Let’s not whitewash it. It’s a scary world right now. Everyday, we’re absorbing news via all our devices and witnessing low quarterly earnings, uncertain futures, and friends and family being laid off. It’s easy to just keep going through the motions of cutting expenses, limiting focus to “critical” activities, and just making sure the boss is content.
And yet some companies are innovating right now. Here’s a sampling of how some of them are working on the customer experience (and action you can take) TODAY.
1. Take one small step. A client of ours is focusing on their e-commerce strategy. With limited resources, they are making small changes to their e-commerce process to ensure customers have a better, faster checkout process. This has led to improved conversion, cross-sell and up-sell numbers via the web site.
2. Unite! One organization asked us to come in and rally the troops around customer experience. Summer is their big season, so we are helping every person at the organization – from the CEO to the janitorial staff – understand their place within the customer experience. It’s helped them create a common language and improve their own service standards.
3. Focus on the future. One client in a very hard-hit industry is creating a 3-year plan to get ready for the future. Dabbling in new ways to connect with customers, testing theories, and gathering feedback, they’re able to set the stage for success instead of stagnate where they are.
4. Communicate. Many industries have been hit hard, resulting in difficult times for customers and employees. The focus right now for a client in such an industry is on engaging their employees to deliver a superior customer experience. How? By implementing ways to stay connected through dialogue and communication that’s honest, compelling and relevant. They’re asking employees to celebrate each other and their little victories in new ways. Engagement is up and customers are remaining loyal, even through bad news cycles.
These aren’t costly, cumbersome projects. These are lean and flexible in response to the times we’re in. Anything you can take away here to get started? Let me know.
[...] tell me: There is usually so much we COULD do with customer experience. We want to provide more, better, faster…but in order to do that for our customers we have to change entire legacy systems, hire [...]