The quick answer is YES! What kind of service culture they are shaping and what can be done to align it with the organization’s desire to make customers happy is the focus of this article.
In today’s competitive business landscape, customer experience has become a critical factor in shaping the success of any organization. While companies often focus on training their front liners to deliver excellent customer service, they often overlook the broader aspects that contribute to a customer’s overall experience. One key oversight is the failure to recognize the role managers play in shaping the company’s service culture. Compared to customer service training, companies seldom recognize the need to train their managers on how to shape a service culture. This article aims to shed light on the importance of managers in influencing customer experience, the factors that comprise a customer’s experience, and how Weisbord’s 6-box model can be applied to build a strong service culture.
The Multifaceted Customer Experience:
A customer’s experience with a company extends beyond their interactions with front liners. It encompasses every touchpoint, from marketing and sales to product quality and post-purchase support. If you are in a retail or hospitality business, this includes parking, establishment upkeep, billing & collection, etc. Managers have a direct impact on these touchpoints as they oversee the various departments that contribute to the overall customer experience. However, many managers are not trained to recognize all the factors that influence customer experience, leading to potential gaps and inconsistencies. No matter how nice your front liners are if the aircon is not working, or the restrooms are not up to standards, or your billing and collection people are only concerned about controls, then you are likely to deliver a negative customer experience.
Managers’ Blind Spots:
While managers may excel in their functional expertise, they often lack a comprehensive understanding of the customer journey and fail to recognize the intricacies involved. This can result in a disjointed experience for customers, where different departments operate in silos, unaware of the impact their actions have on the overall customer perception. Managers must go beyond their departmental responsibilities and develop a holistic perspective to create a consistent and exceptional customer experience.
Weisbord’s 6-Box Model:
Weisbord’s 6-box model provides a framework for understanding organizational effectiveness, which can be applied to building a service culture. Let’s examine how each box relates to shaping the customer experience:
- Purpose: Managers need to clearly define the purpose of the organization, aligning it with a customer-centric mindset. This purpose should be communicated throughout the company to ensure everyone understands their role in delivering an exceptional customer experience.
- Structure: Tony Sieh, former CEO of Zappos said that it takes an entire organization to serve the customers. This means that customer-centricity is embedded in all roles in all units of the company. It is, however, not enough that all departments are passionate about customer service, The structure of the organization should support cross-functional collaboration and communication. Managers need to break down departmental barriers and encourage information sharing to eliminate gaps and inconsistencies in the customer journey.
- Rewards: Managers should establish reward systems that recognize and reinforce customer-centric behaviors. By incentivizing employees based on customer satisfaction metrics, managers can cultivate a culture that values and prioritizes the customer experience.
- Relationships: Relationships can make or break a strategy. At their best, strong relationships can expedite execution, unblock issues, ensure people are treated well, and strengthen a company’s culture. It is important to look at relationships as something that starts from within the organization and extends to the customers. Good internal relationships lead to better external customer experience… Managers must foster a collaborative environment within the organization and develop partnerships with suppliers and stakeholders to ensure a seamless experience for customers.
- Leadership: Effective leadership is vital for cultivating a service-oriented culture. Managers need to lead by example, demonstrating customer-centric behaviors and empowering employees to go above and beyond in delivering exceptional service. The Leadership box highlights the importance of a good, inspiring direction that helps employees respond well to all the other boxes.
- Helpful Mechanisms: Managers should implement feedback mechanisms to gather customer insights and track performance metrics. This data-driven approach enables managers to identify areas for improvement and make informed decisions that positively impact the customer experience.
Equipping Managers to Shape the Service Culture:
To ensure managers are equipped to shape the company’s service culture effectively, organizations need to invest in their development. This includes:
- Training: Provide comprehensive training programs that go beyond functional expertise and focus on customer experience management. This will help managers understand the broader context of their roles and develop the necessary skills to drive a customer-centric culture. A course on Service Leadership should help the managers appreciate the role they play in building a service culture and equip them to apply of all Weisbord’s 6 boxes to sustain that culture.
- Mentorship and Coaching: Managers need to act as mentors and coaches to help employees realize their full-service excellence potential. If the company is to train all employees on service excellence, all managers must be ready to follow through after they attend the training so that all lessons are applied in the workplace.
- Performance Management: Incorporate customer experience metrics into managers’ performance evaluations. By linking their success to customer satisfaction and loyalty, organizations can reinforce the importance of the service culture.
Being about shaping an organization’s culture towards customer-centricity can be quite an investment and a daunting task. Unless we recognize, however, that our products and services are easily duplicated, an excellent service culture is very hard to emulate. If you want to differentiate towards giving memorable, outstanding, and rewarding experiences for your clients, start with your managers.
