To Deliver The Best Customer Experience, Must Commit To Do Business Differently!

I am still floored by the following statistics from Forrester Research:

• 80% of executives believe that their company competes on its "customer experience."
• Only 11% have a formal process to assess and improve that experience.

For those executives reading this blog entry, I am sure you recognise the issue since many of your companies are counted here. I recently commented on this in a recent posting: http://deliveringperfectservice.blogspot.com/2010/03/businesses-need-perfect-service.html

As result, it is indeed a crowded noisy competitive marketplace, with organizations all over claiming to have the best service experience in the industry. But as we see from this research, most are claiming it, but are doing nothing other than telling stories, to deliver it.

The following is a copy of the first post for my blog that emphasizes the point:

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Commit To Delivering "Perfect Service"

This blog is targeted to management within Service Delivery companies who truly want to be able to say "Our company delivers the best service in the industry!" and then deliver on that promise. Sadly, I have found that most companies will say the words--even put it is some sort of company values or vision statement--but then never commit to deliver.

It is not enough to say it; a company must be it.

"Perfect Service" is an approach to managing a Service Delivery company that transforms the focus of the company to totally satisfying the customer. And when a company begins that journey, magical things begin to happen:

--Customers begin to openly communicate with you;
--Satisfaction ratings begin to soar;
--Sales presentations begin to focus on tangible evidence of satisfaction;
--Conversations are less about cost and fees;
--Employee evaluations become simpler;
--And incredibly, costs to operate go down!

Over time, "Perfect Service" will retain and attract more customers--at lower overall cost and at premium fees.

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My View

My boss once challenged me to recommend an approach that did not merely talk about customer service, but transformed the entire company's customer service design into a premier customer experience engine.

My warning was straightforward: "To be viewed as the best, you can't do it the same way as everyone else....it is not a question of simply out-executing our competitors. The nuances will be lost in the conversation. To be the best, you have to do it differently, and be bold in your approach. It is a full body commitment."

Perfect Service was the result. And I am still convinced the principles of Perfect Knowledge, Perfect Improvement, and the Perfect Guarantee, can be the bedrock for other firms embarking on that same journey.