Many business leaders believe that if the price is right, the frontline people smile, the products work and more recently, if there’s an online payment solution, then it’s a home run to the service excellence plate. In reality, it’s not quite that simple. Customers interact and by extension, they intersect with every element of the human and operational scaffolding of the business and this goes beyond the tangibles, to the sometimes invisible, tripwires. This is the intersectionality of the customer’s experience.
Some of the most intriguing parts of the intersectionality for me, are the value exchange between the business and its customers, its technology load, its cultural cadence and the level of internal functionality or dysfunctionality. As a service transformation consultant, I encounter businesses that miss the multi-dimensional appreciation of how the confluence of these parts affect the overall experience of the customer.
For in-person supermarket shopping, this value exchange begins before the customer even sets foot in the building. It starts with adequate parking facilities.
Let’s start with one of my favourites……the value exchange. One can tell quite a bit about how a business values its customers by looking at how much effort goes in to making life easy for those customers. For in-person supermarket shopping, this value exchange begins before the customer even sets foot in the building. It starts with adequate parking facilities. If customers experience difficulty in finding a parking spot, value is compromised. Similarly, if customers wish to shop online and the shopping site is clumsy in its configuration, slow, or keeps shutting down, this level of user unfriendliness, will cause emotional disconnection (the opposite of the desired effect on customers).
We seem to believe that technology is the magic panacea that will place a business on the path to abundant success with its customers. May I suggest that specifically, technology should be considered more as an enabler of the business goals associated with ease of doing business, speed, convenience and responsiveness to those being served. It’s also about the strategic use of technology to generate data that can be used to design the best, most customized solutions for the customer. Oh and we mustn’t forget that decisions around technology should be thoughtful enough to deliver employee value as well.
A tangible intersectional point for every business with customers is its cultural cadence. Like humans, businesses are icebergs. This means that customers are interacting mostly with what they cannot see.
A tangible intersectional point for every business with customers is its cultural cadence. Like humans, businesses are icebergs. This means that customers are interacting mostly with what they cannot see. They are interacting with businesses that function on a spectrum that spans cultural dysfunction to cultural harmonization.
If the business is functioning as a toxic environment, the customer will not be spared the perils of poisonous internal interactions. These perils will show up in cross-departmental or horizontal collaboration that is discontinuous, untimely and fraught with poor communication and varying levels of urgency. If the business is functioning in a harmonized culture, the cadence of interactions will be meaningful, thoughtful, cohesive and with a shared sense of urgency. This style will characterize all platforms and channels of the business.
If the business is functioning as a toxic environment, the customer will not be spared the perils of poisonous internal interactions.
Cultural habits bleed onto the canvas of the customer experience, so it’s important to ensure that internal dysfunctions are remediated. My experience is that this is one of the most neglected areas in the operations of a business. Why? Because many business leaders whom I have encountered, do not like to confront messy issues, especially if these are people issues. Instead of tackling the issues, leaders opt to wait it out and hope that with time, the issues resolve themselves. Of course, we know that this only leads to further fragmentation.
Intersectionality with customers is prismatic. As a service transformation consultant, the technicoloured nature of the customer’s experience intrigues me. Each interaction with a customer is, in its essence, a micro-aggregation of the human and operating scaffolding of the business and is reflective of the state of affairs within the business. If service delivery has to get to service excellence, the scaffolding has to change first.
Each interaction with a customer is, in its essence, a micro-aggregation of the human and operating scaffolding of the business and is reflective of the state of affairs within the business. If service delivery has to get to service excellence, the scaffolding has to change first.
It’s important to note that the endgame to service excellence is to win the heart and mind of the customer, by building a powerful emotional connection with him or her.
Getting to this level of emotional connection, will require a business to adopt a surgical approach to unwiring the good the bad and the indifferent practices that govern its existing people and operations models. It will require leaders to expand their awareness of the constellation of moving parts that connect invisibly and influence the customer’s experience.
A good way to start this journey is by looking through the prism of customer experience for design inspiration.