Unpacking Mahatma’s Unparalleled CX Ideology

Mahatma Gandhi – India’s independence activist and leader, renown for employing nonviolent civil disobedience that led India to independence, and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world; has the timeless and legendary customer service quote popularly attributed to him as having been delivered in a speech in South Africa in 1890.

It still remains a customer experience wonder how these words uttered over a century ago not only remain relevant to date, but also form the back bone upon which every enterprise big or small, start up or established, individual or jointly owned, should focus their customer service efforts.

Unpacking each one of these 5 statements, provides us the opportunity to really focus on developing a customer centric culture, and to have a customer facing attitude that can only serve to  deliver winning results at both a personal and professional level.

A customer is the most important visitor in our premises 

Indeed customers are the reason why every single business opens its doors every morning. Without customers, no matter what product is being sold, service being delivered or ideology being pushed, without the audience then it totally ceases to matter. Who then is the center of focus for every organization but the customer? On who should due importance then be plied?

A customer is not dependent on us, we are dependent on them 

Customers are and will always remain to be the drivers of business. It is from customers that the revenues required to sustain business are obtained. It is customers that sustain growth. Even in the not for profit sector, customers being defined as the different stakeholders for whom service is provided, are the backbone upon which the enterprise is built. No customers = no business.

A customer is not the interruption of our work but the purpose of it 

Customers are often viewed as ‘work’… and very often as a ‘bother’. Especially when customers ‘inconvenience’ the service provider by coming or calling at the ‘wrong’ time or doing what is contrary to the rules and regulations set out by the provider. Many a time customers have been made to beg or plead for services or to feel unwanted. How much sadder can it get than to subject customers to this?

A customer is not an outsider of our business but a key part of it 

Partnership partnership partnership - this is the new song that every organization must sing with regards to delivering customer experience excellence. Make every customer your friend and partner with them towards raising service excellence. Making customers key partners will ensure they get listened to, that their voices matter, and that continual improvement is an everyday discussion.

Customers—we are not doing them a favor by serving them—they are doing us a favor by giving us the opportunity to do so

Nothing further can be added to this self-explanatory statement except to urge each one of us to remember the true value of our customers and to remember the valuable opportunity they provide each time they allow us to be of service.         

                      

That Mahatma’s wise words should challenge us to raise our delivery levels is not in debate; leaving a legacy of excellent customer service that transcends centuries is not without our means. We just need to ensure every customer interaction, leaves every customer be they be internal or external feeling positively better and thankful for the experience.        

Customer Service Excellence - To script or not to script that is the question…..

We’ve all experienced the eye-rolling fatigue that engulfs us when we dial in to a help desk or sit down at a restaurant and the service provider belts out the same tired old lines that have been hardwired in their internal systems making them robotic. Plastic enunciation of words, plastic smile and plastic tone of voice that is as discernable in person as it is on the phone. “What would you like to drink Meeehhmmm(Ma’am)”, “Thanks for calling XYZ we’re happy to be of service to you” or the old and tired disembarking script “Thank you for flying with XYZ airlines, hope you enjoyed your flight” Not an ounce of feeling, warmth or passion in these expressions.

As customers, we persevere through these interactions, willing them to end at the soonest, so that we may get on with the business that brought us to the establishment or had us make the call in the first place. The officers on duty are doing their job and a customer service audit if applied, would not reveal noncompliance. Far from it actually; for the scripts are being well followed and delivered based on hours of drilling, and increased perfection of having delivered the same customer after customer. And as we all know ‘practice makes perfect’. In this case it delivers mindless perfection.

On the customer experience Richter scale, perfected scripts rank an all-time low of one. They do not make for customer experience excellence and do not provide for delightful customer interactions. Customers instead feel like batch processed stats all passing through the same ‘machine processed’ system.

A real challenge presents itself towards achieving customer experience excellence where both standardization and personalization are equally important. Developing and implementing service standards is a key tenet of service excellence, as is providing personalized and individualized service. Paradoxical isn’t it?

The dilemma persists with several parameters that need to be explored including:-

• How to maintain a decent and standard way of delivering service without making robots out of the service givers
• How to balance between saying the same thing over and over again without fatigue and flatness kicking in.
• How to communicate in a similar format with numerous customers over time, whilst recognizing  that each customer will be interacting with you for the first time.

Customers totally abhor overly scripted service. It in no way works towards having them emotionally engaged with the brand. Scripted responses turn customers off each time every time, and should be struck off the customer service training manual. What works instead and goes with the flow of the needs of today’s customer, is to have teams totally know and understand the company policies, procedures and guidelines, from which the company cannot and will not deviate.

With this in mind, the service deliverers will have the autonomy to read the customers mood, assess the situation, and customize as necessary. If greetings are the first thing on the customer reception code, then so be it, have the agents greet customers in as polite and courteous a manner as they deem fit. If the service failure recovery procedure involves apologizing and empathizing with the customer, then this should be at the discretion of the team member involved to ensure they get it done. This will allow for a variety of custom made responses that align to the situation at hand, and have the customer feel their needs have been met.

And whereas this may be easy to preach, it is by no means easy to implement. When human beings are set free to fly in the direction of their best thoughts, then the outcomes will be as diverse as the individuals in the group in discussion. This poses a real risk of agents feeling that they did what they thought was best with disastrous aftermaths; as common sense as we all know it, is not common to everyone.

The antidote to this though, is to first and foremost invest in training, re- training and then training again. Opportunities need to be created for sharing of experiences by team members to have them think through all possible customer scenarios and pre-prepare possible responses in their own customized ways. This will do wonders towards delivery of authentic customer service. And of course the hiring of customer facing personnel, needs to be well cast, with those with natural tendencies towards the desirable 5 C’s of customer service reps - being caring, compassionate, communicative, confident and having composure taking center stage. This will provide a stable base upon which to load on the added responsibility of delivering standard but unscripted customer service excellence.

Customer Service Excellence  - To script or not to script…..who gets to decide? You do!

Love Your Customer - Lessons From Anyango The Fishmonger

This article first appeared in Biashara Leo Magazine July 2016 

Anyango sells fish at Kenyatta Market. Her fish stall is as ordinary as they get. Just a basic metallic-wooden structure with polythene padded roofing and a table with a metal sheeting to display her fish. It looks just the same as all the other fish stalls in the area. There are six of them around the same spot. What differentiates Anyango’s from the rest, is the number of customers that congregate. This is a permanent feature at her stall from 11am when she opens to fry her fish, until about 9:30pm when she closes. There are always people buying fish from Anyango – that’s just how it is. And no, it is not the same for the five fish vendors. This situation is unique to Anyango.

So – the next question would be, why is Anyango’s fish stall so attractive and what makes customers by pass all the others and come to hers?

I am Anyango’s customer. I have been buying fish from her for the past eight years after a recommendation from a friend who has now been her customer for ten years and still going strong. I have never looked back. I live about eleven kilometers away from Anyango’s fish stall, so it is not convenience that has me or many of her other customers stick with her. I have studied her model over time and learnt three critical lessons that apply to every business, whether start up or conglomerate:-

Every customer is unique. We are all customers and we are all buying fish at the same price. You would imagine that as customers we are all the same. Not to Anyango. For as long as I have been her customer, she has greeted me by name and enquired after my health and my family. You see, as you buy fish from her, she makes a point of knowing who is going eat the fish you are buying, and from then on, she never forgets to send greetings to her actual customers back at home, who are the end recipients of the fish. Anyango does this for all her customers. It takes work and effort and a fantastic memory to pull this off, but I’ve figured that she has figured out, that it is important and she therefore makes it happen. And this is what all customers crave – personalized attention. To know that the vendor doesn’t regard them as some statistic, but actually appreciates them for who they are, and makes a point to provide personalized service as best possible. People like one on one contact with the ‘owners’ of a business and not just the ‘workers’. This gives them a sense of belonging and of directly contributing where it matters. In the corporate or business environment, this would be the manager or supervisor of the firm. In a restaurant it would be the maître d' or restaurant manager.

Whatever your business, have an important person come out and interact with customers. This interaction need not be anything complicated or fancy. Just to greet them, find out how they are doing, get feedback on products and services and engage with customers. This is not restricted to a physical activity and may be done on phone and online as well. Reaching out to customers by paying them a courtesy call or extending a warm greeting to them on email or text, to follow up on how they are doing, elicits pleasant feels from them. Nothing beats personalized service in the race for customer loyalty and customer retention. 

Ensure Simplicity. Simple is the name of the game. Always has been and always will be. I have been a happy recipient of Anyango’s ‘car’ service and seen many a happy customer utilize it as well. She extends her service beyond selling directly from the stall and delivers fish to customers’ cars. All one needs to do is place their order with her or one of her assistants, and she will have it wrapped and brought straight to the car. This level of convenience is preferred because the customer does not need to leave the comfort of their car, and still get what they came for – fresh fish. So much has she perfected the art that there are quite a number of customers for whom the transaction is made much shorter and much easier, just by arrival and eye contact. She already knows the particulars of customers who have regular orders. In my case, all I have to do is park across the road, nod and make eye contact with Anyango, who then has her assistant bring over the three medium size fish I usually buy. I then drive off as I send her the money for my purchase through mobile money transfer. This transaction takes all of four minutes as I sit in my car and one more minute as I make the payment from my phone. Talk about customer comfort? Talk about super-efficient service? It doesn’t get better than this. Knowing and understanding customer preferences and keeping it all nice and simple.

That’s what matters. Customers abhor complication. They just want their interactions to be simple and straight to the point. Anyango the fish seller has mastered this art. This world as we know it has way too much going on at any one time in the lives of every customer as they journey through life. The simpler and more efficient you keep your operations, the more likely you are to really keep your customers.

Integrity reigns integral.  On two occasions in my ongoing stint as Anyango’s customer, she has come personally to the car to let me know that the size of fish she has that day is smaller than the usual size I buy, and then proceeded to provide me options - to either take four pieces at a slightly higher price instead of the usual three, or to buy the smaller ones at a lower price. I have each time gone with the option to take more fish. I have at these points note very loud lessons there on providing customer education and proposing solutions. Two profound things that endear suppliers to customers without fail.  Three times as well at different points in the eight year period, she has come personally to the car to let me know, that although the fish is ok and has nothing wrong with it, it is the previous day’s fish carried over, but still fresh. You see, Anyango does not really have to come and disclose this, given that the fish is fresh and isn’t likely to cause any harm. And I would be none the wiser should she just have packed and sold it to me as usual. But given the unspoken agreements with her customers that she sells fresh fish done up the very same day, she is inspired to make the disclosure when this agreement needs to be broken. That level of personal commitment and integrity with customers keeps them coming back all the time. I have on each of the three occasions bought the very same fish and taken it home for consumption without any adverse outcomes. Customer loyalty and customer retention ride very high on the trust factor. When customers trust your business, they feel safe and they feel inclined to recommend you to others. They are assured that when things go wrong, they will be informed, or if things are not conforming to the usual standards that they will get duly advised. 

Loyalty like Rome was not built in a day; it is built in small doses, by reassuring customers at each visit that your business cares for them and wants to do what is right by them. What has customers emotionally attached to brands is not how well they perform when things are going right but how they bounce back from service failure. As Jeffery Gitomer the bestselling author and sales expert says – “Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. They DO expect you to fix things when they go wrong.”

Anyango is the proud owner of a high rise building on Mombasa Road, built and completed from her fish stall business that runs purely on the goodwill of customers. Customers who have felt confident enough to keep coming back, and who keep telling others to come too. I have lost track of the number of people I have enthusiastically referred to Anyango for good fish. The daily steady flow of business to her fish stall is not by chance. It is as a result of dedicated focus on ensuring customers are happy at each visit, and resolving any matters arising with genuine concern. It also stems from knowing and understanding customer needs and not only fulfilling these needs, but doing so in a way that ensures pleasant interactions. 

Focusing on customers and not on the competition is a sure strategy to keep them close and to generate a sustainable flow of income from the business. Lessons on customer service are everywhere we look.  One need not necessarily go to big international business schools to learn what it takes to deliver service excellence. Just look around and identify businesses that elicit customer loyalty no matter the size, industry or geographical location, and right there in the middle of their operations, will undoubtedly be a complete focus on the customer. There’s really no magic to it. Put customers first for “It’s easier to love a brand when the brand loves you back.”–Seth Godin

The Customer is An Asset!

The dictionary describes an asset as a useful or valuable thing, person, or quality. The business dictionary goes ahead to further qualify this as “something valuable that an entity owns, benefits from, or has use of, in generating income. It proceeds to enumerate the definition in accounting terms as “something that an entity has acquired or purchased, and that has money value; and that assets shown on the business balance sheet, are usually classified according to the ease with which they can be converted into cash.”

With this definition, the customer then takes on the shape and form of quite a valuable asset that fits squarely into the description. Indeed: customers are useful and valuable, without whom the business ceases to exist, and the business vision for which it was created ceases to have a foothold; organizations most definitely benefit from and have such valuable ‘use of’ customers that form the foundation of their operations; and customers are income generating entities, from where the revenue to drive the business comes from including planned innovations, strategy activities and expansion initiatives.

Many things have been said about the customer including the age old catch phrases that - the customer is always right, the customer is king and in some places the customer should always come first. Whereas all these have served over time, and oftentimes have their validity debated in the context of the current customer experience environment. The original intention however, is what should be valued, where the originators intended for focus on the customer to given the deserved attention.

Where the world has moved now and the new emphasis on getting customer experience into the boardroom to ensure discussions on customer acquisition, satisfaction, retention and loyalty; is to describe the customer in the right way, using the right format, with the right terms that fit into the right placement in business discussion. And with that in mind – The Customer is An Asset!

With this mind frame, it is expected that there will be a positive attitude shift towards customers within the entire organization. Organizations rank assets very high in their priority lists. Assets are precious items that must be well taken care of, well guarded, well looked after and well protected. The same must be said and done of our customers. They must be center of our focus and handled in pretty much the same way that assets are. Company assets are entered into the company books of accounts and are listed as very important items when computing the value of the company. The same must be done of customers, up to and including computing the value of the customer base and assessing the company’s overall standing.

The moment customers are viewed as assets and accorded the same due respect, then the current challenging need to crank up the efforts to have customer experience as an important leadership agenda will ease. It will be automatic. Assets are beautiful things, valued things, precious things, treasured and appreciated things. And so the customer should be and must be. The call to action for every entrepreneur, every business person, every organization and brand is to rework the thinking and the script, to most definitely read “The Customer is An Asset”

The 3 Cardinal Rules of Customer Experience and LOVE

There are three cardinal rules around delivering exceptional customer experiences that have to do with LOVE… No matter the circumstance, industry sector, business environment, sector of the economy or professional inclination, the rules remain the same. Steadfast and unchanging:-

1.       Love yourself

Yes!  The legendary Dr. Wayne Dyer often used a powerful analogy about squeezing an orange. He’d squeeze an orange at the beginning of his presentation and invite his audience to comment on what they observed coming out. They would invariably shout out ‘orange juice’ with each squeeze, wondering why he would keep repeating the act. The lesson behind this demonstration was that no matter how much you squeezed an orange, only orange juice could come out.  The moral of this story is that we cannot give out what we do not have in the first place.

It is in this very same light that we cannot provide excellent customer experiences and extend love to our customers, if we do not love ourselves first. If we are not truly filled with love for ourselves and express this love inwardly and outwardly with the assurance of self-love, then extending love to others and more so to our customers, is an exercise in futility.

At those moments when customers ‘squeeze’ one to the wall, putting to the test one’s emotions, would love come out in the same way that the orange juice consistently comes out of the orange? The answer can only be yes, if one is full of love, to the extent that no matter how soft or hard the squeezing, it would invariably flow out.

Love yourself to love your customers…………

2.       Love your team

An excerpt from the inspirational poem by John Donne (1573-1631) reads:-

“No man is an island,

Entire of itself,

Every man is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main…..”

And indeed, psychologists world over repeatedly aver that man is a relational creature. Human beings thrive in warm and working relationships and perform at their best when surrounded by colleagues who respect and trust them. No greater teamwork exists, than in an environment where there is open communication, a candid feedback system, reward and recognition for winning behaviour, an encouraging ecosystem and cheer leaders across the hierarchy of leadership. What more elements can be plugged into the definition of love than these? Loving customers comes easy when the environment in which one operates, has a core foundation of team concern and care.

Love your team to love your customers……….

3.       Love your customers

As simple as that – just love your customers. Love them for what they are and what they are not, for without them your work, vocation, career purpose and opportunity to practice your calling is naught.

The trick to this - for it is quite the challenge to love that difficult, nasty, belligerent, cantankerous and offensive customer – is to think not of them but the situation. And to relabel the station as difficult or challenging and not the customer. This helps to divorce the ill feeling toward the person and re-direct it to the conflict that manifests.

Love your customer – just love them………

So there you have it, the three commandments for excellent customer experience. Now go out there and love yourself, your colleagues and ultimately your customers this year!