Are Your Guests Stuck?

by: Annette Franz

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Editor’s Note: During our August focus on Guest Experiences, we are honored to have some of the best voices in the world of Customer Experience provide guest posts for the Vision Room. As you read the content below, simply think “Guest” in terms of the “customer” the author is talking about – and you will benefit from the knowledge and expertise of these great minds.

I originally wrote today’s post for Forbes. It appeared on the Forbes site on October 18, 2018. I’ve made some slight modifications since then, as it turned into a two-part series.

The good news is that you’ve embarked on a customer experience transformation journey. The bad news is that you don’t think your organization has evolved as much as you’d hoped it would by now. Perhaps you started to see progress, but it suddenly seems like forward movement has stalled.

You’re not alone. A lot of companies are, or claim to be, working to improve the customer experience, with little or no visible evidence. Companies are still treating customers poorly. And customers are still complaining.

What’s going on?

In this two-part series, I will provide my thoughts on why customer experience transformation efforts stall or slow. In part one, I’ll focus on those reasons attributed to company leadership; in the second part, I’ll outline reasons associated with employees and operations. (Ultimately, it’s all on leadership, but I’ll drill down a bit in part two.)

1. Misplaced or Mistaken Focus
You know the old “acquisition vs. retention” debate. Acquiring customers is so much easier than retaining; retention is hard work, and it’s a huge part of what the customer experience transformation work is all about. Focusing on acquisition yields a much faster ROI, especially when companies are driven by growth metrics.

Because retention — and hence customer experience transformation — work is slow and difficult, people get bored and tend to fall back into their old habits rather than relentlessly driving toward the ultimate goal. It’s important to recognize that a customer experience transformation is all about baby steps. In order to keep people energized and focused, share quick wins, and celebrate successes as you progress.

2. The Revenue Conundrum
Related to the misplaced focus on acquisition is that message you receive from the CEO that starts with, “Revenue is down this quarter. We need all hands on deck, focusing on drumming up new business.” Suddenly, all of your customer experience transformation resources are shifted to business development and sales efforts.

Interestingly enough, the first question the CEO should ask is: “Why are sales down?” Is it a quality or performance issue? Is it that you’re getting Blockbuster’d? Do you really understand what your customers’ needs are and what jobs they are trying to do?

I’ve seen this scenario play out a few times, and each time, if they would’ve fixed what was ailing them, then sales numbers wouldn’t be down. Don’t take your eyes off the ball. Stay focused on the customer and the customer experience. Stay focused on the work that you’re doing to improve the experience. After all, a poor experience is likely why customers aren’t buying.

3. Actions Speak Louder Than Words
It’s a fact: in order to successfully transform your culture to be one that is customer-focused, customer-centric, and customer-obsessed, you must start with executive commitment. Without that commitment, you will not get the resources – human, financial, capital, or other – that you’ll need to implement real change.

But… And there’s always a “but,” isn’t there? But, if you get a verbal commitment that’s not supported by the actions (e.g., actually assigning the resources, modeling the behavior, walking the walk, etc.) or if you got a commitment that had initial support (actions) that has since waned, you’ve got a problem. You’re now in a holding pattern until actions once again shore up the words.

4. It Hasn’t Been an Enterprise-Wide Effort
When you have executive support and commitment across the entire organization, the change efforts will have a much greater chance of taking hold and being successful. If you don’t have organization-wide support, or (especially) if the CEO isn’t on board, sure, you can start making changes within pockets of the organization, but you won’t get far. A true transformation must involve all departments; there can be no silo’d efforts. Customers actually know when the focus (and the experience) is silo’d!

5. Communications Aren’t Open and Continuous
I heard this great quote from leadership development experience Susan Scott the other day: “What gets talked about in an organization and how it gets talked about determines what’s going to happen or isn’t going to happen.” So true! Communicating the vision, the how, the why, the what’s in it for me, etc. is so important when you’re going through this type of transformation. And the communication must be open and ongoing. Provide progress updates. Answer questions. Talk about and celebrate quick wins. Keep the conversation going. Things that leaders talk about are deemed important by employees; things that are not, well, are not considered to be important.

6. Sense of Urgency Wasn’t Established/Maintained
According to John Kotter, the first step of any change initiative is to create a sense of urgency. What’s the burning platform in your business? Pick one: Customers are leaving. Employees are leaving. Costs are rising. Processes are out of whack. The culture is a mess. Bankruptcy. Impending hostile takeover. They’re all bad. If you haven’t clearly communicated, including ongoing reminders, to your employees what the burning platform is and created that sense of urgency, they forget the why. Thoughts shift to, “Things aren’t so bad; why should we change?” or “It’s just business as usual; what’s the big deal?” And then you lose them.

No one ever said that a customer experience transformation was easy. It’s a lot of work and requires a dedicated and relentless focus on making things better. If you’ve seen your progress slow, evaluate your efforts against the six items I’ve written about here. And stay tuned for several more reasons coming in the second part of this two-part series.

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently. -Warren Buffett

Read the second part here.

> Read more from Annette.

Want to know more about Guest Experiences at your church? Let’s talk! Connect with an Auxano Navigator here.

Tags: Annette Franz, Church Guest Experience, Guest Experience

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Great Church Hospitality Starts Here

by: Annette Franz

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Editor’s Note: During our August focus on Guest Experiences, we are honored to have some of the best voices in the world of Customer Experience provide guest posts for the Vision Room. As you read the content below, simply think “Guest” in terms of the “customer” the author is talking about – and you will benefit from the knowledge and expertise of these great minds.

If you don’t know by now, customer understanding is the cornerstone of customer-centricity.

Customer-centricity means putting the customer at the center; customer understanding is how you’ll achieve that.

What is customer-centricity?

A lot of people talk about being customer-centric, but it’s one thing to say that and another to be it! Customer-centricity is about putting the customer at the center of all you do.

Customer-centric companies ensure that they make no decisions, design no products and services, and implement no processes without first thinking of the customer and the impact that the decision or the design has on the customer. They ask, “How will this impact the customer? How will it make her feel? Does it add value, or does it create pain?”

In customer-centric companies, decisions are always made with the customer’s best interests in mind. The customer’s voice is brought into meetings and into conversations; the customer is always represented. Jeff Bezos’ empty chair concept is a great example of this and has been widely adopted by other brands.

It’s important to note that a customer experience transformation can only happen when there is a commitment to change the culture to one that is customer-centric, even customer-obsessed.

Being customer-centric happens by design. Customer-centric companies do the following to ensure the organization knows its reason for being, i.e., the customer, and to embed the customer into the DNA of the organization. They…

• Have visible (and visibly) customer-centric leadership, demonstrating a customer commitment from the top down
• Develop and socialize customer personas
• Speak and think in the customer’s language
• Use customer feedback and data to better understand their customers
• Are engaged in continuous improvement as a result of the customer understanding efforts
• Focus on products and services that deliver value for their customers, i.e., solving their problems and helping them with jobs to be done
• Have a commitment to customer success
• Engage with customers from the beginning
• Walk in the customer’s shoes to understand today’s experience in order to design a better experience for tomorrow
• Foster a customer-centric culture
• Empower the frontline to do what’s right for the customer
• Ensure all employees (front line and back office) understand how they impact the customer and her experience
• Recognize the customer across all channels
• Design processes and policies from the customer’s point of view
• Measure what matters to customers
• Encourage customer innovation
• Include customer-driven values in their core values
• Recruit and hire employees passionate about customers and about helping customers
• Incorporate the customer and the customer experience into their onboarding processes
• Train employees on how to deliver the experience that customers expect
• Establish a customer room that is open to employees 24/7 so that they can learn more about their customers and the customer experience
• Rewards and recognition reinforce employee behaviors that align with customer-centricity
• Have a C-suite executive who champions the customer across the entire organization
• Customers before metrics, i.e., every meeting begins with and includes customer stories
• Invest in the latest technology to support and deliver the experience customers expect

As you can see, becoming a customer-centric organization is a commitment that requires a mindset shift and a behavior shift. And, especially, some investments – financial, human, time, resources, technology, and more.

What is customer understanding?

Customer understanding is all about learning everything you need to know about your customers, i.e., their needs, their painpoints, the jobs they are trying to do, etc., and their current experiences in order to deliver the experience they expect going forward.

There are really three ways to achieve that understanding. The problem with these approaches is that, if not done correctly, you’ll be no further ahead in terms of understanding than if you hadn’t done them.

The three approaches are:

1. Listen. Don’t just ask customers about the experience, listen, as well. There are a lot of different channels and ways for customers to tell you about their needs and desired outcomes and how well you are performing against their expectations. Understanding these expectations and identifying key drivers of a great customer experience are important outcomes of this exercise.
2. Characterize. Research your customers. Identify the jobs they are trying to do. Compile key personas that represent the various types of prospects and customers that (might) buy from you or that use your products or services.
3. Empathize. Walk in your customers’ shoes to get a clear understanding of the steps they take to do whatever job it is they are trying to do with your organization.  Map their journeys to understand the current state of the experience.

These are all learning exercises. We walk away from them with a lot of knowledge about customers, but we need to make sure we truly understand what we’ve heard about customers, their needs, and their expectations. Without that understanding, the exercises have failed. Make sure they’re done right.

And then make sure you do something with what you learn! This is where customer understanding manifests into customer-centricity and becomes the cornerstone for it. Make sure to put the customer front and center.
Here are just a  few things you can do to infuse the customer into everything the organization does. Key to this is to start at the beginning, i.e., start with the first day an employee starts working for your company. (Even better: start with the first day you start your company.)

• Onboarding: Showcase your customer-centric culture during the onboarding process so that new employees know what that means. This is a great time for them to learn what it means to be a part of your organization, i.e., knowing your brand promise, values and commitment, what it means to live the brand, where the priorities lie, and how to deliver a great customer experience. This is a great time to set the tone for employees.
• Ongoing training: You can’t expect that, as both the business and customer expectations evolve, employees will automatically know what to do and adapt/evolve, too. You need to train employees regularly to ensure they are kept abreast of new customer insights and new approaches to delivering a great experience. Be sure to provide updates on anything you’ve learned about customers, the jobs they are trying to do, and their expectations.
• Communication: What gets shared and communicated regularly is viewed as important to your employees. Not only does communication lend clarity, it is critical to a clear line of sight to the goal. Communication needs to be open and ongoing. Share customer feedback with employees; don’t keep it from them. Tell customer stories and stories of great experiences to teach and to inspire employees to deliver the experience they need to deliver.
• Rewards and recognition: When you recognize and reward those who consistently delight customers, you are reinforcing the behavior you expect from your employees, further confirming and solidifying the importance of putting the customer at the center of all you do.

Other ways to ensure the customer is always front and center, include:

• Personas on every wall: these help to remind employees who the customer is, what she’s trying to do, her pain points, what delights her, etc. – again, keeping her front and center in all you do
• Customer cut-outs: place these around the office – and especially in meeting rooms –  to keep the attention on who really matters; they should include details of who the customer is and what she thinks and feels about the current experience
• CCO/CX professionals: in key decision-making meetings, especially, there needs to be a representative from the CX team present to represent the customer voice and perspective
• A real customer: imagine that! ask a customer (or multiple customers) to attend a meeting in which you’ll be making decisions critical to the customer experience
• Customer feedback: have you gotten feedback about the product or the touchpoint you’ll be discussing; share it with meeting attendees so they understand how customers feel about the current experience
• Journey maps: this might seem like a stretch, but if you can show executives/employees how the changes they plan to make impact the experience through truly walking in customers’ shoes, then that’s a powerful tool to have at your disposal, too

As you can see, all of the tools to facilitate and drive customer-centricity are rooted in customer understanding. In case there was any doubt, customer understanding really is the cornerstone of customer-centricity!

> Read more from Annette.

Want to know more about Guest Experiences at your church? Let’s talk! Connect with an Auxano Navigator here.

Tags: Annette Franz, Church Guest Experience, Guest Experiences, church hospitality

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How to Put People Before Programs

by: Annette Franz

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Editors Note: During our August focus on Guest Experiences, we are honored to have some of the best voices in the world of Customer Experience provide guest posts for the Vision Room. As you read the content below, simply think “Guest” in terms of the “customer” the author is talking about – and you will benefit from the knowledge and expertise of these great minds.

If you want to move beyond cosmetic changes and lip service to real changes in both the employee experience and the customer experience, the first thing you have to look at is your company’s culture.

What is culture? My favorite definition is Herb Kelleher’s: “Culture is what people do when no one is looking.” To add a little more detail to that, culture = values + behavior.

While customer experience strategies must include a priority focus on the employee experience, they often don’t. Many companies believe they can improve the customer experience without improving the employee experience. I’ve heard it many times over the last 25+ years.

At the root of what both employees and customers experience is a company culture that focuses on both of their needs – and puts them before profits or shareholder value. Does your company have a people-centric culture, or is it profit-centric and profit-driven? Companies must make money, but there’s a better way of doing it that benefits all constituencies involved.

How do you design a people-centric culture? It’s definitely a culture shift (obviously), a mindset shift, and a behavior shift for most companies!

Unfortunately, in most organizations, the culture looks like the pyramid in this image below, where mission, vision, and values might frame the foundation for the culture, but revenue and profits take priority over employees and customers – and drive everything that’s being done in the organization. These companies live by the old management philosophy that they’re in business to maximize shareholder value.

Contrast that with a people-centric culture (image below), where, without a shadow of a doubt, the company foundation is its mission, vision, values, and purpose. These companies have a strong culture and use these foundational elements day in and day out to operate the business. Once the company is grounded in well-defined and clearly-communicated mission, vision, values, and purpose, they’ve got a solid basis for a people-focused and people-centric culture.

Next, you’ll see that I’ve reordered the layers of the typical organization culture pyramid and have added a new layer that is all about the executives and executive alignment. If your executive team is not aligned with the business goals and outcomes, both internal and external, then neither is the rest of the organization. In the same vein, if executives don’t embrace both servant leadership and truly human leadership, then it will be difficult to foster that people-centric culture.

The next layer in the pyramid is your employees, who will benefit from a company built on solid mission, vision, values, and purpose – all of which become not only the basis for hiring, firing, and promoting but also the basis for executive behavior and decision making. And they benefit from an executive team that is aligned and working together.

As you know, employees must come more first. The employee experience drives the customer experience. When you’ve got happy, engaged, satisfied, and empowered employees, customers benefit in their experience. And so, the customer experience is the next layer of the pyramid.

And when you focus on the people – employees and customers – first, then the numbers – revenue/profits – will come.

Putting employees and customers before revenue and profits means that your executives are making decisions with their employees and customers in mind at all times. They are doing what’s best for employees, and ultimately, for customers, so that, in the end, the business benefits.
If there’s any doubt that that is possible, check out this TED2019 Talk from Hamdi Ulukaya, CEO of Chobani. It contains a lot of powerful messages!

You watched the whole thing, right?

I could just stop there, but I’ll wrap up with a few thoughts.

While creating and maximizing shareholder value is important to any public company, it is an outcome, not a means. There are means to achieving that outcome, and they include putting employees and customers first, ahead of profits. Companies succeed if and when…

• employees want to work for them
• customers want – and actually do – buy their products
• vendors and suppliers want to partner with them
• people want them to locate in – and be a part of – their communities, and
• shareholders buy their stocks.

Companies have more constituents than shareholders and more responsibilities than delivering value to just shareholders. The rest of their constituents must receive value, as well. So, put employees first, then customers, and watch the business thrive.

To hear more about my thoughts on this topic and how to create this people-focused culture, be sure to watch my webinar with CallidusCloud titled, Be a CX Winner by Focusing on Culture and Employee Experience.

Always put people first, for without them, there is no organization. -David Sikhosana, Time Value of Money: Timing Income

> Read more from Annette.

Want to know more about Guest Experiences at your church? Let’s talk! Connect with an Auxano Navigator here.

Tags: Annette Franz, Guest Experience, People

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The New Trojan Horse

by: Annette Franz

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Editors Note: During our August focus on Guest Experiences, we are honored to have some of the best voices in the world of Customer Experience provide guest posts for the Vision Room. As you read the content below, simply think “Guest” in terms of the “customer” the author is talking about – and you will benefit from the knowledge and expertise of some great minds.

Are you challenged in your efforts to implement organization-wide changes to improve your culture, the employee experience, and the customer experience?

Have you considered how a Trojan Mouse might help you gain traction in these efforts?

Trojan Mouse. What is it? And how does it differ from a Trojan Horse?

Well, right off the top of my head it seems like “Trojan Mouse” elicits an image of smallness, speed, and agility, while “Trojan Horse” makes me think of a larger undertaking that is a bit slower and more labored – in both planning and execution – and likely rejected.

Let’s start with what a Trojan Mouse is. From TrojanMice.com:

Much change is of the “Trojan Horse” variety. At the top of the organisation a decision is taken to introduce a strategic change programme, and consultants or an internal team are commissioned to plan it down to the very last detail. The planned changes are then presented at a grand event (the Trojan Horse) amid much loud music, bright lights, and dry ice. More often than not, however, a few weeks later the organisation will have settled back into its usual ways and rejected much of the change. This is usually because the change was too great to be properly understood and owned by the workforce.

Trojan mice, on the other hand, are small, well-focused changes, which are introduced on an ongoing basis in an inconspicuous way. They are small enough to be understood and owned by all concerned, but their effects can be far-reaching. Collectively a few trojan mice will change more than one Trojan Horse ever could.

What do you think of that?

I am immediately drawn to these two sentences: More often than not, however, a few weeks later the organisation will have settled back into its usual ways and rejected much of the change. This is usually because the change was too great to be properly understood and owned by the workforce.

Trojan Mice seem like a great approach to implementing change for a variety of reasons:

• Trojan Mice address the last point in that second sentence – they are small enough to be understood and owned.
• We often talk about quick wins and showing some successes before we do a full roll out of a CX strategy. Those small wins, those quick wins, are great examples of Trojan Mice, allowing for gradual adoption of – and engagement with – the larger journey.
• Making small, nimble changes also limits risk or makes risk more tolerable as you design a new experience, develop new products, and find creative solutions to old problems. Think: fix fast, fail fast, fix fast.
• You can deploy various changes at the same time, which means you can test which ones work and which don’t – allowing you to quickly retract the ones that won’t have the intended impact, learn from them, and redeploy with updates. Again: fail fast, fix fast.
• Given that these changes are small and nimble, they will certainly help increase speed to market, i.e., you can get the solution out there quicker.
• Small changes that are quickly accepted, understood, and owned will add up and make for a bigger impact quickly – and over time – than rolling out a Trojan Horse that baffles people and is immediately rejected.

People hate change. And if they don’t know what it is or why it’s taking place, they ignore it; they certainly don’t want to be a part of it. Why not break it down for them, simplify it, and help them understand and own it.

As I’ve said before, improving the customer experience happens in baby steps; Trojan Mice – small, yet impactful, examples with tangible value – may just be the quickest way to successful adoption of the CX strategy and to transformation success.

> Read more from Annette.

Learn more about the power of connecting with your Guests – start a conversation with Guest Experience Navigator Bob Adams.

Tags: Annette Franz, Change, Church Guest Experiences, Guest Experiences, Trojan Mouse, change process

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Better Than Gold: The Value of the Platinum Rule

by: Annette Franz

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Editors Note: During our August focus on Guest Experiences, we are honored to have some of the best voices in the world of Customer Experience provide guest posts for the Vision Room. As you read the content below, simply think “Guest” in terms of the “customer” the author is talking about – and you will benefit from the knowledge and expertise of some great minds.

Here’s another age-old debate… gold or platinum?

Personally, I prefer platinum.

Oh wait. What are we talking about? LOL.

Rules. I’m talking about rules.

I still prefer platinum!

On the heels of my recent post about imagining that you’re a human… I thought I’d take a look at which one, the Golden Rule or  the Platinum Rule, puts us into more-human and more-empathetic shoes.

You’re probably well aware of both rules I’m referring to. The Golden Rule states that you should treat others the way that you would want to be treated, while the Platinum Rule shifts the focus a bit and says that you should treat others the way that they want to be treated.

I’m positive the Platinum Rule was created by a customer experience professional! While the Golden Rule ignores the feelings of others and assumes that we all want to be treated the same way, the Platinum Rule recognizes that we don’t, that we want to be treated the way we want to be treated. It acknowledges that we all have different needs and want to be respected as individuals. It’s quite the improvement to the Golden Rule. It’s much more empathetic.

The Platinum Rule speaks to customer experience professionals. We are constantly preaching that companies need to be more empathetic and do a better job of understanding customers wants, needs, pain points, problems to solve, jobs to be done, and more… so that they can design the products and the experiences that customers want – or that solve customers problems and painpoints.

Put differently, I think the Golden Rule perpetuates inside-out thinking, while the Platinum Rule inspires outside-in thinking.

What’s the best way to perpetuate the Platinum Rule? Three ways that I write and talk about all the time are:

1. Listen. Don’t just ask customers about the experience, listen, as well. There are a lot of different channels and ways for customers to tell you about their needs and desired outcomes and how well you are performing against their expectations. Understanding these expectations and identifying key drivers of a great customer experience are important outcomes of this exercise.
2. Characterize. Research your customers. Identify the jobs they are trying to do. Compile key personas that represent the various types of prospects and customers that (might) buy from you or that use your products or services.
3. Empathize. Walk in your customers’ shoes to get a clear understanding of the steps they take to do whatever job it is they are trying to do with your organization.  Map their journeys to understand the current state of the experience.

These are all critical learning exercises. We walk away from each one with a lot of knowledge about customers wants, needs, problems to solve, etc. Use that information to live the Platinum Rule with your customers.

If you still think the Golden Rule is the better rule, consider this golden rule: He who has the gold makes the rules. Your customers hold the gold, and they will spend it elsewhere if you don’t take the time to get to know them.

I’ve said it before: maybe it goes beyond those rules to just simply doing what’s right. But does that mean we need to rely on common sense? And how common is common sense? Maybe that’s the problem.

> Read more from Annette.

Learn more about the power of the Platinum Rule in your church’s first impression – connect with Guest Experience Navigator Bob Adams.

Tags: Annette Franz, Customer Journey, Golden Rule, Outside-In, Platinum Rule

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Don’t Put Your Guests First at Your Organization – Part 1

by: Annette Franz

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Editor’s Note: During our August focus on Guest Experiences, we are honored to have some of the best voices in the world of Customer Experience provide guest posts for the Vision Room. As you read the content below, simply think “Guest” where you see the word “customer” – and you will benefit from the knowledge and expertise of some great minds.

In this first part of a two-part series, I’ll outline some important ways to ensure that your company is putting the customer at the center of all it does.

Why are companies in business? For customers, right? To create and to nurture a customer, to be specific. And, yet, we still see some dismal statistics about how many companies don’t focus on the customer experience or think they focus on the customer experience but really don’t. In research published by Bain, they reported that:

• only 50% of management teams tailor their products and services to the needs of customers
• only 30% organize the functions of their company to deliver superior customer experiences
• only 30% maintain effective customer feedback loops

Temkin Group recently reported that 67% of large companies rate themselves as being good at soliciting customer feedback, but only 26% rate themselves as being good about making changes based on the insights.

These are dismal statistics. How do we turn this around?

If you haven’t yet started to focus on the needs of the customer, where should you begin?  What can you do to turn the tide?

First you must decide. And then, when you’re ready to put the customer at the center of all you do, there are six important steps to take to get started:

1.    Identify the customer
2.    Understand the customer
3.    Outline the customer lifecycle
4.    Map the customer journey
5.    Listen to your customers
6.    Socialize the insights/findings

Step 1: Identify the Customer 
Knowing who the customer is seems like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised by how many companies have never gone through the exercise of identifying the customer. In a B2B organization, for example, customers can be many and varied; look within each customer or partner organization at the people you interact with, e.g., purchasing, product, support, accounting, end-users, etc. to identify your customer. The company is not the customer; the people you interact with within the company are. Not having a clear understanding of who the customer is hampers any further steps in this process.

Step 2: Understand the Customer 
Once you’ve identified who your customers are, you must understand them and their needs. How do they interact with your organization? Why do they buy products and services from you? What are their needs? What problems are they trying to solve? What are they trying to achieve?

A tool to use to answer all of these questions is personas. Personas are fictional characters created to describe your ideal prospect or actual customer. They are derived through primary research – research that can then also be used for your customer journey maps in Step 4. They are specific to your business, not to the industry. The descriptions include vivid narratives, images, and other items that help companies understand the needs of the customer (contextual insights) and outline feelings, motivations, goals, behaviors, challenges, likes, dislikes, objections, and interests that drive buying (or other) decisions. Each persona includes a human face and name. Used properly, personas keep the customer alive and front and center for the entire organization. They tie in nicely to your journey maps and are necessary to begin that exercise.

A hardware client of mine developed supplier personas in order to better understand the different supplier personnel with which they interact. Different supplier types and different roles within a supplier company have different needs and interact differently with your organization; understanding those then allows you to create a better experience for all involved. For their personas, we looked at the different roles within supplier companies and came up with six primary personas: operations management, logistics, production schedulers, inventory management, shipping, and accounting. A lot of research went into defining these personas, which were then used to develop journey maps that laid out the experience they had when trying to achieve whatever it was each did with the client. These personas were then used to better manage supplier relationships and to design a better supplier experience with the client, one more personalized to each specific role/persona. The client saw a remarkable uptick in supplier satisfaction, and hence retention, as a result of this increased understanding.

Step 3: Outline the Customer Lifecycle 
The lifecycle map shows the phases of the customer’s relationship with your company. It’s high level and good for understanding the overall relationship the customer has with the organization, from before he’s even considered a customer through when he is no longer a customer. It typically includes these stages: Need, Awareness, Consideration, Selection/Purchase, Experience, Loyalty, Advocacy, Engagement, Raving Fans. And, unfortunately, Exit. It’s not necessarily linear and often circles back on itself.

It’s great to understand the lifecycle at this high level before moving on to the next step. Lifecycle maps, while important to nurturing the overall customer relationship, are a natural first step to identifying listening needs along the lifecycle; however, to get to the heart of the matter, to really understand when and where to listen and to really design a better customer experience, you must dive deeper into the lifecycle stages, inventory the touchpoints, and map the customer journey, which I’ll discuss further in Step 4.

In my next post, I’ll wrap up the other three steps you can take to ensure that customers are front and center in your organization.

When a brand connects with their customer, that in some ways is the easy part, the hard part is keeping the customer at the center after the success/profits comes flooding in. Success can breed complacency, success can breed arrogance. -Anna Farmery

> Read more from Annette.

Want to learn how to create an EXCEPTIONAL Guest Experience at your church? Check out Auxano’s Guest Experience Boot Camp, coming to Orlando, FL on April 3-4.

Tags: Annette Franz, Church Guest Experiences, Guest Experiences

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The 10 Commandments of Welcoming Guests

by: Annette Franz

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Editors Note: During our August focus on Guest Experiences, we are honored to have some of the best voices in the world of Customer Experience provide guest posts for the Vision Room. As you read the content below, simply think “Guest” where you see the word “customer” – and you will benefit from the knowledge and expertise of some great minds.

Are you following the 10 Commandments of Customer Experiences? Or is it time for a confession? 

In May 2016, I spoke at CallidusCloud Connections (C3); if you’ve never been to this event, be sure to check it out this year! The topic of my session was The 7 Deadly Sins of Customer Experience. With the topic of today’s blog post, I seem to be on a bit of a spiritual customer experience journey.

In thinking about the customer experience, there are at least 10 Commandments that must be adhered to as you embark on your customer experience journey. These are essentials to ensure a successful customer experience transformation. Here’s what I’ve come up with, in no particular order.

1. Thou shalt listen to customers and act on their feedback.
This is probably two commandments, but you really can’t do one without the other. Listening to customers is, without a doubt, important to designing a great experience and to business success. Without understanding customers, their expectations, and how well we perform against those expectations, we can never correctly or appropriately redesign the experience to meet their needs. But too many companies forget that the “work” doesn’t end with listening. It’s only just begun! You must act on what you hear.

2. Thou shalt map the customer journey in order to understand the experience.
You can’t transform something you don’t understand. If you don’t know and understand what the current state of the customer experience is, how can you possibly design the desired future state? Take the time to map it, and make sure you map it so that it’s actionable: map it from the customer’s viewpoint and be sure to bring in artifacts and data that bring the journey to life.

3. Thou shalt put employees more first.
The link between the employee experience and customer experience is real. And yet, many companies still refuse to make the employee experience a priority, focusing instead on shareholder value, the bottom line, or customer experience without considering the implications a poor employee experience has on all of the above. Yes, you’re in business to create and nurture customers. But without your employees, you have no customer experience. If employees aren’t happy, satisfied, and engaged, it will be very difficult for them to delight your customers. This is known as the spillover effect, i.e., “the tendency of one person’s emotions to affect how other people around him feel.”

4. Thou shalt define and communicate the brand promise.
A brand promise is, well, a promise to your customers. Everything you do should reflect this promise. It sets expectations and defines the benefits customers can expect to receive when they engage in your services or use your products, when they experience your brand. It’s not a mission statement or a brand position. It’s meant for employees and customers. Employees at all levels live the promise and deliver on it. In order for employees to deliver on it, they must know it, i.e.,  it must be clearly communicated to them and reiterated often.

5. Thou shalt hire for attitude and train for skill.
Hiring the right people for your company is always a challenge, but it’s critical. Get the right people in the door – not just those folks who fit your culture or your values but also those who truly want to be there, for the right reasons. Define what “right” means for your company. And when you have the right people, they will attract other “right people.” While you need to define what your culture fit looks like, typically hiring people who are positive, passionate about what you do and what the role entails, and love talking to and being around people will set you on a good path. With enthusiasm and passion for the brand, employees are eager to work hard and do what it takes to contribute to, and ensure, its success.

6. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s experience.
Imitation is the death of innovation. When imitating, there’s no need for innovation, right? Get motivated by what your competitors are doing, but don’t dwell on them. Don’t try to be just like them; nobody wins when you imitate. Instead, competition drives innovation, and vice versa. And innovation drives success, simply because it allows you and your competitors to offer a variety of products to meet your customers’ varying needs. When that happens, the customer wins. And then you do, too.

7. Thou shalt not proceed without getting executive commitment.
If your executives aren’t on board with developing a customer-focused and customer-centric organization, then forget it; it won’t happen. You might have localized or departmentalized efforts, but those will be siloed efforts that translate to siloed experiences for the customer. You must have global, cross-functional executive commitment; and most importantly, the CEO will lead the charge. Just know that, without executive commitment, you’ll never get resources – human, capital, or other – to execute on your customer experience strategy.

8. Thou shalt empower employees.
What does it mean to empower employees? Empowerment is all about responsibility, ownership, and accountability. It’s also about trust; the employee is given the keys to the castle and trusted to do what’s right for the customer and for the business. Empowerment means they never have to ask, “Is it OK if I do this for my customer?” Empowerment means not having to ask for permission. Because employees know. And why do they know? See the next commandment…

9. Thou shalt define a purpose, vision, and strategy.
Your purpose is your why. Why do you do what you do. Your vision is where you’re headed; the corporate vision must be aligned with the CX vision. The CX vision will be inspirational and aspirational; it will outline what you see as the future state of the customer experience. It will briefly describe the experience you plan to deliver. And it will serve as a guide to help choose future courses of action. Your strategy is how you’ll go about delivering on that vision.

10. Thou shalt communicate, communicate, communicate.
This one seems like such a no-brainer, but it’s one thing that folks need to be reminded of regularly: communication is critical to the successful execution of organizational and customer experience  transformations. Communication is a key leadership skill that must be mastered. With communication, we can instruct, motivate, convince and align the audience, drive open and candid discussions, share, and set expectations. It’s the most valuable tool in any relationship.

Bonus. Thou shalt kill bad policies and rules.
There’s one more commandment that I thought was worth adding as a bonus. In order to transform the organization and the experience, it’s imperative that we lose the “we’ve always done it that way” frame of mind. Question everything. Is there a better way to do something? Is there a stupid rule or policy in place whose origin cannot be recalled by anyone? Are there rules that make it painful for customers to do what it is that they’re trying to do? Are bad policies making it painful for employees to do their jobs well or to deliver the desired customer experience? Never let “that’s just how it’s always been done” get in the way of doing things more efficiently and with less effort.

Without a doubt, there are more customer experience commandments! Perhaps I’ll write about others in a future post. How many of these commandments have you fallen short on?

Some rules are nothing but old habits that people are afraid to change. -Therese Anne Fowler

> Read more from Annette.

Want to learn how to create an EXCEPTIONAL Guest Experience at your church? Check out Auxano’s Guest Experience Boot Camp, coming to Orlando, FL on April 3-4.

Tags: Annette Franz, Church Guest Experienc, Guest Experience, Welcoming Guests

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The Basic Checklist to Meet Today’s Guest Expectations

by: Annette Franz

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– a note from the Vision Room Curator: During August we are focusing on Guest Experience in churches, but some of the most powerful learning for churches can occur by reading about customer service – all you have to do is substitute the word “Guest” every time you see “customer.” The following content was graciously supplied by Annette Franz, a customer experience expert. Enjoy!

Is your customer experience legendary?Do companies even know what it means to deliver “legendary customer service?”

I’ve been dealing with a provider for the last three and a half months that claims to deliver “legendary customer service.” They tout this on their website, in their emails, and even on their voicemails. The problem is, their service is not legendary – at least not in the (positive) way I’m sure they want it to be.

I’m meeting with this provider again this week, and in preparation, I thought I’d take a look at what it means to deliver legendary service. Perhaps I just don’t understand what they’re striving to deliver.

I’ll start with defining “legendary.”

Google defines legendary as:

1. based on legends
2. remarkable enough to be famous; very well known

Again, my guess is they want to be “very well known” for their levels of service, but known for it in a good way.

Since legendary is based on legends, I should understand that term, too. Wikipedia defines legend as:

…a narrative of human actions that are perceived both by teller and listeners to take place within human history and to possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude. Legend, for its active and passive participants, includes no happenings that are outside the realm of “possibility” but which may include miracles. Legends may be transformed over time, in order to keep it fresh and vital, and realistic. Many legends operate within the realm of uncertainty, never being entirely believed by the participants, but also never being resolutely doubted.

Synonyms are “myth” and “fairy tale.”

I’m still waiting for the miracles. And that “never being entirely believed” part is what I’m wondering about. Perhaps their legendary service is just a fairy tale.

I went on a Google hunt to see how people/companies define “legendary customer service” or “legendary customer experience.” I found that not many brands tout this; I supposed it’s a pretty extreme thing to say or to claim. And those that did, well, they were really describing what I call “the basics.”

Perhaps claiming that you’ve got legendary service is a bit pointless.

Sam Walton said: The goal as a company is to have customer service that is not just the best but legendary. Do you feel like you get legendary customer service when you go to WalMart? Is it legendary in a good way or a bad way?

The companies that deliver that extraordinary level of service don’t have to tell customers in their voicemails and emails, quite honestly; they just do it! We know they do it. Think: Zappos, USAA, The Ritz-Carlton, Southwest, Nordstrom, et al.

Want to talk about customer experience legends? Google “Nordstrom returns tires.”

Some of the brands that mentioned legendary service defined it as making sure they met and exceeded the expectations of their customers. (Without a doubt, key to that is understanding what customers’ expectations are. Exceeding expectations cannot occur without understanding expectations first.) But is that legendary, or is that, too, “just the basics?” Saying you’re going to meet and exceed expectations is quite generic. As a customer, what does that mean to me? And how do you, as a company, know that you’ve exceeded my expectations.

At the very least, I would hope that all businesses strive to meet their customers’ expectations. Remember, Performance – Expectations = Satisfaction. Your performance must be greater than those expectations in order to be positively reflected in that equation!

So if you’re going to tout legendary service, well then, by George, you better have something special!

Legendary service means going the extra mile, but you can’t go the extra mile until you get the last mile right. Delivering on the last mile is all about giving your customers what they expected. The extra mile is that piece that really adds the component of delight.

What most organizations think is legendary is really (barely) the basics; they’re just striving to get to/through the last mile. The extra mile, or that legendary service, is a pipe dream for them.

Let’s look at the basics first; they include things like…

• Treating customers with respect
• Acting with integrity
• Being polite – definitely not rude!
• Trusting your customers – don’t call them liars!
• Being responsive – set an SLA for response time that shows you care! And stick to it!
• Doing what’s right for the customer – you and your organization know what that means; and if you don’t, ask your customers
• Doing right by the customer – again, you and your organization know what that means; if not, then ask
• Showing empathy and understanding for the customer’s situation
  • Walk in the customer’s shoes; don’t make him walk in yours (e.g., “Oh, that’s easy for me; I can do that. Why can’t you?”
• Putting the customer’s best interests before your own
• Caring about your customers (we can tell when you don’t)
• Being willing to help your customers
• Adopting an attitude of “yes”
• Doing what you say you’ll do
• Understanding your customers – the person, the situation, their expectations, and more!
• Making it effortless for customers to do business with you
• Meeting my expectations

Honestly, this is just meeting today’s customer expectations.

And yet, the provider I’m meeting with fails on all of these. All of them.

If those are the basics, then figure out how you can go above and beyond. Every service situation differs. Know your customers. Figure it out. Find out how you can go above and beyond in a way that is meaningful and relevant to the customer in front of you.

It takes a lot to deliver a legendary level of service. Here’s what I think legendary customer service includes:

• All of the items/basics listed above, plus…
• Identifying/understanding my expectations – and exceeding them
• Doing the unexpected, and
• Adding elements of delight that I would appreciate (Need examples? Check out this book!)
• Being proactive – why should the customer wait for you? and wait, and wait, and…
• Personalizing it – make it for me and about me, no one else
• Being remarkable – at all you do, in every interaction
• Being consistent – from interaction to interaction, from employee to employee

What would you add to this list?

Just because you say you deliver legendary service doesn’t make it real. Just because you tell customers that’s what you deliver doesn’t make it real. As a matter of fact, once you say it, you better darn well deliver on it. And remember, actions speak louder than words.

Perhaps this particular provider that I’m dealing with does deliver on it for other customers, but I’d like to reiterate this: legendary service is not selective; legendary service is consistent. You need to uphold the same high standards for every interaction, by every employee. And if you have an employee that can’t deliver, perhaps he’s not a good fit and needs to go!

That’s a great segue into what this means for the inner workings of your organization. In a nutshell, there must be:

• a culture of service
• a customer-centric, customer-focused culture
  • customers, not metrics or profits, are at the heart of all you do
• leadership to drive, facilitate, and support that culture
• the right employees to not only fit with this culture but also to deliver on its expectations
• a set of core values or guiding principles that employees can call upon should they ever question what to do

Is your company’s culture and customer experience the stuff that legends are made of?

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. -Maya Angelou

> Read more from Annette.

Want to learn how to create an EXCEPTIONAL Guest Experience at your church? Check out Auxano’s Guest Experience Boot Camp, coming to Orlando, FL on April 3-4.

Tags: Annette Franz, Basics, Church Guest Experience, Guest Expectations, Guest Experience

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5 Characteristics of a Guest-Focused Culture

by: Annette Franz

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– a note from the Vision Room Curator: During August we are focusing on Guest Experience in churches, but some of the most powerful learning for churches can occur by reading about customer service – all you have to do is substitute the word “Guest” every time you see “customer.” The following content was graciously supplied by Annette Franz, a customer experience expert. Enjoy!

Creating a Guest-Focused Culture

I was looking through some old files last week and came across something I had written a couple of years ago about how to go from collecting feedback to creating a service culture, especially among your frontline staff/teams.

My thoughts haven’t really changed much since then. Let’s get started!

Hire and build it.

• Hire the right people – those passionate about customer service.
• Like Zappos, ensure there’s a good culture fit, too.
• Train and empower your staff.
• Encourage ownership of execution at the front lines; ask staff to define the ultimate customer service experience.
• Remove employees who don’t want to adopt this new culture.
• Treat your employees the same way you want your customers treated.
• The customer experience is driven by the employee experience.

Announce and socialize it.

• Make sure everyone understands why this initiative is so important.
• Create a “greater cause” mentality in all staff segments.
• Create a language around your VOC initiative; brand it, give it a name, etc.

Live it.

• Mystery shop your own products and your service. You. Yes you!
• Call your customer service line to see what your customers are experiencing.
• Ask yourself, “Would I enjoy being, or want to be, a customer of this store?”

Operationalize it.

• Prioritize key metrics and communicate them to the team.
• Define your ultimate customer experience – taking into account feedback from your customers.
• Outline your “Truly Outstanding Customer Contact” and train the team on what that means; better yet, let them define what it means so they own it (see above).
• Realize that this is not about quick fixes; it’s a life-long endeavor (for you and your customers).
• It is a way of doing business, not just the initiative of the day.
• Talk about your scores in every team meeting.
• Be sure to share comments with your frontline and let the voice of the customer be heard!
• Communicate process changes internally and externally; close the loop with customers and let them know what process changes have been implemented as a result of their feedback; communicate changes to employees.  Make “visible” your commitment to listening to and acting on feedback.
• Look for ways to be proactive in communicating with customers about new services, products, etc.
• Be proactive in correcting an issue; don’t wait for a customer to call it to your attention.
• Provide great service to everyone:  prospects, customers, employees, vendors/partners.
• Fix issues quickly, and close the loop with all involved.
• Create and maintain a best practices log/manual. Document it all: suggestions, solutions implemented, culture designed by employees, etc. Use it for coaching, training, onboarding, etc.
• Treat customers as you would like to be treated!
• Remember that customers are the reason that you are in business
• (Over-)deliver on the brand promise!  Every day.  Every interaction.

Celebrate it.

• Incentivize key staff for improvements.
• Celebrate great service! Reward, recognize, and share examples.
• Develop a competitive spirit! Have fun!
• Find ways to show your appreciation… for customers and for staff.

“A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.” – this quote has been attributed to Mahatma Gandhi

> Read more from Annette Franz

Want to learn how to create an EXCEPTIONAL Guest Experience at your church? Check out Auxano’s Guest Experience Boot Camp, coming to Orlando, FL on April 3-4.

Tags: Annette Franz, Church Guest Experiences, Guest Experience, guest-focused

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8 Tools to Help Get Everyone on the Same Guest Experience Page

by: Annette Franz

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– a note from the Vision Room Curator: During August we are focusing on Guest Experience in churches, but some of the most powerful learning for churches can occur by reading about customer service – all you have to do is substitute the word “Guest” every time you see “customer.” The following content was graciously supplied by Annette Franz, a customer experience expert. Enjoy!

How do we ensure that everyone in the organization is on the same page when it comes to customer experience? 

My latest post has me thinking about a quote I stumbled upon the other day from Edmund Wilson:  

No two persons ever read the same book.

Wow! Isn’t that the truth.

Think about books you’ve read; think about books you’ve discussed, either back in school or with friends or colleagues. I’m pretty sure you all came away with different lessons, interpretations, and favorite characters. You probably loved it, while someone else hated it. You might have been bored with it after two chapters, while others totally related to it. Never mind books… think about conversations you’ve had. Were they all interpreted the same way by every party involved?

How does this apply to customer experience?

It got me thinking about customer-centricity and getting the organization focused on the customer. How do we get everyone on the same page? How do we ensure that everyone is reading the same book?

A few tools you can use within your organization include:

Employee CX Assessment: I wrote about this last month. Use it to find out what employees know about the customer and the customer experience? Then use the results to better frame our training efforts and to provide other (the right) tools needed to ensure employees have a clear line of sight to customers and are equipped to deliver the experience we need (and customers want) them to deliver.

CX Vision: Your customer experience vision will be inspirational and aspirational; it will outline what you see as the future state of the customer experience. It will briefly describe the experience you plan to deliver. And it will serve as a guide to help choose future courses of action. It should align with your corporate vision.

Corporate Vision: An inspirational and aspirational statement, your vision not only outlines what the company is trying to achieve near-term and long-term but also guides decision-making processes and your subsequent, resultant course of action. Presumably, your vision will (a) draw the line between what you’re doing and for whom you’re doing it and (b) create alignment within the organization.

Brand Promise: A brand promise is the expectation you set with your customers; it’s a promise you make to your customers. Everything you and your employees do should reflect this promise. Consistently. It’s a combination of the brand purpose and the reality of what the brand can deliver. In most cases, defines the benefits a customer can expect to receive when experiencing your brand at every touch point.

Core Values: Your core values are guiding principles for your employees; they outline which behaviors and actions are right and which are wrong, both for your employees and toward your customers. Everything you do must be aligned with your values, and they should be integrated into everything you do.

Purpose: It’s your reason for being, your Why. Customers buy from brands with which they align; similarly, employees want to work for companies with which they are aligned. Make sure everyone in the organization understands your Why.

Journey Maps: A journey map is the ultimate tool to help everyone understand the customer and his experience, to walk in his shoes. Journey maps also connect employees to how they contribute to – and impact – the customer experience.

Personas: Personas help put the experience in the customer’s perspective and make you think about the customer as a “real human.” They help everyone understand the customer and keep people from forming their own opinions about who the customer really is.

What other tools have you used to get everyone on the same page when it comes to customer experience?

If you feel like you’re not on the same page as me, maybe it’s time to change the story. – Unknown

> Read more from Annette.

Want to know more about Guest Experiences in your church? Start a conversation with our team. We’re glad to offer our input. Your vision is at stake, so let’s talk.

Tags: Annette Franz, CX Journey, Church Guest Experience, Church Guest Services, Guest Experience, Guest Services, Journey Maps, Personas

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