How to Create a Customer Experience Journey that will Produce Amazing Results
5 Quick Tips to Help you Make Price Irrelevant
1) Feature Story
How to Create your Customer Experience Cycle that will Produce Amazing Results
By Dave Murray
Nothing will have a bigger impact on elevating your customer service company-wide than developing your Customer Experience Cycle (CEC). The vast majority of businesses suffer from inconsistencies in their customer service delivery which varies from employee to employee, or location to location. Creating and training your team on a CEC dramatically increases your customers receiving a consistent high-level customer experience, regardless of who they come in contact with.
One of my all-time favorite quotes is…
“Your customer is whoever benefits from the work you do—or, conversely,
whoever suffers when your work is done poorly or not at all.”
–Ron Zemke
Traditionally, a CEC is very focused on external customer interactions. What are the most impactful interactions, touchpoints, employees have with those external customers, and how can we make them better?
In order to do this, we dissect those interactions and look at them in four buckets:
- What are the things that can go wrong? (service defects)
- What are the things that employees have to do in order to get the job done? (operational standards)
- What are the things that employees can do to build rapport, relationships, and make it a better experience? (experiential standards)
- Where can we give employees autonomy to surprise and delight and “wow” a customer? (above and beyond opportunities)
Let’s look at a specific example to help further explain the process—making a reservation at a hotel, which will be Stage 1. What are some of the service defects that can occur? A customer could be on hold for a while, the property may be sold out, they cannot access the customer’s rewards information, or the hotel doesn’t have the price the customer is looking for or received last visit. Next, let’s look at the operational column. Pretty simple, they need to get the customer’s name, all relevant booking information, and form of payment. Now, let’s move onto the experiential column. These are things like smiling (even on the phone!), using the customer’s name 2 or 3 times in the conversation, and asking the question “is there anything else I can help you with today?” which is such an impactful way to end any service interaction. Finally, the fourth column identifies above and beyond opportunities at this particular stage. These could be a room upgrade or updating personal information based on the conversation.
One important point I want to make here—when you are done with this process, the two center columns, Operational standards and Experiential standards, actually become one column and these become an organization’s standards. This is because it does not matter to front- line team members if they are operational or experiential; they are the standards that they need to execute every time.
The reason these are created as separate columns when creating the tool is that most companies simply do not have enough experiential standards in place, and during the creation process, this needs to be the focus.
The CEC is best summed up by this quote from Joe Prokes, Service Manager at Al Sera Auto Plaza in Michigan and a client of The DiJulius Group.
“The CEC takes customer service to the next level; placing these standards into the exact touchpoint of our normal processes without having to reinvent the wheel. It allows for newly hired associates to be on the same page as senior associates; all having been trained on the same standards and expectations.”
At the end of the day, it is about giving your teams a tool so that they can deliver a great experience and do so consistently—across employees, shifts, departments, or locations.
The CEC can also be an impactful tool with internal handoffs and internal customers. Where in your organization do you have invisible service providers—those that are not necessarily seen by the customer, but their actions are felt? These could be team members in the plant on a production line, or the team that processes orders once the sale has taken place. Think about the invisible service providers that you have in your organization, and ask—do they understand who their customers are and the impact that they have on those customers? Most likely, the answer is no, and their own stage or two in a CEC can be helpful.
Where do you have departmental handoffs or other internal interactions that can have an impact on your customers’ experience? What cycle or stages are happening behind the scenes while your front-line team members are interacting with customers? Often, these can happen in a transition from sales to service. So many times you will hear of over-promising and under-delivering during this important but inconsistent handoff.
A partner of The DiJulius Group, ImageFIRST, utilized the CEC to tackle this issue head-on. Instead of creating two separate stages—one for sales “finishing” their portion of the project, and then service “beginning” its portion of the engagement—they created a new stage where sales and service worked together to onboard the new customer. This ensured a consistent onboarding process, while minimizing the long list of service defects that existed previously.
Where in your organization do you have handoffs or invisible service provider that need to be a part of your CEC? I encourage you to take a look and make sure they are included in the process.
If you’d like to learn more about the CEC tool, and the many uses it has both externally and internally, be sure to connect with us at thedijuliusgroup.com.
*Related – How to Create an Emotional Connection in a Digital World
2) Zoom Fatigue is not the Problem
Everyone is talking about Zoom fatigue. I don’t believe Zoom fatigue is any different than work fatigue.
Before many of us started working from home doing zoom meetings all day, we had back-to-back meetings at the office or for lunch. We may have been rushing to the airport, worried we would not make our connecting flight. All of those brought anxiety and at the end of the day we were just as exhausted if not more. However, there is a major disadvantage today compared to the physical world. Today we don’t have the commute time to decompress before we walk into our homes and become mom, dad, husband, or wife. Now after a stressful day of (Zoom) meetings, our commute time is opening the doors of our home office and stepping into the kitchen. The drive time home was key to our daily transformation from our professional to personal persona.
3) Episode 32 of The Customer Service Revolution Podcast
In Episode 32 of The Customer Service Revolution Podcast, Chief Revolution Officer and best-selling author John DiJulius shares What it takes to be a Revolutionary.
In order to be a Revolutionary, you need to:
- Never say or accept “I gave my best”
- Understand the Reality Distortion Field
- Ask yourself “What belief system needs to be changed in your world?”
- Understand the mindset of a Revolutionary
4) Quote of The Week
“We already have everything we need to be the happiest we could ever be”
5) Get your Master’s in Customer Experience
We are now accepting applications for the 2021 Customer eXperience Executive Academy (CXEA), which starts April 2021. Having worked with the top Customer Service organizations in the world, The DiJulius Group’s Customer eXperience Executive Academy (CXEA) gives you both theoretical and practical experience on how to elevate the levels of service at your company. With the need for rapid growth of the Customer Experience Executive in businesses
today, the Customer Xperience Executive Academy uses the X Commandment Methodology, which covers all facets and responsibilities that fall under Customer Experience. Unlike any other institution, the CXEA’s focus, strictly
on the Customer Experience, prepares leaders to champion change at any company, regardless of industry. Register today!
