Build a Customer-Obsessed CX Team
What is customer obsession and why is it important?
Customer obsession is a state of intense emphasis on enhancing the customer experience from the viewpoint of the customer. Customer obsession refers to a dedication to keeping the customer’s wants and needs first.
Ultimately, it means:
Anything you do, from sales to service to marketing, revolves around the needs of your customers.
Being a customer-obsessed company increases retention, loyalty and ultimately makes you a more successful organization.
Start building your customer-obsessed team.
As with most things within an organization, you’ll need to start from the ground up - by motivating your Customer Experience team.
Your CX team is directly responsible for showing your company’s true customer obsession. Without the buy-in from this key team - you’ve got nothing.
If you’ve ever worked in Customer Experience, you know that far too many businesses neglect to prioritize their employees and provide them with the tools they need to provide excellent service. Creating meaningful customer interactions doesn't end with productivity and efficacy. Because of this, there is a human aspect missing from the consumer experiences.
Professionals in Customer Experience feel unheard, disconnected, and burnt-out from their work. This kind of burn-out leads to apathy when it comes to their customer’s experience. Without motivation, our CX team can find themselves with the mentality of “not my job.”
To build a team who takes ownership of their interactions, who are truly bought-in to wow-ing their customers, you need to empower them!
Give your team confidence through coaching.
If you aren’t already, you need to be doing weekly coaching and training sessions with each individual on your team. In these sessions, you should be giving them the confidence they need to resolve their customer’s issues.
When you train your agents regularly, you're training them to manage any situation that can occur. When a customer approaches your agent with an issue - there will be no panic when it comes to resolving it. They are assured that they have the tools, team support, and leadership they need to solve the problem correctly.
This kind of confidence is the first step to ownership in customer interaction. You want your agents to feel the attitude that they resolve anything that comes their way. That type of confidence gives them the push to start going above and beyond for their customers.
Emphasize quality over quantity.
To be customer-obsessed, we shouldn’t be rushing through conversations. In the era of immediate gratification, agents who feel obligated to be fast will not feel like they can truly investigate customer’s problems. Especially if remaining in a chat for two minutes longer would negatively impact their metrics.
Empowered CX professionals, on the other hand, are not expected to obey excessively stringent rules - because there aren’t any. Even if it means losing a KPI, they'll take the time to explain why a problem happened for your customer. They know that if their call lasts longer than the normal talk time, they will not be penalized for using their best judgment and providing the customer with additional details. Conversational customer relationships are key to being a customer-obsessed company.
Listen to your Customer Experience team.
A major complaint in Customer Experience is that the teams do not feel heard. It’s important to recognize that those who have daily interaction with the clients are the ones who are nearest to their achievements and shortcomings. Those on the front lines have firsthand knowledge of what your customers appreciate, despise, and love about your services. Oh, and yeah - they’ve heard every complaint, too.
What I’m saying is: talk to your Customer Experience team. They are the most important people at your company and should be involved in decision-making. They live the experiences each and every day and should always be present at your leadership meetings.
Give your Customer Experience team power:
Companies that are customer-obsessed know to delegate tasks to their front-line staff. They enable the people who are closest to customers' needs and expectations to be personally accountable and motivated to build value for them. Whatever the customer's issue is, the Customer Experience team member who addresses it will be the one who ultimately resolves the issue.
If you ask me, there need to be way fewer escalations - and more agents having the ability to just solve the issues that come their way.
Give your team members the ability to:
Make refunds and provide credits
Send gift cards, flowers, etc
Create feature requests for Product
By empowering your Customer Experience team, you’re giving them the knowledge they need to help customers, a voice in decision-making, and the confidence to do their jobs well. This kind of empowerment leads to a happier, more hard-working team who puts their customer’s needs first. The best way to show your customers that you’re obsessed with them is by making sure your Customer Experience team has everything they need to be successful in their roles.