Focus on improving customer experience for business growth
Customers are the lifeblood of a business, without them, there would be no exchange of goods and services for money.
At the same time, the internal workforce is integral to the effective running of the business. Without a satisfied workforce, the services provided would suffer, resulting in loss of customers, especially in these competitive times.
Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the business environment has changed. Supply chains were affected, and individuals across the globe felt the financial pinch, curtailed expenditures, and restricted purchases. Many organisations genuinely felt the increasing financial burden and had no choice but to temporarily lay off staff. Others used this situation as an excuse to lay off staff.
As we emerge from the pandemic, are companies back on track with in-store customer service? An active investor, Mr Maina, regularly visits a bank where he has an account. As a result of reduced staff in the branch of this prestigious bank, he had to wait over 30 minutes to deposit a cheque. This was in premier banking within the bank. He was upset at the reduced quality of service and realised it is because the organisation has cut down staff. Sadly, upon reviewing the annual report of the listed company, the CEO, MD and directors had taken not only inexplicable salaries but also bonuses equivalent to their salaries whilst the core business suffers with disappointed counter staff and disheartened customers.
This scenario applies to various businesses in retail. In some cases, one only gets decent customer service through higher-level connections in the organisation. A simple customer has no forum or method of getting through to such hidden channels of customer service. The company could have solutions but does not bother making them available.
Financial performance
How does one tie customer experience to financial performance? Customer experience as an industry has been evolving for the last few years and ultimately it is important for management to understand how the companies are executing brand promises and how consistently they deliver. The customer experience figures are interesting only until they can be related to financial performance. Leading firms are getting good at modelling and taking these disparate inputs, operational, experiential, objective, and subjective measures, and tying them back to financial measures.
Most individuals are focused on financial performance, so any good customer experience programme needs to have a financial component to it because they can be a costly investment and so executives in the C-suite would want to understand, “what is the company getting out of this”.
There is a tremendous amount of investment in analysts, data scientists, and PhD statisticians to try to take and harness data. At the end of the day a customer experience management programme needs to help a business answer three questions; what matters most to their customers? Where are the gaps where they are not executing against best practices or brand standards? And ultimately where is the financial return on investment (ROI?) The question remains, which initiative should a company be investing in over another and what is the ROI?
Some companies forget that customer service is equally as important as the product itself. Many companies use the gap model of service quality, the Servqual model to measure quality dimensions, and other such models and techniques. Customer care expert Damon Richards famously quoted “Your customer does not care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
Companies that focus on creating the best customer experience, reducing churn, and increasing revenues that help them achieve higher profits. This is because they build a genuine relationship with the customers which brings them back for more business. Customer experience is not just a single touch point but it impacts feelings and emotions throughout the entire customer journey. Creating an improved customer strategy that leads to higher revenues as well as less churn would be helpful for many business owners looking into ways that they can improve customer satisfaction while reducing costs in time spent on resolving the issues or returning products by themselves.
Customer feedback
It is never too late for businesses to take an initiative with their customers and improve satisfaction rates. Create customer-focused behaviour to understand customers, and capture feedback in real-time. You cannot know what your customers are feeling about their experience with your brand unless you ask them. Ideally, there is no time like the present. Some companies are using expensive and elaborate chat surveys and similar customer experience tools which lets them collect customer feedback at every part of the customer lifecycle journey, however, is this necessary?
Internal customer service is equally important. This is when an organisation provides better service internally so the employees can provide better service to the customers. Better internal communication and service within work teams lead to a happy workplace. Engaged and motivated teams lead to improved productivity and ultimately an organisation's prosperity.
Customers are satisfied when expectations are met or delighted when they are exceeded. This rule applies to internal as well as external customers. How individuals in the organisation respond to internal requests is reflective of how external customer issues are handled. If a firm wants to provide world-class customer service then it will need to start providing world-class internal customer service.
Business expert Jim Blasingame has succinctly summarised the effect of inefficiency on business through his quote “even if your company’s financial condition can withstand the inefficiency of quality service, your brand likely won’t.” BY DAILY NATION
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