Customer Experience Superstars: Their Celebratory Give & Take! #CX
by Kate Nasser | 2 Comments »
Customer Experience Superstars: Are You Ready to Be One?
For years I’ve had the honor of inspiring customer service and customer experience professionals to be superstars.
Super stardom starts with desire. The actions that create a marvelous customer experience come from the thirst to celebrate the customers.
The Celebratory Give & Take of Customer Experience Superstars!! Istock Image.
Superstars shine through customer success.
They engage in the celebratory give and take of customer care.
Their leaders inspire this desire daily and guide efforts to service excellence.
Image licensed from Istock.com
The desire launches through inspiration, takes shape in beliefs, sustains with commitment, develops through actions, and is honed with daily practice.
Customer Experience Superstars: Here’s What to Give & Take
- #1 Give your attention. To what customer trust truly means. To the customers themselves. To the customers’ human needs as well as the tactical requests. To the details of execution without turning the details into the destination. The destination is a great customer experience. The mission is the customer care to get there.
- #2 Give your listening. For what the customer perceives and is trying to achieve. Customer experience superstars celebrate the input to create output. The destination is a great customer experience. The mission is harmony with the customer to get there.
- #3 Give your empathy. It is the essential connection to customer trust. Empathy is feeling what the customer feels. It is not limited to comforting them in negative situations. It is the underpinning of great design. It crafts customer friendly policies. It puts you and the customer in community. It solves actual customer problems. The destination is a great customer experience. The mission is empathy with the customer to get there.
- #4 Give your heart. Customers judge commitment and establish trust through the heart. Heart is visible in the quality of products and services. It is authentic. It shows through the design and delivery. It elevates the spirit as it meets a tangible need. Heart transforms a great idea or invention into sublime success and profit for both. The destination is a great customer experience. The mission is giving your heart and authenticity to the customer to get there.
- #5 Give your objectivity. Objectivity unsticks people from tunnel vision. It creates new roads to success. It questions the obvious to uncover the obstacle and discover the answer. It preserves your professionalism in tough times and serves the customer well. The destination is a great customer experience. The mission is using your objectivity with heart to get there.
- #6 Give your balance. Balance creates a valuable human connection with the customer. Balance feels good. It draws customers back to you and the comfort. It impresses customers with your ability to see the big picture before they complain. It is not the extreme enforcement of a rigid policy. It is the design and use of procedures as guidelines that enable marvelous service. The destination is a great customer experience. The mission is keeping your balance to get there.
- #7 Give your ease. There is one thing that every customer wants and that is ease! Ease of interacting with you. Ease of using your website. Ease of getting information. Ease of making a decision. Ease of use. Ease of purchase. Ease of meeting their specific needs through you. The destination is a great customer experience. The mission is making it easy for the customers to get it.
- #8 Give your flexibility. Large organizations often struggle with this. They design a complex structure to preserve quality yet these become rigid processes that instill fear of flexibility. Customer experience superstars like Zappos, Nordstrom, Ritz-Carlton have conquered that fear. They plan and manage for success yet don’t let the plan kill the customer experience. The destination is a great customer experience. The mission is conquering the fear of flexibility to get there.
- #9 Give your knowledge and insight. In the mobile sea of Web based information, customers still value perspective, experience, and insight. Anyone can look up a list of restaurants for their vacation spots. Front desk superstars and concierges can filter that list and tailor it for the customers. The destination is a great customer experience. The mission is expert tailoring for a wonderful customer fit!
- #10 Give your solutions. Delivery with care is the mecca of a great customer experience and what customer experience superstars do so well. Solutions that hit the mark leave a lasting memory. It takes both vision and tremendous cross teamwork. It takes true customer focus to overcome the security of internal bureaucracy. The destination is a great customer experience. The mission is the teamwork, urgency, and follow-through to get there.
- #11 Give your professionalism. Professionalism is loving the feeling of caring for others. With customer experience superstars, it supersedes frustration, impatience, and envy. It puts a positive tone into every word. It holds the customer’s best interest in equal weight to the company’s goals. It defines the superstar’s work identity and sustains the long term customer relationship. The destination is a great customer experience. The mission is professionalism to get there.
Be Customer Experience Superstars!
Find and Take …
- Pride in your service; it is not servitude.
- Note of your growth; it is not an easy road.
- Comfort in the comfort you provide.
- Strength in your teams’ collective talents.
- Every opportunity to wow the customer.
Customer experience superstars celebrate what they contribute to the customer’s success. They take extra care and pride in doing it.
Be customer experience superstars. Shine through the customers’ achievements. Be instruments to their success. Get set and be ready for mission possible!
From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™
Related Posts:
Business Leadership: Who Are Your Customers’ Advocates?
Rapport is the Artery to the Heart of Trust for Super Customer Experience
Leaders, Are You All Attitude Ready?
©2012-2014 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. I appreciate your sharing the link to this post on your social streams. However, if you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please email info@katenasser.com for permission and guidelines. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.
Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on leading change, employee engagement, teamwork, and delivering the ultimate customer service. She turns interaction obstacles into interpersonal success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.
Kate
I want to underscore the quality of empathy and how beautiful and powerful it can be. I frequently visit a local grocery store, which like most has a meat section. One of butchers there is named John. I would see John frequently on my way home from work, picking up something for dinner, and he always was very helpful and warm. We developed a relationship of calling each other by first name, chatting a moment, and occasionally sharing a laugh.
A few months ago my mother died (at the age of 100) and the next day I happened to be in the store. John saw me meandering distractedly in front of his counter. “Well, what are you looking for, Dan? ” he called out. “You’re weaving around here like you don’t know where you’re going,” he laughed. “Oh, John, I’m sorry,” I said, “my mother died yesterday and I am still a bit in shock.”
John’s face changed and he immediately came out from behind the counter, reached over and put his hand on my arm. “Oh, man!” he said, “that is so rough!” I explained how old she was and how her death wasn’t really unexpected. “No matter,” he said to me, “it’s always tough. Always!” He and I spoke for a few minutes and then I wandered off to finish my shopping, with me muttering, “Thank you, John.”
His condolences, so sincere, so caring at that moment meant the world to me (more than those of friends, if truth be told) and they instantly developed a human bond. Every particle of him was there for me at that moment. Butcher, customer, it didn’t matter. It was just John, and now I value every moment of his “service” at his counter in a different way. He unexpectedly touched me. And, frankly, I don’t even bother to look down anymore at the package he hands me to see how much I’m spending. Why on earth would I?
Best to you
Dan
Dan,
This is why I love stories to teach. Your last line, “I don’t even look down at the price etc… why the heck would I?” sums it all up. Trust germinates from a deep sense of authentic care. He was just John.
And for skeptics that say “that only works in small biz” .. I can say “no”, not true.
The relationship you establish with a customer, is one-on-one no matter what the size of the company. When you allow reps to develop the relationship with the customer, future business is “all in the family” so to speak.
My deepest sympathies on the loss of your mom and gratitude that you shared this story here with me and all the readers.
Warmest wishes,
Kate