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The Interview with Annette Franz:

• Customer understanding is a cornerstone of a customer-centric culture. You must understand who your customers are, the experience they’re having, the problems they face, their goals, and how your business helps them achieve their goals.
• Communication is crucial in the customer experience. You must communicate openly and honestly with your customers, especially if you need to make changes and decisions that will affect their experience.
• Everything that affects the customer experience is related to the employee experience. Use the same tools to measure and map the employee experience as you do for the customer experience. Employees, after all, are “internal” customers, and what happens on the inside of an organization will be felt on the outside by external customers.
• It’s important to eliminate friction for both customers and employees. Be wary of making decisions that will eliminate friction only for customers, while creating more difficulties for employees. That friction, though not direct, will eventually be felt by the customers, too.
• Happy employees result in happy customers. If you treat your employees well, they, in turn, will treat your customers well. The result is a win-win for your business.
• Without customers, you have no business. But in order to have happy, loyal customers, you must treat your employees well. At the end of the day, your business focus should really be on the people that drive your business—both customers and employees alike.

Quotes:

“It’s all about the customer. If you don’t have any customers, then you have no business. But you won’t have customers if you don’t have employees to build things and service things. So, really, it’s all about the people.” – Annette Franz

“Out of a great employee experience comes employee engagement, productivity, and quality. This translates to a great experience for customers.” – Annette Franz

“Customer centricity is about putting the customer at the heart of everything you do. There should be no decisions, no discussions, no designs without first thinking about how it impacts the customer.” – Annette Franz

About:

Annette Franz, CCXP, is founder and CEO of CX Journey Inc., as well as an internationally recognized CX thought leader, coach, speaker, and author of Customer Understanding: Three Ways to Put the “Customer” in Customer Experience (and at the Heart of Your Business. Her website is cx-journey.com.

Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio.

This episode of Amazing Business Radio with Shep Hyken answers the following questions … and more:

1. How can I create a great customer experience?
2. How can I create a great employee experience?
3. What mistakes do employers make with their employees?
4. How are the customer experience and the employee experience related?
5. How important is communication?