The Employee Experience Model

The following is content taken from John’s best selling book The Customer Service Revolution (January 2015 Greenleaf Books)

Are you getting enough complaints? Think about the last several times you had a disappointing experience as a Customer. Did you tell anyone at the company? You left a business feeling frustrated, or hung up the phone more stressed than before you called. If you are like most people, you don’t bother to waste your time sharing your displeasure with anyone at the business that disappointed you. Why? Because most Customers don’t think anyone really cares, no one really wants to hear about it, or they will think you are trying to get away with something. So why would a Customer want to waste the time? How often does this play out in your business: Customers leaving unhappy without letting anyone know? If we are not making it easy for our Customers to give feedback, then it is happening to us more than any of us realize. Our Customers have better things to do with their time than hunt us down and complain and then feel that it didn’t make a difference.

*Related – The best selling Customer Service Revolution book available on Kindle

Give permission and make it easy for them to share – There are several ways to give permission to our Customers to communicate with us. Now, I am not talking about Customer measurement devices that ask Customers their level of satisfaction and how likely they are to refer. While that is vitally important, what I am referring to is something totally different. I’m talking about giving your Customers permission to communicate easily, in a nonthreatening way, and not only giving them permission, but also asking for their advice and their feedback, both positive and negative. Few companies ask their Customers for praise, and lose the opportunity to celebrate and perpetuate outstanding performance. However, even fewer companies have the courage to ask their Customers for feedback if their experience was below what they were expecting. It is so simple. It is just marketing to your Customer on everything: invoices, orders, emails, at checkout, on the website, even in restrooms. Here are some examples of what companies have used:

“Please tell us about your experience. It is very important for us to know how we are doing.”
“We want your advice on how we can be better.”
“Did we hit the mark today? Tell us. Did we miss? Tell us, please!”
“Was someone a hero for you today? We want to recognize them.”
“Were we the best part of your day? If you can’t answer yes, we need to know why.”

Give me a T…When you hear someone cheering for a team, I am sure you are expecting to hear T.E.A.M. In this case, however, my cheer is T.E.E.M. That is short for “The Employee Experience Model,” also referred to as the Team Member Experience, or simply the Employee Experience. We all want to have great teams, and we all want to cheerlead and celebrate success, but do we all treat our team member as well as we should?

Building a World-Class internal culture – The T.E.E.M. is one of the main focuses of Commandment II, World Class Internal Culture. It is an extremely useful tool that guides us through the employee experience we are providing, from recruitment, to the interview, to orientation and through the first year. Each stage has standards in place that we use to guide every employee so that we are providing an excellent and consistent experience. Think about the last time your organization thought about your employees’ experience. Too many companies take employees for granted, mistakenly thinking that a paycheck twice a month is enough to keep them engaged and happy. Even worse, many companies out there have a “they’re lucky to work here” mentality. I encourage you to think about your culture. Do your employees truly feel valued? Do you have systems in place to ensure they are celebrated, when appropriate? If not, I am willing to make a bet that it is not happening often, if at all. If you just answered ‘no’ to the questions above, how is your turnover? I’d love to hear what you are doing to keep your team energized and engaged. Please share with me @ dmurray@thedijuliusgroup.com, or on twitter @DavidDMurray.

2015 NCAA CHAMPS! I have to share and congratulate the Ohio State Wrestling team and my son Johnni DiJulius for winning the NCAA Wrestling Championship this past weekend! Go Bucks! Another example that dreams do come true with a lot of hard work and persistence.

Turn your Contact Center into a Relationship Center Workshop:
Whether you have a call center, contact center, Customer service representatives, or a support center, they are the face of your company. No department speaks to your Customers more than this group. They represent your brand! It is time you invest in them.

• Are they a team?
• Are the empathetic, engaged, present?
• Are they trained at building relationships and emotional capital?

This 2-day workshop focuses on opportunities to take everyday, run-of-the-mill calls, and turn them into effective, memorable, touch points. Whether your representatives are dealing with existing Customers, or a high volume of new, one-time Customers, rapport building can be done quickly and effectively.