Increase Customer Loyalty by Doing This When You Train Team Members

“We are a customer-first organization”

“Treat customers the way you want to be treated”

“Exceed customer’s expectations”

“Going above and beyond is our standard”

“We deliver genuine hospitality”

Leaders love to throw around platitudes when it comes to customer experience, and all of these are great mantras. By themselves, however, they are just platitudes and potentially dangerous. If you tell one hundred employees to exceed customer expectations or go above and beyond for your client, you will get one hundred personal interpretations. For delivering a world-class customer experience at every point along the customer journey, to potential customers and loyal customers alike, truly world-class CX organizations do this when training team members, they remove personal interpretations.

Turning a Mantra Into an Action Statement

The DiJulius Group has helped hundreds of organizations all over the world create a customer service action statement (CXAS). A company’s CXAS is an organization’s north star for how they treat their customers, a guide to developing the best customer relationships. It is:

A clear call to action of what every employee should intentionally

achieve every time they interact with a Customer

When developing a CXAS we have one primary rule we must adhere to: It has to be ATOM.

• Actionable
• Trainable
• Observable
• Measurable

Meaning, whatever the CXAS ends up being, as a leader, you can watch a customer service representative interact with a customer, listen to an employee on the phone with a client, or read an email they just sent, and you can say “yes” or “no”. If your CXAS isn’t that easy to answer, it is not a good CXAS.

The HOW is More Important Than the WHAT

That is why there are two parts to a CXAS. The action statement and three supporting pillars define your approach to customer service. The action statement is WHAT each employee needs to do, the pillars are the HOW. 

The supporting pillars are how that everyone from your front-line employees to the CEO performs daily in each Customer interaction. There are traditionally three pillars that support the CXAS:

1. The Expertise provided by your employee.
2. Customer Interaction, how we make them feel.
3. Above and beyond, empowering employees with autonomy to do a little more than what is expected.

The pillars are what remove personal interpretation of your CXAS, allowing your team to uphold the highest customer service standards. Let’s examine The DiJulius Group’s actual Client Experience Action Statement.

The action statement is Carpe Momento which stands for Seize the Moment. By itself, what does that mean? When you add the three pillars; Know More, Care More, Give More, now you know how to seize the moment. 

Delivering Genuine Hospitality…How?

Another example is, don’t just tell your customer service staff to be present or to provide genuine hospitality during their interactions with customers, without telling them how. Avoid generalities, offer real-world customer experiences examples. In other words, make it black and white and make it measurable. One of my favorite hospitality systems for making a Customer connection is the “5 Es.” 

1. Eye contact
2. Ear-to-ear smile
3. Enthusiastic greeting
4. Engage
5. Educate 

*Related – Customer Bill of Rights: You Want Customer Loyalty? Be Brilliant at The Basics

The top world-class organizations don’t suffer from employee roulette because they remove personal interpretations and literally define what your organization specifically means by training their employees on the HOW. 

Exceptional service that leads to the highest customer retention includes customer service training on soft skills. Not all employees enter the job market with experience in rapport building or inherently know how to deliver exceptional customer service. A company can have the latest technology and superior products but if they don’t have friendly, knowledgeable employees, research has shown that customers will absolutely go elsewhere. However, this is under our control. Intentionally training customer service staff better takes time and effort but the organizations doing so not only reap the rewards of an ever-growing customer base but also happy, loyal employees.

*Related – Building Stronger Customer Connections

*Save 15k on Licensing fee! Register for the next Coach Camp May 16-18

Episode 113 of the CSRev Podcast 

113: Rock the Recession!

In this episode of The Customer Service Revolution Podcast, Jonathan joins John to discuss preparing your business for a recession before it starts. He outlines his four-tiered Emergency Brake companies should be ready to execute, how to identify who you’d have to let go during an economic downturn, and why you need to have a tiered recession plan in place before a recession hits.

Here are just a few takeaways:

• The definition of a recession and where we are in our economy concerning a recession
• How a recession can be an excellent opportunity for companies, and how transparency about a recession can help avoid panic in your workforce
• The four tiers of an Emergency Brake that companies need to be prepared to execute
• What non-economic recessions can affect businesses
• How to identify which employees you want to keep in a recessionary environment
• The benefits a recession can bring to your company
• Why you should always have a tiered recession plan in place

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Yes, we better know our customers’ names, but if you really delivered 

a great experience, the customer remembers our name.” 

—Ara Bagdasarian

*The 2023 Customer Service Revolution Lineup Coming Soon Oct 11-12

CX VIDEO CLIP OF THE WEEK

Why you want to resend your existing employees through New Employee Orientation

Get 50% off a case of The Relationship Economy

New Customer Experience Executive Academy starting in September ’23

The 2023 Class of our Customer Experience Executive Academy (CXEA) that started in January sold out. So instead of waiting till 2024, we are starting a new class in September ’23. We expect this class to also sell out. Don’t delay, register now!

Are you in charge of your brand’s customer experience? Are you currently, or on track to be your company’s Chief Experience Officer (CXO)? It’s time to start learning the methodology applied by world-class companies to create consistently memorable moments that lead to happy customers and happy employees. The Customer Experience Executive Academy (CXEA) is the Harvard of Customer Experience.

*Register for the Class of 2023 Customer Experience Executive Academy