3 pointers to become a customer experience champion

Written by: Kushal Dev | Co-founder, Customer Guru

The idea behind a successful customer experience program is to create a customer-centric organization where all the departments work towards a common goal of improving customer satisfaction, both internal and external. A non-customer-focused organization moving to a customer-centric one is a huge shift in culture and processes. There are 3 key things which need to be considered to ensure this shift is smooth and successful.

• Senior management buy-in: There is no magic potion to making an organization customer-centric. It’s an on-going process with a consistent investment of time and energy. For the entire organization to be consistent, it’s important that employees know that the senior management is invested in this idea of customer experience. If not, the employees will easily dismiss this as another management fad that will wither only if they ignore it for little longer. The message should be clear by the top management in words and in action. Set the right process, take action on poor feedback, give a pat on the back for good feedback.
• Make it the pulse of your organization: Both action and performance of individuals should be judged on its impact on customer experience. It should be the language of communication within the organization. Employees from the frontline to all departments should be clear on what impacts customer satisfaction most and how does their action affect the satisfaction level. This can be achieved by implementing the right process, an easy to quantify metric like NPS, and more focus on action than analysis.
• Understand that this is long-term: It’s like hitting the gym…it’s not a one-time investment with lifetime returns but its small investments every day for lifetime returns.

The idea is to make small changes in direction which matter most, analyze its impact, and iterate. Real results are the best measure of the success of an initiative.

Please leave in your comments, thoughts, and ideas on how you would do it differently.

Reach Kushal at kushal@customerguru.in