How’s Your Customer Experience

On Earth’s Rotation Day.

This is a time where we need to think about our planet and our fellow creatures who inhabit that planet. One thing that I was thinking about today was customer experience customer service customer value. These three terms are not interchangeable but they are absolutely linked and here’s the reason why your customer experience may be myopically looked at as something exclusively online. And we need to program the Website to make it really easy and navigation and clicking here click OK.

But what about the human element in that experience?

What about the people behind the scenes or in the back office. And how about the end user as a human being if they should need to have further support. Have you thought about these things? So let’s take a look at an example and I’m going to probably anonymise these things because I don’t want to get into any risk of defamation and so there is a specific company I’m thinking of has an interesting customer experience for one thing it is a transportation company and they service their customers both online and off line through their transportation mechanisms. And so let’s take a look at their experience you go and you purchase a ticket online and you have a standard website with lots of information. And while it’s quite confusing actually.

How could we improve the customer experience online?

My suggestion would be to create a sales funnel if you want to know what that is and what that looks like online. Just take a look at ClickFunnels. This is a company that is close to a billion dollar company now. So this is not something I invented. And this is not something that I’m pulling out of my you know what. This is a legitimate industry and enterprise and smart companies these days are ditching the traditional Web site and they are putting their customers through a beautiful experience and a well thought through and designed funnel. So this transportation company could greet a customer with. A squeeze page. That offers them information What information does a customer need if they are on the web page of a local transportation company a map a timetable a fair table. Quite simply. And if they input their information they can have access to that the next page would then guide them through what well what what do we want them to do we want them to purchase a ticket. And you can use your imagination to take them up the value ladder until they have their seasonal pass. But what if they’re just a tourist. No problem they stop there.

Do you still want to keep in touch with them? Sure!

Why would you not if they opt in. You keep reminding them because maybe they want to come back as a tourist to your town village city. And that not only enhances the tourism for your city that it also benefits the company and benefits the customer. So it’s a win. All around but that’s the online customer experience.

Let me now tell you what these people have done offline and where the biggest improvement could be.

So they took a decision a few years ago to eliminate selling tickets on board. And now people have to purchase their tickets off board and onboard if they don’t present a valid ticket they get a 50. Dollar fine. I purposely changed the currency again to anonymise where this is.

Why is this a bad decision?

Well here’s a case in point:

A business professional has recently purchased a ticket legitimately. The tickets were dispensed. Legitimately. Receipts were dispensed. Legitimately. And they got mixed up. Legitimately. And what happened of course when the ticket taker asked for the ticket. The poor gentleman had his receipt. But didn’t have the ticket. And so. He was fined. He challenged it. And at no point did anybody within the company. The customer service manager or anybody take responsibility apologize or admit to any error whatsoever on the part of their company. How could we improve upon this experience. Very simple. Let’s call it Creating service solutions. Let’s call it Empowering Employees to do that.

Why is that important?

If we have a fear based culture in our companies. If we force people to abandon their personalities like we did before. Or like I talked about in my earlier podcast from yesterday. How is that benefiting anybody? If we build the people so the people build the business. If we allow them to express their individuality and personality while simultaneously adhering to company policies procedures and processes but allowing them. The use of their faculties the use of their judgment their use of their intellect to create service solutions not. To randomly play with people but to create service solutions. In the example I’ve given if that person checking the tickets was enabled to do that he could have simply seen that there is a receipt.

“You didn’t have your ticket. Look I understand this thing happens happens quite frequently actually. There you go.”

The person has been empowered to create a service solution. The customer only slightly embarrassed; saved them the humiliation of having a ticket and having to fight it.

Let’s say that didn’t happen, though. How could we still improve the customer experience?

The customer service manager who basically told him off could have instead assumed some responsibility, apologised, and said, “look this this happens to us and our employee was following process and procedure and he should have used his better judgment and seen that you have a receipt. So I apologize and of course we will not demand of you the fine that was issued. And here’s a free Travel Pass for a day on our Transportation System.”

Thereby, leaving a good impression with the customer, instead of a bad taste in his mouth.

The point is this: Look, it’s Earth’s rotation day we’re all here on the same planet. We’re all just trying to get along. We’re all just trying to earn our way. Survive in this world. Even the criminals and the crooks. So why can’t we take it a little easy on ourselves and our fellows. On people. Practice a little bit of forgiveness, charity and mercy. And not just when people are looking but when people aren’t looking.

To tie this into customer experience.

Wouldn’t that take it a very very long way? Wouldn’t that be so much better to be known as a company That has An online presence that’s simple that guides you through a process, Enthusiastically supporting selling Tickets to our community and Traveling around our community. And when blips come off line In the actual delivery of the transportation We always Want to create a service solution for you The customer. And if 2, 5, 10, 20 percent. (Will never be 20 percent) but if 20 percent of the people try to rip us off. 80 percent don’t. And how much better would this world be. And how much more profitable would we be if people never hesitated To Take our Transportation. Not just because of Necessity or convenience or price, But because it’s a pleasurable experience. A courteous experience. A nice experience the customer experience is important. It’s important. That it is elegant. And it is important. That we create customer value, not just experience. And we do that, we demonstrate that by our actions.

Justin Answer