Six Steps to Better Understanding your Customers
As Brands increasingly focus on the customer experience, they will recognize that their organization lack a deep understanding and appreciation for their customers. It's not a flaw in the people, just a natural result of how organizations operate. To break this pattern, brands need to learn to "guide with empathy," Here are a few steps for putting this concept into action:
Put Customer feedback into everyday routines:
Do more than just examine customer feedback when it shows up on a report. Instead embed customer feedback into your day to day activities. Every day prior to of their shift, Apple retail store team members get together to review customer feedback who they recently interacted with in the store. This daily huddle keeps customers' need top of mind with team members and management.
Refer customers as people: Consumers are statistics...Customers are people. Your data may show 28% of your customers are female, 52 % of your customers are single owner operators, but that does not describe a real person. To spark empathy, it's very important to talk about customers in a way that team members can relate to them.
Share your Customers actual words: Reports on paper tend to eliminate the emotional element of customer feedback and making it easy to ignore. There's nothing more powerful than hearing the actual voice of the customer. Adobe has created a Customer Listening Post, which is a room where executives and team members across the company can listen and interact with actual customers.
Empower Random Acts of Kindness: Encourage team members to go out of there way for customers. Disney trains its team members on a customer focused program called 'Take Five' Disney team members are expected to take five minutes from their normal daily duties to be ' aggressively friendly' with customers. The Ritz Carlton gives team members the go ahead to spend up to $2,000 on a guest to ensure the Ritz experience.
