Don’t Skip These Critical Steps
Sometimes, the best way to get a reality check on how well you’re really treating your own customers is to simply be one of your own customers. Experience your brand’s customer experience.
What do I mean by that? Well, let’s be real. If you’re the CEO, CX leader, or other senior executive, you probably get top shelf service whenever you make a purchase or send an email or ask a question within your own organization. But, according to Bob Azman, author of “When was the last time you experienced your customer experience?” on CustomerThink, you may not be seeing how it all really works for the rest of your customers. You “may not sense” what it’s really like for the customer who feels “frustrated with their online experience or poor-quality packaging…” or anything else that can go wrong along the way.
This piece is a very timely reminder of how quickly we can take our eyes off the ball when we’re so understandably busy dealing with big, unexpected challenges. I especially appreciate how Azman shares 10 very do-able ways of checking in, first-hand – and lays out 9 smart ways to use what you learn to keep improving.
You can read the entire article here. If you would like to know how Skybridge Americas measures the true, everyday CX performance that affects customer loyalty, profitability, and long-term brand success, please reach out. We would love to talk!
When was the last time you experienced your customer experience?
Bob Azman
Or put another way, when was the last time you:
- Accessed your website from a mobile device?
- Checked to see if a promotion code works when you try to enter it online?
- Asked one of your field sales representatives about the specifications of one of your products?
- Used your interactive voice response unit to access your account information online?
- Tracked the number of emails you receive from your company each week?
- Bought one of your products?
- Checked the packaging and delivery times on your purchased items?
- Tried to return one of your own products?
- Contacted one of your customer service representatives to place an order or resolve an issue?
- Read an invoice sent by your billing department?
I’ll stop at 10. What’s my point? As CX professionals, we spend a lot of time collecting customer information, analyzing survey data, completing journey maps, creating process maps, using measurements to track our progress against established metrics and so on. All these activities are time well spent in the pursuit of a better customer experience. But too often, they become our only activities in pursuit of this goal. We overlook the basics of experiencing what our customers experience when they interact and buy from us. We may not sense the perceived emotional response in our hard and fast data when customers become frustrated with their online experience or poor-quality packaging. We miss their choice words for us as they get caught in the “call routing game of department transfers” when seeking the answer to a simple question.
We fail to “experience the experience!”
If we were doing more real-time research, we would quickly come to realize that sometimes our processes are flawed, our policies are prohibitive, and our systems don’t work as we had planned. By understanding what it really means to be one of your customers, we can experience firsthand the challenges they face and the frustrations they experience with our products and services. I contend if we were doing more of this hands-on research, then as consumers we would experience fewer poor experiences when dealing with B2B, B2C and B2B2C organizations. For in this case, it matters not what type of customer you serve. We are all consumers. We are all somebody’s customer. We know what makes us happy. We know what makes us angry. Why don’t we apply our own experiences to that of our organization and create better experiences? The answer remains a mystery to me!
READ the entire article here >
-Bobby Matthews
Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing
Skybridge Americas
bmatthews@skybridgeamericas.com
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