Customer Experience

Interesting questions come my way and I thought it would be of benefit to my blog readers to share some of these with you. If you have any questions relating to employee engagement, corporate culture or peak performance, please send them to me at cgordon@cultureshockcoaching.com and I would be happy to respond at no cost to you.



Question: Many people in our organization deal with customers and potential customers on a number of different levels. How can I ensure that they are treated well and consistently? I have some customers who only want to deal with certain employees and that’s not always possible. This signals to me that they get a different type of service from others when they fill in. What do you suggest?



Answer:  The type of service or customer experience received when dealing with a business could make the difference in your company’s growth potential. High performing corporations such as Apple, Zappos.com and Four Season Hotels and Resorts have focused on creating their unique customer experience that represents the corporate culture and values. Their service experience provides them with the ability to consistently uphold their standard of excellence and provides staff with a foundation for the expectations of their behaviours when dealing with customers and desired outcomes. I feel investing time and resources in the development of your company’s customer experience objective would provide your customers with a consistent service experience and allow all members of your organization to deal with clients in the way you desire and intend.

• The senior leaders of the organization develop the detailed framework of the company’s customer experience. This depiction must be directly linked to the company’s mission, vision and values to maintain integrity and a consistent message. (This assumes that your organization has a codified corporate culture so support this process.) Use corporate values to create specific behaviours to be demonstrated on a regular basis by every employee. The model developed should be detailed and clear to allow intermediary or front line management to expand on these concepts to fit their specific customer profiles. Specific areas such as how should customers be greeted and communicated to, how often a customer should be contacted, product delivery and installation procedures would be some of the criteria to feature. Obviously specific details would depend on the nature of your business.

• Seniors leaders work with intermediary or front line managers to expand on the above step to create specific habits, strategies and employee behaviours to be implemented in locations or departments of the business. The model is translated into the actual day to day customer interactions the staff commonly have and the strategies that are needed to support the ultimate experience result. Use information about your customer profile, needs and wants to assist the further development of your customer experience mandate. For example, if you are a retail store in a predominately Portuguese neighbourhood, should there be signs in Portuguese? How many employees should be Portuguese speaking in the store and in what departments should they be working? Where should traditional foods be displayed or positioned in the store? What other products should this store be carrying that may not be sold in other locations?

• Communicate and train staff in the specific model created. Help them to express their personalities through the model to make it their own representation of the company. This will make the process more authentic and natural to them.

• Help employees to understand how the customer experience ties into the corporate culture and how they play an important component in the presentation of the business and its philosophies. This will lead to their understanding how they contribute to the bigger objectives of the organization and heighten their enthusiasm for the process.

• Create mentor relationships to effectively support the development of the customer experience. This will not only help to embed the model in the staff, but create strong peer relationships to support your objectives.

• Regularly evaluate the effectiveness of the customer experience. Gaining feedback through financial data, observations and customer feedback will help to determine how on track you are and what additional support staff members may need. Stay open minded to potential enhancements that can be made to the initial plan. As well this evaluation process will provide a lot of positive feedback that can be passed onto to those employees who were struggling in the past.

• Create forums for employees to contribute ideas to enhancing the customer experience. They are the ones who will see the customers’ immediate reaction to the behaviours and procedures you have in place and are best armed to provide insight. This will not only work to provide valuable information, but will bring a stronger sense of purpose to the employees, increasing their level of job fulfilment and engagement.

The positive customer experience is the ultimate representation of your company. Without the proper guidance and structure given to your staff, objectives may not be met. The cost of the company can be severe – ranging from loss of customers, lost of potential growth and disengagement of staff. Investing in creating your ultimate customer experience will pay off over and over again.


Note: these questions and answers are of a general nature. Application of the above information to your business may require additional advice or refining of the information.