6 Steps To Refocus Your Business On Customer Delight

Driven to Delight

1. Start with an overriding top-down focus on customer experience. The right message must be delivered from the top, by your words and your actions. Start with feedback from real customers, set measurable objectives, and make sure rewards and incentives are tempered by customer experiences, rather than only internal thresholds.
   
2. Find the best of the best models, and aim even higher. Look inside and outside your industry for role models, and apply some innovative thinking to put you ahead of the game tomorrow, rather than yesterday. Your competition is global, so today’s customers are demanding world-class service. Set the expectation for continuous improvement.
   
3. Make sure the team understands the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ will follow. Since customer experience is not a fixed process, it’s most important to get buy-in on the ‘why’ first. The ‘how’ will follow as each team defines how their processes intersect with those of others. Your objective should be for everyone to look for opportunities to say yes rather than no.
   
4. Tie customer experience to all compensation and recognition. Customer-driven compensation is now the norm in most industries, not just consumer-facing ones. You see the exceptions being ridiculed daily in online media – employees getting bonuses despite customer pain and bailouts. Strive for customer visibility on the positive side.
   
5. Practice is better than training on what saying ‘yes’ looks like. Give your front-line people the mission and freedom to practice delighting customers. Providing scripts and reading manuals won’t do it. Ask key team members to step outside the company and record their experience as a customer looking in. Then let them apply their own input.
   
6. Collect and publish compelling stories of customer delight. Real stories are inspiring and more powerful than any executive or marketing messages, both for team members and potential new customers. Stories illustrate concepts and evoke emotions in a way that even the best facts and figures can’t. They highlight the impact of ‘yes’ to all.
   

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