The Six Golden Rules of Customer Experience
By Temkin, Bruce | |
Proquest LLC |
Providing good service is not rocket science
ROBERT Fulghum's classic All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten tells us that daily living doesn't require complicated formulas. All that's needed is an understanding of basic lessons, such as share everything, play fair, don't hit people, put things back where you found them, and clean up your own mess.
Customer experience wisdom is also not rocket science. While not as simple as what is commonly known as the Golden Rule ("Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"), the following, more robust version is what I call the Six Golden Rules of Customer Experience.
1. Focus on journeys, not interactions. When customers interact with you, they're only doing it because they're trying to get something accomplished. Rather than focusing on the individual touchpoint, try to help customers achieve their goals. If a
2. Treat employees as assets. If your employees are not engaged in the overall mission of the company, there's no way to consistently deliver a good experience. Why? Engaged employees are more than twice as likely to work late if something needs to be done, help someone at work even if they're not asked, and do something good for the company even if it's not expected of them. They are almost three times as likely to make recommendations about an improvement and more than six times as likely to recommend that a friend or relative apply for a job.
3. Build your brand from the inside out. No matter how much you spend on marketing and advertising, you can't get customers to believe you offer a great experience if you don't. Make sure that employees understand, believe in, and are prepared to deliver on your brand promises. Before
4. Make every ending count. People make decisions based on how they remember experiences, not on how they actually experience them. This is important because it means people don't remember experiences the way they actually occur. Memories are constructed as stories people create in their minds, based on fragments of their actual experiences. Nobel Prizewinning psychologist
5. Tap into the power of why. Most corporate communications focus on the "what" and "how" of a situation. This may elicit short-term compliance, but its efficacy decays quickly, and it loses value completely when situations change and the "how" no longer applies. Leaders need to elicit buy-in by starting communications with "why," explaining the reason that something is important to the company and to the people being asked to do something.
6. Only ask if you plan to act. Asking customers a barrage of multiple-choice questions might have made sense five years ago, but today it's an ineffective use of a key asset, customer feedback. When you're trying to figure out what feedback to collect, focus on the actions you plan to take. Intuit, for example, won't send out a survey unless it's prepared to follow up with unhappy clients.
Make sure to follow the Six Golden Rules of Customer Experience.. .and also to clean up your own mess. (Ft
YOU CANT GET CUSTOMERS TO BELIEVE YOU OFFER A GREAT EXPERIENCE IF YOU DON'T.
Copyright: | (c) 2014 Information Today, Inc. |
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