There will be situations when everything is in upheaval. One such situation exists right now, in the form of COVID-19. Amid the chaos and confusion that such a situation has caused, businesses will likely want to make the smallest of changes with the biggest impact on an improved customer experience.
It all starts with measuring the customer and employee experience, says Sean McDade, PhD, author of Listen or Die: 40 Lessons That Turn Customer Feedback Into Gold.
As a business, you will continually find out what customers and employees love, like and hate. With this information, you will gain the ability to make adjustments accordingly. Or, if you can’t adjust, you can help customers and employees understand why things are as they are and likely gain their acceptance.
Once a company establishes a regular feedback system, or takes advantage of one that already exists, it can then take further steps to get and use feedback that improves the customer and employee experience. Here are a few high-impact tweaks to help get companies started.
Identify the most important touchpoint
It is not uncommon today to have omnichannel communications and multiple touchpoints. Businesses should take a good look at all of these touchpoints, including contact centres, marketing material, websites, sales process, etc.
In getting feedback, you want to find out which one would cause you to lose customers if something went wrong. For example, would a potential customer abandon your company if a salesperson did not follow-up with them? Would a customer ignore your marketing material if they requested a white paper and received a checklist? Would potential buyers run into the competition if your contact centre did not respond immediately.
Focus on the critical touchpoints
Any immediate changes, improvements or tweaks to the customer experience should always be focused on that vital touch point. If needed, create a cross-functional team that can regularly review feedback, identify critical touchpoints often, and take charge in a focused effort to improve on what customers care about the most.
Go to the source
The most important source of feedback comes straight from the customers who care the most. They will be both your biggest fans and loudest critics.
Businesses will want to know who these people are so that they can follow-up, get more insight and make things better. McDade suggests limiting or eliminating the anonymous element to customer feedback. That way, you can get ahead of issues before customers take them to social media. You can create better relationships when you reach out in response to feedback, too.
Treat CX employees well
It is advisable to treat the employee experience with as much enthusiasm and vigour as the customer experience. The reason for this is because happy employees will translate to happy customers; and happy customers will be loyal to your brand.
Surveys among employees and their results should be anonymous, McDade says, unless employees want you to know who they are because they’d like to share more. Act on what they say and get them involved in improvements that benefit them.
