Ten Truths to Managing the Branded Experience
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How to get employees to deliver on customer experience promises
The title of this article is a bit misleading. So is “How to get him to return calls quicker,” “How to get her to be friendlier to customers,” and “How to get them to upsell more.”
If we want to be accurate about how we lead people, and how we manage the experience, we have to admit that we can’t actually “get” anyone to do anything. But we still need our workforce to produce, to deliver, and ultimately to help us obtain and keep customers.
So if we can’t get them to do it, what can we do?
We can provide clear, strong leadership that sets our people (and our business) up for success, both internally—among employees, and externally—among customers.
The Leader’s Role
Here are three critical ways leaders can set their people up to do “it”—that is, to deliver on customer experience promises:
1. DEFINE AND SET EXPECTATIONS FOR WHAT “IT” IS
Start off by determining what you want your business to be known for. Define one or two basic beliefs to inspire each employee’s behaviors every day. For example, “We believe every interaction with a customer is an opportunity to offer a friendly, engaging experience that makes us the best place to shop.” If an employee doesn’t believe every customer truly deserves a friendly, engaging experience, that employee will have difficulty providing that experience.
Beliefs are critical because they drive behaviors. But beliefs are invisible. We can’t “see” or “do” a belief, so we can’t measure its effectiveness. Behaviors, on the other hand, are visible—and therefore, measurable. Behaviors drive the experiences that lead to a business result—more or less productivity, loyalty, and/or sales.
Determine specific behaviors that all employees can do consistently to provide the kind of “wow” experiences that not only satisfy customers, but instill the kind of loyalty that leads to referrals (the ultimate compliment).
Document these beliefs and behaviors. Make sure beliefs are simple, easy to understand, remember, and repeat. Make sure behaviors are actionable and visible.
Here’s an example of a basic, non-negotiable behavior every employee can and should do every day.
“Help customers find what they need.” (Good, but not great).
“Approach customers in the store and ask ‘Can I help you find something?’” (Much better! Why? Because it’s specific and visible).
2. COMMUNICATE
After you define and document the behaviors that make up the desired customer experience, COMMUNICATE them to all employees and set clear expectations.
In weekly staff meetings and informal huddles, on break room bulletin boards, and in staff newsletters, focus on one key behavior at a time, such as, “Acknowledge every customer with eye contact, a smile, and a sincere greeting.” Frequently mention “the experience” you want to deliver to customers, and remind employees of the specific behaviors that have been defined as “mission critical” to the company’s success.
Better yet, catch your people doing the right behaviors, and share those successes with the entire workforce. Recognizing people for doing the right things is the best way to educate employees on the company strategy, generate commitment, and stimulate positive actions that will be replicated by others.
3. HOLD PEOPLE ACCOUNTABLE FOR DOING “IT”
Measure the consistency with which those behaviors are delivered on a day-to-day basis, and link those measurements to key financial results.
Make “the experience” part of every performance review. Have employees complete a non-confidential self-assessment once a year to rate themselves on how consistently they do the non-negotiable behaviors. This can be a great starting point for a conversation between you and your employee. Find out if they’re unclear about expectations – what to do, or how to do it. Identify areas where the employee might be struggling, resources or additional training they may need, and reinforce their crucial role in impacting the company’s financial results.
Good employees will try hard to meet performance objectives if they understand what good performance is. It’s your job as the leader to DEFINE good performance, clearly COMMUNICATE expectations, and courageously HOLD PEOPLE ACCOUNTABLE for delivering “it.”
Five Steps to Great Customer Experiences
Special thanks to Dori Saltzman, Leisure Editor of Travel Market Report for this interview published on November 14, 2011:
With a little forethought and a lot of commitment, travel sellers can make outstanding customer service an integral part of a winning brand.
No big concepts are needed; no fancy formulas – just basic common sense, said Gregg Lederman, author of Achieve Brand Integrity: Ten Truths You Must Know to Enhance Employee Performance and Increase Company Profits.
So whether you’re known for checking in with clients while they’re on vacation or following up with them afterwards, these are your branded behaviors that customers come to expect.
“Every point of interaction leaves an impression in your customer’s mind. It all comes down to how we act.”
The CEO of consulting firm Brand Integrity, Lederman regularly advises businesses on how to create the optimum customer experience. His primary tool is the Achieving Brand Integrity (ABI) model, a step-by-step process for determining series of “non-negotiable behaviors” that all employees must commit to.
Walk a mile in their shoes
Travel Market Report spoke with Lederman to find out more about the process, including the five steps that form the framework of his model for achieving brand integrity.
“The framework forces people to think about what it’s like to really be a customer. What do they want? What obstacles get in their way? And what behaviors can you do to make their experience consistently good, if not great?”
The first three steps require travel agents to walk a mile in their customers’ shoes.
Step #1. Identify points of interaction
The first step is to determine your various points of interaction with customers. Who is the customer and where are you going to deliver the experience?
For a travel seller that could be the initial contact, which might by phone, email or social media.
Other touch points could include the booking itself, the post-booking pre-departure, while clients are on vacation, and their return.
Step #2. Look at desired outcomes
Before you can determine what behaviors are in order, you need to understand exactly what customers want.
So pick one point of interaction and ask yourself: What is the desired outcome the customer wants to have? What are they looking for?
“For example, upon their return home, do they want to be able to share their experience with you? If so, there are behaviors you need to come up with that enable that.”
Agents should identify as many desired outcomes as possible, then prioritize them in terms of the outcomes most customers want, Lederman said.
Another way to prioritize is to ask, “‘Who are your best customers that you want more of?’ Then pick the desired outcomes that they most want.”
Step #3. Explore possible obstacles
Once you’ve created a list of the desired outcomes for each touch point, start exploring the possible obstacles that might get in the way of each desired outcome.
Obstacles could include an agent not having an answer to a client’s question during an initial consultation, or bad weather during the client’s vacation, or lost luggage.
It doesn’t matter whether you have control over the obstacle or not, Lederman said. You have to take the attitude that whatever went wrong might not be your fault, but it is your problem to try and solve.
Handling what you can’t control
For problems that are not within a travel agent’s control, showing empathy is essential. If you know that a client’s cruise hit bad weather, don’t avoid the fact. Send them a note card acknowledging the bad weather and saying you hope they enjoyed the sunny days they did experience.
“Acknowledge it; be empathetic. That’s a branded behavior that shows that you care.”
Step #4. Develop nonnegotiable behaviors
Once you’ve identified the desired outcomes at each touch point and possible obstacles to each outcome, it’s time to develop a series of behaviors that ensure customers receive the outcomes they want.
The behaviors you settle on will become nonnegotiable. You must do them all the time.
“Are you always going to send some sort of thank you note? Are you always going to follow up with an email? Then that’s a non-negotiable behavior.”
Examples of nonnegotiable behaviors include: returning a phone inquiry within two hours of the call, never answering another call while you’re on the phone with a client, sending a restaurant recommendation while clients are traveling, or always having a welcome home balloon waiting when clients return home.
Step #5. Go above and beyond
The last step is identifying behaviors that go above and beyond your nonnegotiable behaviors. These are the behaviors that create “wow” moments.
“Maybe you send a gift basket that’s waiting for them when they arrive home. Maybe you send them an oversized beach towel with your company’s logo on it. These are the types of things that really wow a customer. We only do them now and again.”
Alternatively, you may create a series of above and beyond behaviors that are nonnegotiable, but only for a subset of customers.
“If you have a repeat customer who regularly books X amount of dollars with you, then those might become standard for them.”
Keep it manageable
Finally, Lederman said, you don’t need to do a lot of behaviors for each touch point. You just need to do a few things really well.
Why survey customers if you’re not going to follow up?
Below is part two of my two-part series recently published in the Rochester Business Journal on building and managing an effective and meaningful customer feedback program.
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In my last article, titled “Any monkey can survey; start building relationships,” I described the benefits of a fully operational customer experience management program and its key differences from traditional satisfaction surveys. I cautioned readers not to annoy customers by seeking feedback about their experience if they are not prepared or motivated to act on it. I also shared the fundamental mistake that companies make when they are irresponsible in surveying customers: Bombarding them with an endless list of questions using oversimplified-yet affordable-tools like SurveyMonkey or Zoomerang.
Since then I’ve learned an astonishing fact. According to research by MarketTools Inc., 98 percent of companies collect feedback from their customers, yet only 8 percent follow up with customers to do something about it.
Sending out a survey is easy. Inviting customers to give feedback and then effectively following up to uncover opportunities is much more difficult. I can only assume that is why such a small percentage of companies do it. When I speak with business leaders about the importance of customer follow-up, they get it. They know it is critically important and will lead to terrific opportunities. Yet they still fail to do it the majority of the time. Why, especially considering it will lead to at least one of four opportunities to improve or grow your business? Those opportunities:
Resolve an issue. Learning about challenges or problems from the customer’s perspective and then taking action not only helps you improve operations but also shows that you care, which in turn makes customers happy and more loyal.
Up-sell or cross-sell products and services. Following up with satisfied and extremely satisfied customers provides instant permission and positioning for the “what else” question. For example: “Hi, Mr. Customer. Thank you so much for sharing feedback about your experience with our company. We are pleased you are so happy. We love to do business with you too. Just out of curiosity, what else might we be able to help you with?”
Get referrals. Again, you have instant permission and positioning for getting a referral or at least planting the seed that referrals really are the greatest compliment. “Hi, Ms. Super Loyal Customer. Thank you so much for sharing your feedback. … Who else do you know who might benefit from having a great experience with our company?”
Recognize and appreciate employees. Happy customers quite often have a story to tell about an employee who went above and beyond in delivering a great experience. Capture those stories and best practices, and share them. Doing so motivates employees by clearly connecting them to the difference they make for customers and your company.
Again, why is effective follow-up with customers done so infrequently, and what can you do about it? Here are four strategies to ensure your workforce is successfully equipped to execute a customer experience management program that will build stronger relationships with customers, drive sales and engage your workforce to become more customer-centered than you ever imagined possible:
1. Make sure employees have the knowledge about your company’s products and service offerings. A customer follow-up call-whether the customer is extremely satisfied, extremely dissatisfied or somewhere in between-is a unique and hard-to-regenerate opportunity to connect and build upon a relationship. Employees taking these calls should be in a position to answer (or find the answer) to any question related to your business offerings. A dissatisfied customer may ask, “Why did it take so long for your company’s support representatives to answer the phone?” or “Why do your accountants charge so much for preparing personal tax returns?” Inability to address questions of this nature during the call can make even a satisfied customer reconsider his opinion of your company.
2. Empower employees to make things right. In many situations, there is an opportunity for immediate action to improve the customer’s experience. In these instances, customers want to see tangible results-especially considering they spent time and energy to provide feedback.
3. Use technology to automate “triggers” and track customer follow-up. Having the right technology is a must to manage customer follow-up. Employees responsible for following up need to have:
- Trigger alerts, automated messages indicating an opportunity to contact a customer. Access to customer scores and comments to help them prepare for the conversation.
- Ability to document information about the call (during and after), including specifics of the conversation and their perspective on the situation.
- Ability to record the status of the follow-up call and, once completed, its outcome.
In essence, your trigger and tracking system becomes a case management work flow that tracks in-progress activity and results. For instance, does someone else need to follow up with the customer next? If the case is closed, did the employee prevent the customer from dropping you as a preferred supplier? Did your employee establish new contacts in the account? Did he or she manage to identify a new sales opportunity?
4. Establish accountability by measuring and reporting on outcomes. What gets measured gets done. Determine which measures the employees who are responsible for customer follow-up should be most accountable for. A few metrics to consider include the time interval between feedback and initial follow-up, average time to “close the loop” with customers, and ratio of favorable to unfavorable outcomes.
A customer experience management program can seem overwhelming at first. Employees may initially react with an attitude of “Oh no, not another thing I need to do.” Ask yourself whether following up with customers to resolve issues, build relationships and uncover new opportunities is just another thing to do or the thing you should be doing.
Today we have access to a plethora of technology and tools that allow us to do amazing things with respect to connecting with customers. Don’t use technology to annoy customers with survey requests. Invite them to provide feedback, and follow up with them through a program that is specifically designed to build relationships and increase sales.
~Gregg
PNC Bank: Sweetening the customer experience.
I was passing through the drive through late one night when my eyes beheld a usual site. The monster behind the counter began to rise when suddenly, to my surprise, she smiled and said, “Hello Charee, welcome back to PNC, it’s great to see you again!”
Hold on. I’m used to dealing with zombies here. They don’t smile. They don’t know my first name and they certainly don’t say nice things. They grunt, growl, and devour my transaction to get to the next customer. Did the CDC finally find a cure to avoid the apocalypse? No time to think about that…Intrigued by this change in behavior, I found myself actually wanting to partake in a brief, somewhat meaningful dialogue. Then as my receipt completed its voyage through the dark underground tunnel, the teller, now quite human, said “I hope you don’t mind, I dropped a few pieces of candy in your envelope. Just a small token of our appreciation. Hope you have a great night and thank you for being a customer with PNC.” Nice touch.
Still cynical, I thanked her back and drove away with this new “experience” top of mind knowing full well this little game changer was not done by accident. You see, at the time, PNC was just a few months into their acquisition of National City and let’s just say they were nowhere near my list of companies that provided great customer service. As far as I was concerned it was a relationship beyond repair and I was ready to take the painful steps toward taking my business elsewhere.
Then as weeks turned into months of consistently good experiences, I thought about changing banks less and less. The last of the zombies were replaced by engaged humans and they continued to take pride in their front line duties. Fast forward to today, because of their consistency, this local branch still calls me a customer.
So there you go. With all the horror stories posted on Halloween about scary customer service encounters, I thought it was time to write about one banks’ local branch that woke up, became human again, and actually got it right.
In closing, I hope this post serves as a reminder that even the most well-designed customer experience strategy is worthless if your front line employees aren’t engaged and aligned to consistently deliver on your brand promise – treats or not.
