What caus­es one busi­ness to flour­ish and an­oth­er to fal­ter, in this new era of cus­tomer hap­pi­ness? Could it be that the for­mer has mas­tered the art of keep­ing its cus­tomers in a state of on­go­ing en­thu­si­asm, whilst the lat­ter strug­gles in the “twi­light” zone of do­ing just enough to keep cus­tomers in a state of luke­warm sat­is­fac­tion? Could it be that the for­mer re­fresh­es its cus­tomers’ ex­pe­ri­ence con­tin­u­al­ly in in­no­v­a­tive and in­tel­li­gent ways, whilst the lat­ter lacks a dy­nam­ic strat­e­gy for mov­ing its cus­tomers for­ward?

In this cus­tomer-dri­ven era, busi­ness­es must re-ed­u­cate them­selves in the art of go­ing past sat­is­fy­ing to de­light­ing cus­tomers. This re-ed­u­ca­tion should be­gin with shed­ding out­dat­ed be­liefs that an­chor busi­ness­es in medi­oc­rity. One such be­lief is that high sales au­to­mat­i­cal­ly equate to cus­tomer suc­cess. In re­al­i­ty, cus­tomers may ap­pear sat­is­fied, yet feel un­der­served, qui­et­ly count­ing down the days un­til a more at­ten­tive com­peti­tor wins their loy­al­ty. A cau­tion­ary note would be for busi­ness­es to en­sure that their phe­nom­e­nal sales equate with an equal­ly phe­nom­e­nal cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence, be­fore they sit on their ser­vice ex­cel­lence lau­rels.

An­oth­er mis­con­cep­tion is that ser­vice de­cline would have start­ed at the point when the de­cline be­comes no­tice­able. Busi­ness­es hard­ly ever ar­rive at poor ser­vice overnight. The process in­volves a slow, some­times im­per­cep­ti­ble de­cline over time. So, while it’s com­mend­able to catch and re­solve cus­tomer com­plaints, a more ef­fec­tive ap­proach is to en­sure that ser­vice fail­ures do not oc­cur in the first place.

A third mis­con­cep­tion is not ac­knowl­edg­ing that poor ser­vice is a symp­tom of in­ter­nal mal­func­tions. By not treat­ing poor ser­vice as a symp­tom of deep­er, in­ter­nal is­sues that need to be re­me­di­at­ed be­fore ser­vice de­liv­ery can be el­e­vat­ed, busi­ness­es com­mit one of the biggest sins in ser­vice mal­prac­tice. Ser­vice re­me­di­a­tion and, there­fore, the ex­pe­ri­ence el­e­va­tion jour­ney, must be­gin with ad­dress­ing pre­vail­ing mal­prac­tices, ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties, fail­ures, and weak­ness­es that hin­der smooth pro­gres­sion to ser­vice ex­cel­lence. These re­me­di­a­tions will need to fo­cus on the flaws that be­dev­il or­gan­i­sa­tion­al cul­ture, man­age­r­i­al prac­tice, team­work­ing, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, lead­er­ship prac­tices, ser­vice stan­dards com­pli­ance, cus­tomer en­gage­ment skills, ser­vice agent ex­per­tise, process friend­li­ness and tech­nol­o­gy en­able­ment.

By fo­cus­ing on fix­ing in­ter­nal is­sues, many of the shock­waves that im­pact ex­ter­nal cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence be­come pre­ventable. The so­lu­tion lies in tak­ing a holis­tic ap­proach to mov­ing a busi­ness from in­con­sis­tent, ir­reg­u­lar, frag­ment­ed, hit-and-miss ser­vice de­liv­ery to a dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed, dis­tinc­tive lev­el of world-class ex­cel­lence.

The next suite of ac­tions that will surge the new cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence brand­ing, will re­quire busi­ness­es to move away from the slug­gish­ness of the by­gone era and to re-ed­u­cate and re-ded­i­cate them­selves to dri­ving mo­men­tum in foun­da­tion­al ar­eas that in­clude ur­gency, fail­ure pre­ven­tion, ser­vice sci­ence, deep cus­tomer seg­men­ta­tion and dig­i­tal in­te­gra­tion in the new era.

Take cus­tomer com­plaints, for ex­am­ple. In a by­gone era, the busi­ness­es that were re­solv­ing cus­tomer com­plaints prompt­ly would have been com­mend­ing them­selves on their track record for com­plaint res­o­lu­tion. In the new era, the per­spec­tive has shift­ed from res­o­lu­tion to pre­ven­tion. Cus­tomers have lit­tle or no tol­er­ance for in­ter­ac­tion dis­cour­tesy, mix-ups in or­ders, trans­ac­tion er­rors and dig­i­tal mal­func­tions. The re­al hero busi­ness­es ded­i­cate time, re­sources and ef­fort to plug­ging the holes in process­es, demon­strat­ing a sense of ur­gency and us­ing tech­nol­o­gy to de­liv­er er­ror-free ex­pe­ri­ences.

In a by­gone era, busi­ness­es hard­ly ded­i­cat­ed them­selves to be­ing guid­ed by a sci­en­tif­ic ap­proach to cus­tomis­ing and per­son­al­is­ing of­fer­ings to match the unique needs of spe­cif­ic cus­tomer seg­ments. The era was prod­uct-dri­ven and not cus­tomer-needs dri­ven.

In the new era, “above and be­yond” busi­ness­es un­der­stand deeply the rich re­wards of ag­gre­gat­ing and har­vest­ing cus­tomer da­ta. They re­ly on us­ing sys­tems that build a com­pre­hen­sive view of the cus­tomer, culled across mul­ti­ple plat­forms, to pro­vide the op­por­tu­ni­ty to dif­fer­en­ti­ate val­ue propo­si­tions across cus­tomer seg­ments. They har­ness the pow­er of sci­ence, dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy and now, ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, to in­te­grate cus­tomer re­la­tion­ship man­age­ment and en­ter­prise re­source plan­ning so­lu­tions that cre­ate a more ef­fi­cient con­nec­tion of sales, ser­vice and op­er­a­tional process­es.

These busi­ness­es op­er­ate with a dif­fer­ent en­er­gy. They re­ject pro­cras­ti­na­tion, em­brace mo­men­tum and are dri­ven by a per­va­sive sense of ur­gency. While oth­ers floun­der in re­ac­tive mode, these busi­ness­es are proac­tive, ag­ile, and re­lent­less in their pur­suit of ex­cel­lence. One of their most defin­ing traits is the com­mit­ment to up­hold­ing the cus­tomer’s “Bill of Rights,” a set of non-ne­go­tiable stan­dards that guide every in­ter­ac­tion and en­sure cus­tomers feel val­ued, re­spect­ed and un­der­stood through­out their jour­neys.

In this new era, suc­cess be­longs to the busi­ness­es that are pre­pared to view ser­vice fail­ures as re­flec­tions of sys­temic in­ter­nal is­sues and to re­me­di­ate these chal­lenges as a first ac­tion in the jour­ney to mean­ing­ful cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence trans­for­ma­tion.

In fact, suc­cess will ul­ti­mate­ly be­long to those busi­ness­es that dare to re-ed­u­cate them­selves, re-en­gi­neer their ex­pe­ri­ence de­sign and re­set their ap­proach to sus­tain­ing cus­tomer en­thu­si­asm.