Creating a Great Customer Experience in 2017

Here are five practical tips for ensuring you deliver great service in 2017.

There are still few organisations who truly deliver an outstanding customer experience on a consistent basis. Yet most recognise that service is a source of competitive advantage. Meeting and exceeding customers’ expectations leads to greater customer retention, enhanced reputation and increased profitability and stakeholder value. Those businesses who truly deliver exceptional service adopt five principles:

1. Listen to customers and act on their feedback

Great organisations use a variety of techniques to better understand and anticipate customer needs. These include techniques such as Net Promoter Score, customer satisfaction surveys and customer effort scores as well as on-line surveys and internet feedback, customer focus groups and customer panels. to gain insights into customers’ views, opinions and feelings. Importantly, these organisations act on customer feedback.

2. Recruit for attitude, train for service

Recruit for attitude, train for service skills. Organisations which are customer-centric, recruit and select people who have a positive attitude towards the customer and high levels of energy to get things done. These people, demonstrate winning behaviours towards the customer . They are not cynics (who have a poor attitude and high energy levels), or victims who display a ‘I can’t and I won’t help’ attitude or a spectators who ‘would if they could’. Rather they have a ‘can do’ approach which means that they deliver high levels of customer experience. If you have people with the right attitude and energy, you can then train service skills and competence. Remember to hold refresher training too so skills and approaches are constantly updated.

3. Ensure everyone has line of sight to the customer

Too often people who work in back office positions within organisations fail to appreciate the impact of their actions on the customer. The requests that get passed from department to department and processes that are bureaucratic and cumbersome all have an impact on the end customer. How well does your business instill the philosophy that everyone serves the customer? This means providing opportunities for back office staff to interact with customers and to appreciate what it is like on the front line as well as  promoting the recognition that there are internal as well as external customers.

4. Continually strive for improvement

Customer’s expectations are constantly rising. To remain successful, businesses need to continually innovate and improve. This means being aware of rising customer expectations and finding new ways to deliver a great customer experience. Take the opportunity to engage your teams in ideas and projects for improving the customer experience.

5. Lead by example

Simple as its sounds, if you want your business to  be customer-centric, then the leadership team needs to demonstrate behaviours that show that the importance of the customer. Customer-focused leaders spend time with customers, act on their feedback and put customer experience on all agenda items. They recognise that highly engaged employees are most likely to deliver excellent service so take steps to involve team members in service improvements.

What you do and say in relation to service excellence will set the tone for the rest of the business.

How do you and your organisation rate against these five areas? To find out more about how to create a great customer experience, contact info@thestairway.co.uk

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