Are Your Dissatisfied Customers Defining Your Reputation?
What would happen to your business if you had no say in the reputation your company has? Do you knowingly and blindly hand over control of your reputation to the masses? Would you let people who have no financial stake in your company define your reputation to the world?
Effective customer experience management means taking control of the internal and external factors that your customers encounter when doing business with you and guiding these factors to form an experience and feeling that your company proudly stands behind.
Many companies are leaving the perceptions that their customers have of them completely to chance.. They are so entrenched in their business and the service and product they sell that they lose sight of one of the most important factors of sustainability – their reputation in the minds of their customers. Companies that don’t take an active part in defining their culture and reputation are giving their reputation up to their customers. Unfortunately for them, statistics show that the unhappy customers are the ones doing most of the talking.
Many studies support the finding that happy customers tell 4-8 people about their positive experiences. Dissatisfied customers tell up to 20 people within 24 hours when they are dissatisfied with the customer experience they had while doing business with you. With social media outlets, dissatisfied customers have hundreds, even thousands, of people they can spread their impressions to.
This being said, companies can be defined by their dissatisfied customers before they even realize it is happening. Is your company enabling these upset customers to dictate the reputation you will be known for? Are you losing potential customers and not even knowing it? Studies show that more often than not, the customers that are leaving you, leave you quietly and don’t tell anyone in your organization the reason why.
The goal of your company is to stand out in the crowd. Set yourself apart from the broad field of competitors by crafting and implementing a reputation that will make your potential customers want to go out of their way to do business with you.
Define your desired culture. The culture will be the way you live, sleep, eat, and breathe within your organization. It becomes your way of life. It will be the consistent experience of the actions, behaviors and practices that customers and your staff come to expect and appreciate when interacting with you.
Leadership must be involved and embrace both the culture and core values. Teams are much more likely to properly convey the desired message and actions to customers when they see it coming from leadership themselves. Leadership defines and practices the culture, the teams follow by example.
In determining your culture, the focus should be on the characteristics of your business, not the field of business you are in. Consider some of the following characteristics to begin the process – progressive, innovative, educational, effective, efficient, quality conscious, socially conscious, fun, empowering, broad minded, respectful. Your ideal culture and core values will become the DNA of your company.
Once the ideal culture and core values are in place, the next step is to ingrain it into your teams. Be certain that everyone within your organization understands and embraces the culture and the core values. This process is crucial. If your team does not understand the image that the company is striving to convey, how can they properly implement that and communicate it to the customers they are serving?
Clearly define your desired customer experience. Examine your culture from the perspective of your customer. Identify the ideal business interaction that would occur when your customer is doing business with you. What does it look like to them? What feelings are they experiencing? How is your staff treating them? Is your staff engaged with the customers? Are they forming relationships with your customers? What are your customers saying about you?
Train your teams. Improve your customer service skills that your teams deliver to be consistent across the board. Don’t focus on best practices. Focus on the next practice. Best practices are simply an improvement on what your competition is already doing. The next practice is to do it differently in a way that impresses your customer.
People do business with those they know, like, and trust. This concept has been around for ages. Customers today are not buying your product or your service. They can find that from any number of your competitors. What they are buying from you is the relationship that you are promising them if they do business with you.
Effective business relationships are forged much the same way that effective personal relationships are sustained – by engaging and communicating. When companies engage with their customers, they are forming partnerships that are mutually beneficial to both parties. The customers are integrated into the world of the company for purposes of determining which products and services are desired. Their preferences, opinions, and insights are sought after. Customers stay loyal to the companies that appreciate and value them personally because of the business they bring. Customers are astute enough to know that companies value them because of the money they bring to the table, but they also recognize their desire to be treated as an individual can be achieved during the process.
Successful engagement occurs when you know how your customer uses your product. You know when your customer has a need for your product and why they come to you instead of your competition. You know how your customer makes their money to spend with you. You know what it takes for your customer to be successful in their field and what trends are upcoming in their market.
By engaging with and understanding your customers and their needs, you are in the position to fit your product or service to their needs. Customers come to you to solve a problem or meet a need they have. A result of effective engagement is that your company has evaluated the situation and tailored a solution designed specifically for them with the services or products that you provide.
The understanding of your customers and their needs and wants enables you to deliver it in a way that your competition can’t, or isn’t willing to. Customers will spend their money with companies that are prepared to go out of their way to delight them. Some experts even suggest that customers are willing to spend more for a product or service that they know is inferior to yours, but do business with you because of the lengths you will go to in order to delight them.
Engagement means caring. Customers often don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. Engagement with the customer demonstrates a genuine concern to give them what they are looking for. Customers increase their purchase amounts and frequency when they understand that we are providing them with the materials or services that we feel will best meet the needs they have. Discovering the issues behind their reason for purchasing our products will help us develop a relationship with the customer that is truly centered around them. Customers truly do appreciate the extra time and attention that is spent getting to know them and their situation and are more willing to work with companies that value the symbiotic relationship.
Customer retention is the direct result of excellent customer service and customer satisfaction. Once the culture has become customer centric and customers are truly engaged, the service that you deliver to your customers becomes valued. The entrepreneurial spirit in each of your team members begins to emerge as they make decisions as if they were the business owner. Customers are not only viewed as people who do business with you, but as the ones who literally keep you in business. Because of this customer centric mindset, the service that your teams deliver notches up a few levels once they realize the importance of how they treat the customers actually is.
Many organizations empower their staff to use their creativity to delight and retain customers. Friendly competitions engage the staff to determine the most creative method used that month to solve a customer issue or delight a customer. Because guidelines have been put into place, the staff realizes the authority they have to act in the best interest of the customer and deliver excellent service that far surpasses anything the competition has even thought of.
Define as many aspects of the customer experience as possible. If nothing else, be clear in what your expectations are for your teams to deliver to their customers. Without clear expectations, everything is left to chance. As a business, you have the opportunity to strategically place yourself in the hearts of your customers by giving them what they want consistently and building a relationship with them that your competition isn’t even thinking about.
Successful business relationships continue long after the initial product or service has been purchased. The initial purchase is just the first step in the relationship. If you have been successful in building a sustainable relationship, you have created an indelible image and feeling in the mind of the customer that makes them want to return to you for all of their needs in your field. Whether it be for information, education, fact finding, or preparation for the next purpose, the relationship is based on much more that then initial product or service that was purchased. Customer centric companies that define their own reputations are acting as consultants to their customers and helping them in any way possible. Their goal is to solve the problems of their customers before they themselves are even aware that there is one.
Unless you are the only game in town, there is no way to retain your customers without delivering excellent service. Your organization’s reputation is up to you. Be proactive and define how you want to be known and what your customers should experience. Doing this will set you apart from the competition. Keep your focus on your customers and they will have no reason to go anywhere else.
