The Human Touch: How Employees Drive Exceptional Customer Experiences

In today's competitive landscape, businesses are constantly striving to provide exceptional customer experiences. While technology plays a crucial role in streamlining processes and enhancing customer interactions, it is the human element that truly drives the quality of the customer journey. Employees, the face of a company, are the ones who interact with customers directly, shaping their perceptions and brand loyalty. In this high-tech age, it's technology that allows for scale, but it's people that allow for depth

Why Bad Customer Experiences Happen

No company intentionally sets out to create bad customer experiences. However, these instances often occur due to a lack of alignment, communication, or empowerment within the organization. When employees are not fully aware of customer expectations, or have their own interpretation of customer experience, they may make decisions or provide service that falls short of expectations.

The Power of Employee Alignment

When companies achieve a high level of alignment, departments and its employees share a common purpose and understanding of what customers are trying to accomplish. This shared vision fosters a customer-centric mindset, where employees are empowered to go above and beyond to resolve issues, exceed expectations, and create lasting positive impressions.

NS, the Dutch national railway company, has transformed its customer experience by empowering its train conductors to personalize announcements, incorporating humor and creativity into their interactions with passengers. To encourage this initiative, NS created challenges for conductors, encouraging them to showcase their unique personalities and connect with passengers on a human level. This shift in approach led to a significant improvement in customer satisfaction scores.

Embracing the Outside-In Perspective

Achieving exceptional customer experience requires a deep understanding of its customer and emphasising from their perspective. This outside-in approach involves stepping away from internal processes and policies and immersing oneself in the customer's journey, identifying the friction points and delights that shape their perception of the brand.

Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, was a master of this philosophy. He regularly visited his own stores and those of competitors, observing customer behavior, staff interactions, and overall store conditions. This hands-on approach allowed him to identify areas where Walmart could improve its customer experience and adapt to changing customer needs.

Frontstage and Backstage Alignment

Achieving a seamless customer experience requires collaboration between front-line employees who interact with customers directly and backstage employees who support the front-line experience. This collaboration breaks down silos and ensures that everyone is working towards the same goal – delivering an exceptional customer experience.

Apple understands this importance of aligning frontstage and backstage experiences. CEO Tim Cook regularly visits Apple Stores, often entering through the back entrance unannounced. He engages with employees, answers their questions they have about Apple. This hands-on approach helps him ensure that Apple Stores consistently deliver a high-quality customer experience.

Empowering Employees through Journeys and Principles

High-performing CX organizations have a well-defined customer journey map that outlines the key touchpoints and interactions customers experience throughout their relationship with the company. This map helps employees understand and anticipate customer needs, identify potential friction points, and proactively address any issues.

In addition, these organizations establish clear experience principles. These principles articulate how the organisation wants customers to feel in interactions, and how that emotion should be evoked in the journey. Your local coffee shop could be using a principle like “we want customers to feel acknowledged, therefore no customer goes undetected, no matter how busy we are”. Principles like these serve as a compass, ensuring that all employees are aligned in their approach to customer interactions, fostering a consistent and positive experience.

In conclusion, the human touch remains the cornerstone of exceptional customer experiences. When employees are empowered, engaged, and genuinely care about customer satisfaction, they become the driving force behind creating memorable and lasting connections. By aligning employees with customer purpose, understanding the customer journey, and fostering a unified front-backstage approach, organizations can elevate their customer experience to new heights, driving customer loyalty, brand advocacy, and long-term success.