“Keep Customers: Consistently Meet Their Expectations”
Jeff Bezo’s quote “Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room” reminded me of an insightful conversation I had with a restaurant owner about the longevity and success of his business.
Being a long time customer, I mentioned to him that meals have been consistently great and that my favorites tasted the same as they did twenty years ago. I noted that tables were full and customers waited in line to get into the restaurant throughout both the bad and good economic times. His response: he stressed the importance of maintaining the service, quality and price that their customer expected. He provided me with a specific example,
“We were planning to offer a lamb dish special. To get the quality our customers expected, we would have needed to charge above our typical price point for the entrée. We could have offered the entrée within our price range, but the quality would have been below our customer’s standards. So we didn’t offer it at all.”
This told me a lot about how him and how he runs his business. He clearly knew his brand, his customers and was committed to established quality standards. My take-aways:
- Understand who you are – your brand and value offered – “why you exist”
- Live the brand promise: consistently deliver what you promised to customers
- Know who your customers are and what they want
- Establish customer experience standards and have all employees familiar with them
- Customers will remain customers when they value their relationship with you – by you consistently working to understand and address their needs
“Optimizing the Customer Experience”
I was thrilled to be invited to deliver a presentation for CareerSource Suncoast at their Employee Retreat & Talent Development Day.
My session “Exceptional Service: Enhancing the Customer Experience” stressed the importance of optimizing the customer experience throughout the various touchpoints with their organization. Those interactions define who you are in the mind of the customer, which can be a determining factor in them becoming or remaining a customer with you.
The presentation cited research that found that customers who experience greater value throughout their experience can improve both product use and loyalty.
Employees learned concepts and participated in exercises as a framework to spark ideas and to rethink current customer experience practices for potential improvement opportunities.
“Living the non-negotiables”
In my previous newsletter I discussed establishing non-negotiables in creating an “organizational-engaged” culture. I described it as holistic system of performance and behavioral expectations for management, supervisors and employees.
My recommendation was to integrate these as benchmarks into everyday business practices and interactions such as hiring, managing, communicating and branding. What would this look like?
- Plan & Vision: communicate what you want to accomplish and how you will do it
- Get Involvement: start conversations with your team gathering their observations of the current culture, values and mission to define the non-negotiables and everyone’s input on what changes might be needed to be a more organizationally-engaged workplace.
- Manage Performance: along with job specific ratings, include non-negotiables and expectations as a work culture component of all employee performance reviews.
- Recruitment & Hiring: Use behavioral and situational interviewing to gauge the candidate’s skills and qualities that are consistent with your organizational-engagement expectations.
- Employment Branding: communicate “Why would you work here?” on your website, career page, social media, and during job application process to reinforce the employment experience value your workforce enjoys and to attract new employees.
- Manage Message: insure your organizational-engagement experience and practices are reflected at brand touchpoints including direct sales, retail floor, reception, interview process, job fairs and conference booths and signage.
“Establishing Non-Negotiables for an Organizationally-Engaged Culture”
In my newsletter “Ten Strategies to Foster an Employee-Engaged Culture”, I wrote about the global pandemic crises’ impact on the world of work: forcing change on how we manage, supervise and operate our businesses. I presented a blueprint to become a more employee-engaged culture to both attract job candidates and retain current employees resulting in meeting customer needs and improved outcomes.
It involved the organization’s commitment to an environment where employees, for example, can develop, work independently, or be encouraged to share their ideas and input.
It also entails the employee’s role; their accountability to their job responsibilities, co-workers, customers and organizational growth.
I describe it as a holistic culture of “organizational- engagement“: management, supervisors and employees.
Where do you begin? Attempt to reduce any ambiguity for what is expected. Consider establishing the non-negotiables that you are committed to in creating an organizational-engaged work culture by defining and clarifying behavioral and performance expectations for everyone in the organization. Then integrate these as benchmarks into everyday practices and interactions such as hiring, managing, communicating and branding. Non-negotiable examples include:
- Ownership of responsibilities, deadlines and outcomes
- Collaborative, sharing of information and expertise
- Proactive in improving the customer experience
- Employees are valued and treated with respect
- Strategy and goals are written, discussed and understood
- Difference opinion are expressed freely
“Rethinking How You Hire”
I enjoyed the opportunity to work with the Greater Raritan Workforce Development Board to create and deliver to business employers the webinar “Championing Your Employee Brand as a Recruitment Strategy”. This program was intended to assist employers with today’s recruiting and staffing challenges with solutions on how to answer the question “Why would someone work for your organization?”
Participants left the the session rethinking how they hire, with practical ideas and action steps to integrate the employee brand experience into the recruitment and selection process, including valuable takeaways for recruitment best practices for immediate application back on the job.
Don’t hesitate to call or email me for additional information on offering this program for your organization.