The Key to great customer experience
Much has been said about the importance of customer experience. We, here at Altaqnya, have written about its meaning and its position as one of the pillars of success as a modern business, but you may be wondering why having set standards specific to Customer Experience is important or what those standards should even be.
Having set standards is an essential part of our lives. They define a wireframe within which to build our customer experience systems. These standards can be used to ease the confusion associated with change. They speed up adoption and collaboration making the entire process smoother.
Are standards constricting?
The limitations of freedom
Before we get into the details of the potential standards and rules that you can set for your staff, it’s important to say a thing or two about the importance of freedom. Standards are essential but they cannot supplant your employees’ free will and you shouldn’t want them to. Standards should act like guidelines that help your staff rather than hinder them. They should help direct their energy rather than stifle their creativity.
But on the other hand, excessive freedom can also be an issue. By abandoning your staff to make their own decisions based on the sometimes vague goal of “Customer Experience”, you are asking for trouble.
For example, your staff shouldn’t be told what to say exactly. Instead, they should be directed to push the customer in a certain direction in their own way, to get points across in their own words, this allows them to balance creativity and precision within the confines of the standards.
Discovering your standards
How to go about building your own system
Standards differ from industry to industry and so, no predefined checklist can cover your specific case. Because of that, it’s in your best interest to study your organization and draw up your own list of standards based on its requirements. Here are some steps you can take immediately:
- What are your organization’s goals? Your goals should be understood well by you and your employees. The Hilton, for example, wants to provide the best hospitality experience that money can buy.
- What are your clients’ goals? A gas station’s clients aren’t as interested in the aesthetics of the station as they are in the speed at which the service that can be provided.
- How do you expect the service to be provided? At this stage it’s best to focus on generalized goals rather than specific employee actions towards these goals. If the employees understand the first two points, they should autonomously arrive at the best solution most of the time.
Something to get you started
These goals are good to keep in mind regardless of industry
While there may not be such a thing as a “catch all” set of standards, there are a few goals that the Altaqnya team recommends you to focus energy towards achieving. These goals will help start you down the path of generating and customizing your own set of standards for the perfect customer experience.
- Be available and responsive: This seemingly simple point is an important double-sided coin. Not only must you be available to the customer as often as possible, but your availability must also be tangible, responding to customer needs and requests as quickly as possible.
- Be courteous and obliging: This not only means treating the customer with deference and respect, but also designing the whole experience so that it leaves the customer feeling amazing. It extends from person-to-person interactions all the way to the environments that the customer is expected to be.
- Be consistent and accurate: there is nothing customers appreciate more than predictability when interacting with a business. They want to be able to fit their interaction with you into their schedules neatly.
The last point seems to conflict with our push to provide staff with autonomy, but it’s all about striking a balance between giving the staff the freedom to handle issues in unique ways, while also giving the customer the fantastic experience that they expect, when they expect it.
We, here at Altaqnia, want you to reach the pinnacle of customer experience greatness. Contact us today to find out how our systems and standards can help you achieve these goals. Together, we can discover the perfect set of standards for you and implement them in a way that’s sure to succeed!
