Have you ever heard this from your customers? Have your employees ever heard this from your customers? Have you ever said this to a company? The answer to all 3 of these questions is probably YES! How is it we get to a place where are customers are saying this to us?
It’s actually simpler than you might think when you strip away all the noise and emotion from the situation in crisis. When something goes wrong and we get this question from our customers (either openly saying it or knowing they are thinking it) we scramble to try and fix the issue…only for it to most likely pop up again sometime down the road. We spend a lot of time “fixing” immediate issues instead of “fixing” them permanently.
There are 3 main areas I would encourage every business owner or executive to explore inside their organization. I have found that when these 3 areas are addressed, the number of “Why can’t you just get it right” comments all but vanish…because you are now getting it right…before an issue happens. Here are the 3 areas I would encourage you to “honestly and openly” review inside your organization.
- YOUR CUSTOMER JOURNEY…This is one the best place to start in any organization, regardless of your size or industry. If you don’t have a documented Customer Journey, I highly recommend you step back, invest some time, and put this together. In a nutshell, the Customer Journey is the entire process a customer goes through their first interaction with your company to the end of the purchase (and even beyond when you add in regular follow up and building ongoing word-of-mouth with your customers).
I find the majority of organizations don’t have a Customer Journey mapped out. A key (and critical) component of a Customer Journey is a well-designed and mapped out Customer Experience (Customer Experience Mapping)…most organizations don’t have these either. The key to both the Customer Journey and Awesome Customer Experiences is that they are “documented and trained.” It is definitely not enough in our “commodity driven” economy to simply “care about your customers.” The research tells us less than 25% of organizations have these in place. So is it any wonder why the customers’ journey is full of unexpected twists and turns that lead to a less than desirable experience…over and over again?
Building Customer Experience Maps is at the heart of any Customer Journey. Companies that have documented Customer Experience Maps usually lead their industry…and they have an experience that thrills their customers and creates a totally awesome interaction and experience. Starting with the Customer experience goes a long way to eliminating the repeated issues that crop up and helps avoid the ones that would have normally occurred in the future.
- INTERNAL PROCESSES…Often times the processes companies have created are designed for ultimate efficiency and are “inwardly focused” as opposed to being designed for the customer, which are “outwardly focused.” When this occurs, it means the organization has designed their processes to make the most efficient use of their resources, products, and services as the prime objective. This generally works in the opposite direction to delivering what would make the customer happiest and their life easier when dealing with your company.
This “product/service centric” strategy is a “throwback” to the Industrial Revolution of the ‘90s where everything was about “products and services” as opposed to the Internet Revolution where “everything is about the customer.” We now live in what is often referred to as The Customer Economy because today, the customer is firmly in control. Customers dictate to companies what they want and how they want it…and if you can’t deliver this they move on to the other hundred competitors that can deliver it to them. This “commoditization” of the current economy is forcing companies to become “outwardly focused” with their processes if they want to win over their customers and create a competitive advantage.
- ACCOUNTABILITY/EMPOWERING EMPLOYEES…It is much easier for employees to take responsibility and accountability for issues when the above two areas are addressed. When problems arise, they have a better understanding of what might have occurred to cause the issue and now they are empowered to fix it for the customer without the usual “garbage phrase,” “I will have to check with my supervisor/manager to see what we can do.” This phrase should be banned from every company…the best ones already have.
Setting up Customer Obsessed Processes and Customer Experiences completely designed around your customers demonstrates to your employees what they can do throughout the Customer Journey to ensure they help the customer get what they need and want. This doesn’t mean giving things away, it means giving them the experience they most desire when interacting with your company. When employees know what the experience should be and how they can WOW their customers, they become empowered to make it happen. They take accountability and responsibility for their portion of the Customer Journey and make it happen.
When these 3 things are in place, you literally eliminate the phrase, “Why can’t you just get it RIGHT?” Now you are getting it right almost every time and when you don’t, you make changes and incorporate these into your processes and customer experience. This is true CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT with the Customer in mind, not just the efficiency of your product/service centric business processes.
This is an incredible OPPORTUNITY for almost 75% of the businesses in the market. Research shows us that the vast majority of companies aren’t doing these 3 things and as a result are ending up with “spot fixes” rather than continually improving the CUSTOMER JOURNEY. If you decide to take on these three areas, you most likely will position your company in the enviable position as the undisputed leader in your industry…because your competition isn’t doing it and your customers love it!
If you want to know more about how this actually works inside a company, shoot me a message and we can talk further to help you see how these all fit together…and how they work in some of the best companies in the world. It might just be the guidance and answer you have been looking for to take your business to an entirely new level.
To get you further excited about his opportunity, there is the WORD-OF-MOUTH and ADVOCACY aspect that can occur when all of this is in place and dazzling your customer. One of the best results from this type of strategy and approach we haven’t talked about is how much money this can actually save a company when they don’t have to continually invest time, people, and funds to continually fix the same problems over and over again. A topic for another day. I hope you will cease the opportunity…it’s sitting in front of virtually every company RIGHT NOW!!
