If a business does not take its own voice out of the conversations that swirl around how happy it keeps its customers, it may be destined to fall prey to the perils of self-messaging. This is a phenomenon that occurs when a business overestimates its subjective assessment of customer sentiment, on the positive end of the scale, contrary to the reality of the customer’s experience. In other words, it’s the belief that the business is doing far better with its customers, than it is, in reality.
This is the trap of deception and disconnection, into which many businesses fall, when they shun independent sources of qualitative and quantitative data on customer experience and customer sentiment. This disconnectedness, ushers in the dangers of denial, when a business sits in a contrarian reality and fails to act on its falling and failing service delivery levels.
One of the dangers of denial is that points of service failure remain unchecked and eventually turn into points of severe customer distress. When the problem reaches this level of intensity, so much damage has been inflicted on customers’ nerves and patience, that it’s almost impossible either to course correct, or to regain customers’ trust.
This disconnectedness, ushers in the dangers of denial, when a business sits in a contrarian reality and fails to act on its falling and failing service delivery levels.
Furthermore, when levels of experience distress become excessive, customers feel isolated and nothing causes defection faster than when customers believe that they are being treated with disdain. Often, when customers begin to believe that a business does not value their patronage, the natural response is to exercise their economic power, by not doing business with the errant brand.
Another danger of denial, is the slow descent into complacency in both frontline and back-end support operations, that leads ultimately, to service impairment. Often, after a prolonged period of sustained impairment, when customer unhappiness reaches a level of clamour that can no longer be ignored, businesses go into a knee-jerk response and hasten to launch customer service training to plug the slow failure leak that would have been long in the making.
A major outcome of sitting in denial, is the slow erosion of competitive currency, not so much as a result of neglect on the part of the errant business to maintain a mindful eye on customer sentiment, but more so as a result of competitive outmanoeuvring. Sitting in denial can incur significant opportunity cost to a business.
A business that fails to opt for an accurate assessment of the state of customer experience and neglects to embrace independent channels for determining customer sentiment, runs the risk of living in its own echo chamber.
A business that fails to opt for an accurate assessment of the state of customer experience and neglects to embrace independent channels for determining customer sentiment, runs the risk of living in its own echo chamber.
My experience as a service transformation consultant has been that some businesses that are in denial, often misdiagnose the root cause of the problems that have led to severe levels of customer distress, and therefore, apply faulty remedies that exacerbate the situation further. Misdiagnosis and faulty antidotes result in either short-lived or ineffective outcomes.
The good news is that a business need not suffer the effects of denial over a protracted period. A start of a simple antidote, is for the business to discard the misconception that its voice carries equal value in gauging customer sentiment, to that of an independent customer feedback or community channel. The message here, for the business is, “Do not trust your own voice in the business of customer experience or sentiment.”
Misdiagnosis and faulty antidotes result in either short-lived or ineffective outcomes.
The minute a business liberates itself from denial contamination, it paves the way to energize its service transformation journey. Opportunities for accelerating this journey, become plentiful.
One such under-explored opportunity, is mining employee wisdom on customer experience.
Employees interact continuously with customers, so it’s only natural that they would be a rich reservoir of creative ideas that can accelerate customer engagement and build positive customer sentiment. It’s amazing how often businesses fail to tap into the rich insights that employees can contribute to customer experience design.
Service excellence denial is, in itself, not a death sentence. Sitting in it for a protracted period, where it’s stunting acceleration of customer experience success, is the problem. Any business that finds itself in this situation of arrested development, should activate an exit strategy, with haste.
It’s amazing how often businesses fail to tap into the rich insights that employees can contribute to customer experience design.
Basically, the tension is about perception versus reality. It’s about a business living in its overestimation of how well it’s doing with its customers, while those customers languish under the weight of unhappiness with their experience.
The unravelling of this conundrum, lies squarely in the lap of the business in question and relies heavily on its willingness to take its ego and its voice out of the equation, in order to make way for an intelligent way forward to customer happiness.
The right choice will mean the difference between customer pain and customer passion.