The CXU Student Brief
A monthly newsletter for Upgraded Online Course Subscribers
Insights from the 2018 Customer Experience Conference at The Conference Board
Customer experience is best when it fits with the emotions of your customers. They want to feel they can trust companies, regardless of industry. Therefore, they look for evidence. In the 2018 Customer Experience Conference at the Conference Board, observations from 112 senior practitioners were recorded. Here is the first set of observations…
Issue 3: Maintain a customer-oriented culture through storytelling and give employees the freedom to make their own decisions when solving customers’ problems.
- Remember: “In service of the customer” is often the differentiator between good and great customer service. And who serves the customer? Your employees. So, your customer experience can’t be better than your employee experience. If employees are happy, they will be better at serving your customers.
- Generate trust. Employees have to trust that management will do what they say they will do. Likewise, the company and management have to trust that employees will make good decisions when doing their jobs.
- Create a culture where employees feel empowered, so give them latitude in how they can accommodate customers. Freedom within a framework will allow them to be human (not script readers) and make decisions based on a customer’s individual needs, such as adjusting a price or replacing or fixing an item.
- Maintain a customer-oriented culture through stories that are personal and inspiring. And think of it as “story-sharing” rather than storytelling—the story has to be so inspiring that it compels employees to find and share the next story.
- Share success stories that illustrate how employees have made a difference for customers. Some companies start town halls with these types of stories to energize employees to go above and beyond. One insurance company starts all employee meetings with a mission slide and a video that answers the question: “What’s your mission moment?” It looks for stories like this: An employee had just concluded a call with the spouse of a soldier who was killed in action. The anniversary of his death was coming up and she couldn’t afford to visit his grave. The employee on the phone call found another employee who lived near the cemetery and asked her to put a flag on the grave, take a photo, and then send it to the customer. No one asked these employees to do this—they took it upon themselves.
9 Ideas for Empowering Employees {Quick Video}
Watch as Adam Toporek, of Customers that Stick, shares 9 easy-to-implement ideas that will empower your employees and create better customer experiences.
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