I had not planned to write about this today, but after reading two similarly themed posts, I couldn’t help but to think about this from my own perspective within the customer experience strategy.
The first story spoke of a youthful perspective of different roles in our life. It is summarized that in life, there are three key roles: bad guys, the people that need to be protected from the bad guys and the heroes.
A very youthful perspective indeed, but we can see this slightly differently as being the challenges (the bad guys), the customers that need help (the people that need to be protected from the bad guys) and the heroes (also known as the ‘heroes’).
You Will Fail (Sorry)
Let’s start with the challenges. Failure is going to happen! I promise you that things will go wrong. Not to discourage, but that is the reality. That goes beyond the customer experience all along the customer journey, it also includes things we do every day – from small things like a botched dinner plan to bigger things like a business shutting down. I’ve written previously about the idea that we should be ready to take on challenging moments in business (and in life), but that starts with the outlook that you take when failures happen.
There are so many challenges that can come your way. A small list of my examples from my own career across a few industries:
- When I worked as a cashier for a grocery retailer, I had a customer screaming at me and hurling personal insults about my lack of intelligence (and mathematics skills) because he perceived that I computed the sales tax incorrectly on his purchases (that were computed by the register)
- As a teacher, I had a parent ask that I be relieved of my teaching responsibilities because he felt it was my responsibility to “inspire” the student to want to do their homework
- In market research, a client stated my analytics approach was incorrect, when I stated there were three ways to approach it, and all three yielded the same outputs, the client request that I be removed from our largest account because I was perceived as condescending providing those details
Three Things for Your Failure Toolbox
I’m not suggesting that you await failure, however you need to be ready when something goes wrong. In each of those cases above, I arose better able to handle customers despite those failures. I always tried to be that hero that carried everyone on my shoulders toward success, but that is another path that will guarantee a bigger failure. The reason I was able to emerge from these bad customer experience situations is that – in all three situations (and more) – I had these three things in my “failure” toolbox:
- Supporting Data – I’m not referring to data to demonstrate my failures, rather data that supports my successes. Actually, you should have both. There is always room for improvement, but it is also important to take stock in past successes. Usually data comes from measurement, and in the first example we had data from our customer experience software platform that supported the case that I had many more successes than failures. While it was not available then, this interaction probably would have shown up in a social media analysis similar to what we get from tools like QuestionPro’s CX Reputation. Tempting as it might be to respond in kind (or lack of kindness as it was), it would still be important to have an approach.
- Response – An approach to address a failure is just as important as knowing the reasons for the failure. Most financial linkage analyses on using the customer feedback loop across the customer experience touchpoints in a Voice-of-the-Customer program demonstrate the same outcomes, successful recovery from a service failure can often yield better outcomes and no failure at all. Additionally, having a meaningful response mechanism can also help to support and enhance the employee experience. As the expression goes, you can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar (though it has been proven that this is just an expression and not a reality). When challenges arise, be ready with a response. Some responses require more thought, but enabling employees to respond makes it easier on everyone involved. In my second story above, my department director had an approach to each of these examples, rather than fighting it out with a parent via email and phone messages, he called a meeting with the principal, myself and the parent so the parent could be heard. While the outcome still did not meet the initial expectations of the parent, the ability for us to immediately respond helped to move past the “ugliness” of the situation sooner.
- A Great Team – You can try to be a hero, but you don’t always have to be the hero. Having a great team will make that a reality. This was the second post I observed when thinking about today’s blog.
LEARN ABOUT: Service Recovery
Mistakes will happen, a good team around you will support you. In my third personal anecdote, I was certain I would be shown the door and unemployed in no time as both the client and the internal global account director asked that I be removed from the account. That is generally how it works in a B2B focused environment. Even I was contemplating my own career choice at that moment, feeling I had failed. Instead, I had a great team around me that became my hero when I couldn’t be that hero at the moment. They came to my defense against the client and reassured me that I had many more successes than failures. When I couldn’t be the hero, they were.
Knowing that you have limits and that every day won’t be perfect is important to keep in mind. As I learned in understanding the concept of limits in Calculus, you may approach perfection, but you’ll never truly attain it, so be ready from the curves in that line – with data, responses, and heroes. By the way, shout out to my retail customer that said I know nothing about mathematics. I actually have a graduate degree in mathematics.
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