To achieve great customer experience you need more than just to focus on giving your employees a great place to work and interact.
We recently had the honor to test a state-of-the-art co-working space in Ho Chi Minh City with their self proclaimed Customer & Employee Experience expert leaders. We believe that their working environment and care about their staff is reflected in the friendliness, engagement and motivation they show to their clients and visitors, however some crucial factors for flawless customer experience are missing:
1. Staff knowledge and access to information
We repeatedly run into issues that different staff members do not share the same information or are not knowledgeable about basic things, like memberships, facilities, promotions, etc.. We are really fond of their staff in terms of friendliness and commitment but failing in answering basic questions on the front-desk does not lead to a satisfying experience. By setting up clear communication channels, daily / weekly stand-ups and virtual posting boards, you can update your staff, engage them and encourage them to be curious and well informed any time.
2. Standard operating procedures and consistency
We were surprised how complicated or forgetful this amazing co-working place was regarding basic customer journeys and follow-ups. Signing up for the free month of co-working via a google doc (promoted on a HR networking), lead to 2 weeks no response from the team as nobody felt in charge. Asking on the front desk about the promotion, the staff did not even know about it and just by enquiring with the management we could secure the free spots and a valid answer to our enquiry. While working in the space we realized mid January that the December announcement poster were still hanging on the wall and were not updated on time. The co-working space acknowledged that they did not have any process in place to do so.
To know more about employee experience, read more on our latest posts.
3. Humble attitude and customer experience basic training
A great confidence in ones workplace is impressive and valuable for the company, however it could also reflect a certain arrogance and neglect towards customer issues. When we tried to tell their staff about minor flaws (e.g. missing trashcan in work space), we were told that we were wrong as clients and that the staff is confident that there is no flaw. This behavior is not only offending customers but also discourages any client to give feedback in the future.
As previous VP CX Lazada (Alibaba E-commerce Group) we encourage our staff to listen
carefully before answering and to doublecheck before neglecting or even worse blaming the customer.
Secondly we also trained our CS agents not to make excuses (e.g. blaming the delivery service or other third party partners) but taking full responsibility and focusing on solving the issues rather than explaining why it happened. Most customer want a solution not a lecture about our internal flaws, which can subsequently lead to a bad PR if you emphasize your internal issues. (The co-working space told us they are not fully ready due to being a new location, we won't accept or advise our clients to state these kind of excuses and focus on solution for customer).
In conclusion, we acknowledge that it is important to provide your staff an enriching, motivating and self-fulfilling work environment so they can share this happiness and motivation truly to your customer. However we would like to emphasize that transparent staff communication and notification as well as training and implementation of standard operating procedures are paramount to provide a great customer experience. For more information about customer experience and employee engagement please contact us carsten@asiapmo.com.