business and to motivate employees to respond by focusing on the customer and in the process achieving the mark in recognition of one’ contribution,

Support your employees to drive the CX

If you want to put your best foot forward when dealing with your customers ensure that your team is well-placed to deliver amazing customer experience recovery. Their ability to quickly spot an issue and speedily remedy it will earn great plaudits for your business.

Your quick responses will ensure that you even prevent a possible complaint leaving the customer feeling fantastic. Set your team up to become ‘Recovery Heroes’ by providing clear guidelines, enabling them to act with authority by providing the right guidance and support. This will place them to act quickly in situations using their initiative.

This is where learning is key. How you turn insights into solutions can be a game changer for your business. One lever to turn here is how you value your employees. When they mean much more than cost centres to you your relationship with them becomes very genuine and they in turn reward you with their loyalty.

The boss of a Moves company who observed a loyal employee walk some miles to work on his first day and decided to give away his car to aid this employee stands out as a creative move. You could see in the employee’s facial expression on receiving the car keys from his boss that he was blown away.

Ian Golding makes this clear when he says, ‘Employee experience drives customer experience. Make it your business to understand the picture of engagement in your organization. And help maintain or build it.

Develop customer-centric profiles to create and maintain a link between employees and the business goals. Empathy with the needs of your customer is what will keep them coming back.

The story is told of a CEO who waits on tables because he is keen to understand for himself what the customers go through when they are engaging with his business and for him, the best way to understand this is to experience what his employees go through serving them

Customers will always remember two things vividly. My guess is that the best and worst parts of that experience. They won’t take kindly to a poor experience but equally they will respond positively to a great experience.

just get it right the first time if you can help it and if it goes wrong be prepared to remedy things and compensate the customer. Your response to the encounter leaves a mark so strive to manage the encounter well and you will be duly rewarded.

The Writer is Head of Training Development & Research Service Excellence Foundation, and Management Consultant (Change and Customer Experience). He can be reached on 059 175 7205, [email protected],  https://www.linkedin.com/in/km-13b85717/

 

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