Very few companies had leaders that were responsible for “customer experience” (CX) when I was recruited to create that role and function in 2006. However, I had been focused on the clear connection between employee experience and customer experience for several years. How managers treated their direct reports directly informed how those employees treated the company’s customers and other stakeholders. It was not correlation, it was causation.

The key to success is to make sure you know what is truly most important to your key stakeholders. Many marketing and sales teams (or individual leaders) will claim that they know exactly what is most important, and that often aligns nicely with a key competitive advantage that the company has. However, customers and clients are more likely to think about their personal experiences with your company at every touch point and the emotional reaction they had is what matters most to them. They will say “lower prices” or “faster delivery,” but when they talk about their best or worst experiences, those factors rate very low compared to “friction in the process” and “competent employee giving the correct answer the first time.” Let me know if you want me to facilitate Critical Incident Methodology for your organization so that you can start to measure and manage the friction points and service failures that cost you customers (and money).

Once the organization and its leaders understand and buy into what is truly most important, those factors can be leveraged to measure the voice of the customer. Processes can be streamlined to remove friction that matters. Leaders can be held accountable for the impact that their team (people, processes, and/or tools) is having on key stakeholders.

Another key to CX success is the active management of your online reputation. When clients or customers are deciding which organization to do business with, they not only see what your other customers are saying about you, they also see what your employees are saying about you. In fact, you will find it hard to attract top talent because candidates will also look at your online reputation. It cuts both ways. In fact, research I conducted for the cruise industry showed that movements in the online reputation as rated by employees (up or down) was mirrored within two months by a corresponding change in guest (passenger) online ratings. (Unfortunately, you must also directly tackle the pay-to-play companies that will withhold positive ratings or screen out negative ratings for a price.)

I also facilitate training for front-line employees on topics such as injecting heuristics and bias in conversations to improve every interaction - especially service recovery.

Let me know how I can help you or your organization.