Last month I wrote about the importance of cultivating a client-centric focus in your business as well as providing excellent customer service.
Customer service is what you do, and customer experience is how the client perceives what you do. The size of the gap between the two depends on how client-centric your organization is.
[quotes]Statistics from multiple sources show buyers are up to five times more likely to purchase from companies that provide a good customer experience.[/quotes] So, narrowing that gap is critical to optimize your success and differentiate you from competitors.
Since improving client service is a primary focus for many companies in 2018 – including your competitors – let’s look at how core values drive client experiences, and how you can achieve a greater focus on services by establishing the right values.
What Are Core Values?
Core values in business are the fundamental principles on which your company bases its goals and objectives, its strategic plans and service philosophy. These values also help suppliers, customers and other parties understand how you operate, what’s important to you, and what to expect when they’re doing business with you.
The beliefs shape your company culture and reflect what your organization considers important, while educating existing and potential clients and clarifying the company’s identity. [quotesright]You could consider values to be a blueprint for the way you work and relate to your customers. [/quotesright]
Why Do You Need Them?
To deliver a successful customer experience it takes more than simply offering a better product or service. You can have in place all the core values you want – honesty, integrity, productivity, respect and trust, for example.
[quotesright]Unless your employees are committed to helping your customers solve their actual challenges, however, this doesn’t translate into revenue and profit. [/quotesright]
If your customer’s experience is important to your business, developing customer-focused core values is essential for your staff so they understand buyers’ pain points and provide solutions. This helps you to ensure referrals, bring back returning clients, and deliver a high performance.
Identifying Appropriate Values
[quotesright]Every company exists to make a profit, but that factor shouldn’t govern your activities and beliefs. [/quotesright] On the contrary, your clients’ needs should be the deciding factor on what constitutes good service, and this will happen if you establish core values such as:
- Client Focus. Once you recognize that customers are the reason for your business success, you’ll be more committed and interested in listening and responding to their requirements.
- Diligence. To achieve the highest level of diligence in your company, you need to implement the highest levels of staffing capabilities. This requires training, motivation, supervision, and support to deliver, but if each member of your team is focused on giving their best performance, your customers will benefit.
- Integrity. [quotesright]Nobody wants to do business with a dishonest supplier. [/quotesright] Even a whiff of dishonesty will cost you sales. The ability to ensure that your company operates with integrity and each employee does their very best for clients at all times can provide you with a real competitive advantage.
- Respect. This value works in several ways, and doesn’t apply only to customers. You certainly have to treat your clients with respect, but by developing customer-focused core values that extend respect to the employees, you’ll encourage your staff to hold themselves accountable to high moral and ethical practices.
- Strong Leadership. This one’s important, because leadership can make a significant difference in a company’s ability to enhance profitability. Pay people what they are worth and set your team up for success by improving efficiencies and removing routine tasks from your staff. This gives them back time in the day that can be better spent providing good customer service.
- Accountability. Train your workers to understand that the customer’s experience ultimately depends on them. Instill in them a sense of accountability for the success or failure of each individual transaction, for the conversion of every lead, and the retention of every customer.
- Empower, Recognize, Reinforce, and Reward. U.S. companies spend billions on incentives to influence positive customer care and keep service staff focused on the clients’ experience. According to Forrester Research, it’s more effective to begin with the person serving the customer than the customer themselves. Empower your employees to solve the customer’s problem, make them an advocate within.
- Customer Empowerment. Enable your customers to respond through multiple channels and encourage them to provide feedback. Some options for connecting include online chat, help desk, email, social media engagement, or even telephone calls.
- Fostering Loyalty. Create a gratitude program that honors long-term customers and highlights your appreciation.
- Performance Management. Integrate your customer-focused methodologies into all your programs for coaching and training then review the performance of your staff to ensure they comply with all of these requirements.
The Link Between Core Values and Brand Promise
There is a strong link between internal and external service and profitability. Many companies don’t recognize that employees need to “live” the brand promise for them to be effective in creating a customer-focused culture that attracts and retains clients.
Organizations that are successful at doing this typically involve their employees in the development of values, which are based on customer feedback and linked to their brand. They encourage their employees to align their behaviors with the values and reward them for doing so, above and beyond basic payment for “doing their jobs.”
[quotesright]Customer-centricity is a way of doing business that focuses on creating a positive experience for the client. [/quotesright] Put him or her at the center of the company’s philosophy, operations or ideas and be obsessive about delighting customers, even the ones that are a bit of a pain. They are your chance to turn their problem around and turn them into one of your strongest advocates.
It all begins with having the right culture and core values in place and getting all team members to buy in to them.
[quotesright]Does your business have a customer-centric approach across all aspects of your company? [/quotesright] If not, let’s talk, we are experts who can help you identify your company’s core values, involve your employees in developing them, strategize ways to implement adoption of the values, and develop culture guaranteed to deliver greater success.
Give me a call or drop an email, let’s discuss your opportunities to outgrow, out earn and outpace your competition. USA: 877.433.6225 feedback@focalpointcoaching.com
Resources you can use:
- https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2017/02/customer-experience-core-values.html
- https://www.ameyo.com/blog/customer-experience-statistics
- https://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3072017 https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2016/12/core-principles-customer-centric-organization.html
- https://www.taylored.com/about/core-values/
- https://go.forrester.com/blogs/12-05-11-9_ways_to_reward_employees_to_reinforce_customer_centric_behaviors/
- https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2016/12/core-principles-customer-centric-organization.html
- http://www.customerchampions.co.uk/creating-a-customer-orient