How to Bring the Organization Together to Think “Experience”

Counting on a leader to naturally switch from driving the business from a quarterly sales perspective one day to thinking all things “customer” the next is pretty delusional. There’s got to be some kind of accountability forum that forces the issue with leaders on what they did and how they did it.

The most rewarding accountability forum is the customer room, which has four goals:

1. Drive continuous learning about the impact the company has on customers
2. Assign accountability and import urgency for improvements
3. Execute ongoing modifications and improvements
4. Create awareness and manage the customer profitability pipeline

The walls of the customer room depict the customer experience stages with the priority metrics you have identified and tracked to manage customer relationships and profitability.

Wall #1 – depicts metrics on overall outcome: the flow of customers and other guerrilla metrics.

Wall #2 – posts the volume, flow, and nature of customer issues.

Wall #3 – identifies operational accountability and performance in executing the customer experience at priority contact points.

The customer room brings alive the concept of guerrilla metrics and pushes them from concept to accountability that people can manage. In addition to the outcome metrics (enlarged visually and posted on the walls), the priority contact points can be mapped and visually depicted. For example, if receiving a shipment was a key priority, you would display the packaging and communication with the results on how shipping was executed and responses from customers. You include customer complaints, the KPI’s for each key touch point and the survey results that are impacted by it.   The trending and tracking of customer issues captures who is working on the issues, what they’re doing to fix them and how long it’s taking to get the counts down.

All the operational leaders and the president meet in the room at regular intervals.  This level of public accountability is potent. The reason this works is that people know the accountability meeting will regularly occur, they know they will be held accountable, and they know that good results will be rewarded.

The visual and interactive customer room brings the organization together to think “experience” rather than “my silo.”

Companies that excel in managing their customers as assets consistently hold scheduled forums to address customer accountability.  The differentiating factor between them and the everyday company is the beloved company is the customer conversation isn’t just a meeting or an agenda item, its part of nearly every conversation.