Take advantage of high-touch customer engagements, a retail insight.

Take advantage of high-touch customer engagements, a retail insight.

Retail managers have a tough job balancing operating constraints and customer experience demands. What is often missed are the opportunities created through positive customer engagements, delivered at the right time…. and those can be designed.

In a retail context, where do we place our best employees? In one instance the store managers had allocated their worst performing staff to the fitting rooms to sort hangers and fold clothes behind a desk.

Out of sight, out of mind?

I think not. And certainly a missed opportunity to engage (delight) customers. Wait, there’s more – fitting rooms present the ideal opportunity to up-sell and drive revenue.

The peak-end-rule should also guide our operational decisions. The peak-end-rule says that a customer’s experience is based mostly on how they felt at the peak of the experience and at the end of their experience.

The buying decision is often the ‘peak’ or most intense point. Does this decision occur in the fitting room?

Then how do we design the ‘end’ of the experience? Does the cashier surprise the customer with a discount or offer on their next purpose? How do the door staff thank the customers as they leave? The opportunities are endless (and cost effective). 

When sorry isn't enough

Whilst reading my book over the weekend I overheard my twins quarreling with each other. The one child apologises to the other for throwing her treasured toy tiger in the dirt. The other responds (slightly belligerently) – “well sorry isn’t good enough” and storms off to her room.

This got me thinking about how often we apologise or receive an apology and whether simply saying sorry is enough.

In the context of customer experience management we need to consider how we apologise to our clients when we mess up – and let’s face it we all mess up, it’s how we recover that’s important.

While I believe empathy in saying you’re sorry is important, the words need to be backed up with actions.

The question is: are the recovery actions your company takes random, consistent or at the discretion of the service delivery agent? What is the closed loop to ensure we learn from our mistakes?

My suggestion is to invest time thinking about the desired outcomes for your customers and the organisation and design a set of guided actions to achieve these outcomes. Whichever way you look at it, there is only an upside: poor experiences are turned into great ones leading to more loyal customers and internally processes can be continuously improved and slip-ups avoided in future (a journey to customer excellence). 

Defining CEM through princples

During my research I found that many of my interviewees defined Customer Experience Management in their organizations using principles….. and so I began collating and grouping CEM principles and over a few months had a list of over 800 CEM principles. I find that principles provide a great foundation for defining, explaining and operationalizing customer experience management. Below are my top 25 – let me know what you think and what you would add?

My top 25 CEM principles:

CEM Principle #1: Leadership should be actively and continually involved in CEM efforts

CEM Principle #2: Leadership should keep looking for new ways to maintain enthusiasm around CEM efforts

CEM Principle #3: Make CEM one of the companies top priorities

CEM Principle #4: Have a clear and well communicated strategy

CEM Principle #5: Develop trust relationships with your customers

CEM Principle #6: Consider the functional AND emotional value you are providing to your customers

CEM Principle #7: Always deliver on your promises

CEM Principle #8: Reinforce your brand with every interaction

CEM Principle #9: Consider customer experience beyond marketing communications

CEM Principle #10: Find ways to meet customer needs not only deliver product features

CEM Principle #11: Know what drives customer purchases

CEM Principle #12: Employees need to be motivated, competent and innovative

CEM Principle #13: Reward and recognize customers for delivering excellent customer experiences

CEM Principle #14: Align key performance indicators with customer experience

CEM Principle #15: Engage employees in the customer experience process

CEM Principle #16: Provide employees with the right tools to deliver good customer experiences

CEM Principle #17: Think about segmenting customers by their needs

CEM Principle #18: Use customer segmentation to predict behavior

CEM Principle #19: Document customer experiences across touch points

CEM Principle #20: Have an integrated view of the customer across systems

CEM Principle #21: Know and understand all customer touch points

CEM Principle #22: Segment and prioritize customer touch points

CEM Principle #23: Find ways to measure customer experience

CEM Principle #24: Love customer complaints

CEM Principle #25: Embrace customer complaints

Importance of building trust relationships

Mr. Company how can I trust you when you lie to me?

I recently had a scheduled appointment with a representative from one of my service providers. Further – it was an initial assessment and I hadn’t even handed over any money yet. After waiting for 20 mins (too long) in the waiting area I decided to call him and find out where he was. I was presented with a ridiculous lie. Details unimportant but if only he had told the truth and said “I got caught up” or “I’m so sorry I completely forgot how can I make this up to”.

This silly lie cost him and his company my trust and my business.

Having recently read the SAS Institute Inc’s ‘2009 Customer Experience Maturity Monitor’, this got me thinking about the importance of building trust relationships with customers. The SAS Institute Inc. sum up this concept nicely and say that “a customer’s trust is a belief that the company has her and his best interests at heart and can be depended upon for respect, openness, tolerance and honesty”.

What a fabulous philosophy for companies to use?

This article also describes the gap between how companies think they behave towards trust and how they actually behave. --- I think a key problem in developing customer centricity.

We are all human and we can all make mistakes but this can be overcome with a simple philosophy of respect, openness, tolerance and honesty.

It really matters how you respond to customer feedback

I use the term “customer feedback” which to me sometimes means “compliments” but most of the time this means “complaints”.

As a customer I often give feedback as I believe this is part of my role to play in having my expectations met. And I try to do it in a collaborative way. So this morning I gave some “customer feedback” to a well known local butcher where I often buy meat and also to a beauty spa where I recently had a treatment. Without providing you with the long winded tales here are some basic principles that I learned:

1. Provide customers with easy to use channels to provide feedback. Customers have different preferences so offer options such as a phone number, email address, website etc. I like to have a number to call.
2. Be open to feedback. I mean encourage customers to really tell you how they are feeling.
3. i.e. Don’t be defensive. Some customers will be offensive, don’t retaliate with defense.
4. Avoid denial. Customers don’t want to be told that they are telling fibs. If you don’t believe them rather say that you will investigate the problem. And then investigate it.
5. Don’t blame an employee or a broken system. It is your company, take ownership.
6. Thank customers for providing feedback. And really mean it.
7. Follow up with some information on how the problem was resolved.
   

Then lastly I personally DON’T like to be offered freebies when I give feedback. In my opinion freebies don’t buy good will and encourage the wrong kind of feedback, showing you care will keep me coming back… but this point is up for debate?

So….. I’m really looking forward to my massage next week but can anyone recommend a good butcher?

Your brand belongs to your customers

There is a desperate need for companies to move from the mindset that they own their brand to an understanding that their brand is in fact driven by their customers.

When describing your brand can you say:

• It is clear in the customers mind? Or is it about the internal processes of the company?
• Can it easily be delivered to the customer? Or could it leave empty promises?
• Does it relate into value for the customer? Or is the value proposition unclear?
• Is every customer interaction identifiable with the brand? Or could your customers be experiencing brand confusion?

Is it not the brands that are clear, customer directed and consistently delivered the ones that outsmart their competitors time and time again?

Why is CEM so difficult?

Few companies will deny the importance of CEM while many fail to deliver. Below I have discussed some of the reasons why I think companies continue to struggle with CEM.

Fuzzy definitions: CEM often means different things to different people inside companies. Perhaps companies need to have clearly defined customer principles which are well communicated and become part of the company ethos.

Visibility: Often there is nobody senior to oversee the entire companies CEM efforts which results in a loss of visibility, momentum and focus. Assigning a senior member of the company to guide the CEM strategy will surely ensure sufficient resource allocation, gain organisation wide support and provide continuous monitoring.

Lack of management approaches: This is the case of good intentions but no game plan. There seems to be a general lack of clear CEM approaches and management tools. Companies need simple and implementable CEM practices that work.

Not a priority: If CEM is not one of the companies top priorities it will always take the back seat to other initiatives. Unfortunately CEM cannot be successful unless it is accepted as a continuous journey- one that requires constant focus and attention.

No strategy: Many companies claim to be managing their customer experiences yet lack a formal strategy with allocated resources. Good customer experiences will only happen when a company has taken intentional and calculated steps towards providing them. It just doesn’t happen on its own.

Conflicting perceptions: A customer’s perception of their experience often differs to the company’s perception of the experience they provide. Until companies can put themselves into their customer’s shoes they will struggle with their CEM efforts. Furthermore few companies know what customers value and what keeps them coming back.

Once-off efforts: CEM cannot come in the form of short project bursts but should be managed as a continuous function of the business. This is achieved by allocating a permanent CEM team that embarks on a CEM journey with constant feedback, measures and new initiatives.

These are just some of possibly many reasons, but hopefully a quick assessment of the above could help companies determine why and where they continue to struggle with CEM.