Jeweller - February 2022
• Stronger together - Buying Groups get ready for 2022 with newfound vigour • The Great Retail Reset - Pandemic demonstrates that every cloud has a silver lining • Vale Peter Beck - Tribute to a jewellery industry icon
• Stronger together - Buying Groups get ready for 2022 with newfound vigour
• The Great Retail Reset - Pandemic demonstrates that every cloud has a silver lining
• Vale Peter Beck - Tribute to a jewellery industry icon
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BUSINESS<br />
Marketing & PR<br />
Three steps to creating a great<br />
customer experience strategy<br />
The best customer experience strategy encourages a bold vision and<br />
takes all staff along for the ride, writes STEVEN VAN BELLEGHEM.<br />
One of the most popular questions in my<br />
conversations with decision makers has to<br />
be about setting up a successful customer<br />
experience (CX) strategy.<br />
The solution is at the intersection between<br />
your customers, staff and the vision<br />
binding everything together and any solid<br />
CX strategy should integrate a three-step<br />
approach:<br />
Create an engaging vision<br />
At the heart of any successful business<br />
strategy lies a powerful yet tangible vision<br />
and that’s no different when dealing<br />
with customers. The usual, ‘putting the<br />
customer at the centre’ is not sufficiently<br />
specific to enthuse and engage your staff.<br />
Identify the customer’s problem or their<br />
‘want’ and what you can do to improve<br />
their life and which mindset should be<br />
connected to that.<br />
Don’t start from a key performance<br />
indicator attitude but focus on an ‘intention<br />
mentality’ and make sure you are truly<br />
useful and helpful to customers, not just<br />
with your core offering but also with your<br />
other products and services.<br />
A good example of creative thinking is Lumi<br />
nappies by Pampers. Proctor and Gamble<br />
(P&G) pushed a standard commodity like<br />
a nappy to a whole new level by adding a<br />
baby monitor and sleep app into the ‘mix’.<br />
With this approach, P&G does not just<br />
sell nappies, instead, it aims to be a true<br />
partner in the life of parents and ‘helps the<br />
whole family rest easier’, as its website<br />
states.<br />
So, just like P&G with Lumi, make sure that<br />
your vision is both concrete and appealing.<br />
All staff should know how to contribute<br />
The reason why you need step one, a<br />
concrete and engaging vision, is to get your<br />
staff on board with your CX vision.<br />
It should not be some top-secret for<br />
‘C-level only’ strategy document; it needs<br />
to resonate throughout the entire business.<br />
The link between the vision, customer and<br />
Puzzled? The key to customer engagement is always experience.<br />
staff in large companies is often buried<br />
below processes, KPIs or vague slogans.<br />
Factory workers or people in HR often lack<br />
that tight connection with the customers<br />
but it is absolutely crucial if a company<br />
wants to offer great CX.<br />
There is no shortcut to achieve a tight<br />
relation between staff, vision and the<br />
customer. There’s no secret ingredient,<br />
you might have to find a way to convince<br />
your employees one by one.<br />
However, in SMEs, especially retail<br />
based business such as jewellery stores,<br />
focusing on customer satisfaction and<br />
enjoyment is much easier.<br />
One of my favourite examples of a business<br />
that has every staff member on board with<br />
the company’s vision has to be Disney, and<br />
the fact that it’s a master storyteller has a<br />
large role to play in that.<br />
From the outset, Walt Disney decided his<br />
theme parks would not have ‘employees’,<br />
instead they would be cast members who<br />
wear a costume, not a uniform and that<br />
made a huge difference in the way they<br />
engaged and behaved with customers/<br />
visitors<br />
He also made sure everyone knew their<br />
vision and stayed in character. From the<br />
actors playing Snow White to the staff<br />
selling ice cream or the cleaners: everyone<br />
knows their role in the script.<br />
Creating a<br />
vision and<br />
ensuring all<br />
staff are aware<br />
of their role is to<br />
accomplish the<br />
vision to help<br />
create fantastic<br />
customer<br />
experiences, are<br />
fundamental<br />
steps in a CX<br />
strategy.<br />
Make sure staff receive customer feedback<br />
Creating a vision and ensuring all staff are<br />
aware of their role is to accomplish the<br />
vision to help create fantastic customer<br />
experiences, are fundamental steps in a CX<br />
strategy.<br />
However, one crucial step many companies<br />
seem to neglect is ensuring staff receive<br />
feedback from customers.<br />
If they don’t know what customers think<br />
and feel about their work, they won’t be<br />
able to replicate what worked or change<br />
what didn’t work.<br />
This direct link is essential in order to<br />
offer great CX and keep adapting it to<br />
customers’ changing needs. Use quotes,<br />
videos, audio fragments or feedback<br />
scores, but make sure all staff know what<br />
customers feel about them.<br />
For example, at Coolblue – a Dutch<br />
ecommerce company – every morning the<br />
delivery drivers are shown their previous<br />
day’s Net Promotor Score.<br />
In a more hands-on approach, Dutch<br />
insurance company Centraal Beheer, (CB)<br />
holds Small Dent Days which they organise<br />
four times per year.<br />
On these days, 10,000 people have small<br />
dents in their car repaired free of charge<br />
while they are warmly welcomed by CB’s<br />
insurance agents, creating a human<br />
relationship and direct feedback with<br />
customers they otherwise almost never<br />
meet in person.<br />
A successful CX strategy goes beyond a<br />
written policy. All levels of the business<br />
must be involved in an engaging and clear<br />
vision that relies on constant feedback to<br />
fuel progress.<br />
STEVEN VAN BELLEGHEM<br />
provides coaching, workshops and<br />
advice about social media and<br />
conversation management. Learn More:<br />
stevenvanbelleghem.com<br />
54 | <strong>February</strong> <strong>2022</strong>