By Nduka Mba-Uzoukwu
Deriving more value from customer relationships is almost always largely dependent on how satisfied customers are with the experiences offered by their service providers. Arguably, these experiences are completely employee-dependent because technology deployments and process designs require people working them to add value. They are enablers. Companies that deploy the best technology and design the most customer-centric processes cannot expect to deliver profitable customer experiences just because they made those investments.
Neither should they expect to fully-optimize their customer value-extracting potentials if they do not have employees who are completely keyed into that mission. Similarly, great products are limited in themselves as their value propositions are often eroded by poor after-sales support. Despite the advent of robotics and self-service options, neither have been able to match or displace the adequacy of human contact. This further establishes employees as the incontestable driving force behind customer experiences that either build or destroy value to customers, employers and shareholders.
Very recently, a private school lost a customer who, over the past 5 years, singularly generated at least N4million every session in school fees alone. This same customer introduced two other families to the school, and then left for a new school with them because they all had unpleasant experiences. All three families each had four children in the school; meaning the former school will lose at least N12million in revenue from these families by the start of the next school session, whenever that is. Note though, these defecting customers were late to the party. Other families had been withdrawing their children for similar reasons.
So, how did we get here? With schools exploring virtual learning classes due to the COVID-19 pandemic, parents have had to adapt to the new approach, with varying degrees of success. In the same vein, teachers have also had to get used to new ways of consistently delivering great learning experiences to their students. However, in this case, some of the teachers were disillusioned by the school’s approach to the new situation, especially regarding tooling.
In the rush to provide e-classes, the school failed to devote enough time and resources to ensuring the teachers were adept at using the selected learning applications before the classes began. In this case, they also did not assume the cost of data required by the teachers for streaming the classes. Consequently, the teachers struggled to offer any meaningful value to the students during live sessions, causing utterly dissatisfied parents to vent their spleen on the teachers. After all, the teachers were on the frontline and, therefore, were the ‘school’ the parents could ‘see’. Having reached their elastic-limits dealing with all the stress, the teachers began to take-out their frustration on their students.
They snapped more, were less-patient with the kids, smiled less often, and were sterner while they struggled to make the most of the applications, they were barely trained on how to use effectively. Somehow, despite all these shortcomings, the school still exacerbated the issues by ill-advisedly insisting parents pay the complete school fees before set deadlines. That served the last straw for some parents. As at the time of this writing, and according to the telling parents, at least twelve families personally known to them have withdrawn their children from the virtual classes. They are also school-hunting through referrals.
When employees are unenthused by their employers, working conditions, compensations, cultures, leadership etc., their interactions with customers could lead to distasteful and damaging experiences; the synergy between internal departments becomes less-cohesive, interpersonal relationships within the organization start to go bad, productivity levels drop, staff attitudes become toxic, employer loyalty thins away, demotivation sets-in and, ultimately, customer service suffers.
This makes customers less likely to spend more – if at all, less likely to introduce new customers to the business, unlikely to write good reviews online, more likely to switch loyalties to competition and, should they walk away eventually, unlikely to return. The impact of these customer-initiated actions against any business will definitely have immediate and long-term effects on profitability targets. Which is why the case for making employee satisfaction a priority is a compelling one. Some would even argue that if businesses spent a bit more making their employees happy than they do trying to make customers happy, their customers would even be even happier, leading to healthier returns on the costs incurred per customer and, for the business as a whole. It makes sense.
Rob Markey and Fred Reichheld, both of Bain & Company, opine that “Your best employees work for love, not money”. Whilst their argument is based on the premise that “tying customer feedback to incentive pay often encourages the wrong behaviours” – which, by the way, is right in so many ways – I would also argue that when employees love working for their company more than they do for their salaries, such companies are better-positioned to enjoy better customer relationships than they currently do.
So, with customers’ service delivery experiences hanging precariously on employees’ dispositions towards their employers and jobs, like we saw in the story about the school earlier on, business owners and their leaderships must rethink their growth strategies. Attention must shift to driving profitability by aggressively but insightfully engaging these critical twin factors, getting employees and customers excited about the brand.
As we learn from the school story, ensuring your employees are adequately tooled to exceed customers’ service delivery expectations, is as simple as it gets. Not doing so is like sending an army to battle without arms and ammunition. They can only do so much. The late Herbert Kelleher, Co-Founder and former Chief Executive Officer of SouthWest Airlines in the United States, could be found walking the tarmacs, boarding the planes and pacing the terminals while engaging with his employees and customers. He believed that “anyone who looks at things solely in terms of factors that can easily be quantified is missing the heart of business, which is people”.
His convictions and practices endeared him to his employees and customers, so much so, his airline continued to rate as one of the most profitable and customer-loved businesses in the United States. Unsurprisingly, SouthWest airlines’ customer and staff retention rates got super-high. Its customers say their friendly employees are one of the main reasons why they stick to the airline. We could borrow a leaf or two from these easily implementable tips. The question is; beyond sending emails to all staff members and, an occasional ‘family meeting’, how often do our Managing Directors (MD), Chief Executive Officers (CEO) etc. leave the comfort of their offices to bond with employees in their offices? In some companies, no staff is allowed to get in the same elevator with the MD. In some others, the closest they ever get to communicating with their CEO is when he or she sends an email, or they run into ‘Oga’ somewhere in the building.
Organizations cannot give what they do not have. Productive customer experiences, in terms of solid win-win outcomes for all stakeholders – customers, employees, shareholders – start from productive, internal customer experiences. These internal experiences are created by employees for employees, starting from the top. The leaders set the tone for everyone else. What kind of leader are you? What kind of tones are you setting today in your organization? Would it be right to expect employees to offer exceptional service delivery experiences to each other when the leadership has done little or nothing to create that sort of culture within the organization?
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced customer-centric companies to rethink and redesign their internal and external customer experiences to ensure quality is established/maintained/exceeded without being compromised. Have you? Are you the sort of leader that believes once employee compensations and benefits are paid, everything is fine? Does your organization have service excellence as one of its values? If so, do your employees and customers think you live-up to that value? Do you run employee satisfaction surveys? If yes, do you ask the right questions? Is your customer acquisition and retention expenditure returning the projected investment returns? Are you tracking how your customers behave or, it is not important, so long as you make profits at the end of your business year? Do you have any idea how many of them are spending less/more? Do you know why? Do you know how many customers have left or are on the brink of leaving your business? Do you know why? Are your employees and customers voluntarily and happily growing your customer-base through positive word-of-mouth marketing? Are they responding to your referral and influencer marketing campaigns because they enjoy the great experiences you provide? Do your customers and employees deserve better experiences than you are creating for them today? Will you do anything about it? Do you care?
As businesses continue to remodel their operational dynamics to cope with the pandemic (and afterwards), employee pulse-checking, in addition to other employee and customer-targeted initiatives, should be considered a compulsory strategic imperative. That’s what customer-centric companies do.
Mba-Uzoukwu is the Managing Partner of CX-Practice, a Customer Experience Management consulting company. Follow him on Twitter: @PracticeCx, and Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nduka-mba-uzoukwu-b26360101
