Here are seven ways to improve customer experience. The Magnificent 7!
1. Create a clear CX (customer experience) vision
The first step in your CX strategy is to have a clear customer-focused vision that you can communicate internally as well as externally. The easiest way to define this vision is to create a set of statements that act as guiding principles. These define your culture “the way we do things round here”. Your WHY!
For example, Zappos use their core family values and these values are embedded into their culture; which includes delivering wow through service, being humble and embracing change.
Most social housing providers have these principles in place. The key is to ensure that they are driving the behaviour of your organisation. Every member of your team should know these principles by heart.
Our experience is that the majority of delegates are unable to vocalise their organisation’s vision and values.
They should be embedded into all areas of training and development, which is why we ensure our training is tailored to incorporate your vision, values and expected behaviours.
2. Understand who your customers are
If your organisation is going to understand your customer’s needs and wants, they need to be able to connect and empathise with your customers.
One way to do this is to segment your customers and create personas (or customer profiles). Try to give each persona a name and personality. For example, Jodie is 35 years old; she likes new technology and is tech savvy enough to follow a video tutorial on her own, James (72 years old) needs to be able to follow clear instructions on a web page and Fiona has no internet connection.
By creating personas, your staff can recognise who they are and understand them better. It’s also an important step to becoming truly customer centric.
Remember, your customers are internal and well as external!
3. Create an emotional connection with your customers
You’ve heard the phrase “it’s not what you say; it’s how you say it”? As we say at Big Picture Training:
Take a look in the mirror and ask yourself “How does it feel to be on the receiving end of me?”
The best customer experiences are achieved when a member of your team creates an emotional connection with a customer.
One of the best examples of creating an emotional connection comes from Zappos:
A customer was late returning a pair of shoes due to her mother passing away. When Zappos found out what happened, they took care of the return shipping and had a courier pick up the shoes without cost. But, Zappos didn’t stop there. The next day, the customer arrived home to a bouquet of flowers with a note from the Zappos Customer Success team who sent their condolences.
Research by the Journal of Consumer Research has found that more than 50% of an experience is based on an emotion as emotions shape the attitudes that drive decisions.
Customers become loyal because they are emotionally attached and they remember how they feel when they use a product or service. According to a recent Harvard Business Review study titled “The New Science of Customer Emotions“, emotionally engaged customers are at least three times more likely to recommend you.
4. Capture customer feedback in real time
How can you tell if you are delivering a WOW customer experience?
You need to ask – And ideally you do this by capturing feedback in real time.
Use live chat tools to have real time conversations and when done, send a follow up email to every customer using post-interaction surveys and similar customer experience tools.
Be proactive and call those customers that you don’t hear from regularly. Ask them how things are. If a customer on a development is experiencing issues with damp and mould for example, it’s likely that others are too. They just haven’t told you.
5. Embed customer service into performance development plans
Many organisations assess the quality of phone and email communication, however, embedding customer service objectives into performance development plans, takes this one step further.
Delegates on our Customer Service, Making a Difference training program, benchmark their current customer service performance against best practice, and create at least one customer service objective to be incorporated into their performance development plans moving forward.
6. Act upon regular employee feedback
Most organisations send out an annual staff survey but, what happens in the 11 months in-between?
Usually, nothing happens. And this is where continuous employee feedback can play a role, using tools that allow employees to feedback customer service improvement ideas, and for managers to see how employees feel about the business.
For example, by using project management software or social media tools, you can create a closed environment where your organisation can leave continuous feedback.
7. Measure the ROI from delivering great customer experience
And finally, how do you know if all this investment in your teams, process and technology is working and paying off?
The answer is in the business results.
Measuring customer experience is one of the biggest challenges faced by organisations, which is why many companies use the “Net Promoter Score” or NPS, which relies on simply asking a customer:
“Would you recommend this company to a friend or relative?”
Big Picture Training provides CX consultancy and training. If you’re looking for a CX interim or you’re a smaller organisation that isn’t ready to invest in a full time CX position, like Mary Poppins, we can fly in and provide you with a “pop-in” CX Director for a fixed number of hours each month to help you to achieve your business goals.