It is not secret that customers or clients who have a positive experience with a company are more likely to recommend it to others and that recommendation can be more persuasive that any other advertisement. The best customers will promote you by word-of-mouth because they love what you do so much that they want others to know about it too. However, creating that delightful customer experience is not just about building a product or creating a service offering, it is about HOW that experience of customers receiving your product or service is managed. This is why it is extremely impactful to weave a customer centric mindset into your product or service.
Here are 5 ways in which you can do so:
1. Hire and Retain People Who are Passionate About the Customer Experience
Hiring and retaining people who are passionate about the customer experience is one of the most important aspects of building an employee engagement strategy. In order to find passionate employees, you need to look for candidates who have shown a willingness to go above and beyond in their role or have demonstrated an ability to make big changes on behalf of customers.
Once you have hired talent, it is important that you create a culture where they can flourish. Your company’s values should reflect this focus on customers: everything from hiring practices through decision making should be informed by a focus on what benefits your customers instead of focusing solely on profit margins or shareholder value.
2. Pay Attention to Feedback from Customers
Create a “voice of the customer” program.The voice of the customer program is essentially a way for employees to have constant interaction with customers. This can help them understand how they can better serve their customers, and what their needs are.
The most common way to implement a “voice of the customer” program is through surveys, questionnaires, or interviews. Employees are encouraged to ask customers questions about everything from what they like best about your product or service, to why they decided not to buy from you in the past (or choose one of your competitors).
3. Define, Track, and Report on Key Metrics
Before putting an action plan in place, it is essential to define the goal and clearly identify the metric that will be measured. Also, it is important is to ensure that everyone involved in the process understands exactly what is being measured and how it is going to be done. The more specific you can be about what needs to happen on both sides, the more accurate the results following which you can chose to modify as best suited.
Identifying and measuring key metrics also helps customers understand their role in the evolution of a product or service. For instance, a before and after metric of ‘product performance’ based on customer feedback will allow them to understand how their feedback led to actual changes to the product or service.
4. Focus on Continuous Improvement
Continuous improvement is a mindset that focuses on making incremental changes to make processes more effective. The idea is to focus on improving the way things are done, rather than changing what you do.
For example, instead of re-doing your entire customer service strategy, you could consider improving the way you give feedback to employees after each interaction with customers. You could also look into ways of streamlining processes so that they are more efficient and cost effective for your business.
There are many benefits of continuous improvement including better efficiency and reduced costs over time; improved employee morale; lower turnover rates; higher productivity levels; increased profitability through greater sales volumes or reduced production costs; improved customer satisfaction levels etc.
5. Reward Good Behavior Through Recognition and Incentives
Teams are often made up of people who may not know each other well or have worked together for a long time, and recognition can help begin to build relationships between them. Recognition is powerful because it helps employees feel good about their work, which helps them stay motivated.
It’s important that recognition be meaningful and specific, rather than simply giving out meaningless praise: “Good job!” doesn’t mean anything unless you are able to explain why the employee did something well. A better example would be: “Thank you for staying late this week so we could finish our project on time.” This tells your employee that they did something helpful, but also gives them some feedback on how they could improve in the future (maybe their next task could start earlier).
If this resonates with you or you would like to explore further, we would love to be of service on that journey.