Customer Experience Leaders: Remove the Never Ever Rules | #cx #cco
by Kate Nasser | 2 Comments »
Customer Experience Leaders: Are rigid rules ruling (and ruining) your customers’ experiences?
If your answer is a quick “no”, I ask you: “Have you asked your customers?
If your answer is “not sure”, I ask you: “Have you asked your customers?
If your answer is a list of reasons why the rules are important, they are most likely ruining your customers’ experiences!
Find and remove all the “never evers” that are not required by law or science!
Customer experience leaders, there are more never ever rules in your organization than you think. They quietly develop, take hold, and ruin customer experience — until you find and remove them.
The never evers – everything you don’t let customers do — lurk within your organization. They take root in the need for security. They develop as protection mechanisms. They thrive in blame cultures. They kill customer experience.
Great customer experience leaders remove these never evers!
- The — it’s always been that way — never ever rules.
- The leader’s never evers that serve their own personality, goals, preferences.
- The team’s never evers that develop from a leader’s criticism or rebuke. Team members begin protecting themselves vs. serving the customers. Blame creates these individual protective never evers that sink customer experience.
- The reactionary never evers that develop from a difficult interaction with a customer.
- The silo never evers that evolve as different teams build walls between each other.
- The deduced never ever rules that grow on the grape vine from poor or confusing communication from leadership.
- The — we don’t trust our employees — never ever rules. These un-empowered agents and reps must say no to customer requests only to have the leaders say yes. For customer experience, it’s too little too late!
Customer Experience Leaders: Prevent the Return of Never Ever Rules
Never ever rules block superior customer experience. They almost always serve your company not the customer. They feed your failure and your competition’s success.
Replace the Never Ever Rules!
- Excavate all never ever rules.
- Identify the purpose of procedures and rules.
- Create a can-do culture of possibilities with what ifs, dialogue, listening and critical thinking.
- Replace silos with trust bonds built on a bigger purpose and honest communication with and among teams.
- Breed accountability not blame.
Take a lesson from companies like Zappos, Ritz-Carlton, Amazon, Nordstroms, and lesser known ones that have adopted a truly can-do customer experience culture!
Make sure that the sign your employees envision is “GO” not “STOP!”
What never ever rules have you found and removed in your organization and how did it help customer experience?
From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™
Related Posts:
Customer Experience: 24 Tips to Make it Easy for Customers
Are You Driving Calm Customers Away? Checklist to help you!
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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.
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~Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™
I was assigned to look at government imposed rules for work visa which hinders our temporary consultant immediate access to the company in case of emergency. When I looked more in depth into the regulation of the government rules and compared it to our HR rules we came into the surprise that such temp access was imposed by the security department. When we asked why they referred to a retired manager who asked to NEVEF EVER allow externals to access without a work visa! So it was an internal rule that was imposed which created lots of delays in company access under the impression that it was government requirement!
Thanks for the enlightenment Kate 😉
Khalid
And thank YOU Khalid. What a wonderful real life example to illustrate this post so well! And in the example you offer — it was a “retired manager” who set the policy and it stuck as a NEVER ever.
I am so grateful for all your comments where you offer in the field points that make a difference!
Warmest wishes and thanks,
Kate