Innovation Insight: How to Deliver Excellent Customer Experience

KnowledgeBrief clients were joined at this month’s Innovation Day by Professor John Murphy, Manchester Business School, to provide new thinking and practical application on the aspects of customer management.

The vast majority of companies are fully aware of the ability to attract new customers. However, organisations must also deliver on customer satisfaction, in order to maintain customer loyalty and retention. Whether you are working with businesses, customers, clients, consumers, citizens, or patients – the same principles apply to all.

As part of the Innovation Day, we asked clients – including Linklaters, Hackney Council, DHL and Warrington CCG – to provide advice on how they would successfully implement excellent customer experience. Some of the key takeaways were:

• Remember the P2P relationship: People-to-People. To achieve real customer loyalty and retention, companies must zoom in on the long term relationship with the customer and make a genuine effort to understand who their customers are.
• Keep your promises to keep your customers. People expect consistency of professionalism, and trust is the anchor to retaining relationships. Sincerity is very important. Don’t deprioritise helping existing customers in the attempt to get new ones.
• Invest in recruitment and training of front-line staff. Customers are judgemental of any interaction – whether it’s a nurse or receptionist. Companies really need to make sure that the front-line staff are all high quality and that they have the right interpersonal skills, as they are the real ambassadors of the company.
• Investigate employee satisfaction. Employee engagement should be the most important area for any organisation. Customer retention goes hand in hand with employee retention. Conducting regular employee surveys means you can address any problems immediately.
• Put as much emphasis on compliment management as on complaint management. Responding to positive feedback from employees and customers is important. Complaint management many companies do already, but compliment management should become the forefront.
• Bring the customer to the board room. Customer service starts at board level and transcends through the organisation. The customer should be relevant for everyone in the organisation and needs to be a top priority.

Next, this group will focus on the role of collaboration tools and networks in building a better innovation strategy. For more information, please view the Innovation Day page.