Chris Bell Managing Director of Customer Experiences a company that specialises in the development of high quality customer experiences said it was not rocket science especially in the present tough economy.

Bell said it can be more difficult to motivate people to step it up a notch when business is slow, that’s where the experience of someone that has a good knowledge of a customer experience strategy and the leadership skills to change attitudes and over time the business culture, come into their own.

Bell has developed a successful customer experience formula that shows the importance of working on the internal experience before developing the customer experience.

The Customer Experience Formula is what our new development programme CED is based on said Bell.

Customer Experience Formula:-

Involvement = Engagement

Engagement = Commitment

Commitment = Loyalty

Loyalty = Increased productivity

Bell said disengaged front-line employees don’t deliver consistently high quality experiences. In a recent survey it is estimated 67 percent of employees go to work everyday, disengaged.

Unless this improves customers will continue to receive ordinary, annoying and in some cases frustrating customer experiences that will motivate them to look for other options and they will make sure others hear about the experience.

The key is total involvement in the development of a customer experience strategy, WHY, because everyone plays a role in what is eventually delivered at the front counter.

For further information chris@customerexperiences.co.nz www.customerexperuiences.co.nz mb 027 2792360

Customers are sick and tired of being phoned right on dinner time, stopped in the street when they are running late, or having cards thrust in front of them as they check out of a hotel and asked to complete yet another survey.

We are well and truly over the novelty of completing surveys according to Chris Bell Managing Director of Customer Experiences a company that advises business on customer experience improvements.

Very few businesses act on the information customers provide and actually do something about the issues that have been raised and the reason for this especially when the feedback involves customer service and customer experience issues is, they don’t know how to act on the information or there is so much information they are just overwhelmed.

“Stop continually annoying your customers by asking them to complete surveys unless you are totally committed to acting on the results” is the message we would like to get across said Bell before customers get even more annoyed with being asked.

His message to business is that if you are genuine and really care about your customers, get back to them and advise them of the action you intend to take as a result of a survey. At least you can then be held to account. Then get professional advice if unsure how to improve performance.

Bell said that if customers can see that some effort is going into improving the customer experience most will be more than happy to take the time to provide feedback. His advice is to make sure the commitment to action is in place first.

For further information chris@customerexperiences.co.nz www.customerexperiences.co.nz mb 027 2792360

New Zealand’s leading customer experience expert and managing director of Customer Experiences Ltd. Chris Bell has just launched Customer Experience Development (CED) with one goal – to increase business performance by delivering better service and experiences that add greater value for the customer.

Bell said the old approach of sending front-line employees to a customer service training workshop and thinking that was going to make the difference, is clearly not working for a number of reasons the major one being the lack of commitment to a complete strategy not just a “quick fix”.

Bell has been working with New Zealand companies developing high quality customer experiences since the launch of Customer Experiences Ltd in 2004 and said the reason for the customer experience approach was a direct result of seeing the customer service training workshop approach not delivering the promised outcomes.

Bell said that front-line skill development was a key part of the customer experience strategy but is only carried out once an organisation has defined the experience they will deliver and written service standards to ensure the consistency of performance. It’s only then that areas of skill development are addressed and measurements put in place.

Bell said it was clear in a recent survey that business does understand the advantages of a high quality customer experience to their business. The challenge is that only 13 percent said they knew how to put such a strategy in place. CED has now given business the opportunity to up skill a key person within an organisation to lead the development and implementation.

The advantages clearly outweigh the investment both for the business and customers including increased employee & customer loyalty and word of mouth recommendations, the ability to capitalise on the ideas within an organisation, lower marketing and recruitment costs and the ability to attract more of the right people, to name just a few.

For further information – chris@customerexperiences.co.nz

Banks, Telco’s and airlines are just a few industries that have taken steps to minimise the direct contact customers have with a real person and others are looking to follow according to Chris Bell Managing Director of Customer Experiences Ltd a company that specialises in the development of customer experiences.

Bell said that some of the moves in this direction have been embraced by customers because they have increased convenience, speed and consistency, turning what was in many cases a frustrating or annoying experience into one that now meets expectations.

Bell is warning business to be very careful when contemplating this approach. For businesses like the examples given, there are clear customer and company benefits but for others like Tower Insurance it clearly was a backward step and they are now opening new branches to increase people contact.

Bell says that as we continue to increase our use of e-commerce, direct face to face contact will decrease and he sees this as an advantage for those organisations that are contemplating developing a customer experience strategy. Direct customer contact can be very beneficial for businesses, as long as these organisations understand the three fundamentals that make the strategy successful- committed leadership, an employee and customer focused culture and the importance of having the right people.

Bell uses a recent example he heard. A customer of one of our Telco’s was going on an overseas holiday and wanted to find out about mobile phone calling rates while he was away, a question that could have been quickly answered by contacting the right person at the company. However that was not an option and after an hour of trying to find the information on the company’s website gave up frustrated and with no answer.

Regardless of how an organisation delivers their customer experience it will be that experience that they will be judged on. With customer loyalty on the decline, employee disengagement is at an all time high. The ability for customers to have a powerful impact on a business’s reputation through word of mouth, means it has never been more important to ensure your people are your competitive advantage.

chris@customerexperiences.co.nz www.customerexperiences.co.nz mb 027 2792360

We are well and truly over the novelty of completing surveys according to Chris Bell Managing Director of Customer Experiences a company that advises business on customer experience improvements.

Very few act on the information we provide and actually does something about the issues we have raised. The reason for this is… they had no intention of doing anything with your feedback says Bell the whole survey in many cases was really a marketing campaign in disguise.

Asking customers for feedback just to make them think you care is undermining those organisations that really do care and will, where possible act on feedback

Bell is advising business and market research companies to clean up their performance in the areas of customer and employee surveys including the use of outdated questions like “the satisfaction” question that has no relevance to customer behaviour and surveys that are far too long

“Stop continually annoying your customers by asking them to complete surveys unless you are totally committed to acting on the results” is the message we would like to get across said Bell before customers get even more annoyed with being asked.

His message to business is that if you are genuine and really care about your customers get back to them and advise them of the action you intend to take as a result of a survey; at least you can then be held to account.

Business must start genuinely focusing on their customers and drop the marketing stunts. Customers will no longer tolerate unprofessional behaviour.

.chris@customerexperiences.co.nz www.customerexperiences.co.nz mb 027 2792360

Research from Bain & Company showed that 80 percent of companies believe they deliver a superior customer experience but only 8 percent of their customers agree.

The goal for all organisations in 2010 is to exceed customers’ expectations and as a result benefit from the loyalty and recommendations that follow.

Market research organisations need to stop using questions that don’t relate to future customer behaviour resulting in a false view of how a business is performing and start measuring customer feedback that will give an organisation a clear understanding of how their customers rate their performance as well as the areas that require improvement according to Bell.

The tourism, banking and retail sectors are among those that are persisting in the use of outdated customer feedback methodologies that continually give business a false “feel good” factor that does little to improve employee engagement, growth and profitability.

Bell applauds the recent increased focus on gaining employee and customer feedback, but believes that this will be to no avail unless the feedback is accurate and is based on real intentions, especially in regards to loyalty and the motivation to recommend to others either directly or through social media and other customer feedback sites.

Bell said it was great to see high profile New Zealand companies like Air New Zealand and Westpac Bank taking the lead from overseas organisations like Apple, Amazon.com and e-bay and replace “the satisfaction” question with the much more relevant recommendation question.

According to statistics released by Nielsen Media research 83 percent of New Zealander’s surveyed relied on word of mouth recommendations over all other forms of advertising.

Bell said business is starting to realise that in a world of excess, uniformity and repetition, people buy experiences, not products or services. When people feel good about their experience they will not only return, they will tell their friends.

To turn a financial exchange into a rewarding experience, businesses have to be creative and they have to be fully committed to seeing the world through their customers’ eyes.

END

chris@customerexperiences.co.nz mb027 2792360 www.customerexperiencetrackerco.nz

Many organisations proudly show me their recent customer satisfaction survey results.

Yet despite all the surveys, the countless workshops and seminars, the thousands of books and research that has been done on improving customer service and the quality of the customer experience…

WHY are we still not receiving better customer service and having more high quality customer experiences?

Well, believe me its not due to the vast collection statistical analysis, pie charts and graphs that apparently show what the customer wants.

Most organisations have a clear understanding that they are not living up to their customer’s expectations and yet no improvement has been made following the analysis.

Some recent research in the US has found that the root cause is the disconnect between employee and customer perceptions of what it is the customer is expecting.

The “Experience Gap Analysis (EGA) study of both employees and customers found that employees consistently overestimated their level of service performance, believing they had delivered greater value than their customers on the receiving end were willing to give them credit for.

This is a clear case of employees applying one set of criteria to judge the quality of their service and customers rating the experience based on entirely different standards.

This gap has little to do with employee attitudes or motivation levels and everything to do with a lack of clear definitions and insufficient knowledge of the customer, leaving employees to their own definitions.

Also contributing to the gap is an organisations focus. While paying lip service to the importance of the customer, the focus is clearly more on the organisation resulting in a lack of customer focus including support processes and systems geared to the delivery of high quality experiences.

Another big contributor to the problem is the persistence’s of some organisations to continually advertise their commitment to the customer and proceed to tell them all the wonderful things they are going to do for them.

All this customer focused advertising does not actually create a better experience and today after being let down so many times doesn’t even gain attention anymore. All it does is continue to create higher expectations on the part of the customer.

Great customer experiences require an emotionally engaging performance. Processes and systems can’t do that nor can machines, only people can and in an increasingly web based economy great people contact is becoming a real point of difference.

Let me share with you the single most important factor for business success.

It’s not your products or services

It’s not your management

It’s not your rules & regulations

It’s not your processes & systems

It’s not defined job responsibilities

Its not financial rewards

It’s the choice your people make every day regarding the quality of customer experience they deliver.

Everyday your people make choices that determine the experience your customers have with your organisation.

You can’t make your people smile

You can’t make your people care

You can’t make your people be more helpful

You can’t make your people be more welcoming

You can’t make your people go the extra mile

Only your people can make that choice.

What you can do is provide quality leadership, a people and customer focused culture, and ensure you have the right people onboard……

Then let them deliver the magic!

Chris Bell

Customer Experience Creator

If you are one of these Gentle Leaders, I will admit that you have likely faced formidable opposition throughout your career. Your stellar people skills have been patronized and your collegial nature has been seen as weakness. Your superiors have encouraged you to sharpen your strategic leadership skills (usually code for “please do my job because I can’t do it”) and become more forceful in driving high performance (even though they would never admit to having their performance driven by others). Your teams have always quietly achieved extraordinary results but you have been unable to build any career momentum because you just don’t fit the mold of the upwardly-mobile executive. You have been kept around because you are great at getting important stuff done but are not seen as tough enough to take on a real organization leadership role. I have good news for you….your time has come!

Why now? Simply because many of our organizations have been beaten up to the point of collapse and need the revitalization that can only come from a new kind of leadership. Your kind of leadership. A leadership that graciously sees the best in others, heals festering wounds and crafts a new, exciting story for the organization. And this is not just about being nice to people. This is a business imperative. The bonds of loyalty and commitment have been so weakened that many of our organizations are unable to take advantage of any economic upswing and will be left behind, irrelevant in the next economic chapter. A look inside these organizations reveals talented people who are now living out their careers in quiet desperation. These people are merely going through the motions each day and putting in their time. There is no shortage of advice for today’s leaders. As engagement scores tumble, consultants and writers from previous eras are still imploring our leaders to “drive new behaviors”, ” hold people more accountable”, and “get the wrong people off the bus”. It’s not working, and it’s time for leadership that can inject fresh energy and enthusiasm into our organizations. It’s time for The Gentle Leader.

Other leaders have had their time. During the past century we have been on a relentless journey to create commercial organizations that can survive and thrive in demanding and ever-changing marketplaces. Uniquely-gifted men and women have emerged to lead these organizations. From the early 1900’s until the 80’s our companies were dominated by The Production Systems Leader who organized us around machines and repetitive processes. This leader was needed to bring order and predictability to the horde of individual craftsmen who were trying to serve the emerging markets created by industrialization. This leader was followed by The Quality Performance Leader whose obsession with improvement in work systems and processes resulted in previously unimaginable levels of productivity. The year 2000 birthed today’s Opportunistic Enterprisers, the “wolves” whose mission was to extract maximum value from the convergence of technology, globalization and fast-changing markets. They were asked to build lean, mean organizations, set big, audacious goals, exploit every market opportunity and be satisfied with nothing less than exceptional performance. And they have done this remarkably well. Maybe too well. We seem to have lost something important along the way. We have lost our organizational soul!

Many organizations have become cold and heartless entities that no longer nourish the human spirit and are now incapable of moving forward. In our pursuit of excellence and opportunity, we have somehow lost touch with the very purpose of organizations and have created entities that no longer satisfy our most basic human needs to be appreciated, to learn and to do work that really matters. When is the last time you saw a leader put community-building at the top of their priority list? When is the last time you have heard a leader speak about compassion and caring as if they really meant it? When have you seen an executive truly make a large personal sacrifice for the good of the lowest paid member of the company?

Can one become a Gentle Leader you ask? Yes, but it is not easy and certainly not for the faint of heart. It may very well be the most challenging transition of your leadership career. It requires exceptional courage, boldness and daring: the courage to confront your needs for accolades and recognition, the boldness to invite each and every member of the organization to put a hand on the organization’s steering wheel, and the daring necessary to commit to a leadership agenda based only on duty and service to others. But the rewards are worth the effort. As a new decade dawns, you will be the leader who forges new pathways into the future. Now is your time to step up to real organization leadership. But watch out for the wolves. They will not go quietly into the night.

Gregg Thompson is the President of Bluepoint Leadership Development

In 2008 we walked away from 37% of businesses that approached us about the development of a customer experience strategy.

The reasons for turning them down included poor leadership skills, lack of commitment to both the process and their customers, the reluctance to think about a long-term approach, and the wrong people in frontline positions. These organisations were not about to make any progress from an operationally focused business to one that puts both its people and customers first.

We know from recent surveys that 95% of executives in both Europe and the US believe that the customer experience strategy is the next big sustainable competitive advantage. We also know that customer loyalty and, it seems staff loyalty, are on the decline – a recent Hudson survey showed half New Zealand workers want or are actively looking for a new job.

Businesses need to develop a sustainable competitive advantage, which will ensure greater customer loyalty, lower marketing costs and lower staff turnover. Business leaders understand these advantages but lack an understanding of the process that goes along with a long-term commitment.

It is time to dispense with the marketing hype, the broken promises and the internal lip service that is out of step with actions. It is time also to stop treating customers as morons and focus on adding real value from the customers’ perspective, through the service you consistently deliver.

It will only be businesses that have a solid foundation in place that will be able to capitalise on an increasing focus on the quality of service they deliver to their customers.

This foundation includes a committed leadership, which has a clear direction for the organisation and understands the importance of a culture that inspires people to develop professionally and perform at their best to deliver a unique customer experience, regardless of the part they play in that process.

It starts by looking at your leadership style and flows through to the experience your people are having. Your frontline people will never consistently deliver great customer experiences unless they are having the same.

A customer experience strategy depends on three things:

• Leadership
• The right people delivering the experience
• Your ability to capitalise on the creativity that exists within your organisation.

Don’t ever doubt the creativity of your people. Most of us work in environments where creativity is not encouraged. If that culture can be changed, it results in an incredible transformation within the workplace.

As the economy falters, a focus on superb customer service experience becomes even more crucial. Putting in place a strategy that both management and staff are committed to can make the difference in customers doing business with you rather than your rivals down the road.

Chris Bell is managing director of Customer Experiences; a company that specialises in helping businesses improve the way in which they interact with customers and clients. Click here to contact us.