It’s your people who create a great customer experience
Today I saw a press release advertising an online course in Customer Experience Management, emphasising its ability to show learners how to measure a set of key aspects of the customer experience.
To me the very concept of customer experience management conjours up images of organisations somehow trying to control the experience the customer has with them. It reminds me of CRM software and operational processes and metrics applied to every aspect of the idea.
Of course, it’s great if an organisation can improve the way its customers experience the process of buying and using their product or service, but this is a very different thing from a group of executives trying to manage such a thing.
What it comes down to is the way people behave, both in carrying out tasks in the background that support the customer experience and in interacting with customers. Yes, it’ important to have efficient systems and processes. But too often executives focus on these because they are quantifiable and easy to manage, to the exclusion of creating positive change in their people.
This is the hard part. Much easier to install a new Customer Experience Management system. From my 20 years experience of helping people at work learn and change, it seems that three conditions are necessary for this to work:
We must become acutely aware of the need for change
We must look honestly at our existing behavioural patterns and the results they are producing, and feel inspired to give our customers a great experience. This inspiration can come from different sources depending on the nature of the business and its leaders.
We must know how to change
We must be given tools that enable us to change both our thinking and our behaviour in our own special way. Scripted recipes for all to follow will never work. When our individual map of the world is in line with the idea of giving a great experience to our customers, then the behaviour will follow with relative ease.
We must be given the chance to change
Expecting habitual thoughts and behaviours to change overnight is unrealistic. This takes time. We need to be given a plan where we make simple, small changes over a specified time period as we install our new patterns. This means we need reminding and supporting.
So my plea to organisations our there talking about managing their customer experience – help your people first. Help them to be the very best they can be and then let them loose. And stop measuring them!
James Irvine, Team Egyii, Singapore
Tags: Customer Experience, Leadership, Learning and Development, Management, Relationship Management, Training
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