In this insightful interview, Christine Churchill, Founder and CEO of the Customer Service Institute of America walks us through the varying aspects of the customer experience and highlights the growing need for providing the most effective experience to customers and employees alike.
Listen to the full interview of Christine Churchill with Adam Torres on Mission Matters Business Podcast.
The Importance of Customer Experience
Many organizations believe that their customer service department only needs to worry about their customer, but that’s untrue. The entire organization’s focus needs to be on both their customers’ experience and their employees’ experience.
“The customer experience is what will make or break an organization, not just because they’re always receiving positive word of mouth, but because with good customer experiences comes a larger share of wallet from your customers and clients,” shares Christine.
A positive word of mouth brings other customers and clients to you; even if they move to another organization, they’re going to sing your praises. It also makes your employees excited and proud to work at your organization, and there’s nothing better than that.
“You want great team members, you want team members who stand by you, and that’s going to happen when you treat them well. As a byproduct of that, the customer experience also becomes seamless.”
How CSIA Helps Organizations
The Customer Service Institute of America aims to help organizations struggling to make bottom-line decisions for investors collide with improved customer experiences. They work assessing organizations to the International Customer Service Standard (ICSS), where they go into organizations and work with them reviewing their processes, procedures and hiring practices. By observing the gaps and areas for opportunity, the bottom line and efficiency can be improved.
CSIA works with all industries, including, but not limited to, healthcare, utilities, financial services, manufacturing, and small businesses that need a little more direction. CSIA also works with new organizations exploring customer experience who are not sure where to start. “We’re a great place to help organizations improve customer experience and, through our assessment process, provide a roadmap for success,” shares Christine.
The firm provides guidance on the Chief Experience Officer’s (CXO) role for companies, even serving as an interim CXO when needed. The role of a CXO includes considering the customers’ pain points and providing reliable, effective and quick solutions, as stated by Christine.
The Difference Between Customer Service and Customer Experience
Christine shares how customer experience significantly differs from customer service. While you service your customers, you attempt to assist them with a particular task at a given point in time. Providing the best experience to the customers requires involvement from all areas of the business and includes everything from the essentials to even the most minor details working hand in hand.
Positive and impactful customer experiences translate into happy customers and satisfied and engaged employees, which have a vital role in spreading good word of mouth. This way, the entire experience is made effortless and your organization becomes a desirable place to work, broadening the talent pool from which to pull, as discussed by Christine.
There is also a significant cost associated with a bad customer experience provided, one of the most powerful being through feedback or reviews. Bad word of mouth has the power to go viral and decrease trust and credibility. An effective training program can help reduce this cost to a great extent.
Christine also highlights their influential white paper, explaining the varying aspects and costs associated with customer service interactions, as well as overall customer experiences.
CSIA recently released the Financial Costs of Bad Service whitepaper, which you can download from their website. Referencing the whitepaper, Christine shared that a bad service experience can go well beyond just losing the customer. The bigger cost is not knowing why the customer left in the first place and not having a chance to improve. “Businesses always need to look at feedback, good, bad or indifferent, as a gift,” said Christine.
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