I speak to a lot of Customer Experience Management (CEM) and Customer Service professionals in my role at NICE Fizzback. All have a great vision on where they want to take Customer Experience Management within their Organisation. Many of these CEM professionals talk about Employee Engagement and a customer’s Brand Perception being key to their success in improving Customer Experience but does their remit span their entire organisation. Typically, these CEM professions are concentrating on making CEM improvements within Operations; Call Centres or Stores.My yard-stick of assessing the customer experience and brand values an organisation offers isn’t based on what I read on their website, it is through the way their reception (or security) staff greet me when I arrive at the HQ. In many cases this is the first personal interaction I have with the brand. I appreciate this is often an example of just me interacting with one employee, but it does give me a sense of the organisation I am speaking with.
I have had some mixed experiences, ranging from the very formal within US Financial Institutions and the more friendly approach in the European Telco’s. The best experience I have had was, unsurprisingly, from one of the leaders in CEM, where I received a warm friendly welcome, some rapport building and friendly conversation, coupled with an efficient production of my visitors pass and notification to the person I was due to meet with. This was followed with a free coffee token and free Wi-Fi details should I need to get internet access in preparation for my meeting. I am sure the organisation have spent time recruiting the right people for the role along with appropriate training to ensure this experience is consistently delivered. Having now made a number of trips back to the company in question, in a number of different offices, I am pleased to say, the same experience has been repeated time and time again.I have also experienced the extreme opposite. One occasion I can recall, I approached the reception areas to be greeted with “Yes?”. Not the friendliest of welcomes I am sure you will agree. This was followed with “wait!” after introducing myself and advising who I was there to meet. I guess the person could be described as efficient with just two words spoken!! As you can imagine, I was less than impressed to have been handled in this way.
So, when undertaking Customer Experience Management, getting your own department in order is a great start, but remember the Voice of the Customer spreads across every part of your organisation.
Lee Mostari
For more info on NICE Fizzback please visit www.nice.com/fizzback