You walk into your favorite store and you are greeted by “happy Harry” who is so excited to see you welcomes you to their establishment. You think to yourself, “This is really nice and they are so friendly I like this place.” The experience is off to a great start.
Then you meet the person filling your water glass and he looks like he just woke up and doesn’t say a thing or even acknowledge your presence, just does his job. You make a comment, “Boy this guy should take a lesson from happy Harry and learn to be friendlier.”
You meet the waitress, “smiling Sally” and she is bubbling over with enthusiasm that you are here and wants to do whatever you need to make your experience with them enjoyable. Now you say to yourself, “Now that’s more like it, this is really great to have such a fun waitress this is going to be a great experience and I’m glad we came here.”
Then you wait…and wait…and wait some more…the food is really slow coming out. You are getting a bit anxious about it and it finally arrives. It didn’t look like the pictures in the menu, in fact it looked kind of bad and it wasn’t all that warm, like it had been sitting around for a bit before being delivered. The person delivering the food wasn’t “smiling Sally” but “grumpy Greg” who basically just threw the plates down in front of you, not even asking who got what. Of course he got them wrong and when you commented he said, “OK, so who gets what here.”
You finish the meal and when asked how things were by “smiling Sally” you say the food wasn’t all that great but she was really nice. She thanks you and brings the check. She doesn’t get the manager, doesn’t make a big deal about it, and simply acknowledges your complaints. You pay and leave.
We call this RANDOM ACTS OF EXCELLENCE AND CHAOS.
This is not atypical…in fact, it is generally how most companies deliver their customer experience. They are made up of happy people and not so happy people and they interact with their customers based on how they feel during a particular day. Telling your employees to be more like “happy Harry” and “smiling Sally” and less like “grumpy Greg” DOESN’T WORK! Why?
Because there is no process to follow…no roadmap of how everyone in the organization should be acting and what actions should take place to deliver an awesome experience. It is left up to their feeling at the moment and how their own personality…not a structured plan of how and what they should be delivering…every time. This is what creates the “randomness” of the experience.
One pet peeve of mine in talking to the leaders of companies is that they honestly believe they can significantly change their customer experience by getting their employees more excited, teach them to be friendlier, hire consultants to get them charged up and excited about their customers, and ultimately rely on the individual to internalize all this and change the way they interact with their customers. THIS NEVER WORKS…at least not longer than the latest “get pumped up” session they just had with their positive personality consultant. There is no “long tail” to this strategy…it’s exactly what feeds “random acts of excellence and chaos” in most organizations.
CUSTOMERS WANT CONSISTENCY.
From our early research, customers told us they would rather have a consistent experience that was mediocre than one that delivered random acts of excellence and chaos. That’s right, they would rather give up an awesome experience once in a while (and unexpected) than knowing what they are going to get…every time…rather than one that jumps all over the place and not knowing what they will be getting with each interaction.
We found that by building a “customer experience process” (we called it Customer Experience Mapping™) a company could create consistency in their experience and help their employees “leverage” their personalities within a consistent and repeatable experience. This allowed them to know exactly what they should be doing to deliver a totally awesome experience flavored with their own personality. If you have “happy Harry” following a specific experience process, you have a winner and a great component in the experience journey. When you came across the “grumpy Greg” in the experience process, you fired him. He wasn’t a fit for following the experience process or flavoring with a customer centered personality.
It gives leaders a ROADMAP…one that significantly reduces or eliminates the “random acts of excellence and chaos” experience that is being delivered. AND the employees love it because it’s structured, it’s not random, it’s something they can learn and get better and better at every day. AND your customers love it because it eliminates their anxiety of what they are going to get each time they interact with your company. It creates a CULTURE centered on “obsessing over your customer.”
And it works regardless of industry, B2B, B2C, NFP, or anywhere else…essentially, any place that doesn’t want to be a commodity product or service. In fact, I feel it is actually more powerful in B2B and NFP because they are all about the relationships, experience, and interactions with their customers on a regular basis.
So when you are trying to improve your overall CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE, I hope you will reconsider telling everyone to get out there and smile more, be friendlier, be happier, treat your customers better, and all the other phrases you use to get them pumped up…for the day. Buying them more books on how to do this or hiring consultants that teach them to be friendlier won’t get you there…not for the long haul. This takes process…this takes changing the way they interact…every day with every interaction…CONSISTENTLY. Some of the best and most successful companies in the world (Zappos, Nordstrom, Southwest Air, Disney, and others) have figured this out and do it every day…so can you.
Now when you get really happy and positive employees, they have a structure to follow that leverages their personality and brings it to life…with every interaction the customer experiences. So when they leave, the customer says, “WOW, I love this place, everyone was so nice and every part of the experience was incredible…I can’t wait to tell all my friends.”
