Customer Experience
Improving the customer experience your organization delivers is difficult. If you want to create enhanced customer experiences, it is critical that your team understands your customers. That sounds pretty obvious — but how does an organization make that happen?
- It’s clear that expectations should be set during the interview process, but how can you ensure that all your employees understand what is expected of them?
One way to do this is by instituting a training program that educates your team members on the customer experience. This should include standards of excellence they are expected to meet, as well as how they can exceed expectations.
Another way to set expectations is through recognition programs. When employees feel appreciated for their work, it encourages them to continue exceeding expectations. “Behavior rewarded is behavior repeated,” as my friend, Dr. Michael LeBoeuf has famously written.
For example, at superior hotel chains like Ritz-Carlton or Fairmont, guests expect to receive a level of experience that many employees have not. If that’s the case, how do you educate your team members to deliver what your guests assume they will receive?
Answer: You provide them the opportunity to participate in the customer experience. These companies encourage their employees to become guests at other properties in the system through extraordinary discount pricing and privileges. This is presented as part of the package that prospective employees discover during the application and interview process. Not only is it a benefit that attracts prospects, but it also sets the expectation that their organizations have a high standard that employees must attain.
Recently Door Dash instituted a new policy. According to Nexstar News, they “recently announced a company program that tells employees – including engineers, managers and top executives – to make one food delivery (or “dash”) a month. It turns out, not everyone was interested in performing the company’s eponymous task.
“I didn’t sign up for this, there was nothing in the offer letter/job description about this,” a post from an employee about this policy read.
The problem isn’t just that an employee doesn’t want to exceed what they “signed up for” — it’s that:
- Door Dash failed to set this expectation for their prospective employees in the interview process
- organizations are hiring people who do not want to exceed expectations for customers
- employees are not being adequately educated on the importance of the customer experience
Here’s how you can overcome this challenging situation:
- expectations should be set during the interview process
- educate your team members by instituting a training program that trains them on the customer experience
- another way to set expectations is through dynamic recognition programs
- when employees feel appreciated for the work they do when it encourages them to continue exceeding expectations
How do expectations we have of people influence the performance they deliver? “The Pygmalion Effect” is the name given to the phenomenon where expectations about someone’s performance actually cause that person to live up to those expectations. So, if we expect more from people, they’re likely to deliver more.
On the flip side, “The Golem Effect” is when our expectations of someone’s poor performance influence them to perform worse than we anticipated!
Are you setting positive expectations from the onset of the onboarding process? Are you making the customer experience an integral component in EVERY potential employee’s communication with you from the start of your engagement with them?
Remember:
- expectations about someone’s performance cause that person to live up (or down) to your expectations
- our expectations of someone’s poor performance will lead to them performing worse than anticipated
- however, if we expect more from people, they’re likely to deliver more!
(Thanks to my friend, Derek Sweeney of The Sweeney Agency in Toronto, for bringing this to my attention!)
Customer Experience, Sales & Retail
Flight attendants attacked by passengers. Retail clerks shouted down by customers. Almost every day, we watch videos posted of outrageous behavior by customers toward those employees seeking to serve them. It used to be those angry customers who would seldom — if ever — physically or verbally assault frontline employees.
It’s getting to the point where angry customers threaten the well-being of our employees and customers!
Now angry customers seem less concerned about the consequences of their actions. Often, angry customers presume they can take out their anger on frontline employees who seem powerless and vulnerable. These customers evidently believe the company will not support that employee or file charges against them.
While angry customers may feel they can get away with their bad behavior, they may be causing your other customers to lose the superior customer experience you provide.
It’s increasingly difficult for any company to maintain good customer experiences when angry customers are attacking their employees. Companies are losing customers by the droves due to angry customers who have no consideration for others. Your employees are leaving because they don’t want to put up with the stress of dealing with the venom — and your good customers might be leaving because they are reticent about experiencing some angry idiot making a scene. (And perhaps your employees are so stressed from dealing with angry customers that their level of service to your good customers has declined.)
In today’s pandemic marketplace, angry customers are becoming increasingly difficult to deal with.
To deal with angry customers, here is a five-step plan that provides employees insight into coping with angry customers. The following are those steps:
- Don’t go it alone. It’s not uncommon for customer service agents to be “alienated” by angry customers, leaving them to feel as if they’re all alone against angry customers. That’s not the case at all. Companies must recognize that angry customers are spreading like germs, and they must do everything possible to help employees not feel alienated or alone in dealing with them.
- Employees now have the ability to tap into online customer service communities where they can ask questions of other customers who have dealt with angry customers. Additionally, they can ask their managers for help in dealing with angry customers. This means you need to be having conversations with your leaders to ensure they back your team members against angry customers and to help coach and train them on how to best handle these potentially explosive situations.
- Ask yourself the right question. It’s not uncommon for angry customers to hurl profane or abusive language at employees, leaving them feeling angry and defensive themselves. That’s the wrong attitude to take. Employees should instead think about angry customers as angry people rather than angry customers.
- What are angry people angry about? What are their concerns, fears, and worries? How can employees help angry people achieve some sort of resolution so they can move on with what they need to do in life?
- Put yourself in their shoes. Angry customers lash out at employees because they feel angry, upset, and frustrated with their situations. They lash out in the wrong place by attacking customer service agents who have nothing to do with their problems or concerns.
- Employees should realize that angry customers are angry about something – maybe even angry about feeling angry. Think of it this way: angry customers are mad because they are angry about being angry. Employees should ask themselves whether they’ve ever felt angry about being angry.
- If the answer is yes, now they can better understand how angry customers feel and why they lash out at customer service agents, who have nothing to do with their problems in life.
- Listen carefully. Listening is one of the most challenging things to do, especially when angry customers are yelling at employees. Listening requires deep concentration on what angry customers are saying.
- Employees should be open-minded and actively ask themselves whether angry customers have a point. Maybe angry customers don’t really know why they’re so frustrated, but they’re acting out because that’s the only way they know how to deal with their feelings.
- Check your ego at the door. It’s not uncommon for angry customers to resort to name-calling and other forms of verbal abuse when talking with customer service agents, leaving your employees feeling angry and upset in return. That’s normal human behavior of those who lash out at others because they are angry.
- Employees should not take angry customers’ words personally, however. They can’t be upset about angry customers being abusive with them – that’s too much anger for anyone to handle. Instead, employees should focus on the feelings behind uncivil words yelled by angry customers acting out of irrational emotions.
- In other words, angry customers are often that way because they are angry at themselves for being so distressed. Employees should consider whether they’ve ever been irritated about being upset before responding to these customers who are acting out of their own overwhelming feelings.
There’s no excuse for this type of customer behavior. It should not happen. However, it does — and much too frequently in the real world.
Our job is to help our team deal with this challenge in a manner that de-escalates an emotional situation while maintaining a superior experience for your customers who are behaving in a way that should take place in any professional situation.
Business Distinction, Customer Experience, Leadership, Personal Distinction
When you stop to think about it, the qualities embodied by the spirit of the holidays — a giving attitude, an appreciation expressed to others, and gratitude for your blessings — define how we should treat our customers and team members EVERY day throughout the year.
Giving Attitude
A “giving attitude” is best expressed as the perspective that puts the needs of others above your own. It’s the attitude of being willing to help, to give freely of yourself, and to think of others before yourself. We should bring this spirit to our relationships with both our customers and team members.
When we are open to giving more than we receive, it creates a feeling of joy and abundance. This is the attitude we want our team members and customers to experience. We should think of ways to give more, treat our customers differently, and make them feel special.
Instead of focusing on what we want or need, try shifting your perspective to giving freely to others without expecting anything in return.
Appreciation
Another aspect of the holiday spirit is appreciation. Naturally, we appreciate our customers. However, appreciation also means thankfulness for the team members who make our businesses run. They are the people who serve our customers, package and ship our products, produce and fulfill our orders, deliver customer service, and keep everything organized behind the scenes.
Expressing appreciation to our team members is the only way to show that we value them and their contributions. Keeping it to yourself does no good for anyone! A simple “thank you” can mean a lot, but it’s also important to show appreciation in ways that will be meaningful and memorable. Everyone likes to know that their efforts matter, so take the time to make your team feel valued.
Gratitude for Our Blessings
Finally, gratitude for our blessings is of utmost importance. If we want to grow in the future, we must appreciate how the lessons of the past – good and bad — have brought us to this point. We should also be grateful for our current situation, even if it is not ideal.
Our hearts open when we are grateful, and we become more compassionate. We see the good in life and in others, and this transforms how we interact with them.
Ideas Into Action
To put the spirit of holidays into action, consider these four questions:
- What does appreciation look like in my organization?
- How can I demonstrate appreciation for my team’s past efforts and current contributions?
- What can I do to uniquely express gratitude to my customers through unexpected acts of appreciation?
- How can I increase the joy and abundance in my organization to enhance our organizational culture during the coming year?
When we embody the spirit of the holidays every day in the coming year, we prepare for creating distinction, no matter the circumstances of the economy, pandemic, or unforeseen challenges.
- Apply these insights, and you’ve planted the right seeds for ICONIC achievement in 2022!
(And please keep watching here! We want to partner with you to enhance your professional and organizational growth. Our consulting/coaching/training business is limited to a few select clients each year. I would love to have a conversation with you about how we can work together to help you achieve the distinction you deserve in the coming year!)
Business Distinction, Customer Experience, Leadership, Sales & Retail
Employee happiness is a critical factor when it comes to excellent customer service. Employees who are happy with their work — and how their employers treat them — are more likely to care about their customers. This factor is because when employees are treated with respect and engaged, they naturally want what is best for their company.
If employees are happy, it means they will be willing to go above and beyond for their customers — which in turn leads to more delighted customers.
The employee-customer relationship is an essential factor in successful customer service; when companies put their employees first, they find success.
What do employee happiness, employee engagement, and customer satisfaction all have in common? Granted, they are all very similar. However, employee happiness is perhaps most critical.
Employee happiness is the employee’s overall contentment for everything related to their job, including how they’re treated by management and customers alike.
Here’s an aspect easily overlooked: employee happiness has a much more significant impact than employee satisfaction.
Satisfaction is just the employee’s opinion of their current job; happiness means employee contentment for all aspects of their work-life, not just their specific job assignments. Employee happiness means employee engagement.
Here are three ways to improve employee happiness:
- The first step to employee happiness is that there must be buy-in from leadership. If leadership doesn’t care about employee happiness, it won’t go beyond something as minimal as creating a flimsy employee satisfaction survey.
- It is incumbent to communicate with employees how their opinions are vital for improvement and what changes are in process due to their input.
- Decide to make employee happiness/employee engagement an organizational priority. It’s impossible to have employee happiness without employee engagement. A company cannot be engaged with its employees if managers aren’t showing constant commitment to their teams.
- Employees believe that if their manager doesn’t care about the happiness of team members, how can the rest of the organization?
- Offer benefits and compensation that matter. Employee benefits and compensation are essential aspects for employees to feel as though they are compensated fairly for their work.
- It’s difficult to feel valued and under-compensated at the same time. Make sure your wages and benefits also display your commitment to your team.
The more employee happiness there is within an organization, the better the workplace culture will be for everyone involved!
When employees are happy, customers are too.
Business Distinction, Customer Experience, ICONIC
At the risk of sounding somewhat like my Dad, who had to trudge to school, in the snow, barefoot, uphill in both directions: Today’s generation of employees want (some would say “require”) something different from the world of work that I never expected.
They want to do work that has meaning. Younger generations now want to know that their efforts for your organization are more purposeful. And they will not be satisfied with work for work’s sake.
Many organizations have a purpose, even one that might be virtuous and laudable. But your organization’s purpose can’t stop at the office door. It has to follow your employees home and inspire them in their personal lives—and it should do so in a way that makes sense from an employee perspective.
This purpose-inspired culture has become so important that it isn’t merely the very top – C-Suite leaders or business owners, for example — that need to buy into it; it has to be shared by all who work for you, managers and non-managers alike.
The organization’s greater purpose needs to leap from job descriptions and company mission statements and flow into employees’ consciousness 24/7, wherever they are.
This purpose-inspired culture will be critical to attracting the best of the Millennial generation (generally accepted as born between 1980 and 1997) and Gen Z (born 1998-2012), who expect meaning from their work–and who have a multitude of employment options. These generations know what they want, even if older generations of leadership and management do not yet know exactly how to help them get it.
Studies show that Millennials and Gen Z are searching for purpose in employment more than anything else–and not merely purpose at work, but purpose with their lives.
To borrow a phrase from the 1930s, purpose is the “New Deal” that young workers seek from today’s world of work.
Some would say purpose is the difference between being “engaged at work” and “having a job.” It is a purpose that engages employees and keeps them focused on their work, producing higher-quality outcomes, and staying committed to the organizations they work for in a manner that ensures they’re present for work tomorrow.
Purpose is no longer solely an HR issue: Purpose has become a business imperative.
From product development and marketing to operations and quality control, purpose is the New Deal. Every department and every business leader should explore purpose for their organizations and how they can market it to not only to Millennials and Gen Z– but also to existing experienced employees who may demand purpose in return for sticking around.
The purpose could be your organization’s mission or a purpose you apply to a specific unit. The purpose could be to do something worthwhile for the community or society at large, which is often a powerful draw for Millennials and Gen Z. Your organization’s purpose should be something that everyone can get behind.
Your purpose is not required to be altruistic, though. It can also be about an improved customer experience or a purpose-inspired product line. Purpose could also validate that your organization is doing something important in its own right, and is something that employees could take pride in delivering for customers.
Your purpose can be to make work more purposeful, which means designing the purpose into the project or taking purpose into consideration for any given marketing campaign.
Your purpose could be to make employees’ jobs easier, not harder, to find new ways to help them get their work done, or to give them time for other pursuits while still performing effectively.
However, here’s a fundamental problem I’ve observed that leaders experience as they attempt to move in this direction: purpose shouldn’t get confused with meaning.
Purpose is a direct result of meaning — purpose is what you do to give your life meaning, or purpose is applying meaning to your work. Purpose may be an immediate objective, but it’s typically not something you bank on for a lifetime.
Meaning is about “an applied purpose over an extended period.” Meaning is what you embrace and believe in for years or even decades.
This purpose/meaning gap can lead to some significant problems. Here are some important questions to assist you:
- What is the meaning behind the products and services your organization provides? What’s it all about?
- How does the purpose of each project or activity — or even daily work — contribute to the organization delivering on its very meaning in the world?
- How does the work of each individual employee serve a purpose that aligns with the purpose of their team, a project, or their daily activities?
- And have you made it abundantly clear how that individual’s work of purpose contributes to the organization’s purpose — which, in turn, creates meaning in the world?
If you can’t answer those questions — or if you haven’t considered them — there’s no way your employees understand their purpose. This means they may be currently searching for an employer who can deliver one, as opposed to you. It’s a primary reason we have seen this “Great Resignation.”
If you desire to be an employer of choice — and consistently remain the employer that top talent chooses to work for — the role of purpose and meaning in your organization should be primary in your efforts to create distinction.
Customer Experience
For the first time in my career, the number one problem in business that I consistently hear from organizations is the same, regardless of the industry or size of the company: it’s more difficult than ever to find and retain talented employees.
They seem to be the rarest aspect in business today: the employee who comes in early every day, is willing to stay late, and goes above and beyond what they’re asked to do.
- In other words, the team member with total commitment to the organization’s success.
These employees bring fresh ideas to their role that help them grow within the organization and improve the overall employee experience for everyone else.
There has always been an excellent reason for organizations to work to prevent employee turnover. In fact, in my earliest books from two decades ago, I wrote that employee churn was the most significant overlooked expense for any organization. Employee turnover is an expense of significant dollars for every company. Perhaps even more importantly, there are also costs on employee morale and productivity.
According to Gallup’s 2013 State of the American Workplace, employee turnover expenditures are more than $30 billion a year. Note — this study was conducted eight years ago! As turnover is a key indicator of employee satisfaction, it’s obvious that this is much more impactful to you and your organization now than ever before.
The term for this current challenge in finding and keeping employees is the “Great Resignation.” That phrase was coined by Texas A&M associate professor of management, Anthony Klotz (as reported by Time). The numbers bear out his assertion: — in August alone, 892,000 people quit hospitality jobs, and 721,000 left retail employment.
- So why are so many of these great employees resigning? What are the primary reasons cited for people quitting their jobs?
The answers — and there are several — might not be what you expect. For example, the data proves it’s not the expanded unemployment insurance. (I admit I initially thought that issue was an essential driver of the problem — but the evidence shows it was not a significant factor. More people are leaving their current jobs now than those who quit before the end of the expanded benefits program concluded in September.)
Every organization — regardless of size — must learn that the employee experience isn’t merely about salaries, benefits, and working conditions. It’s most important about an organization’s culture — how people are treated daily within their company walls.
And the employee experience is not always about the employee. It’s also tied to customer satisfaction. It means you must focus on creating an outstanding employee-customer relationship, to ensure that both sides of the company coin (both employees and customers) are satisfied with their product or service.
Here are the three primary reasons employees quit:
- Poor leadership. We’ve said for decades that “customers buy from those they know, like, and trust.” Guess what? The same thing is true for our internal customers. Our employees must know what our organization stands for…they must like the people they work for and with…and they must trust the organization to have their best interests at heart. In today’s world, you must compete for employees with the same passion and precision as you strive for customer acquisition and retention.
- Unfair or poorly managed employee incentives and benefits. Are you confident that your employee perks are in line with what the employee values most? How do you know? If these benefits aren’t congruent with what your employees desire, it can make them feel underappreciated by their company — which can lead to a desire for career advancement elsewhere.
- Finally, employee recognition is another area where employee experience can be lacking. How do you recognize good performance? When I first started in the job market, “employee recognition” was that you got to keep your job and collect a paycheck! Yet, that standard isn’t even “table stakes” anymore…although many employers seem to be operating under the erroneous assumption that it’s good enough in today’s world.
The employee experience is just as necessary as the customer experience, and it’s time for companies to start focusing on what employees really want!
- First, come up with an example of a company that gets employee engagement right. What are some ways that they are going out of their way to improve their employee’s experience?
- Second, how can you adopt or adapt their approach to your business? According to Professor Klotz, we have an opportunity to communicate with our employees and say, “Within the constraints of our business, let’s obviously raise wages and benefits — but let’s also think about flexibility more innovatively.”
- Last, what can you do right now to start this employee experience movement within your organization?
Remember, employee engagement is a process that requires time and commitment. If immediate actions need to be taken in your company, try shifting the employee mindset by using employee surveys or forums.
According to Professor Klotz, “People want a voice – they want to be heard. This is a great way for employees and employers to meet in the middle.”
Our work on the Ultimate Customer Experience® helps organizations create the best for both your internal and external customers. We would love to talk about how we can work with you – as we have with other major organizations – to deliver this type of experience for your team members and those who purchase your products and services.
For more info, simply go to: https://UltimateCustomerExperience.com
