Are you rewarding your employees for acting smart?

When it comes to delivering a better customer experience, 90% of all companies say it's a huge priority.

But most don't tie reward structures to delivering better experiences.

And, they don't give employees the tools they need to do so.

What gives?

After all, your employees are responsible for designing, delivering and maintaining all customer experiences in your company. Unsurprisingly, if your reward structure is at odds with your goals, you'll always have conflicting results.

And if employees don't have access to the tools and data they need to make smart decisions about which customers to serve and how, at best they'll be delivering a great experience based on their personal definitions that's different from channel to channel.

This ends up – from the customer's perspective – creating experiences that feel broken and disjointed.

To fix this, you need to understand customer needs, and invest in the tools that help spread that knowledge internally. In short, you need to get and act smart. The good news is, there's a framework that can help.

Questions? Give me a call, or drop a note ... we’d love to help...

Best,

Michael Hinshaw
Managing Director
MCorp Consulting

In brief, this is (and will
continue to be) an
evolutionary process.
For now, we're looking at
a combination of:

- Clicks
- Mentions
- RTs (retweets)
- Reach (of a tweet)

Our baseline (0) is a
Tweet that has reached
only my approximately
3,000 followers, and
opened (read) only an
average number of
times.

Insights and Influence in 140 Characters or Less…

This month's Tweets are heavily weighted towards employees. As a group, they also point to three other core issues related to employees and their ability to help your company consistently deliver excellent customer experiences:

1.  Technology (systems, data, access) in the hands of your employees –
     and customers – is a key enabler of seamless cross-channel
     experiences.

2.  Without the proper incentives, rewards and information, employees
     can't deliver excellent customer experiences no matter how much they
     want to.

3.  No matter how innovative your technology, if you're not using it deliver
     on what really matters to your customers, then please – don't bother.

It all starts with understanding your customers: Who they are, their wants and needs, their current experiences and the roadblocks you put in place that deny them. In brief, you need to know why, where and how to focus resources.

The question is, do you have a framework in place that enables you to address this? Whatever your issue, you're not alone. But you should address it before your competition does (because they're thinking about this right now too...).

1.) The butterfly effect of customer experience - or - how to make the world a better place, one customer at a time. http://ow.ly/6NcWe
Excellent comments make this short post shine. Frustration and bad feelings from bad customer service spread like a virus, infecting everyone we touch. Don't let a flawed set of beliefs deny your customers' emotional needs, instead think in terms of maximizing social value and long-term investment and spread the love instead of the flu.  (Tweet Score: 116)

2.) Reading: “Amazon's Kindle Fire Is a Disruptive Innovation” http://ow.ly/6IPFu
This piece could've been titled, “Aim for the knees!” Aiming low with room to grow can fell a mighty gian...or so goes this theory. And they make a strong case. Too often, market leaders ignore the minor annoyance of mosquito stings...until they've grown into torpedoes. I'm not sure I call this a disruptive technology but it will be interesting to see how the mini Kindle and mighty iPad square off a few years from now.  (Tweet Score: 70)

3.) Poor Customer Service + Amazing Technology Still Equals Poor Customer Service. http://ow.ly/6SSBg
Yeah, so I stole my tweet directly from the title, but it was too great to pass up. In short, an airline that invests in Boeing's new Dreamliner 787 but still provides the same crappy old service is going to remain a crappy airline. Disgruntled passengers may have a view from the toilet, but really, how long will it take for that to wear thin? It's great when companies invest in new technology, but do you know how much CS staff training $202 million* would buy? (*The average list price of a Dreamliner jet.)  (Tweet Score: 61)

4.) Reading: “Is CRM technology killing customer experience management?” http://ow.ly/6NdyQ
You know how there's one thought every issue that really sings? How about this one: We allow ourselves to misunderstand the fundamental difference between CRM and CEM for the sake of simplicity. That's like an angels' chorus backed up by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Not because it's a good thing, but because Colin Shaw so accurately nails what I see to be an enormous and pervasive problem. Not only are CRM and CEM different (let's call it system vs soul), but putting all your eggs into the deceptively all-encompassing CRM basket can actually harm your operations and your customer care. Now a boxed solution to CEM, with customer insights on your organization specifically? Believe me, we're working on it...  (Tweet Score: 56)

5.) Reading: “Engage Employees Using Customer Service Tactics” http://ow.ly/6mJbj
Decentralize! Power to the People! Dignity and Respect! Nah, I haven't been hanging out at Occupy SF, but I do like the idea of improving employee experience using the same methods we should be employing to improve customer experience: with short, frequent surveys, hands-on reviews and resolution...in other words, closed-loop learning. We always list employees as a key audience, because happier employees make for more profitable companies. Welcome to the eNPS.  (Tweet Score: 56)

6.) “I come into this store because it's fun and you just took all the fun out of it.” [Ouch.] http://ow.ly/6Vlze
My blood pressure went up about 20 points reading about Segel's experience. I'm pretty sure I've had this guy wait on me. At a Barnes & Noble in SF, Macys in Manhattan, Starbucks in Atlanta...yeah, they're everywhere. The officious manager who takes problem solving as a personal affront rather than a chance to delight. I've also had the opposite: Go in with a faulty product and leave happy to have had the interaction. It's the oldest lesson in the CEX universe.  (Tweet Score: 55)

7.) Reading: “The Customer Experience Deficit: Opportunities for Growth in the Retail Industry” http://ow.ly/6VlMy
At 64 pages, this is more of a bedside laptop read rather than a skim break. Forget that most of the companies measured are UK brands: This is a must-read for any retail branders out there, and a should-read for the rest of us. If you secretly think that web, print and brick and mortar are sufficient integration for your integrated marketing, how does a billion USD in potential lost sales strike you? (And the authoring firm has a beautiful way with diagrams.)  (Tweet Score: 49)

8.) “Customer Experience Rep”... It has a nice ring to it - don't you think? http://ow.ly/72rjP
It's the initial assumption of this piece – that some organizations don't see their sales force as an extension of their customer experience – that floored me. I'm not often accused of being naïve, but I guess this time I was caught in an ivory tower. Yes, automated sales processes / user comfort with online purchases / greater direct access to unbiased research, etc. affect a salesforce's responsibilities, but if you think software replaces this human touchpoint, you're the one in the fairytale. Capitalize on this shift by challenging (and training) sales to be ambassadors and you've just improved your customer experience, your profitability, and probably the mental health of your sales team.  (Tweet Score: 48)

9.) Are You Building Fences - Or Digging Wells? http://ow.ly/750FL
We typically think of holes as a negative analogy: “I was just digging myself in deeper.” “I wanted a hole to open up and swallow me.” But in this cow-centric context, they're a good thing. I'm not equating your customers to cows, but if I were, there's nothing like a deep well of clear, sweet water to entice them to stay in your field where they belong, rather than wandering off onto someone else's land. You've heard of the grass being greener? This is the antithesis. Give your cows (clients) a reason to stick with you, and you won't have to expend all your resources setting up barriers to keep them in. And on that note, we're mooooving on.  (Tweet Score: 46)

10.) Reading: “Improving the customer experience: which approach, which levers to use?” http://ow.ly/72sh1
Customer Experience is a cinnamon roll. No wait, think about it. Without the spiraled layers of Culture, surrounding Process, curled around Differentiation, enfolding Insight, how could you get to the sweet gooey center of Superior Value? Don't neglect the strategic outer layer: A focused mission, visionary leadership, and workable model that encase everything within. Forget about that layer and the rest turns crusty and hard.  (Tweet Score: 44)