How Aligned Teams Can Supercharge Your Customer Experience with Alan Williams

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

1. Why is alignment within an organization important for the customer experience? 
2. How has the customer landscape changed in the last 20 years? 
3. Why does customer experience start with leadership? 
4. How is employee engagement linked to the customer experience? 
5. Why is brand identity crucial for an organization’s customer experience? 

Top Takeaways

• Customer experience is not just a function or a set of processes. It’s not just some department or strategy. It is ingrained into the company’s culture from the top leadership to every employee. It’s in the DNA.  

• Everybody’s job is important when it comes to customer experience. Every employee must understand how what they do impacts the customer, even if they’re two or three places removed. 

• Over the last 20 years, customer decision has shifted to where it is 80% driven by emotion and values. Customers choose to do business with companies that share the same values and stand for the same social causes as them. 

• Communication has greatly evolved thanks to the internet and social media. Customers’ thoughts about a brand can now be shared with millions of people in an instant. Companies need to ensure that their messaging is authentic to their brand identity and resonates with their audience. 

• Organizations used to have the majority of control over brand perception. They could decide how they want to be perceived and hire a company to pump out that message. Now, customers put more trust in what their friends, family, or colleagues tell them.   

• The customer focus should extend to the organization’s internal customers as well. Every role, whether customer-facing or support-oriented, plays a part in shaping the overall customer experience. Customers, employees, service partners, and communities now shape how people think about a brand. 

• Customer experience should reflect the organizational brand identity. Every aspect of the customer journey, from arrival to departure, should embody the organization’s values. Every action, whether customer-facing or behind the scenes, should reflect the company’s mission. When this alignment occurs, and everyone in the organization understands and represents the brand identity it creates a consistent and compelling customer experience.

• Plus, Alan shares examples of  customer experience from the hospitality industry (every type of business can benefit from a hospitality mentality.) Tune in! 

Quotes:

“A hospitality mentality helps drive customer experience. It is a brilliant training ground because you can learn a lot from that space and then apply it to other sectors.” 

“Customers use to make choices and decisions that are often driven by rational, financial decisions. Now, customers are making choices based on their values and what is important to them.” 

“The organizations that will be successful in the future are those that have established a sense of shared values across all of their stakeholder groups—the customers, the employees, and the investors.” 

“Delivering a fantastic customer experience is about the hard work and obsession with delivering it every single time. We don’t always come across great service because people don’t always have the discipline and longevity to maintain it.” 

“Customer experience is inextricably connected to all parts of the organization. If there is no alignment throughout the organization, CX is not going to be as good as it could be.” 

About:

Alan Williams is the founder and managing director of SERVICEBRAND GLOBAL Ltd and the co-author of Supercharging the Customer Experience: How Organizations Can Drive Performance in Today’s Values-Based Economy.

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