Guest Blog: Turning Customer and Business Wishes into Reality

This week on our Friends on Friday guest blog post, my colleague Joseph Michelli writes about the importance of perfecting the customer experience and how it takes great leadership to achieve. I always like to say that it is the leadership that creates the culture and manages the vision of their organization. – Shep Hyken

Is delivering a great customer experience on your holiday shopping list?

According to Forrester Research, 92% of business leaders have “customer experience” improvement among their key strategic objectives.  Unfortunately, despite all that strategic prioritization, consumer satisfaction (according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index -ACSI) hovers at a 9 year low.

You, however, are a well-informed business person (heck, you read Shep’s blogs), so clearly you’re satisfying your customers! The real issue is whether you’re satisfied with your customers’ emotional engagement, loyalty, and frequency of referrals.

I recently asked Gareth Joyce, vice president of Customer Services at Mercedes-Benz USA, what he thought made the difference between businesses that consistently delight customers and those that merely satisfy them.  Gareth starkly said, “The difference is leadership.  It is all about inspiring people toward violent execution.”

While I was initially taken aback by linking the word “violent” to the work “execution,” the phrase has grown on me.  All too often, leaders accept “tolerable” execution and celebrate incremental improvements toward “good” outcomes.  Extraordinary customer experience brands are fueled by leaders who set audacious customer experience goals and enliven their people to pursue them.

Gareth’s “violent execution” is in keeping with a phrase I once heard while working with a Ritz-Carlton executive.  That leader told me he wanted to deliver “perfect customer experiences.”  When I sought to clarify by asking, “Did you mean exceptional?”  He firmly responded, “No, I meant perfect.  The pursuit of exceptional is not good enough. Perfection is about constantly striving to be better today than I was yesterday.”

Daniel Pink, in his book Drive, talks about 3 key motivators of human behavior – purpose, mastery, and autonomy.  By focusing on “why” consistently great customer experiences matter, great leaders help team members see the “purpose” and value that comes from forging personal emotional connections with customers.  That value is realized for those served, those serving, and for the long-term well-being of the business.

By setting lofty customer experience goals (e.g. violent execution or perfection), great leaders are essentially encouraging their people to stretch in pursuit of significance.  That striving engages the human need to master his/her environment.  Inspirational leaders understand that they nudge people toward mastery as agents of influence not as agents of command or control. They appreciate that people need a sufficient amount of autonomy to innovate solutions that meet the needs of those they serve.

I’ve recently witnessed the power of visionary leadership (focused on purpose, mastery and autonomy) in the transformation of the Mercedes-Benz USA (MBUSA) customer experience.  In fact, I’ve chronicled that journey in my recently released book titled Driven to Delight.

In 2012, I was contacted by MBUSA CEO Steve Cannon to assemble a panel of leaders from iconic customer experience brands such as Zappos, The Ritz-Carlton etc.  Steve Cannon had customer experience excellence on his priority list, but more boldly, he publically claimed his legacy would be the transformation of customer experiences at Mercedes-Benz.  Steve acknowledged that while Mercedes-Benz products and marketing lived up to the brand’s tag line “best or nothing,” the MBUSA customer experience being delivered across more than 370 dealerships was not on par.

Steve set an audacious goal to do more than emulate the customer experience of the best luxury car brands and instead challenged his people to consistently deliver experiences better than those being delivered by perennial customer experience champions like Nordstroms.  Steve and his leadership team’s goal was framed in the context of being “driven to delight” for every customer, every time, no excuses!

In partnership with dealership staff, customer journey maps were created, effective customer feedback tools were developed, cultural immersion programs were deployed, and people were held accountable to and rewarded for delighting customers.

So what about you? What is your transformational and inspiring customer experience vision?  How effectively are you challenging your team to stretch toward “perfection” and how accountable are your people when it comes to passionately executing in way that puts you in the ranks of the best-of-the best customer experience providers?

You may not be able to put “perfect customer experiences” under your tree or give it as a Hanukkah gift, but I’m certain you can champion the vision and drive outcomes. Those outcomes will assure your business will be serving customers for many, many holiday seasons to come.

Joseph Michelli, Ph.D., C.S.P., is a professional speaker, business consultant, and New York Times #1 Bestselling Author.  His latest book, Driven to Delight: Delivering World-Class Customer Experience the Mercedes-Benz Way was released earlier this week.  For more information on Joseph and his services, go to www.josephmichelli.com. 

For more articles from Shep Hyken and his guest contributors go to customerserviceblog.com . Read Shep’s latest Forbes Article:

Drucker Said ‘Culture Eats Strategy For Breakfast’ And Enterprise Rent-A-Car Proves It

 

 

 

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