The customer is the very reason that a business exists for. Mostly, the customer is at the very core of any business decision. Since time immemorial, the tastes and perceptions of customers that we intend to serve have changed drastically in this V.U.C.A world. Because of the generational shift and other influences, today’s customer wants more of everything. Top quality, one-tenth the time to deliver, and most importantly all this must be a great experience. In a world where the customer is spoilt for choices and constantly being bombarded with many alternatives and brand loyalty is a thing of the past, any organization would be well served to sharpen its axe and look at how it perceives what a customer experience means for them and for their industry.

Through this space, we reflect and revisit the paradigms of customer experience and what can we do to make our organization more customer-centric and strive to create a memorable customer experience time and again.

To start with, customer experience has to be inculcated from the first call of addressing the customer and within the conversation, processes, and communication of the organization when they approach a customer. Once we do that and sustain it over some time, creating a value-based customer experience becomes a part of how an organization does its business. While customer interaction training helps, additionally, there are other critical factors for an organization to address.

Empower employees at every level: This part is critical and the first experience the customer has when they call an organization, e.g. when they check into a hotel, call an airline, check into a flight, or call a bank, it’s called the moment of truth. The first level of employees if not empowered, if not trained well time & again, to make their own decisions will end up disappointing its customers and hence will eventually lose them to competition.

Encourage and ideate with employees: Your frontline staff and the middle-level staff are breeding grounds for great ideas to come through and explore. Since we are talking about creating a culture where employees can share their ideas and see which ideas can be taken forward, allow & facilitate your employees across levels to come up with ideas to sharpen processes and implement ideas no matter how big or small they are, small steps but big leaps.

Embrace an omnichannel mindset: All organizations that want to take their customer experience to the next level are now using every way to reach out to customers to create an experience for them. They try an engage with their customer on every device and way possible. Real estate players have used technology to let their customers take a virtual tour of their projects if proximity is a challenge, banks have started virtual banking and made their processes more customer-friendly to constantly create an experience for their customers. The only challenge is to mix technology with the human experience and not just one of them. Also, organizations should be weary of not overdoing any of them and strike a balance as to how much connection they seek with their customers rather than bombarding them with company info on every platform.

Use customer journey mapping: Simply put, customer journey mapping is a way for an organization to understand customer perceptions, values, taste, and their relationship with the organization. This can help an organization envision what future expectations can they expect from their customers.

Implement Voice of Customer Program: Another critical aspect of creating exceptional customer experience is to deploy Voice of Customer initiatives as part of the company’s DNA. Tapping into customer expectations, their experience, and their perceptions of the company can make the organization proactive and allow them to see into the future into what can customers expect from them going forward.

Enhance customer service: Last but not least, any organization’s backbone to create a great customer experience is to enhance its customer service, especially after-sales service. Unfortunately, this is one area that a lot of customers feel let down with. Once the sale is made, a lot of times the customers feel let down and are perceived to be given step-motherly treatment by the company. Let’s work with the paradigm that a complaint is actually a gift and through a complaint a customer is allowing us to improve once again. It shows humility on the company’s part to accept that there are areas that they may need to work on continuously for that exceptional customer experience. Historically, organizations which have invested in customer service skills training have reaped benefits of better customer satisfaction scores.

This blog has been written by Rupender Khaira, an Associate Partner @Growthsqapes