We know that It’s time to say goodbye to patchwork service delivery and discontinuous customer experience. But, brace yourself, it’s not going to be a smooth journey, neither will it be a painless ride. Elite athletes make the visible part of getting to the finish line look easy, but what we don’t see is the innumerable hours of preparation required just to win at the big event. What we don’t see, as well, is the pain trail that precedes the pleasure.
It’s no different when a business decides to elevate to service excellence. The journey is disruptive and the subsequent reassembly around a new model, can cause tremendous upheaval to the pre-existing order. The saving grace to the tumult however, is a new level of customer experience that places the business in a renewed contract with its customers, one that creates expanded value for both parties.
Let me start by highlighting the difference between service excellence and customer experience. They are not one and the same, neither are they interchangeable concepts. First of all, every business delivers service. It’s the landing point of a business orchestrating all of the moving parts that impact the customer, as he or she navigates the journey from one end of the interaction, to the other end. Service therefore, is about what’s offered to the customer by the business and can be good, bad, poor, or any delivery level between these three markers.
The journey is disruptive and the subsequent reassembly around a new model, can cause tremendous upheaval to the pre-existing order.
Customer experience is the outcome for a customer, when service is delivered. The quality of the experience depends on the quality of the service being offered. Customers measure their experience on dimensions that include convenience, speed, ease of doing business, emotional connection and the big one…..how they were treated during the interaction.
Now that we’ve gotten the service and experience relationship concepts out of the way, let’s focus on the lows and highs of the internal journey to service excellence.
One of the biggest pain points on this journey, is the effort required by a business to embrace disruptive thinking. In the first instance, this comes in the form of dissociation from the deep and pervasive mindset that average service delivery is acceptable. Often, this hard-wiring exists because in many business sectors, “average service” is the prevailing standard. Competitors are not rushing to outclass each other in the business of serving customers.
One of the biggest pain points on this journey, is the effort required by a business to embrace disruptive thinking.
It’s hard to shift upward when a business is accustomed to hit and miss service being its norm.
Another pain point is saying goodbye to ad hoc service improvement strategies. Businesses are so wedded to being reactionary to customers’ needs, complaints and threats, that often, it’s a monumental effort to adopt the more scientific, customer experience design model.
Why change from the ad hoc, reactionary style if there is no widespread customer outcry, customer traffic appears to be constant and revenue levels are acceptable? It’s when revenue levels start to decline that businesses become a little frantic and start to target service delivery with an equal level of “ad hoc” urgency.
By far, one of the most challenging pain points on the journey happens when a business starts to bridge internal fault lines, created by the existing discontinuity between its people, processes, technology, customer intelligence and data intelligence. Whilst this bridging process causes significant internal upheaval, its major benefit is the reparation of issues that cause discontinuous customer experience.
Another pain point is saying goodbye to ad hoc service improvement strategies.
So, the journey to service excellence is not all gloomy. There are some pleasure points.
When a business casts a vote for migrating to superlative customer experience, it’s declaring an intention to elevate its service delivery to the point where it honours both its customers and its employees, with a consistently superlative experience.
On the customer end, this means having superlative reviews on social pages, customers raving about their unique experiences with the business, inboxes overflowing with notes of gratitude from customers who have received prompt solutions to their problems and glowing customer success stories.
On the employee end, this means becoming such a great place to work, that employees are transformed into the most vocal crusaders for the business brand. They become the voice of the brand. Actually, I believe that if the employees of a business aren’t promoting that business actively, something in the system is broken and needs to be fixed.
By far, one of the most challenging pain points on the journey happens when a business starts to bridge internal fault lines, created by the existing discontinuity between its people, processes, technology, customer intelligence and data intelligence.
Finally, as with many journeys, getting to the landing point of service excellence is the fun part. It’s getting through the messy middle that requires true grit.
In this new service economy, where experience differentiation rules, is your business ready to transform into an unforgettable player?