Embracing a customer-first mindset across the organization is certainly a wise business strategy. But building a thriving customer-centric culture doesn’t happen overnight. Who will lead the effort? What are the goals and objectives of this long-term initiative? Does leadership share the same vision? Will employees be empowered to deliver unique service experiences?
Here are three straightforward tips for creating a unified customer experience:
Define the Customer Experience:
Do you want customers to experience quick response times? Personalized communication? Confetti on their anniversary? Positive interactions between customers and employees should not be accidental or singular experiences. In other words, you need to create a company-wide understanding of your customer experience goals to ensure every employee provides consistently positive service experiences. Put your vision on paper to help identify any gaps in the customer journey. Be sure to engage employees in the effort too. This will boost buy-in across the company and motivate employees to provide experiences your customers will appreciate.
Outline Expectations for Employees
What are the desired attitudes or behaviors employees should exhibit when engaging with customers? Will they be empowered to make decisions to satisfy them? Employees are not mind readers (shocking, I know) so describe your rules of engagement. Here’s where you’ll also need to analyze the feedback from your customer satisfaction surveys. Once you’ve completed that process you can then create a ‘playbook’ for employees to drive customer-centric thinking and behaviors across the organization. After all, your team should strive to deliver experiences that customers actually value.
Maintain Organizational Focus
Emphasize exemplary behaviors by sharing success stories. Many of our clients routinely hold all staff meetings to reinforce the importance of customer-centricity across the organization. Employees learn how each department is influencing the customer experience and they also share ideas for improvement. A rewards or recognition program can also help to ensure customer experience stays top of mind.
The number of companies committed to aligning its corporate culture around customers is increasing. Bridging silos and embracing shared ownership of the customer experience better positions you to reliably deliver what customers expect. Ultimately, this leads to greater satisfaction among customers and employees.