Positive customer experience doesn’t just happen after one transaction, sale, or service, but an initial bad customer experience will send a customer straight to your competition; never to look back at the wake. Therefore I contend that the total positive customer experience I want to appreciate is an organization’s total structure of all departments working together like a finely tuned machine.
When we think of a positive customer experience, we see it as a reflection of the very core values a company has and how that very same organization communicates those values – either through its quality of products or services. The experience begins with the senior executive and works its way through every department.
As an example of a positive customer experience versus a customer who left after only one business dealing, is the difference in core values of two similar organizations, yet one commitment to their business solidly soared over the other. When Cynthia sold her farm in Ohio, she called in an auction company to sell the excess furniture from her house, horse tack, and various equipment and tools she and her husband would no longer need when they moved to South Florida. Cynthia was very nervous about using an auction house, but took her friend’s advice that it was the least complicated way to get rid of everything she no longer needed. Cynthia did relate to the auctioneer how nervous she was as to the prices she would get, and even though he could not assure her of any minimum bid, he promised he would call her after the auction to tell her how she made out. And call he did; not everything sold, but the auctioneer knew that Cynthia needed the extra time and the extra service.
In contrast was the experience of another person from the South Florida area using a local auction house. The marketing, sales, accounting, and support departments were incongruous, and incapable of making a positive customer experience. Where any business needs to coordinate the “first call resolution,” which will clearly reflect the commitment to the shared accountability of individuals to satisfy the customer’s overall experience, the positive customer experience is based on the needs of their customers rather than the needs of the owner or of the convenience of other internal departments.
The South Florida auction house failed to listen to the customer; instead behaved badly – unable and not willing to listen to the customer, nor did he even bother to think about what he would have gained had he listened to his customer’s needs. Albeit one customer may cause your customer service department more time than one might think it’s worth for the moment, the end result is if customer experience suffers, you are most likely losing more than just one customer. The only one thanking you at the end of the day will be your competition, and there’s plenty of it out there.
photo credit: sweetshotphoto
