In it to win it: Playing the CX game

Mat Wylie explains why you should go back to the basics of good, solid team management to vastly improve your customer satisfaction score and grow your business.

Imagine that your business was a sports team; and your industry the championships. How are you going to play the game? How will you win customer experience – and therefore win over customers?

Get the basics right

Watch any game, and I guarantee the captain of the winning team will say the same thing almost every time: “We just did the basics well.”

Yes, they might have a team of talented players and yes, they probably had good tactics, but often winning comes down to doing the basics well.

Providing great customer experience is no different.

I recently went to a café near my house – one of many in the neighbourhood! I ordered a smoothie, and when the waitress brought it out she dumped it on the table, turned around, and left without a word. She completed the task but didn’t add a single thing to my experience.

As a result, the next time I wanted a drink I went to a different café. Failing to understand what contributes to a good customer experience meant that the cafe didn’t earn my repeat business – and in times like this, none of us can afford to be that lazy.

If you don’t teach your team what the basics are, they won’t know. Do they know they should be smiling when they serve a customer? Do they know to return calls within 24 hours?

Whatever the basics are in your business, make sure your team understands why they’re important and incorporate them into consistent training.

Lead the team, but make it fun

As a business owner or manager, you are the captain of the team. And right now, most captains are under a lot of stress. If you’re not managing that stress properly, it may not be creating a great environment or setting the best example for the team.

So consider – how do you lead? Do you make the work fun, even when it’s hard? Are you encouraging your people to play as a team and back each other up? Have they seen you play before or are you always just calling from the sidelines (in other words, have you led by example)?

Depending on the size of your team you could be the coach and the captain – the one driving the overall vision and the one setting the best example. Or perhaps you’re better suited to just be the coach and not the captain – is there someone in your team you could name captain of customer experience and make sure they’re setting the standard while you focus on setting the vision?

Keep the score

Finally, are you watching your team play the game? Are you keeping score? Or are you turning off the channel because it’s too hard to watch? In times of stress or pressure, it’s easy to bury your head in the sand. But if you don’t keep score, you don’t know how to improve – and you’ll always be surprised by the challenges when they come.

What are you keeping score of in your business? Many people focus on sales as their scoreboard but that’s just an outcome. What are the scores that will predict whether those sales will keep coming in, or whether you’ll get repeat ones? Your conversion rate, repeat customer percentage, your customer satisfaction score – these are all things that can help you build a picture of what you need to do to win the game.

Teamwork makes the dream work

In business, as in sports, no-one wins every time. But everyone can give themselves the best opportunity to win. In this environment, winning might mean retaining 80 percent of your business, keeping sales at the same level, or it could be doubling sales.

It’s all relative to your business, but no matter what position you’re in, you can give yourself the best chance of winning by going back to basics, nurturing teamwork, and keeping score.

Mat Wylie is CEO of Customer Radar. Visit www.customerradar.com