There is an Economic Advantage to Being Customer-obsessed

According to Jeff Toister, Author of The Service Culture Handbook, customer focused brands attract more customers, earn more word-of-mouth referrals, retain more customers, and get their existing customers to spend more.

In his most recent book, The Guaranteed Customer Experience, author Jeff Toister turns the concept of a guarantee on its head. An experience guarantee goes beyond merely warranting a product against defects. It encompasses the entire customer journey to promise an experience that never falls short of expectations. It acts as a step-by-step guide to earning customer-driven growth via winning more customers, improving retention, and restoring trust after service failures.

We spoke to him about how leaders and teams can action plans to be more customer-focused.

Full interview; 

How can leaders drive a customer-obsessed culture- top down?

Customer-focused leaders do three things to build a customer-focused culture.

First, they create a customer experience vision. This is a shared definition of an outstanding customer experience that gets everyone on the same page. Leaders don’t create this vision in a vacuum. They involve their employees to help create it and ensure the vision is simple, customer-focused, and authentic.

Look at the world’s most customer-focused companies. Nearly all of them have some statement, whether it’s a mission, purpose statement, brand promise, or something else that acts as the customer experience vision. It acts as a compass to always point employees in the right direction.

The next step is to engage employees with the vision. It’s a leader’s job to make sure everyone knows the vision, understands what it means, and knows how they are expected to contribute.

Finally, customer-focused leaders align everything they do with the vision. They use it to guide strategy, set goals, and even model it in their daily actions. Employees look to leaders to set an example, so it’s important for a leader to show employees what being customer-focused looks like.

Also Read: Turn a Customer into a Fan in One Moment

How can we measure the success of such initiatives?

Internally, you know your employees are customer-obsessed if they can give clear and consistent answers to three questions:

1. What is the customer experience vision?
2. What does it mean?
3. How do you personally contribute?

Of course, the ultimate measure of success for a customer-obsessed organisation is the ability to win and retain customers. In one comparison, the economic advantage of being customer-focused ranged from 27-377% more revenue than competitors. 

Customer-obsessed companies attract more customers, earn more word-of-mouth referrals, retain more customers, and get their existing customers to spend more.

How are employees empowered to understand brand promise and commit? 

Customer-focused organisations define empowerment differently than most companies. I think most leaders think of empowerment as giving employees authority, but that’s only part of it.

Empowerment really means enabling employees to consistently deliver on the customer experience vision. This includes giving them the resources, best practices, and authority needed to serve customers. 

One thing that’s often surprising is that customer-focused organisations often have rigorous processes to guide employees. This ensures a consistent approach throughout the entire organisation, though employees are still given the authority to deviate from normal processes when it makes sense.

The question of rewards is often misunderstood. A reward is an if-then proposition. If an employee accomplishes a certain result, then they will get a reward. Research shows rewards are extremely damaging to a service culture. The reason is employees focus on winning the prize rather than providing great service.

A classic example is survey begging. Employees are incentivised for great survey scores, so they beg customers to give them a top score on the survey. Some employees even manipulate surveys by prompting happy customers to leave a review while manually stopping upset customers from receiving a survey request. Customer service becomes an afterthought because employees just want the reward.

Recognition is very different, and can be powerful. Recognition is unexpected and happens after the behaviour. It might be as simple as pulling an employee aside after they expertly helped an upset customer and thanking them for doing a great job. Unlike rewards, recognition can’t be gamed because employees don’t expect it.