When it comes to Customer Experience, leadership makes a huge difference.
In every industry today, leaders are being challenged with unprecedented levels of uncertainty. However, one thing is certain: Customer expectations keep increasing. In fact, a recent Microsoft survey found that 54% of customers say they have higher expectations today than they had one year ago.
Customer expectations don’t stop with good customer service. They also want a great customer experience, and there’s a big difference between the two. If customer service is a single touchpoint with a company, customer experience is how customers feel about the sum total of their interactions with an organization. Research from Salesforce found that 80% of customers now consider the experience a company provides to be as important as its products or services. A PwC survey found that customer experience is a top factor in purchasing decisions, right along with price and product quality.
The crises of these past two years have magnified the need for companies to create connections and build trust with customers. For the most part, leaders understand that creating an exceptional customer experience is vital to business success. However, their good intentions are falling short. Salesforce’s survey found that while 66% of customers expect companies to understand their unique needs and expectations, they felt that only 34% of companies generally treat them as unique individuals.
What are smart leaders and companies doing to improve the customer experience?
Faisal Pandit, president of Panasonic System Solutions Company of North America, shared how today’s crises forced Panasonic to think and act differently. They used what might be considered a counterintuitive approach. Instead of focusing first on the customer, Panasonic turned its attention to its own employees.
Pandit explained the rationale. “Customer experience is nothing without company culture. At Panasonic, we’re aligning the customer experience with the employee experience. You can’t have one without the other.” Working as a united organization is key to Panasonic’s success. Pandit shared three key factors that have helped Panasonic improve the customer experience: Inclusion, collaboration, and storytelling.
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Inclusion
Pandit shared that before the pandemic, Panasonic’s mindset was “If you’re at a certain level we should consult with you.” But the pandemic brought with it a whole new level of challenges. Leaders ‘at a certain level’ weren’t going to solve problems on their own.
During the first five months of the pandemic, Panasonic held conversations with about 600 of its employees. These conversations opened Pandit’s eyes. “Encouraging two-way communication created space that made employees feel comfortable. Including everyone built a resilience that will help us weather this storm, and any future storms that will come our way.”
Listening to the concerns of their own employees positioned Panasonic to better listen to the needs of their customers. Great customer experience is built on a foundation of making customers feel understood. Inclusive listening helped Panasonic to shift from a transactional model to a partnership model of doing business.
Collaboration
Collaboration is key to creating a cohesive customer experience. Pandit explained, “You can’t be collaborative with customers and siloed within your organization. You can get information from customers, but how do you share it and use it internally? How flexible are your systems to respond and react to their needs?”
Customers crave a unified connection across digital touchpoints. Sadly, this type of integration is still sorely lacking in today’s organizations. Salesforce reports that 54% of customers agree that “It generally feels like I’m communicating with separate departments, not one company”, and 65% say that “I often have to repeat or re-explain information to different representatives.”
Pandit continued, “To break down silos, we needed to set a common vision. We had to explain what we’re about, what we’re trying to accomplish, and why it’s achievable. We needed to have common objectives across functions, and share and celebrate wins. For example, we took manual processes and digitized them to gain more visibility and agility into our work flows. This enabled us to deliver the necessary tools to best support our employees, so they could better able address customer needs.”
Leadership was key in making this collaboration work. Pandit explained, “An important part of this culture is diversity of thought. We made sure that leaders across business units set the precedent that all opinions needed to be heard and considered in the decision-making process. We took the time to listen. We made sure that all employees knew their opinions were wanted, respected and heard.”
Storytelling
In their B2B world, Panasonic’s customers aren’t looking to buy hardware or software or services. They want solutions. Customers want trusted advisors, who can listen to their story, and find the pain points in the story.
Pandit shared, “We set out to become more consultative. The kind of client engagement we strive for is to sit with our customers and talk about their unmet needs. By listening and telling stories, we help our customers identify problems, and then generate solutions. Some of those solutions involve us, and sometimes we bring third party partners into the discussion. Our services are agnostic—they’re focused on more than just our own stuff. It’s far more gratifying to own a story than to make a sale.”
Pandit shared an example of a Panasonic client in the restaurant industry. During the early days of the pandemic, the client was facing a massive congestion issue. Customers arrived to pick up their food, and couriers were also arriving at the same time, seeking to pick up delivery orders. The end solution turned out to be installing food lockers. But the conversation didn’t start with lockers. It started by telling a story.
Putting the customer at the center
The foundation of a great customer experience is to create a culture of employee inclusion and engagement. Pandit explains, “Employee engagement boils down to [having] a different set of leadership attributes and how we engage with the workforce. With this, the customer is at the core of the organization and how we run the business, and our view is on the long-term rather than short term.” Inclusion, collaboration and storytelling are three practical ways to help you create a culture that can deliver an exceptional customer experience.
