Client Experience Exercise

Be more competitive by improving the experience Clients AND prospects have interacting with your people.  How?

"Live It" yourself.  In other words, experience how the BEST companies serve others to be inspired how to improve your own team's Client interactions.  ("Live It" is part of L.O.I.: Live It - Observe It - Improve It, one of the desired results of my original Success With People system.)

Steve Meek of The Fulcrum Group reminded me last week of my favorite exercise to improve the experience people have interacting with your company. Here it is:

Team Building Exercise

Have your people name businesses they feel provide an awesome customer experience. Identify twice as many companies as you have people participating in this exercise.

Although Zappos, Nordstrom, and other large companies may come to mind and are valuable to have on your list, we recommend your people include local firms known for providing great service.  For instance, I have an auto mechanic who has serviced my cars to for over 20 years because I totally trust them.  (They replaced a broken water pump just last week.)  Maybe there are things to learn from great local companies too.

Agree on the two companies for which each person is responsible.  The data on each company might include:

• Name of the person or people on your team who is responsible for gathering data from the company
• Date the report on this company is due
• Company name
• Website address
• Physical address
• Phone
• Contact, if you know one, who has provided great service previously (you may or may not want to involve them in this Activity)
• Expectation: What do they do differently with employees to build a strong company culture?
• Expectation: What do they do differently with clients to demonstrate their strong company culture?

Prepare to buy something from them

Each person's job is to creatively explore and fully comprehend why their "best" companies provide such a better customer experience.  Give your people $50-$100 per company to purchase something and report back to the group on their experience.  Allow your people to keep what they buy.

Discuss how you will test them

Do not assume you or your people understand how to do this market research competently.  Have an open discussion to share ideas on how to shop so your people experience "the best" company responses in a variety of situations, such as asking for advice, purchasing, returning goods and support.  Here are some interactions you might consider:

• Ask "stupid" questions before the purchase.
• Ask foolish questions after the purchase.
• Complain (but not too much).
• Return your purchase and buy something else.
• Consider behaving in an easy-going manner with some companies and a "difficult" customer with others, however we do not recommend anyone behaves like a jerk.

Each person can take a different approach, but sharing these ideas helps people consider different ways to engage their "best" companies.

Use all five senses

Share ideas within the group on how they can use all five senses to better understand their feelings throughout the experience with each of their "best" companies.  Multiple senses are involved even when interacting with people online.  Here are some thoughts to get your discussion going:

• Sight:  How is the building designed inside and out?  What do you see in the signage, product placement, colors and anything else that increases your trust in each "best" company?  What is most effective and why?
• Smell:  What do you smell?  Is it natural from the products or environment, or a scent they have intentionally added?
• Hear:  What music or sounds are in the background?  How does it affect your experience?
• Taste:  What tastes are involved in your experience (coffee, tea, water fountain, candy)?  How does it improve or detract from your purchasing experience?
• Feel:  What does your experience with the company feel like physically and emotionally as you interact with their people, products, website, offices and other aspects of their business?

Use Experience Analysis Worksheets

You can use Experience Analysis Worksheets (a tool I developed based on something from John DiJulius) for these Activities to record key data your people bring back from their purchasing expeditions.

Although I came up with this activity on my own, other companies striving to become GREAT are following a similar process.  Years ago I read about Ed Zimmer, former CEO of Ecco, a maker of backup alarms and lights for trucks in Inc Magazine.  He explained one of the ways he contributed to the company's $200 million in sales was helping his customer service people better understand the experience of their clients.  He said:

"...we even bought gift certificates to L.L. Bean and gave them two or three customer service folks at the time, so they could order something for themselves and see what the process was like. We want our customers to have that kind of experience [as L.L. Bean]."

Here is how we suggest you complete this activity before moving on... (there are 5 potential steps in all we can encourage Clients to do):

1. Have a meeting to share the results of the purchasing expeditions.
2. Discuss how your initial Expectations compared to the ways "the best" companies actually engage their employees and clients.
3. Consolidate what you learned from "the best" companies that you want to apply today and in the future.  Possibly organize the actions you want to take in phases with due dates consistent with your other company culture efforts.

You will have fun, AND identify ways to be a better organization. Happy hunting!