What's Your Customer Experience IQ?
Today customers have higher expectations and greater choices. It’s no surprise that they expect business with your company to be seamless, tailored, and hassle free.
To remind us of why delivering a superior customer experience is urgent, Greg Gianforte, CEO of RightNow Technologies, has authored a new book “Eight to Great: Eight Steps to Delivering an Exceptional Customer Experience.” In the book he lists the eight steps required to deliver a great customer experience.
Step one: Establish a knowledge foundation.
Step two: Empower customers with self service
Step three: Empower frontline staff.
Step four: Offer multichannel choice.
Step five: Listen to your customers.
Step six: Design seamless experiences.
Step seven: Engage proactively with customers.
Step eight: Measure and improve continuously.
I interviewed one of Gianforte’s customers—eHarmony—last year because the company follows his eight steps and has seen continued success.
eHarmony’s executives are highly involved in the contact center and the company empowers its customers by listening to and acting on their feedback. eHarmony surveys customers on the interactions they have with eHarmony's staff. The company sends a customer satisfaction survey after every phone call and email that an agent takes. The survey specifically asks, among other questions, if the agent provided the highest possible service for that customer. Agents who receive a 94 percent score or higher on customer satisfaction for each quarter become a part of eHarmony's CSAT Elite group. The company recognizes this group of agents in quarterly rewards ceremonies.
eHarmony also offers a monthly monetary bonus based on how well agents score in attendance. In addition, the company holds birthday lunches, drawings for prizes, and daily gift incentives for agents who may be struggling with low customer satisfaction scores.
In addition, the company recognizes and motivates its agents through its Inspiration Wall. The company receives feedback from members daily, and spotlights agents who receive positive remarks by posting the letters on the Inspiration Wall. Most of the messages are thank-you notes to agents for understanding their customers’ concerns and for providing support and encouragement. As a result, agent turnover rates are below normal and customer satisfaction has increased.
Seems like Gianforte’s eight steps have resonated with eHarmony. To find out if your company is ready to implement strategies for improvement, the book includes a Customer Experience Assessment Scorecard to determine your stage.
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I agree -- great steps, all easy to embrace as guiding principles, but the really interesting discussion is the “how,” which I’m content to believe Greg covers in the book. This is where many service organizations struggle.
At Helpstream, we’ve focused on the same guiding principles, but have taken a community approach to make accomplishing them more feasible. You can check out our 7-step approach and some interesting survey results from a recent webinar: http://webcasts.thesspa.com/event/bm9hl380xp7
Mila: It is nice to see you highlighting one of RightNow’s stellar customers, eHarmony. eHarmony is a great example of how the 8 steps, a practical approach to delivering an exceptional customer experience, can drive competitive differentiation, boost revenue and gain market leadership.
- Greg
I haven't read "Eight Steps", but I have worked with many Fortune 500 executive teams whose ambition is to create new, compelling customer experiences.
The "steps" strike me more as principles associated with delivering better customer experiences and less like a process.
In our experience, the process steps that management teams actually go through to innovate compelling customer experiences look quite different.
The biggest challenge these teams face isn't grasping the principles. It's determining what to change in the customer experience and negotiating with stakeholders, whose buy in is critical to implementing the changes.
This is rarely a linear process. It often involves negotiations around revising priorities and strategies, redirecting resources, and changing reporting relationships and authority. This is the real work of innovation.
Among the earliest steps is developing management consensus about what to change. This requires developing convictions about where in the customer experience significant opportunities to improve it exist. There also needs to be consideration of the business case for making specific changes.
Additional steps follow. These pertain to designing new customer experiences and planning initiatives that effectively orchestrate the organization's delivery of those experiences.
Jason M. Sherman
Whyze Group
Blog: The Market-Intelligent Executive
http://jasonmsherman.typepad.com/marketiq/