Are You Aligned on Your Customer Experience?

The next time you are in a meeting with colleagues or heads of the other departments in your company, try this fun exercise!

Have everyone around the table take a minute and jot down the three words that come to their minds that best describe your company’s customer experience. Now share!

The customer experience is built across every touch point that spans the entire customer lifecycle. Yet in most cases, organizations are functionally aligned with each focusing on delivering a great experience from their area. Sounds like a recipe for success, right?

But what if the first two examples from the staff are “ease of onboarding” and “no hassle service”? Are these two definitions in alignment with each other? Certainly they both stand alone as good goals to have for your customer experience.

So then I sign up for your service, put in a user name and password, and immediately begin using the product. How easy was that! But then the first time I have a question and call for support, I spend the first 10 minutes of my call giving my name, where I’m located, what industry I’m in, the size of my company, etc. to the Customer Support rep. In this scenario, the delivery on one definition of the optimal customer experience torpedoed the other.

Innovation of products and services is all well and good, but first be clear on the customer experience you intend to deliver. Alignment across your management team is a critical first step!

How do you value the Customer Experience Executive role?

A week or so ago, I was having a conversation with the SVP of Customer Service for a well known SaaS software company when the conversation turned to determining what value a Customer Experience Officer role would bring to their organization. This was a company that clearly gets the importance of the total customer experience, but had not quite reached a size where they felt a full time role was justified.

The conversation hounded me for days. And as I thought about how a company justifies the creation of a full time customer experience executive position, these are the questions I imagine are often asked.

Q. “We already measure Customer Satisfaction and Net Promoter, isn’t that enough?”

Satisfying customers will always be important. Think about it! No customer becomes loyal without first being satisfied. But Customer Satisfaction metrics only represent a customer’s opinion of you at that moment in time instead of looking at your entire body of work. These metrics can often times be discrete measures of specific touch points, such as “how satisfied are you with our product” or “rate your satisfaction with our Knowledge Base”. A customer may rate each of these isolated interactions high, but what if the experience of going from the product to the KB is kludge?

Remember, satisfied customers will always come back to see what you have to offer but also are just as likely to check out your competitor! Building a complete customer experience that creates loyalty will keep them from shopping elsewhere!

Q. “We already have someone responsible for User Experience. Aren’t they one in the same?”

A User is just that: someone using your product or service. A Customer is someone continuously evaluating you based on the total experience.

Not long ago I gave a presentation where I describe the overall Customer Experience as similar to being engaged. Both represent:

• a commitment to a long-term relationship,
• being proactively involved in the relationship, and
• having an emotionally, psychologically, and physically connection.

Someone using your product or service may like what’s right in front of them but not necessarily be committed to the long term. Almost like “Yeah, he/she is fun to hang out with, but I wouldn’t bring them home to meet my parents”. Someone in your organization needs to be looking at the total lifecycle of touch points your customers have with you, not just how to go seamlessly from screen to screen in your product.

Q. “We’re already a customer-focused company from the top down. What can an executive responsible for the Customer Experience offer?”

It’s hard to believe anyone would dispute the long-term value of a superior customer experience. Many studies have been done quantifying increases in retention and revenue from companies that exhibit world-class effort on achieving an awe-inspiring customer experience. But the ROI doesn’t have to take years to realize. Making the leap to dedicate someone full time can bring immediate, short-term benefits companies often overlook.

Companies may have top-down commitment on being customer focused but is their alignment amongst the executives and senior managers on exactly what that means? People may be working hard to build a great customer experience within their own silos but the glue that holds them all together is a well-defined customer experience roadmap. With the input from others, a customer experience executive can bring exceptional focus to defining and shaping that roadmap and clarity and organization to achieving success.

Sustainability of customer experience improvement efforts is always a challenge. Kick off meetings and initial efforts to begin making improvements can soon lose their momentum as people go begin slowly gravitating back to their day jobs. Unfettered by anything else, the customer experience executive’s “day job” is just that: making sure the organization’s commitment to the roadmap remains top of mind.

And finally, there’s always the bottom line! Accountability for defining and measuring results is often overlooked on cross-functional efforts to improve the total customer experience. And while the customer experience executive can provide that single “ring-able neck” for the definition and reporting of customer experience improvements, it does not necessarily make them solely accountable for the results achieved. In a company that defines themselves as “already focused on the customer experience from the top down”, everyone from the executives on down are responsible for the actual results!

Companies at the top of the lists for revenue growth and customer satisfaction already recognize the long-term value associated with a dedicated executive at the helm of the customer experience. But they didn’t wait to achieve these results before bringing them aboard!

Can your company afford not to have someone with their “hands on the wheel” today?

Customer Vulnerability

The goal of any business is to successfully create a secure, long-term relationship with their customer and ultimately win their loyalty. Along the way, you need to keep the customer on that “happy path” but also manage them through the pitfalls that can put the customer “at risk”.

But the one thing companies often miss is recognizing when the customer relationship becomes "vulnerable". Vulnerability doesn't happen because of a poor service interaction or an incorrect billing transaction. And vulnerability isn’t always easy to see, often times festering under the surface of what appears to be a stable relationship. What usually creates vulnerability is the deterioration of the relationship over time where no clear value is ever established.

A great example of this can be found in customer loyalty programs, especially in the travel and hospitality industry.

While my work has me traveling with some regularity, I'm not the commensurate road warrior, flying out every week on Sunday night and returning home Thursday. But when I do travel, I make a point to try and book flights with United and hotels with Marriott as I am a member of their frequent traveler programs.

My recent trip to San Francisco began with an upgrade request to United first class using my frequent flier points. When I arrived at the airport gate I was greeted with an electronic sign indicated I was 34th in line for an upgrade. Funny thing was, as I continued to watch the sign I saw other names being added to the list in front of mine.

Obviously those people who have achieved platinum status are treated with a higher priority and I get that. But what about people like me trying to achieve that level? How do you think they feel as they watch other people jump ahead in the queue? Vulnerable?

On the other hand, Marriott continues to get it. I don't have a ton of points with their rewards program but when I arrived at my hotel in San Francisco I was greeted warmly, acknowledged as a Marriott Rewards member, and given a room on the highest level with a nice view of the city. I perceive value in my relationship with Marriott through their rewards program and continue to make them a priority when booking reservations.

My frustration with United, however continues to grow; slowly and silently. For my upcoming trip to Denver, both United and Jet Blue offer non-stop flights and this time I'm going with Jet Blue. Not because they were cheaper, but because United doesn’t seem to put much value on my loyalty. I also find it ironic to be inundated with credit card offers from United with the promise of “more points to be used for travel rewards”. But given my perception of United's opinion of me and my point balance, do they really think I'm interested in deepening the relationship?

I think not!

With Marriott, it’s the continuous journey down the happy path to rewards. With United, it’s all about the destination, regardless of the turbulence along the way. Who would you choose to be loyal to?

Share A Little Of That Human Touch

“I just want someone to talk to,
And a little of that human touch”

Today’s lesson on great support that drives loyalty comes from “the Boss”, Bruce Springsteen himself!

My company received the following feedback from one of our customers today. It was directed toward our Customer Support organization and said:

“I have been using Constant Contact for over a year and I owe my satisfaction completely to the customer service support. Without the access to the great support I have received, I would have stopped using your service a long time ago. Kudos to your support team!”.

High praise indeed, but I was concerned with her statement “without the access to the great support I have received, I would have stopped using your service a long time ago”. So, I called the customer to ask the meaning behind that statement and she provided me with some great insight I wanted to pass along.

Her issue is time and her personal learning style. Being a busy person (as we all are), she doesn’t have the time nor the inclination to use the self-service resources (tutorials, webinars, FAQ’s) to find the answers to her questions. In her words, “I need to get an email campaign created and out the door FAST!”. As such, she is very appreciative of our Support team’s ability to quickly answer questions and keep her work flowing. She also pointed out to me that her comment was not based solely on her last interaction with us but that every time she calls Support she is greeted with friendly, knowledgeable staff that are genuinely interested in helping her be successful with our product.

She did not speak highly of other companies she has dealt with in the past that only offered self-service methods of support!

There’s a great lesson here relating to striking that balance with availability of customer support resources to your customers. Some prefer the self-service, “Let me discover on my own” way of learning, others need the immediate and 1 to 1 interaction with a human being. It’s the sum total of all resources that really makes our Support model successful. And while it’s important for us to continue to promote the use of all available resources with our customers, we never forget that sometimes it’s the human interaction piece that really drives the loyalty we generate from our customers. As a result of both a great product and service, this customer has recommended several people to our company through our referral program.

Self-service tools should compliment your support offering, not be the means to call avoidance!

“Share a little of that human touch
Feel a little of that human touch
Give me a little of that human touch”

Surprise & Delight

I love my VW mechanic! He has a small shop in the town where I live which is wicked convenient, he flexes his hours to accommodate his customers, he remembers my name and thanks me for my business every time I see him, plus has the friendliest dog there at the shop with him all the time!

But today he turned it up yet another notch.

I dropped the car off this morning needing a headlamp and brake light replaced. I know, this is something you'd think I could do myself but ask any VW owner, they're engineered to run like a dream but not engineered for easy access for do-it-yourselfers!

Being the procrastinator I am, my state inspection expires at the end of the month which, oh by the way, is today. Not a big deal, I get the car today and take it for inspection over the weekend. 2 days risk of driving on an expired inspection sticker I can handle.

I called the shop this afternoon to see if the car is done and my guy tells me "yes, the work is done but it's not back from inspection yet". Really? You took it to the inspection place for me? When I asked him about this he said he does this for his customers if time allows. Needless to say, I was blown away.

That simple act, going beyond the expected to deliver something more, something the customer would never have seen coming can create loyalty that's almost impossible to break. Cost, features, and convenience aren't enough to separate you from the competition. You've got to WOW your customer with the unexpected to differentiate yourself from the others and create that customer for life.

Greg, you are my hero !!