Bruce Temkin: How to master the four customer experience competencies
Posted by Bruce Temkin in Customer experience on Mon, 04/04/2011 - 02:02
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- Bruce Temkin will be speaking at European Customer Experience World on 24-26 May in London, UK.
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Bruce Temkin looks at the findings from a recent survey of companies and outlines what we can learn about efforts to become more 'customer-centric'.
In a recent survey of large companies, we found that 92% of European companies are putting more focus on customer-centric culture this year than they did last year. This represents a much higher level of attention than in North America.
But, what is customer-centric culture?
As with any effort that has an ambiguous goal like "becoming more customer-centric", it’s important to introduce some structure. A good place to start is by painting a picture of the ultimate destination. That’s why I like to talk about culture in terms of building a 'customer-centric organisation' which we’ve defined as:
An organisation that continuously aligns its resources with customer needs
To ascend to this lofty goal, an organisation needs to factor customers into every decision; from the micro-level (e.g., every individual interaction) to the macro-level (e.g., every capital expenditure).
Four customer experience competencies
Building a customer-centric organisation cannot be accomplished through an executive decree or a handful of isolated projects. Companies that really want to become a customer-centric organisation need to master four broad competencies:
- Purposeful leadership: Leaders operate consistently with a clear, well-articulated set of values.
- Compelling brand values: Brand attributes drive decisions about how you treat customers.
- Employee engagement: Employees are fully committed to the goals of your organisation.
- Customer connectedness: Customer feedback and insight is integrated throughout your organisation.
The essence of purposeful leadership
Just about every large organisation has vision and mission statements floating around their hallways. But when it comes to making decisions on a day-to-day basis, these documents are nowhere to be found. They play NO ROLE in how the company is actually run.
Instead, firms make decisions based on individual goals and objectives, a handful of hard metrics, and by making compromises across conflicting executive agendas. And that’s the best case. Most times decisions aren’t coordinated at all.
Good leaders need to guide their organisations through change by demonstrating three characteristics:
1. Communicate 'why'. The only way to get people to truly buy-in to change is for them to understand why it’s happening. Most executives tend to under-communicate. And when they do communicate, they often focus on 'what' the company will be doing and 'how' it will get done.
2. Model desired behaviours. We can all learn from New Jersey mayor Corey Booker’s mom, who once told the mayor: "What you do speaks so loudly that I can’t hear what you are saying." Your organisation can tell what’s truly important by observing your actions. If people see that you haven’t changed, then they won’t change either.
3. Reinforce change. It’s very easy for organisations to fall back into their regular, 'comfortable' routines. So you need to make sure that you continuously reinforce the changed behaviors.
The essence of employee engagement
It might seem obvious that customer experience requires a complete focus on customers. But that's often not the correct approach. What should you focus on instead? Employees. While you can make some customers happy through brute force, you cannot sustain great customer experience unless your employees are bought-in to what you're doing and are aligned with the effort.
Herb Kellleher, founder of Southwest Airlines once said:
“I never had control, and I never wanted it. If you create an environment where the people truly participate, you don't need control.”
What Kelleher understood was a dynamic that the Temkin Group calls the 'Employee Engagement Virtuous Cycle'.
Another company that understands this cycle is The Container Store. It heavily invests in training of its employees and has one of the lowest employee turnover rates in the retail industry. During Valentine’s Day, the company even celebrates a "We Love Our Employees Day". Why does Container Store love its employees? Here’s what the company posted on its site about its employee love day:
“…we all believe that if you work to make your employees the happiest employees around, well then they will absolutely, positively then make our customers the happiest customers around. And if those two are ecstatic, then wonderfully, and almost ironically, you’ll have the happiest shareholders around, too.”
The essence of compelling brand values
True brands are more than just marketing slogans, they’re the fabric that aligns all employees with customers in the pursuit of a common cause. As Howard Schultz, Chairman and CEO of Starbucks once said: "Customers must recognise that you stand for something." And it’s critical for employees to recognise what a company stands for as well.
Unfortunately, many organisations lose sight of their brand. Even well recognised brands can flounder, because brand recognition does not translate directly into brand meaning. Starbucks closed more than 7,000 of its stores in 2008 to make time for a three hour training session of all its employees; recognising the need to re-establish the meaning of its brand in an effort that Schultz described as regaining the soul of its past.
Companies need to make their brands more concrete and get the organization to interpret it into specific requirements. JetBlue, for instance, translated its 'Jetitude' marketing campaign into five specific behaviours for its front line employees:
- Be in Blue always
- Be personal
- Be the answer
- Be engaging
- Be thankful to every customer
The essence of customer connectedness
In most companies, decisions are made with woefully little customer insight. People often rely on their 'gut feel' or outdated anecdotes about customer needs, desires and feedback. But any company that wants to improve its customer experience needs to embed deep customer insight in every aspect of its operations. Every interaction elicits an emotional response from customer that ranges from angry to adoring.
Companies that want to be customer-centric need to understand:
- How customers feel about their interactions.
- What makes customers feel the way they do.
- How reactions differ across customer segments.
- What changes will drive the most significant improvements.
Mastering these competencies takes a multi-year journey
So, how many companies currently live up to this blueprint? Not many. In a Temkin Group survey of 358 customer experience professionals completed this past December, we found that:
- 34% think they’ve mastered purporseful leadership
- 30% think they’ve mastered compelling brand values
- 28% think they’ve mastered employee engagement
- 21% think they’ve mastered customer connectedness
Given this low level of current competence, it makes sense for companies to focus on customer-centric culture this year. But they better be ready for a journey. Changing an organisation’s culture can take three to five years.
Bruce Temkin, Customer Experience Transformist & Managing Partner, Temkin Group and author of the blog, Customer Experience Matters.
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