ROI: Focusing on Customer Experience

One of the great things about December is that it gives The DiJulius Group consultants a chance to meet with our clients and reflect on what has been accomplished this year and set goals for the next. This year, the results have been pretty amazing when you take a look at KPIs. In just the last 12 months, we have been involved in projects that have resulted in the following:

• An inbound call center went from an average answer speed of 3:14 in Q1 to an average answer speed of 12 seconds by the end of Q3.
• An inside sales organization improved their sales conversion rate from an average of 23% in the first two quarters of 2017 to a 32% average for Q3 and Q4.
• An outside sales organization decreased client attrition rate from an average of 15% to 4.3% in one calendar year.

What do these three amazing KPI results have in common? A lot, actually. First and foremost, each of these organizations view working to improve the service they deliver to their Customer base as an investment, not an expense. The leaders of these organizations know that these investments are key to fueling company growth. In the last example above (the decrease of the client attrition rate to 4.3%), I was lucky enough to be in the room when the company CEO shared the results with the executive team. He spoke of the roughly $150,000 investment the company made in The DiJulius Group and this initiative since January 1. I must admit I became a little nervous as I looked around the room at some of the leaders with puzzled looks over the size of the investment. The

CEO quickly proved the point he was trying to make, that the investment of $150K was a small drop in the bucket when measured against the 10 million dollars the organization had retained during that same time frame!!

These three companies followed the same methodology to achieve these successful results. The DiJulius Group’s consulting methodology is based on the X-Commandments to providing a World-Class Customer Experience. Customer Experience leaders around the world use this approach.

In each case, we started with empathy. It is so easy for your team members, regardless of their role, to become transactional in their day-to-day activities. Using the X Commandment methodology, we start with getting your team focused on how they can advocate for their Customer, not just serve them.

This first step helps us start to gain consistency, and get all team members to focus on the importance of this mission. Next, we work with the teams and have them create non-negotiable standards – the things that should always be delivered to Customers at specific interaction points. Not only does this help us gain even more consistency, but it is also a fantastic team building exercise.

The moral of this story is that focusing on the experience you provide can do so much more than simply give you better Customer satisfaction scores. Focusing on your experience as an organization can yield so many other benefits. What metrics are you looking to drive in 2018?