• customer experience
• customer experience management

Organizations operating in today’s business environment need to pay careful attention to the customer experience they are creating to their customers. Technology, products, and services are easily copied by competing organizations, but by centering its functions around its customer, an organization can create lasting competitive edge, while at the same time making sure it operates in a cost-effective way.

Customer experience is formed over time through different touchpoints that the customer experiences with the organization, and it is unique to every customer, so organizations cannot directly define the customer experience for their customers, but they can and should design the desired customer experience that they want to offer their customers. For an organization to be truly committed to the customer experience it provides, its management also needs to commit to managing customer experience and define the strategy upon which the organization’s customer experience -minded culture will be built.

Customers` needs are central

Customer needs to be put in the center of the whole organizations actions and all departments need to recognize and commit to their role in producing customer experiences. The customer service may be the only department that interacts with customers in many service organizations, but its ability to serve the customer and provide excellent customer experiences is dependent on the whole organization’s commitment in serving the customer and producing timely, customer-centric, and innovative solutions to the customer’s needs (Shaw & Ivens, 2005).

Service organizations most commonly provide customer service through multiple channels, and an organization needs to ensure an effortless transition from one channel to another for example when the customer starts the interaction in a web-based self-service channel, but then needs personal customer service. In this example, the customer has already experienced different touchpoints with the organization, before ending up in contact with customer service personnel, and other departments than the customer service have been producing the elements that create the customer experience up to that point.

Key areas in developing customer experience

Even though there are many benefits for the organization to focus on customer experience, the will to produce best possible customer service is the foundation for creating exceptional customer experiences. Organization’s management needs to define development needs for the core processes and key areas that make up the foundation for the organization’s customer experience (Korkiakoski & Gerdt, 2016). Such key areas are:

• Building a customer-centric organization culture
• Recruiting
• Empowering customer service personnel
• Monitoring and rewarding
• Processes and protocols

(Korkiakoski & Gerdt, 2016)

Role of Managers and Employees

Managers are responsible for building organizational culture that embraces the customer’s needs and considers how they can best be met. A customer-centric culture creates sense of purpose around producing excellent customer experience and leading by example is the best way that managers can encourage employees to commit to the customer experience work (Shaw & Ivens, 2005).

The best employees for creating positive customer experiences are employees, who are motivated by customer service and who have a genuine will to serve customers and find solution to their problems. This is why a key factor for an organization is to focus on recruiting personnel, who have the right kind of mindset and desire to provide excellent customer experiences. Attitude and motivation should weigh more than technical skills when an organization recruits employees to work in their customer service (Korkiakoski & Gerdt, 2016).

It is easy to produce great customer experiences when things are going smoothly, but the quality of service is really tested in how an organization handles mistakes or customer complaints. Customer complaints provide information to the organization about things that still need to be improved in its processes, but it also presents an opportunity to raise customer satisfaction greatly when the complaint is handled quickly, and the issue is fixed to meet the customer’s expectations. When employees are empowered to make independent decisions to fix issues, they have the possibility to satisfy customer needs readily whenever they encounter them (Saarijärvi & Puustinen, 2020).

Organizations need to measure and monitor their customer experience so that they can recognize whether the organization’s actions are developing the customer experience in the desired direction. Management should actively study customer experience results and use the information to systematically remove in factors that create poor performance and to create opportunities for positive experiences. Customer experience results should also be used in creating a purposeful incentive system that rewards employees for building positive customer experiences. (Saarijärvi & Puustinen, 2020)

Management defines the strategy for the organization’s customer experience, and it is the management’s responsibility to communicate this vision to its personnel who are creating these customer experiences. In service organizations, the first line manager’s primary role should be to coach, develop and motivate their employees to improve customer experience (Shaw & Ivens, 2005).

Customer service personnel are the most valuable players of creating customer experiences

The Most Valuable Players (or the ‘MVPs’) for the organization’s goals in creating exceptionally great customer experiences are the employees that meet and serve the customers in their daily tasks. Even the most advanced processes cannot replace the genuine attitude of service-minded, friendly, empathetic, and positive customer servers (Korkiakoski & Gerdt, 2016).

Great customer servers often possess emotional intelligence. The way this is realized, is that these persons know and can manage their own emotions, are able to motivate themselves, can recognize emotions in others and have the social skills to receive and process others’ emotional reactions. (Shaw & Ivens, 2005).

Motivated and customer-centric customer servers are also important for the organization in developing the customer experience further, as they are closest to the customer and know the customers’ needs and wants and are driven to producing ever better customer experiences.

Sources

Korkiakoski, K. & Gerdt, B. 2016. Ylivoimainen asiakaskokemus: Työkalupakki. [Helsinki]: Talentum Pro.

Saarijärvi, H. & Puustinen, P. 2020. Strategiana asiakaskokemus: Miksi, mitä, miten? Jyväskylä: Docendo.

Shaw, C. – Ivens, J. 2005: Building great customer experiences. Rev. ed. Palgrave Macmillan, London.