Businesses have been trying for decades to import good service
practices and graft them into their own work settings. They use
training programs or other means to try and
"regimentalize" key service behaviors--an outside-in
approach that seldom makes things any better, and often only makes
things worse.
Truly customer-focused businesses deliver outstanding service
from the inside out. The key is to get your employees coming up
with their own ideas for delighting customers, and then letting
positive feedback from happy customers motivate your workers to
continue implementing more of their own innovative service
strategies. This is called the "flashpoint effect," where
employee motivation and customer satisfaction fuel each other in a
chain reaction of contagious enthusiasm.
That's easier said than done, of course--unless your
business has an actual process in place to keep the chain reaction
bubbling. Such a process doesn't have to be complicated. These
three guiding principles will help your employees generate their
own ideas for improving the customer experience. Then step back and
watch how quickly these service enhancements give your business a
powerful competitive edge.
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Customer Focus Principle #1: Exceed your customers'
expectations every step of the way. Shoppers at Ireland's
Superquinn supermarkets experience the "wow" factor at
every turn. When they first arrive, they encounter a supervised
play area for young children. In the aisles, they'll find a
multitude of signs encouraging them to report "goofs,"
such as fruit that's over-ripe, in return for which they're
given free lottery cards. They'll discover bags of free
vegetables they can bring home for their pets ("Make Your
Hoppy Happy"). And at checkout, the store offers umbrellas to
keep shoppers dry while they watch attendants transfer their
grocery bags from cart to car.
You can create these "wow" factors, too. Set up a
brainstorming session in which your employees break a typical
customer transaction down into its individual steps, and then
challenge the group to focus on each step, one at a time, and
uncover ways to add a "wow" element of delight in each
step. They'll probably come up with more ideas than you can
implement, so afterwards, let them choose the best ones and help
them implement these ideas successfully.
Customer Focus Principle #2: Make your customers feel
important. It's just common sense, right? Maybe--but
it's certainly not common practice. Ever see the sign that says
"In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash"? Or the cartoon of
the four little men rolling on the floor with laughter over a
caption that reads, "You Want It When?" Everywhere you
look, you see businesses making it painfully obvious that they
consider their customers to be unreasonable intruders, potential
criminals, annoying interruptions of the "real work" the
business is trying to get done.
During your employee brainstorming session, get your staff
thinking about ways to make your customers feel welcome and
appreciated during each step of the transaction. The ideas that
emerge often cost nothing to implement (like smiling more or
addressing customers by name). Yet these are the little things that
can make such a big difference from the customers' point of
view.
Customer Focus Principle #3: Tailor the experience to fit the
customer. Where one supermarket invests in metal barricades to
prevent the theft of its shopping carts, its customer-focused
competitor instead chooses to invest in carts that are even more
appealing. Mothers with infants can use carts outfitted with a baby
seat. Shoppers with older children can use a cart designed like a
toy car so the kids can pretend they're driving while the
parent proceeds along the aisles. There are even self-powered
sit-down carts for the elderly and the disabled.
Flashpoint businesses recognize that they deal with different
categories of customers and that each category can have unique
expectations. These businesses abandon the one-size-fits-all
mentality and look for ways to provide something special for each
major customer category.
So invite your brainstorming employees to list the major
customer categories in your business, and ask them to think of ways
to "wow" each category individually. These are often the
kinds of "personal touch" ideas that deliver the biggest
impact. Even customers from different categories will be impressed
with the efforts your business is making to improve the overall
customer experience.
Try applying these three principles in a brainstorming session
with your own employees, and discover for yourself how creating a
customer service culture from the inside out really can be as easy
as one-two-three.