September has the virtue of taking us back to our childhood days and adopting a certain "start-up" attitude, even though in the business world the fiscal year begins in January and ends in December. But for some psychological reason, and also because most people have taken a few days off in the summer, when there is much less activity, September remains the quintessential "back to school" month. For everyone, young and not so young, whether they like it or not.
To make the adjustment, or the dreadedreentry, a little less difficult, we wanted to draw on a recentupdate to a classic from a company as renowned in customer experience as the Temkin Group. Under the title The 6 Laws of Customer Experience, the firm has updated this 10-year-old post and now accompanies it with a video and infographics. It is worth revisiting its teachings to start the course, slowly but surely, in terms of Customer Experience.
Just like the laws that govern physics, there is a set of fundamental truths that explain how organizations treat their customers. We call this The Six Laws of Customer Experience," states the publication, which is signed by Bruce Temkin himself, the company's managing partner.
Let's take a brief look at these laws.
Law No. 1 is that "every action creates a personal reaction." This means that the quality of an experience depends entirely on the eyes of the beholder. An experience can be delightful for one customer and absolutely terrible for another. When it comes to customer experience, one size does not fit all of our users.
Law No. 2 states that "people are instinctively self-centered." It doesn't matter how much we try to attract the attention of more or less loyal or more or less potential customers. Ultimately, everyone sees the world through their own frame of reference, and, as you might expect, these unique perspectives greatly influence what they do and how they do it. What does a customer care about first and foremost? Their own needs, desires, and goals. It is the company's responsibility to match this with the reality of its employees, who "have a deep understanding of their company's products, organizational structure, and processes."
Law No. 3 states that "familiarity with the customer creates alignment." In other words, it is essential to have a clear vision of what customers need and want, as well as what they dislike most, so that decisions and actions can be aligned across the organization. When employees share a common vision of who the target customer is, there will be less disagreement about the best ways to serve these customers. This is especially true if, as is increasingly the case, they have easy access to customer feedback.
According to Law No. 4, "unengaged employees do not create engaged customers." No matter how often this idea is repeated, it willnever cease to be relevant: without employee experience,there is no customer experience. Period. Walt Disney once said, "You can design, create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality." And the creator of so many wonderful worlds was not wrong: companies with a great customer experience tend to have significantly more engaged employees. When statistics always show this result, it is no coincidence. It is a law.
The next law, No. 5, reinforces the previous one, because it states that "employees do what is measured, what is incentivized, and what is celebrated." If you are one of those (dwindling) executives who don't understand why your employees don't treat customers better, there's good news for you: it's no mystery. Employee behavior can almost always be explained by the environment in which they find themselves. And what creates that environment? Take note: at least the metrics the company tracks, the activities it rewards, and the actions it celebrates. Collectively, these three factors determine how employees behave.
The final law is one that some may not want to hear, but it may be the most relevant. Law No. 6: "The customer experience CANNOT be faked." No means no. You can fool some people some of the time, but most people will always be the judge of what is real and what isfake. And this carries over to employees themselves: if the customer experience is NOT a real priority for the company, it will not be a priority for its employees either. You can spend as much as you want on advertising trying to say otherwise. It won't work 🙂
Six laws that are now classics in this discipline, and which, in this brief September update, once again lay the cards on the table to take it to the level of excellence. Have a great "back to school" season!
Photo byCytonn PhotographyonUnsplash
