Exceptional customer service impacts your bottom line in more ways than you can imagine, whether your organization's objectives are profit-driven or politically mandated.
Success comes from an understanding that every aspect of any organization, whether visible to the customer or not, plays an important role in your organization's overall success. This includes the effectiveness of your people and processes, the quality of your products and services, management style, and organizational culture. Everything you do has an impact on the customer's perception of you and, in order to be client-focused, you have to be client-focused from the inside out.
Customers of private business and clients of government agencies begin their personal evaluation of you from the moment they first recognize your existence. The tone is set at an early stage and everything you do from that moment on will either lessen or strengthen their perception of you. Here lies an opportunity for you to establish yourself as a model of customer service excellence.
The impact on your bottom line begins at the moment customers enter your place of business, access your Web site, or speak with you on the phone.
Customers and clients are in a perpetual state of service experience evaluation. They evaluate you on an ongoing basis – every time they interact with your people, products, and processes – and they do so at both a conscious and subconscious level. Every one of these interactions presents an opportunity to strengthen your customer service relationship and your bottom line.
The P3 Service Experience
The Product Experience
The Process Experience
The People Experience
Customers who have positive P3 service experiences are more likely to recommend your organization to friends, family, and colleagues and to personally do business with you again. Since their perception of you is positive, they spread that feeling to others and the ultimate benefit is solid positioning within the mind of your audience.
On the other hand, customers who have unfavorable experiences are likely to speak poorly of you, your products, your services, and your people, and this negative word-of-mouth results in revenue losses.
The Product Experience
Think about it. When you buy a product or service that consistently fills your need, you stick with that specific organization or brand until something better comes along.
The product experience is measured in several ways:
Brand personality and promotional style
Price and quality
Service and support
Some products and service purchases are repeated over and over again, while others, usually bigger ticket items, are purchased once a year or less. Creating and maintaining a positive customer product experience is critical for both types of purchases in order to truly maximize your customer's long-term loyalty and testimonial power.
A strong product experience will help you retain existing customers and attract new ones because satisfied customers will naturally recommend you to others.
The Process Experience
Every process should be designed to strengthen the customer experience ... and never to weaken it.
From time to time we all have to deal with organizations that we don't necessarily want to deal with because of a lack of options, or due to some unfamiliarity with a particular industry or geographic region.
The process experience occurs with almost every customer transaction, from buying a new car to applying for a passport and because of this inevitability, smart organizations learn how to turn these process points into opportunities to further strengthen the customer relationship.
Process refers to any of these common interactions:
Filling out forms and supplying personal or business information
Checking to see if something is available or in stock
Methods of payment
Complexity of pricing
Product or service delivery
Accessibility of service and support people
Waiting periods
Before any new or modified process is put in place, organizations should experience that process from their customers' point of view and make the required changes to ensure that process enhances the customer experience instead of adding new and unnecessary administrative burdens.
The People Experience
Are your sales, support, and account management people a pleasure to deal with or do customers cringe when they have to connect?
People play a major role in the overall customer experience. Not only do they physically interact with customers in person, on the telephone, and over the Web, but your people are also responsible for designing the product and for creating the processes that supply your customers' needs and help manage your overall organization.
Ask yourself these questions:
Are my people the right people for their given role and function?
Are my people knowledgeable enough about my product or service to deliver top-notch customer service profitably?
Are my people adequately trained for their positions?
Do they treat customers with respect?
Do they look for ways to strengthen the customer experience, every chance they get?
Do customers like dealing with my organization?
Do my people truly understand how their individual role impacts our bottom line?
Murray Beauliua
President CNex Consulting
As a graduate of the University of Saskatchewan – and with 25 years of experience in business administration, marketing, human resource development, and business improvement – Murray believes in coaching his clients so they're able to advance their own organizational-effectiveness in their everyday activities. In his role as president, Murray 'fulfills his passion of helping people and businesses achieve growth and prosperity'.
Murray is also a dynamic facilitator, speaker, business consultant – and entrepreneur – and he helps clients achieve their goals in their own unique ways. He applies his leadership style in a variety of personal, communal, and business environments and finds tremendous satisfaction in being a part of his clients' own successes.
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Murray Beauliua
