What are your best practices for delivering a great customer experience?

I’m sure you’re going to receive all sorts of Hardware/Software “best practices” advice for aligning and managing organizations to deliver a successful customer experience across product, marketing, sales, customer services, etc. Just don’t lose sight of the fact that fundamentally it’s all about the quality of the ‘Humanware’ you deploy to begin with.

While most everyone can use a telephone - not everyone is cut out to work in a Contact Center environment. Someone may have “The Right Stuff” to be a great Customer Service & Support CSR – it doesn’t necessarily follow that the same individual is also a good fit for the more demanding & sales-oriented requirements of Up-Sell/Cross-Sell/Customer Win-Back – let alone Inside Sales, TeleSales or TeleCollections.

Hiring the wrong Agent to begin with is the Root Cause of most Customer Experience Performance Issues. It’s also a significant drain on your Budget & Bottom Line – on Customer Satisfaction and on Revenue. Every failed hire represents wasted dollars down the drain. Not to mention the Lowered Productivity, Poor Morale & Higher Absences associated with a Poor Job Fit.

Typically there are 3 grades of Agents found in a Call Center: (Above Average), (Average), and (Below Average).

(Above Average) Agents seem to have “The Right Stuff” that pushes them to succeed & a natural compatibility with the duties of the position. They work hard - exceed expectations - do more than asked - achieve high-quality consistent results - can always be counted upon - need little direction & work extremely well with everyone.

(Average) Agents perform their duties adequately enough “to get by” - but no better. They are the partially competent. Generally they’re strong from a Skills standpoint but missing a key ingredient or two from a Job Fit standpoint.

(Below Average) Agents are the people who just don’t fit somehow. Sometimes they’re good people in the wrong jobs. They need extra coaching & supervision just to achieve average results. Often they cause unnecessary conflict. (Below Average) Agents have the Highest Levels of Absenteeism, Lowest Levels of Productivity & Sales, Poorest Performance & Customer Satisfaction Ratings, and generally have a Negative Impact on Team Morale. They represent the real problems in a Call Center workforce. While (Average) & (Below Average) Agents may seem fully qualified at the Interview Stage – they’re a Poor Job Fit – the cost of hiring them is enormous – with little value add to an organization.

Top performing Call Centers drive their Revenue & Performance through superior hiring tactics. We help employers gain better insight & more accurate predictions as to which applicants from a pool of Candidates would perform up to, or beyond their established standards. You can find out about a Free Trial of SPAS Call Center Agent Pre-Employment Screening Software at http://www.telesoftsystems.ca/64201.html

Creating a remarkable customer experience isn't difficult--it simply requires that a company is committed and coordinated in its effort to provide those few things that all customers expect.

Here's a set of guidelines I've used for years in setting the standards and the attitudes that every employee--especially those that have direct customer contact--must cultivate. You need to establish your own Rules of the Road so that there's no doubt in any employee's mind what's expected. Use my list as a starting point to build your own.

Rules of the Road
by James L. Phelps

1. Responsiveness - When a customer has a problem, a question, a need, etc., we need to respond quickly and decisively. And the customer needs to know that you're responding. Naturally you often won't be able to get results immediately, but you need to keep the customer apprised of the status of his request. They'll assume that nothing is happening if you don't tell them otherwise.

2. Follow-through - We field folks—sales, engineering, and admin—are responsible to our customers for getting the job done. No matter whom you bring in to actually solve the issue, the buck stops with us. Until final resolution is achieved, you must relentlessly pursue the fix.

3. Credibility - We must do what we say we'll do. If you don't know if something is possible, tell the customer you'll get back to them with a commit. Once you make a commitment, keep it! I know—commitments to you are often broken. We have to make the best of those situations and let the customer know WHY it was not possible to keep the commitment. And, let them know immediately if something is going awry.

4. Customer Advocacy - We are the voice of our customers to the rest of the company. We must know our customers’ needs and ensure that we are doing everything possible to meet those needs for them.

5. Quality - Product failures are disasters! We must look at every failure as a potential loss of an account. We must take every failure as a critically serious issue and jump on getting to the bottom of the problem. The customer needs to understand and see how seriously we treat failures. They cannot doubt for an instant that quality is a number one priority.

6. Integrity - In the final analysis, all we have is our integrity with our customers; we cannot lose this tremendous asset. Honesty is above all else—they must trust us.

7. Set Expectations - Always set customer expectations lower than you think you can achieve. This way, if you can do better, you rise in their esteem. If you set their expectations too high, you are always at risk of failing. Better to take the beating up front.

8. Be Organized - Keep an action log for every account with every action captured. Review actions with customers frequently and always pursue resolution relentlessly until fruition. Nothing can fall through the cracks.

9. Can Do - Everything we approach should be with a CAN DO attitude. Look first for every possible way to do what's needed before looking for reasons why it can't be done. Reality will set in soon enough, but let your knee-jerk reaction be to find out how to get the job done.

10. Have Goals – Always have clearly defined and written goals established for yourself and for your territory. Express those goals in easily quantifiable ways so you know when you have achieved them. Don’t aim for mediocrity—shoot for the moon. No one will be criticized for not reaching the top, only for simply going for the foothills.

This all boils down into one guiding precept for our team:

It Can Be Done!

 James L. Phelps 2009 All rights reserved
www.seachangeconsult.com

My best practices for offering a great customer experience are

1 - Make it memorable. What can you do to turn the interaction into a memorable experience for the person? Listen, engage, interact. Demonstrations, offering samples, saying YES, offering the discount even if they don't have the coupon, and having fun are part of the experience.

2- Train your staff on how to handle challenging customers. Most employees offer mediocre customer service when the deal goes smoothly and offers apathetic or even awful customer service the moment a customer questions or challenges. This is not the time to wing it. Train your employees to "take care of the customer" and "use your best judgement". Then, don't berate them for making the customer happy. Happy customers are loyal customers. Unhappy customers share your story on youtube.

3- Great customer service happens after sale. Anyone can swoon and court a customer into a transaction, but the continued follow through afterwards keeps your customer thinking about you and encourages loyalty. Keep in touch with your customers throughout the year with a strategic plan to engage your customers, not just for a transaction, but for a loyal relationship.

Top 3 best practices for aligning and managing organizations to deliver a successful customer experience across product, marketing, sales, customer services, etc:

For an 8-year period I managed customer experience improvement at Applied Materials, the world's largest semiconductor equipment manufacturer. Applied Materials has topped its industry in customer satisfaction for the past 18 years. (http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4088055/Applied-again-top-gear-vendor...) Here are our 3 best practices:

1) Involve Every Employee in Customer Experience Management:
We created 40 survey reports so that every organization had their own cut of the data. As soon as the customer feedback reports were available, we conducted a cross-functional workshop within each of the 40 organizations, to establish a common interpretation of the results at a local level, and to develop 3-5 action plans for the most urgent issues. To build ownership at the local level, we trained-the-trainer on market research results interpretation and the workshop methodology, so each organization's presenter was from within.

2) Hold Each Organization Accountable for Customer Experience Improvement:
We published all of the customer experience improvement action plan progress graphs, in a quarterly "green book" to mirror our financial "blue book" that executives were in the habit of studying for their quarterly operations reviews. Organizations that made tremendous progress received accolades, and laggards were checked on by our chief operating officer. We incorporate customer experience improvement criteria in our global team recognition program, and allowed teams to self-report their progress for quarterly competitions; this was a great success, as it heightened employee awareness of our improvement standards. We placed a significant portion of the performance-based executive bonus formula on achievement of action plan goals, and the vice president of quality held personal meetings with each of the 40 organization heads to determine whether extra credit or demerits were deemed appropriate for bonus payout, given each organization's maturity, customer base and competitive environment.

3) Build Customer-Centricity Enterprise-wide:
Our customer experience improvement initiative was initiated because our largest customer announced "If we had a choice to buy from someone else, we would!" This was an alarming wake-up call for us. We even saw many comments from other customers about our arrogance in our first years of deploying customer surveys. We realized that surveys, action plans, and achievement of improvement goals was necessary, but insufficient. I developed an internal branding campaign that embedded customer experience improvement into nearly all of our company's rituals (performance reviews, managerial training courses, annual operating plan, all-hands meetings, etc.). It also communicated customer priorities and our customer-centricity standards using every feasible method. Our internal branding initiative was aimed at "living the brand promise": walking the talk of our vision and values and lofty advertising statements.

These 3 tips are the areas that way too many companies overlook. By integrating these 3 best practices into your company, you'll establish a foundation for inherent customer experience excellence, that organically results in customer accolades and strong business results.

(See detailed story at www.clearaction.biz/experience)

Assuming an organization delivers quality goods and services, through a quality team of employees, then implementing three practices will help to optimize their customers' experience. These practices are treating different customers differently, designing customer-centric processes, and listening to and acting on the voice of the customer.

1. Treat Different Customers Differently

Customers want to be treated as individuals, and they want you to engage with on their terms; about what’s relevant to them. This means segmenting your customer and prospect list using criteria that will define their differences based on their needs; not your solutions. Then approach each segment with specific, high-value content, according to their different needs. Great customer experiences begin with personalized and highly relevant communication.

2. Design your business processes from the customers’ point of view.

Most organizations have business processes that were designed for their own internal efficiency. Internally-focused processes frequently inhibit great customer experiences. Therefore, the second best practice is to re-design key business processes for the customers’ benefit. Begin by identifying and mapping each process that touches the customer. These processes are generally found in the functional areas of marketing, sales, service, support and renewal.

Validate each process map across functional areas. Many processes span multiple functions, and it is critical that each functional area agree on how a process is actually executed, particularly at those “handoff” points between departments. Interdepartmental exchanges must be absolutely seamless to the customer, in order to deliver a quality experience. This is why different departments must cross-validate, and agree on each process.

Conduct “Customer mapping” for each process. This means reviewing each process from the customer’s perspective, and changing the processes to make them more customer-friendly. In other words, a process should be designed to make the customer’s life easy; and to make your organization “easier to do business with,” for the customer.

3. Gather feedback, and act on it.

While it’s important to design your business processes around the customer, it’s equally important to seek feedback from the customer about how they perceive the experience they're getting. Survey your customers regularly, engage them through social media, review the feedback, and act on it by continually refining your processes, and improving on their execution. (This includes developing the interpersonal skills of your customer-facing employees.) And finally, tell your customers what you’ve done, as a result of their feedback.

Treating different customers differently, designing customer-centric processes, and listening to and acting on the voice of the customer, will optimize your customers’ experience, and their loyalty toward your firm.

Three best practices include:

1) First, listen to the customer so you can then assist them properly. After all, we have two eyes, two ears, and one mouth, purposely.
2) First Call Resolution. Take care of the customer in that first call, which is the #1 driver of customer satisfaction.
3) Delight the customer - be professional, knowledgeable, respectful, and create a win win situation such that you and the customer walk away feeling good about yourselves, and good about the interaction.

So often we define customer experience in terms of the technology that underpins a particular process. The resulting experience is a by-product of the process that drives a customer towards a particular outcome. The experience is transactional and functional.

From a social customer care perspective, the customer experience is increasingly underpinned by emotion. In order to curate these experiences underpinned by empathy, openness and transparency, it has become necessary for organisations to understand implicitly their company culture.

A socially 'open' organisation will naturally create 'open' and responsive experiences, whilst a socially 'closed' one will likely create more functional process-driven transactions.

In order for a company to curate experiences that are memorable, to create 'wow', to be empathetic to their customers' needs, they must look inwards first. They must understand what type of company they are. And only once they understand what type of company they are, can they understand what type of customer experience they are able to create.

Your question leads me to a contact center setting, but before we move to that specific environment, there are a couple of important organizational requirements for top service delivery. First, senior executives of the company must genuinely care about building long term relationships with customers. They must care enough to aggressively measure client loyalty, and be willing to invest in those things which will grow that loyalty. Lastly, they must be committed to avoiding short term strategies which might add revenue or profit, but at the expense of the customer or client relationships. My favorite example is Southwest Airlines who has cultivated loyal customers and shuns the industry practices of charging for reservation changes and baggage fees. They understand that these ideas damage the longer term relationship their model has developed.

As we think about contact centers there are three focuses which will almost always deliver superior results. The big three are people, goals and metrics. All three must be in place for results to be there.

People: The contact center environment at its most basic level is people on the phone, chatting or responding to e-mail inquiries. It may appear simplistic to point out that great people get great results, while people with fewer capabilities produce lesser results. The question is how can you attract great people at affordable pay and benefit rates? In terms of a short answer to that question there are a few requirements. First, we must develop the characteristics which would specifically allow the perspective worker to be uncommonly successfully in their service delivery job. Next, develop a profile of available workers with these characteristics. Then you must develop a marketing approach which will allow you to offer these workers the ideal job they are seeking. The broader the net you cast to attract your perfect candidates the more discerning your selection process can be. An abundance of candidates allows you to select the best and brightest. This may sound basic, but few employers do this amount of preparatory thinking before making the most important decision they will make…hiring.

Goals: You will get what you decide to go after. If you decide to answer each call promptly, you will have to define promptly and also define a resource which will allow you to achieve what you plan. I mention this because most organizations miss this first step. The first step in outstanding service is to respond promptly with promptly being defined of the customer, not the company. In a similar fashion, you must go through each contact point in the process, carefully setting goals which will set you apart from those who just provide ordinary service. For instance, are you going to set the goal of satisfying complaints at first contact? I certainly hope so. At each juncture, you have to set aggressive goals and develop the processes and resources to achieve them.

Metrics: Tom Peter’s famous quote, “What gets measured gets done” still applies. You have to have the courage to aggressively measure each outcome. Calls answered within 15 seconds, first time resolutions as a percent of total, customer feedback in terms of loyalty not satisfaction, root cause analysis of failures and so forth. Measuring these is important, but it’s also vital that you communicate results honestly to the entire organization. You will also be rewarded by weaving these metrics into a gain sharing program for front line workers.

There are more success elements, but these three will develop a culture of customer service excellence upon which you can build. You might enjoy my bi-book Never Lose Your Job…Become a More Valuable Player and its companion Improve Your Bottom Line…Develop MVP’s Today. I recommend these to you not just to sell books, but to spread the word which will save jobs and improve business results.

Caty, I would suggest or recommend that you take a look at Zappos and their culutre. The CEO wished he would have focused his initially energy on getting to the right culture. If you want to provide great service, you need to create a service culture. Remember we work from the inside out, not the reverse. If you have great internal customer service, theres a chance you will have great external customer service.

Selection is important and this tends to be the majority of the failing with most organizations. Many believe that you can teach customer satisfaction, that's not a truism. Over the last 25 years I've observed organizations recruit unfriendly people with the hopes that they will one day make them friendly, once they attend their 10 steps of service program, it never works, because the solution to the problem is based on the wrong premise.
Employees need to have what's often referred to as a Servant mentality and they need to fit into your culture, neither is negotiable.
The third consideration has to do with discretionary effort, the employees willingness to do what's right. Employers are always surprised when their employees don't do what they expect them to do, especially when they know that they can do it, this describes discretionary effort.
From the employees perspective, it's viewed more as give and take, but their perception from the employer tends to be take, take, take. This is why engagement levels tend to be low, the employee feels like they are in a one sided relationship. Research has shown that if you can increase pride in your organization, you can increase your engagement levels, thereby improving your customer service levels as well.

There is a paradox that tends to exist in America today, it goes something like this:

The customer is important
I am important
I'm more important than the customer

The key is working from the inside out, organizational cometence is important, but not as important as organizational character.

Before you can talk about any skills that are necessary to provide a great customer service experience, you have to get your employees thinking and acting like owners of the business. Then, and only then, can you talk about the actual components that are needed to provide a great experience.

The three top skills needed to provide a great customer experience are:

Make it easy for your customers to do business with you.
Personalize the experience.
Thank your customers.

When these skills are combined with an owner mentality, the experience will be memorable and customers will be inspired to buy more from you and create word of mouth referrals.

@Randi Busse
Employees will never think and act like they own the business simply because they will never experience the negative economic effect of their bad decisions. I've seen companies attempt this for years and as a business owner, understand why it's virtually impossible.

Transparency and agent empowerment. Be transparent from your executive level to your frontline agents through to your customers and enable your agents to make decisions and do the right thing. Coach them as they learn, but don't take away their decision making power.

John,
They might experience the effect of their bad decisions if the customers leave and never come back and management needs to let employees go because there are no customers to take care of!
You CAN create a culture of ownership among employees without giving them stock options. It's about empowering employees and treating them well. The way management treats employees will have a direct impact on how the employees treat customers.
You've got to work on the minds of the employees before you can help them with the skills.

Rules
1.Remember that you are not there to prove to the customer that you are right.
2.When the customer is wrong see Rule 1
3.Keep your word even if it costs you every penny of your commission/profit.
4.Fix problems fast and efficiently because research shows that a customer who has had a problem that you have fixed is more loyal than a customer who has never had a problem.

Delivering a top quality customer experience consistently can be accomplished only if that goal is one of the strategic cornerstones of an organization. It needs to be an intentional part of organizational strategy because it takes an integrated long term commitment to be successful.

The key is simple: know your customer. The three principles supporting this are: (1) know who your customer is, (2) know what your customer wants, and (3) deliver what your customer needs. The primary rule is do not assume you know any of these things. The answers only come from your customers. It's a principle called Voice of the Customer, or VOC.

The best approach I have found to successfully installing and maintaining a customer-centric operation is through Quality Function Deployment (QFD), sometimes called the House of Quality. It is a process that gathers customer wants and expectations through surveys, focus groups, interviews, trade shows, hot lines, and other customer interactive activities. The elements of QFD are understanding customer needs, developing your service or product so that it meets those needs, measuring customer satisfaction of your product or service, asking your customers to compare your product or service to your competitor's, and then taking all this information and plugging it into a matrix that provides you with the areas that you should target for improvement.

Having a process that allows you to be deliberate about your approach to meeting the needs of your customers takes a lot of the mystery out of the customer satisfaction issue. You can deliver a great customer experience, one that your customers will come back again and again for, if your organization knows what the customer wants and needs and gives it to them.

People want more than just stuff.

They want relief.

They want the PRODUCT OF THE THE PRODUCT.

Of course, they want relief from products and services that solve their problems,
but they also want relief in the way they get them.

-They value their time and do not want it wasted.
-They want knowledgeable sales assistance, not robots with zero interest in them.
-They do not want to be hassled or ignored.
-They don’t want to wait in long lines to pay.

Isn’t it time for your collective efforts to focus on creating “Customer Insistence” by offering solutions and providing relief?

Isn’t it time for your organization to commit to Better Change?

I am not talking about merely meeting customer expectations.
I am talking about EXCEEDING Their Expectations.
However you don't know what they are until you listen to them.
Great problem solving comes from the source of the problem.
Ask the customer what they want in order to solve the problem.

Often it is less than you expect and most often it is something they have not really thought out.

Customers demand that much from any supplier.

I am talking delivering an experience that creates in your customer not just a strong desire to want to do business with you, but an insistence on doing business only with you.

2011 will be the year of "Better Change" If you don't you won't remain in business.

It's time to focus on creating “customer insistence.”

Your competition is doing it.

Your customers are expecting it.

And if you do not provide it, they will find someone that will.

Bottom line is the GOLDEN RULE...
Buy from others the same way you would sell to them.

You are a consumer.
What makes you buy from one company versus another?
It is not about PRICE.
It's about The Product Of The Product and the Customer Service that backs up the promise.

The customer service must match the promise of the value of the product.

My simple mnemonic is
D-A-T-I-N-G Your Customer

Dazzle them with service that keeps them loyal

Anticipate their needs

Treat each customer uniquely

Innovate to solve Problems Better

Nurture Your Employees and they will take Care of the Customer

Guarantee you have customers service by not talking about it, not thinking about it, not reading about it, 'just do it.'

Guarantee your place in the future by Creating Customer Insistence.