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When I ride on Ola or Uber, most of the drivers insist on me giving five star rating.Some of the rewards,incentives, penalties are linked to the ratings that they receive from the customers.I would like to stay away from discussing the economics and the business model of Ola or Uber here but what impresses me is that customer’s voice is being heard and captured.Linking the compensation to the voice of customers is a great thing to do for any business.In the olden days, the cab guys would treat all the customers in a way that is convenient to him (most of the times, we know what it was) and the experience of the customer was non consequential parameter of his business model.
I was doing a consulting project for an engineering company and they had defined the KRA of the Delivery and Support team based on the number of hours they would invest for each project.Acquiring and retaining the customer was solely the responsibility of the Sales team whereas the Delivery and Support team would be responsible for execution of the project. The customer experience was never created by the Delivery and Support team because it was never part of their KRA, So whatever gets measured will only get delivered…
How can we ensure that all the back end team members will also have parameters that create value and experience for the customers?
1.Let’s look at what role each delivery and support team member is playing either creating a direct value for the customers or supporting the team that’s creating direct value for the customers?
2.Lets quantify the goals pertaining to retaining and growing the existing customers,make the delivery and support team also accountable for the same.
3. Listen to the front line sales force who are constantly in conversation with the customers. I had come across a situation wherein the head of the organization would listen to the delivery team more often than the front line sales team. He used to discount whatever is being said by the front line sales team because of the personal bias.When creating value and experience becomes a passion for the organization, that’s when all the functions will be aligned towards achieving one common goal.
4.Sometimes, customer may not be giving the feedback either through technology or in the personal conversations.Analysing repeat purchase behaviour and share of wallet could help us in developing insight about the customers. Today , customers have multiple channels to express their ways, keep track of the buzz around !!! Designing a channel for customers to voice their frustration directly with the company reduces the likelihood that they’ll express those frustrations in other public channels.
5.A formal program of Delivery and Support team visiting customers and having structured interaction might also help.
6.For Key Accounts,documenting each voice of customer statement and the situation or context in which it was made would be a great idea.
7.If you are using CRM system, we could look at Voice of the Customer being captured there.
8.Having multiple perspectives of customer voice will help in interpreting the voice correctly.Over dependence on only one method might be misleading. Dissecting the information collected from different sources and connecting them to derive the customer insight might help immensely.
Many of the support and back end teams don’t realize that customers pay their salaries.. Once the process of realization is defined, we create the customer centric Organisations….