Oversee Your Customer’s "Real Time" Journey

Customers are changing rapidly and keeping up with customer expectations in a world where nobody wants to complete another survey can be very challenging!  Research shows 93% of Americans say organizations fail to exceed their customer service expectations and 60% of customers have higher expectations for customer service now than they did just one year ago.  Today the customer tells us it’s all about the experience.  97% of customers say that customer service is very important or somewhat important in their choice of and loyalty to a brand!  Understanding the customer’s journey through their entire experience with our organization from their POV is absolutely critical to success in today’s very competitive environment.  Examining the key moments of truth that occur at important touch points in that journey to ensure the customer experience is exceeding expectations on a real time basis provides us with an opportunity to design and deliver the kind of customer experiences that drive advocacy and spur repeat purchases!

Last year, my associate's wife bought a brand new Lexus SUV.  It came with a navigation system built into the dash.  It looks really slick!  It will alert you when there is a traffic accident miles ahead and tell you the time length of the upcoming traffic delay.  It monitors all the systems of your vehicle and sends you an alert if there is anything out of the ordinary.  You get a reminder if your tires need air, your oil needs changing, or your shoe lace is untied.  I was just kidding about the shoe part…but, you get the point!

A week after she bought the car with the cool navigation system in the dash, she put her old Garmin GPS on top of the dash and plugged it into the cigarette lighter!  It was her test.  Sure enough, her Garmin was showing roads not known by the navigation system.  When the GPS on the dash and navigation system in the dash differed on the “best route” to a particular location, the GPS always gave the best, most up-to-date advice.  “It’s the satellite,” she explained.  “The navigation system is information programmed into a CD months ago.  It stays the same until you go the dealership and update it.  But, the GPS stays updated…real time.”

Customer needs are a lot like the landscape.  They change all the time, not just annually when you are about to send out the big survey.  Smart organizations figure out ways to build customer GPS’s into every customer touch point.  When a customer has a hiccup in Des Moines, the distribution center in San Jose knows about it.  When a quorum of disgruntled customers register a compliant on social media, a strike team is triggered to search for root causes and implement an appropriate fix.  Get rid of your customer navigation system and put your customer GPS on your dash!
 

© Chip Bell Group, 2023.  Courtesy of John R. Patterson (www.johnrpatterson.com).  Permission is given to download and distribute this article as long as it contains this copyright notice.