Customer experience has always been a key driver of business success. However, our current situation has turned upside down everything we thought we knew about our customers and their journeys.
There are three main observations and considerations that are playing out to be important in ensuring that our customer experience work is contributing positively to our business, and not becoming a liability in these times of change.
In this video, Cynthia Short dives into the three areas to pay attention to as you re-evaluate and redefine your customer experience.
If you’re seeking to revisit and redefine your customer experience, contact Lexico.
Customer experience has long been a topic tied to make it or break it business success. I think it’s important that we recognize that today we’re all in the middle of customer experience transformations, whether we planned for it or not.
First, it is important to understand what a great customer experience is. The three main components of good customer service are:
- Responsiveness: Responsiveness refers to the promptness and efficiency with which customer inquiries, concerns, or issues are addressed. It involves acknowledging customer needs and providing timely assistance. A customer-centric approach ensures that inquiries are answered promptly, complaints are resolved swiftly, and feedback is acknowledged and acted upon. Being responsive demonstrates a commitment to customer satisfaction and builds trust and loyalty.
- Empathy: Empathy involves understanding and relating to the emotions, experiences, and perspectives of customers. It is the ability to put oneself in the customer’s shoes and demonstrate genuine care and understanding. Empathetic customer service representatives listen actively, show compassion, and validate customer concerns. By recognizing and empathizing with customers’ feelings, companies can create positive emotional connections, enhance customer satisfaction, and foster long-term loyalty.
- Knowledge and Expertise: Providing knowledgeable and competent support is essential for delivering excellent customer service. Customers expect service representatives to have a deep understanding of the company’s products, services, policies, and processes. A well-trained and knowledgeable staff can provide accurate and helpful information, offer appropriate solutions, and address customer queries effectively. Having expertise instills confidence in customers and reassures them that their needs will be met competently and professionally.
While these three components are crucial, it’s important to note that delivering good customer service requires a holistic approach. Other factors, such as professionalism, friendliness, adaptability, and a commitment to continuous improvement, also contribute to providing an exceptional customer experience.
3 Ways to Improve Your Customer Strategy
There are three main observations and considerations that we’ve been paying attention to here at Lexico that are playing out to be important in ensuring that our customers’ experience work is contributing positively to our business, and not becoming a liability in these times of change.
- THE FIRST AREA IS ABOUT OUR UNDERSTANDING OF OUR CUSTOMERS.
It’s an important thing to think about that while we may not need to start over in our understanding it is really important that we start fresh. We cannot approach empathy with assumptions. Yes, we’re going back to our personas and our journey maps and taking our understanding about how to best serve our customers today, but we need to recognize that the insights there were built at a different time.
We also need to be open to the fact that our customers may not even be clear on what they need and want themselves currently. So I think it’s important that as we think about this, we don’t focus on building a new customer experience plan, but really build our planning capabilities so that we can stay flexible as these things evolve.
- THE SECOND AREA IS REALLY PAYING ATTENTION AND NOT FORGETTING ALL THE PIECES.
While we are thinking about our customers and trying to best understand them we have to recognize that employees have been the linchpins in delivering meaningful experience to our customers forever. We have to recognize that how they work today, the roles that they’re playing, the value propositions that they have, are all changing as well, so we can’t assume that we know how to best support them. We need to be open about how to best empower them so that they can be positive agents for our customers.
Another piece is our internal customers. Every function has internal customers and how we support them has a huge impact not only on customer experience but on our businesses as a whole. As we’re navigating this change, this is a perfect time to infuse some of this thinking and understanding our internal customer needs and how they might have changed as we’re putting together change plans for our functions as a whole.
- FINALLY WHICH MIGHT ACTUALLY BE THE HARDEST, IS KNOW THYSELF SHALL WE SAY.
We need to recognize as leaders, as decision makers, that we are people going through these major changes as well and may be bringing biases to the table that we may not be aware of. Uncertainty can lead to avoidance or short-term focus that we may not want to be leaning into. We have to be clear on how we’re characterizing these changes and how we’re approaching decision making as well.
So to wrap up, like I mentioned before it’s an interesting time. We’re all finding ourselves in the middle of customer experience transformations whether we were intentionally pursuing them or not. We need to maintain that things are going to continuously change, and we need to recognize that. This is a new landscape and we are going to have to adapt.
So I hope this has been helpful in giving you some new thoughts on how you’re approaching your own customer experience work, and I’m really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on what you’ve been paying attention to as well.