Defining the Customer Experience

by Chris Domergue, Director of Client Services

On May 26^th, I wrote a blog post entitled ‘Four Steps to Improving Customer Service.’ It’s a subject of particular importance to Federal agencies, especially since President Obama has required all of them to improve their customer service strategies in the next six months.  You can read it here.

In my previous post, I listed what I believe to be the four key principles of successful customer service: define the customer experience; focus on consistent information; leverage today’s technology and data; and make customer experience one of your core functions.  Today, I’d like to discuss the first of those principles in more detail – how to effectively define the customer experience.

There are three fundamentals in defining the customer experience.  You need to identify your “customer”, know how and why they interact with your organization, and understand how your employees deliver services to them.  A well-run organization’s goal should be to exceed their customers’ expectations in every interaction they have.

First and foremost, a “customer” is not just a person that buys a product from a company.  Customers can use any one of an organization’s services, leverage their facilities, check out their social media presence, support the organization, or simply just want some information.  The way in which customers perceive their interactions with an organization is critical to the success or failure of that organization regardless of whether it is a commercial corporation or a government agency. 

Customers don’t care how your organization is structured, and they shouldn’t have to jump through hoops because separate groups manage your website, supervise your field offices, and run your contact centers.  When you discuss improvements to your customers’ experiences, talk about their needs, their terms, and their expectations – not your personal preferences. 

As an example, I once worked with a large government client who was very adamant on what the ideal customer experience should be, based on the agency’s own biases.  However, when I conducted a focus group of 100 customers that would be leveraging this agency’s services, not one of them used the same terminology to describe what they wanted, nor did they feel the agency’s idea of the ‘ideal’ customer experience would even meet their needs.  If our design had been based on this agency’s internal bias instead of the customers’ feedback, the solution would have failed.

So, how do you get started?  How can you understand where your customer’s have problems dealing with your organization and figure out how you can optimize their experience?  Simple – by putting yourself in your customers’ shoes. 

Airline executives learn a great deal about their customers’ experiences by getting on their planes.  By doing this, they understand the boarding pass experience, the time waiting in the terminal, the flight experience, and even getting a bag from baggage claim.  For your organization, apply for a benefit, look for a fact on a web-site, or stand on a line for a service.  You’ll get a much better idea of what’s really going on in the field, as opposed to what you THINK is going on--and you’ll get great ideas for improvement and powerful arguments to support your ideas.  Another important set of tools at your disposal are focus groups and surveys.  Find out firsthand what your customers think about your services – what they like and don’t like, where they’ve struggled, and where they’ve been delighted.   

The second major fundamental (and perhaps the most important) is to know how, when and why your customers interact with your agency or organization.  In the commercial sector, this mantra has determined where the strong have survived and the weak have failed.  This competition has now set the bar, one that government agencies must meet as well.  The college student who calls Apple for customer support about their laptop expects the same level of service when asking a question about their federal school loan. 

A blogger named Bruce Temkin, who describes his job as being a ‘Customer Experience Transformist,’ articulates a key insight I think is worth elaborating on.  His point is that every interaction creates a personal reaction, and that therefore experiences need to be tailored for individuals and customer feedback needs to be the key measure of success.  By understanding your contact types, channels, and timing through data and soliciting the appropriate customer feedback, you can easily put together a holistic picture of how customers prefer to deal with your organization.  This will be the foundation for defining the optimal experience.

The third and final fundamental is to focus on your employees.  Keep in mind that employees are at the heart of defining any customer’s experience.  By nature, employees will react to what is measured, incented, and celebrated.  Reward them when they do the right thing, make sure they know what leadership expects, and empower them to accommodate the needs of the customer whenever possible.  Even if this seems to be a particularly difficult task within a government agency, which must also ensure that every customer is treated fairly and impartially, it can be achieved with the right strategy. 

As part of this employee focus, make sure to allocate the appropriate time and funding to training – changing the rules without making sure your employees know what they are supposed to do is ineffective.  If the proper customer service behavior is understood and rewarded across the organization, then you will create a positive culture throughout your organization which will permeate through to your customers and finally your bottom line.

Accurately and adequately defining the customer experience is a difficult task—if customer experience isn’t a top priority, the effort is likely to fail.  President Obama’s executive order, however, and the increased pressure to perform both parties, and both houses of Congress, are putting on federal agencies to improve their levels of customer service, means that government leaders don’t have the option of failing anymore.  If you need some help in your efforts, however, we’re here at SAG!

As a side note… let’s all hope that some of those Airline executives are over 6’ tall like I am so that we all get a little extra leg room.