One of my more well-liked E1™ speaking programs is titled, “Beyond the Suggestion Box – How Your Customers Will Redesign Your Products, Services, Processes, and Business Model.” Fundamentally, the keynote speech is a dialogue about the course of engaging openly with your most loyal and fervent customers. It’s a very convincing, marketing catalyst that helps to enumerate the hard-to-pin-down links between satisfaction, loyalty, market share and profits. With personal and professional examples and familiarity from the likes of Starbucks, Hallmark, Harley-Davidson, LEGO, Umpqua Holdings, and more – it’s relatively apparent that the best companies (E1™ companies) listen to their customers officially and repeatedly.
Indeed, today, the CEO of a Nebraska-based bank client of mine advised me that a panel of the bank’s most loyal customers will be present at an offsite strategic planning session next month where I will speak and facilitate their meeting. Now that’s co-creating value with customers.
Just as significant as listening to your customers for what they desire in future products and services is listening to your customers for what they want you to measure in everyday transactions with your company. Your customers want to be involved in creating metrics that hold you accountable to them. Support is growing demonstrating how customers will not put up with the hurried and tiresome service that is all too common.
Earlier this year, we asked what measurements of service customers would like to observe companies quantify. From our findings, we designed an E1™ program to address – in hands-on detail – how to measure, manage, and implement each finding. Surprisingly, the metrics of efficiency – on-hold time, transaction time, calls dropped, etc – did not emerge. While the measurements of competence are – without doubt – important gauges, customers cared most about front line knowledge and first-hand resolutions. Moreover, the list of ten findings was more about slowing down than hurrying through a transaction, resulting in the type of service or experience that customers find objectionable.
So what matters need measurement, according to customers?
- Have well-informed employees – 65%.
- Attend to my needs on first contact – 64%.
- Treat me like a valued customer – 62%.
- Express desire to meet my needs – 54%.
- Promptly retrieve my information – 49%.
- Provide good value for my money – 49%.
- Have well-mannered employees – 45%.
- Be a company/brand I can depend on – 43%.
- Deal with me practically – 38%.
- Provide me with pertinent/custom-made service – 31%.
To achieve the most excellent appreciation of what customers truly experience, customer service managers should draw on an assortment of information resources: customer satisfaction surveys; net promoter scores; customer segment analyses; behavioral data; recorded customer-to-staff member conversations; and informal communications with customers. From this information, consistently gathered and evaluated, managers can embark on a plan to better recognize and lead the most important facets of the customer experience – those received directly from the customer.
In dissecting, designing, measuring, and improving your customer’s experience with your product or service, your company can transform its image and brand, making you more essential – more indispensable – to your customer’s life. With clearly-defined and well-implemented front line leadership behaviors, the “how” of “wow” is delineated, allowing you to understand and demonstrate your distinctiveness in a jam-packed marketplace. In a world where first-rate customer service is the expected norm, it’s time to abandon being just competitive and concentrate on becoming a required, central part of life. Won’t your competitors wish they were you?
