”We’re seeing record shortages as people quit customer-facing jobs at unprecedented rates”.
Businesses that don’t treat their staff better could be set to suffer greatly. Not only will they struggle to fill positions, with customer service standards potentially harmed as a result, but there is also a growing sense that society has become more sensitive to how companies treat their employees.
As Forrester senior analyst Judy Weader has noted: “Customers are realizing that brands are sacrificing employee welfare on the altar of unsustainable customer experiences. In response, more customers are voting with their wallets, switching their business to brands that treat their employees better.”
“This is a paradigm we have seen before; businesses consistently overestimate their performance compared to how customers would rate it,” notes Peter Dorrington, founder of Exemplify Consulting.
One answer for helping your employees and at the same time improving customer experience is embracing the latest iteration, Customer science. Customer science combines technology, customer data, and artificial intelligence (AI). The significant difference between customer science and customer experience is the behavioral science aspects of it. With all these factors working together, customer science can help organizations anticipate customers’ needs and build experiences that meet them, and we would like to be one part that can contribute to this with our solutions at HappyOrNot.
But customer experience is an investment. It is an ongoing improvement project. As we move forward, a new layer of tools and considerations and even science will move the needle in the right direction. Great brands understand this and constantly moving forward in this area, and with some basic principles.
You must get your customers to trust you. Once they trust you, then you need to communicate that you care about them and value them. Then, after all of this, when you make them happy, it is the kind of happiness that drives customer loyalty and, perhaps more importantly, customer-driven growth. The result is measurable in real-time and can easily be used to drive improvement.
So, give your employees the right tools and then put the customer experience as your number one priority.
Happy Holidays