The No1 Mistake - Developing a Customer Experience Strategy

A lack of commitment from those with the responsibility of delivering an organisations customer experience is the most common issue we find when we are called in to work with a business to get their customer service experience back on track or develop a better more consistent experience.

The Problem
The people who deliver the organisations customer experience have had little or no input into the development of the experience the business wants to deliver to its customers.
The result is inconsistency and inconsistence customer experiences don’t grow customer loyalty or advocacy.

Why Not Encourage Involvement?
The short answer is a lack of leadership skills that include the ability to develop a culture that encourages input on business development strategies like customer experience from individuals across the business. The culture we find in place generally is a “top down” Management knows best culture. We find that when we suggest wider input and involvement it usually gets an immediate negative reaction followed by a number of reasons why this approach won’t work.

Your People Support What They Create 
At Customer Experiences our complete focus is on working with businesses to develop their unique customer experience.
Having said this, I have never developed a customer experience for a business. If I did it would be seen as my experience strategy and I would struggle to gain commitment from those with the responsibility of delivering it.

  Business needs to understand that “your people support what they create”. Our successful approach is to work with customer experience development teams made up of representatives’ from every area of a business. We then use our unique 7 step customer experience development programme and facilitate the process. 
The results from this approach include the breaking down of departmental silos, a greater understand of how different areas of the business contribute and influence the experiences customers receive, a stronger team culture and a greater on-going commitment to the development of a quality, consistently delivered customer experience.

Your people are number one
For a customer centric strategy to be successful, it must have total commitment from every level of an organisation. Your people and customers are not listening to what you say - they are watching what you do.
The most powerful influence on a customer’s experience is your people. Their ability to wow your clients will have a major financial impact on both referrals and additional business. Bad experiences will lead to a negative financial impact, both in terms of lost business and damaged reputation.

A unique opportunity
Customer Experiences has just launched a free customer experience development program www.customerexperiences.co.nz   that allows a business to work through a seven step development process with support when required.

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Chris Bell is the Managing Director of Customer Experiences a business committed to building successful businesses through the development of high quality customer experiences. www.customerexperiences.co.nz 027 2792360 chris@customerexperiences.co.nz