Every business should think of itself as a nursery. A nursery is a habitat that supports the healthy development of its inhabitants or colony. In its widest application, a nursery can fill the role of supporting the development of ideas and noble intentions of a corporate population as well.
As a crucible, the corporate nursery has to be a nurturing environment, with the best infusion of resources and the continuous cleansing of toxins to maintain the health of the inhabitants and to optimize the stability of its ecosystem.
The stability of this nursery is largely determined by the delicate balance between human capability and the functioning structure that propels the business. When people do what they’re supposed to do and systems work the way that they are supposed to work, the habitat flourishes, accruing the benefits that accompany a well-aligned, corporate state.
Every business should think of itself as a customer experience (CX) nursery, a habitat where customers’ expectations are exceeded and differentiated value delivery to customers, positions the business ahead of its competitors in both reputation and earnings.
In particular, every business should think of itself as a customer experience (CX) nursery, a habitat where customers’ expectations are exceeded and differentiated value delivery to customers, positions the business ahead of its competitors in both reputation and earnings.
It’s easy to discern a business that functions as a CX nursery. A major differentiator would be that the business would have mastered the art of connecting its customer experience vision, with the mechanics of exceptional service delivery. It does not flip flop around its understanding of what customers expect and relies on tracking the data points associated with those expectations to determine how well the business is doing with its customer relationships, on a daily basis, (not monthly or reactively, when failures happen). Time and effort go into communicating these expectations to all employees, sharing the data points and rolling out strategies that will guide the collective response to delivering a superlative customer experience.
To this business, there are no shortcuts to success. There is a framework that governs the delivery of a superior customer experience and there is a charge on employee commitment to enabling the framework.
A business that functions as a CX nursery lives in a state of urgency, so there’s always a sense of immediacy to ensure that needs are resolved and solutions are designed efficiently and effectively, to keep both internal and external customers happy.
A business that functions as a CX nursery lives in a state of urgency, so there’s always a sense of immediacy to ensure that needs are resolved and solutions are designed efficiently and effectively, to keep both internal and external customers happy. I can’t begin to tell you how it amazes me that so few businesses operate with a sense of urgency and that so many individuals are unbothered about their failure to be responsive to small contracts that include replying to email messages, returning calls and keeping their promises, on a regular basis.
In keeping with the principles that drive nurseries, businesses that function as CX nurseries, opt to remove barriers to measuring success when it comes to keeping customers happy. Take for instance, what is considered the holy grail of customer sentiment measurement, the NPS (net promoter score). These businesses are not held hostage by their NPS ratings. Their strategy is to work proactively on converting eighty to ninety percent of their customers into loyal customers, so that their NPS ratings are consistently at the superlative levels. Controlling ratings starts with controlling customer happiness.
When a business decides to become a customer experience (CX) nursery, it signals a moment of reckoning, when the business decides to aim for greatness in the way that its customers will be served.
Many businesses have a reactive approach to measuring customer sentiment. Measurement is conducted once annually, which measures sentiment at a “single moment in time only” and therefore may miss the point of capturing the trends in customer sentiment, over time, which gives a more accurate profile of service delivery effectiveness.
Nursery businesses know how to blend noble standards that can withstand the test of time, with useful modern-day technology. There is an understanding that the old and the new elements need to co-exist for best results. New technology is embraced for its contribution to smart working, based on the understanding that sustained digital adoption can deliver competitive advantage in the areas of speed, personalization, responsiveness, convenience and ease of doing business.
Customer experience nurseries pay as much attention to the invisible moving parts that keep customers happy, as they do to the parts that are visible along the journey.
When a business decides to become a customer experience (CX) nursery, it signals a moment of reckoning, when the business decides to aim for greatness in the way that its customers will be served. It’s a vote for simplifying the customer’s journey, whilst elevating the experience, through the synchronization of countless moving parts. It’s also a vote for some level of disruption to the existing status quo. As long as the gains of disruption outweigh the losses associated with stasis, the decision to disrupt can be considered judicious.
Oh, and one more thing. Customer experience nurseries pay as much attention to the invisible moving parts that keep customers happy, as they do to the parts that are visible along the journey.
Often, in the CX universe, it’s what you can’t see that can make or break the experience.