I just returned from a recent trip with clients in Europe and I wanted to share with you some of the insights we had, as I feel they can add value to all our companies.
We were discussing the key values that drive this company, and one that was important to them was the aspect of, being ‘easy to deal with’ from their customers point of view.
So, as a way of challenging and confirming if this value were true, we did an exercise to map out the customer’s journey through the entire sales process and beyond. We looked at all the touch points of where, when and how we interacted with them.
What we discovered was very enlightening, from the completed map we could see some gaps in service levels and some elements of duplication, other processes involved several individuals unnecessarily in the same department, and still others involved the customer in taking too many additional steps.
What is interesting is that this company is a well-run customer focused organisation with good customer service.
However, without stepping back and getting a better customer’s perspective it’s easy for systems and processes to evolve which serve our own individual department’s needs rather than the customers!
So, I’d like to strongly encourage you to do a Spring clean!
Reflect on whether you are really organised for your customers to easily interact with you across all touchpoints and departments, not just at one specific phase but throughout their customer journey.
This mapping process is so valuable as you can identify areas for improvement.
In the example above, we could drop certain steps in the customer service process to make problem resolution faster for the customer. We also filled the communication gaps between sales and customer service, so the sales people had real-time information on customer issues.
Cleaning up and streamlining these areas made them more efficient and delivered even higher service levels to their customers.
How often have you called a company and been transferred to several departments and having to explain your issue every time!
Let’s set a goal to make sure that isn’t our firm!
It would be great to hear your thoughts and comments so why not drop me a line?
Happy Spring Cleaning!
