Carolyn Sheppard (The Complete Trainer): What do you think are the main issues for staff in delivering a good customer experience?
Stephanie Edwards (Director/Author Customer 1st International Ltd): Ask yourself this question the next time you receive service, did you feel the company really understood what you were trying to achieve or did it feel like ‘I am simply being processed’?
The biggest business challenge facing most large organisations is creating an individual customer conversation that is relational and not transactional, that can only happen if staff work in an environment where they are trained and encouraged to see beyond the immediate request for a product or service. Understanding what the customer is trying to achieve not only creates openings to go further and provide proactive advice, it also reveals opportunities for additional sales while creating a foundation for an ongoing relationship.
Carolyn: What are the hardest issues for companies to crack when asking staff to deliver a good customer experience?
Stephanie: The hardest thing most companies have problems with is trying to reconcile productivity / efficiency targets with allowing time for customer facing staff to deeply sense, understand and then respond to their customer needs. The reality is this; if you have already devolved management targets for efficiency down to your customer facing staff then the efficiency trap has already been set. Because the targets will always win and your customers will always lose and staff are caught in the cross-fire. Efficiency should and must be measured but only mangers need to be targeted as this is a resourcing issue which customer facing staff have little or no influence over. Customer facing staff should be targeted on satisfying customers and optimising processes using the simple and effective methods found in lean service.
Carolyn: How does lean service help improve the customer experience through staff?
Stephanie: Lean Service starts with involving customer facing staff in the discovery of customer value, then understanding how well the organisation responds to their customer needs and set about eliminating non value added activities and creating new value. This completely changes the relationship with the customer and their experience of doing business with you.
For managers running a traditional efficiency driven organisation this will seem like an impossible dream, but what they don’t realise is that service staff are already spending between 40%-90% of their available time performing non value tasks i.e. waste. If it were removed then companies could spend time providing a great customer experience, reducing costs and maximising revenues, to put simply…. sensing and responding to customer needs.
Many Leading brands have woken up to the problem of waste and are using the efforts of all their staff to eliminate it, effectively turning their own staff into small management consultants becoming highly effective and efficient as a result. Most importantly, it creates differentiation. And remember, all businesses have costs but waste is optional.
The training and development of all your staff to become Customer Service Professionals is vital for business success in today`s economic climate. Service is the differentiator and organisations need to upskill their workforce.
Stephanie is author of:
Best Practice for Customer Services Managers
Best Practice for Customer Service
Please contact us if you would like to participate in future interviews.
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