These 5 Questions Can Tell You Whether Your Customer Experience is Broken

In working through common customer experience problems, we generally find some combination of the 5 elements below at the core. There is a continuum to building a customer experience that starts with the 5 major elements outlined below. Ask yourself the 5 questions below. If you answer "no" to any of them you may have an undiagnosed customer experience issue.

Would 10 Employees Describe Your Brand in Roughly the Same (correct) Terms?

If you stopped 10 employees in the hall and asked them, "What's your understanding of our employer brand?", they should all give a similar general description. At the very least, they should all use similar words that they have hopefully heard, and more importantly, the words should represent sentiments that describe what they have experienced from their colleagues.

Would 10 Employees Describe Your Employer Brand in Roughly the Same (correct) Terms?

This exercise is identical to your litmus test of your company brand: you simply want to know whether all of your employees understand the voice you hope to project as an employer. For example, our agency, Upward, is a "Hero" brand. It's our hope that our employees would describe our company brand and employer brand in roughly the same terms. We would be looking for phrases such as "be a hero," "amazing work" and "thrill the customer." We would be looking for positive superlatives that support our hero brand.

Do you Have a Continuing Customer Service Education Program for Everyone Who Works With Your Customers?

Do you have a "basic training" program for the employees who work with customers? Do you have ongoing, consistent training for your employees to reinforce "who they should be" to your customers?

Do You Have Response Standards?

Do you have standards defined for how long a customer should need to wait for a response. Do you have decision trees for your employees to follow for common questions? If you do not have these standards, it's likely that your employees are creating their own defacto standards. Sometimes this will be good, other times not so much.

Are You Recording & Monitoring Your Phone Calls and Emails?

Is someone from the marketing team consistently measuring whether the brand is being well represented in these calls and emails?

It All Works Together

If you look at the order of the questions, a process becomes apparent. If you have an established brand and you can articulate who "you hope to be" to your customers, you can create a clear employer brand that communicates who you are to your employees.

This allows you to attract the types of employees that will naturally be a fit for your vision. If they have a company brand to follow, they have a template to work from.

You have your brand, you have an employer brand--now, are you teaching it to your team?

You've hired the right people (who are naturally motivated to work in the same direction as your brand), and you've given them the training and tools to be amazing. Is it working? If you aren't consistently measuring your customer experience, you are in the dark with respect to the effectiveness of your brand execution.

If you don't know an answer to a question, it's quite possible that the answer is not good. Consistent measurement is key.

If you answered "no" to any of these questions, it's likely that you have customer experience issues.

Fear not, we can help! Give us a call today and we can get you started on the road to customer awesomeness with a Customer Journey Assessment.