Tag Archief van: customer experience

CX Framework series #3: Experience design, improvement & innovation

How to shape your CX design & change process

Once you have determined what your Customer Experience strategy should look like and you have good Customer Understanding you will need to need to shape your CX design: having clear repeatable processes and frameworks in place to design the customer experience you want to deliver or redesign the one you are currently offering. To do so, you can use at least three frameworks, not necessarily in this order.

1. Customer Journey Mapping and Customer Journey Thinking

To actively influence your customers’ decision process when buying a product or ordering a service, you need to know which path they are walking, at which moments they are making decisions and how you are interacting with them at each moment along the way. The most common tool used for this is “Customer Journey Mapping” and the most deep and effective way is to propel also a wider “Customer Journey Thinking”. To do so, the Temkin Group recommends that organizations teach employees to consistently think about the following five questions:

  • Who is the customer? For which persona is this map? This is a great place to use personas as a mechanism for describing the customer
  • What is the customer’s real goal? What is he/she trying to accomplish by reaching out to you?
  • What did the customer do just before reaching out? What did he/she do independently and which struggles did he/she encounter?
  • What will the customer do right after contacting you? What do you need the customer to do so he/she can accomplish his/her goal?
  • What will make the customer happy? Go above and beyond the initial question and deliver a customer experience that will exceed expectations.

And don’t forget to include partners and external suppliers in your map. Although they are not part of the core team in your company, they are in contact with your customers and have an impact on your company’s image. They represent your Customer Experience ecosystem (Forrester).

An example from our own life: An undertaker organised a very respectful and beautiful service for a beloved one, but the coffee that was served following the service was just awful. When the people attending the funeral service complained about the quality of the coffee, his response was: “It’s not my fault, my catering partner provides the beverages.” In terms of customer experience, this response is not acceptable because your customers are not interested in how you organised these things. They want a ‘good service’ at the funeral and it is the undertaker’s responsibility to organise this in cooperation with all his partners.

One simple way to get started with Customer Journey Mapping is to follow the 6 steps methodology by Conexperience involving into the workshop not only your employees, but also other key players of your ecosystem.

2. ‘Innovation through Design Thinking’ and ‘Service design thinking’

Design thinking is created because big corporations lack the ability to be creative and aren’t able to create new products and services that meet unfulfilled needs of their customers.

Design thinking is a methodology, but it’s also about a mindset and about a changing paradigm in management theory, moving from the traditional top‐down and quantitative approach to a more bottom‐up, qualitative approach in innovation processes.

It builds around 5 principles.

Service design is about making what you do more useful, usable & desirable for your users, and more efficient, effective & valuable for you ‐ everyone loves a great experience

Innovation is part of your organization at any time. So if you see that there are a lot of complaints about a feature, product or service, you can take the lead and innovate the bottleneck point of the process. When doing this, make sure you follow a “Double-Diamond Design” process:

  • Research the exact problem, both from the customer’s perspective as from that of your employees.
  • Then analyse these results and create artefacts (like a customer journey map) to make a visual representation of the problem.
  • When you have these insights, start a group session to generate ideas on how to resolve the problem.
  • Make a prototype and perform some testing.
  • Then you continue to receive feedback and continue to improve the prototype, until…
  • You have a final product or service you can fully implement.

3. Continuous Improvement based on customer insight

Temkin Group identifies four customer insight-driven action loops. These can be aggregated in two big areas of action, which have gained different naming in the field:

  • Fire-Fighting (also called small loop, inner loop, customer loop or case management): this is about ad-hoc immediate follow-up on each survey response and includes:
    • Immediate Response towards customers on a 121 basis or Collectively, via dedicated & targeted communication or as open communication on digital channels
    • Corrective/Celebration Action internally: i.e. providing immediate feedback towards employees or making quick adjustments.
  • Fire-Prevention (also called big loop, outer loop, business loop or action planning): this is about driving structural changes and improvements based on the insight gained from NPS responses over-time, and encompasses:
    • Continuous and/or Structural Improvement
      • to address root causes behind drivers of detraction
      • to identify ways to WOW customers based on their needs to move them from passives to promoters
      • to keep and intensify doing the identified drivers of promotion
    • Strategic Change: the new insight gained from customers’ voice about what really matters to them can be so substantial to fully influence small or big strategy changes.

You can read more details about these 4 loops and why they are so important to drive change in WHY NPS as Measurement and Methodology: which goals does it serve?

When it comes to change and innovation from the customer experience perspective it is all about Acting. It is about looking to your processes, products and service through the eyes of your customer and adjust, continuously.

Want to grow your Customer Experience competences?

These are only some of the highlights Milou took away from attending the Customer Experience Masterclass. Would you like to know more? Join our next CX Masterclass.

Customer Experience Framework and complete list of blog posts in this series

This post is part of a wider series about all the 6 CX disciplines that represent the CXPA Framework around which the CCXP exam is structured and that we cover in the CX Masterclass.

Find here the complete list of the other posts in this series:

  1. CX Strategy
  2. Customer Understanding
  3. Design, Improvement and Innovation
  4. Measurement
  5. Governance
  6. Culture

Extra: CXPA exam & Becoming CCXP (will be published on the 11th of December)

About this series

This post is part of the CX Framework series by Rosaria Cirillo and Nienke Bloem.

The foundations for these blogposts are written by Milou van Kerkhof following the June 2017 CX Masterclass given by Nienke Bloem and Rosaria Cirillo. Milou attended this as a newcomer in Customer Experience. These blogposts have been slightly edited and reflect only the highlights of the content of each module

 

*****

Nienke Bloem is often called the Customer Experience speaker in the blue dress. 

She’s a global CX thought leader, educator and a global keynote speaker who inspires audiences with best practices and proven methodologies. She leads a speaking practice, a CX game company and a training business; she breathes Customer Experiences and is author of two CX books.

Her two-day Customer Experience Masterclass is known as the best program to prepare for your CCXP and she is the go-to person voor CX leaders who want to advance their leadership and bring direct results from their Customer Experience transformation programs. Since 2020, she hosts a CX Leadership Masterminds program and helps leaders spice up their leadership and deliver an engaging CX Story including a solid CX Strategy. Besides, she is a modern-day pilgrim and found the parallel with leading customer centric transformations. 

With her over 20 years corporate experience, she speaks the business language. Her keynotes and education programs in Customer Experience are inspiring and hands-on. She is one of the few Recognized Training Partners of the CXPA and it is her mission to Make Customer Experience Work and help you deliver business results. 

/door

CX Framework series #2: Customer Understanding

Understanding your customers Rational and Emotional sides

Customer understanding is essential in determining how you can design and provide products/services and experiences that fulfil customer needs, so you can deliver top-class customer service, improve loyalty and get great recommendations.

It’s all about how your customers perceive you and all the interactions with your organisation. Perception being the key element.

Why are they reaching out to your company? How will they feel after being in touch with you? If the customer doesn’t have the feeling you want them to have, there’s a challenge for you as an organisation.

Foundations of customer understanding: archetypes, emotions & needs

Your customers are not just a number or a bunch of character traits. They are human beings with their own problems, hopes, fears and needs. When making their decisions to buy, customers have both rational and emotional reasons.

Understanding your customers’ (buying) behaviour is one of the elements that helps to be successful.

When customers have an emotional attachment to your brand, in addition to being loyal they also become promoters of your brand.

To simplify the understanding of your customers’ behaviours you need to consider: Archetypes, Emotions and Needs

A. Archetypes

The Bradford and Bingley Personality Framework identifies four different archetypes:

  • The feeler: they make decisions and take actions based on their emotions
  • The entertainer: they joke around to make their problems heard
  • The thinker: they are rational and process minded
  • The controller: they want everything to go exactly as planned and they get worked up when it doesn’t

Just imagine the different reaction each of these archetypes may have when entering a hotel room and they smell smoke. Understanding the attitudes of these personalities for example, is critical for your front-end employees (i.e. contact centres or hotel staff) who need to manage these customers’ reactions all the time.

While each of us has a dominant archetype, this can change or become extreme, depending on the situation or the stage in which we are in life, especially in case of life changing events like a divorce or the loss of a loved one.

B. Emotions

Many different models are trying to map emotions & make them understandable within companies.

Most of these models identify 4 main emotions: Happiness, Sadness, Anger and Fear.

Recent Temkin analysis of these 4 emotions at call centers proved the impact of these emotions on call duration!

This model is good and widely recognized, yet has limitations with regards to two essential elements:

  • Tends to perceive emotions as positive versus negative (on a ratio of 1-3)
  • Misses out completely on the fundamental human emotion: love

Rosaria Cirillo has applied her learning from Marshall Rosenberg NVC (Non Violent Communication) and showed us how we can instead distinguish emotions in two broad categories:

  • The ones we feel whenever our needs are met (i.e. happiness and love)
  • The ones we feel when our needs are not met (i.e. sadness and fear). When customers are expressing sadness and/or fear and their emotions are not acknowledged or understood, or when they feel judged, this can turn into anger.

C. Needs

To be able to understand and influence which emotions the customer is feeling we need to have a clear understanding of their needs.

 

The trainer Rosaria Cirillo shared how the analysis of thousands of survey responses she analysed – run since 2005 for different companies across multiple touch points and industry verticals –  shows that an adapted version of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs could be applied. There was a clear correlation between CSAT/NPS Score and at which level of needs the customer felt fulfilled during the interaction. In the most recent year she has added the emotions to the model as we can see in this figure.

Another way to look at needs is to consider the value you deliver to your customer like explained in the Elements of Value Pyramid from HBR’s The 30 Elements of Value.

Setting up a customer insight framework to systematically understand your customer

To have a proper understanding of who your customers are and how they want to be treated by your organization, you need to have a reliable customer insight program. You can achieve this using the following 4 steps:

  1. Collect data:
    1. Listen to the Voice of the Customers by asking feedback, performing voice analysis of incoming calls and making sure to ‘drink your own champagne’ i.e. being your own customer.
    2. Listen to the Voice of the Employees. What are they working on that isn’t giving them any satisfaction? How can you make their job more fulfilling?
    3. Listen to the Voice of the Process. How are your processes aligned and do they add value to the customer? Do you use Lean Six Sigma or another methodology?
    4. Look at the Value of the Customer. Quantify your customer by revenue, size or any other metric.
  2. Analyse your data. What do they mean and can you find any correlations or associations?
  3. Document the data and make it visible and understandable. Customer journey maps and personas are two key tools that can make your insights visible and easily understandable within your organization.
  4. Share your insights within your organization. Make sure everybody knows how the customer feels and how they can change their service or tone of voice accordingly.

Emotions drive loyalty and higher customer spending

When you’re reading this, you might be tricked into thinking that customer experience is only about making the customer happy and it doesn’t affect your revenue. Far from the truth! Numerous studies have concluded that a customer is more loyal to an organisation when they have a positive feeling about how they’ve been treated. For example: when a customer has a very positive feeling about an organisation, they are 7.8 times more likely to try new products and services. Think about the possible impact this could have on your P&L!

Getting in touch and staying in touch with your customer

The easiest way to get insights in the actions of thousands of customers is by analysing your website visit data or by looking at a chart of your contact centre volumes by contact reason (Check Tip: do you have such an overview in your company and, if so, who is looking at it regularly taking which actions?). Downside is that in doing so, you’re changing your customers into numbers or segments and you might forget that they are individuals. To compensate for this, numerous big companies make actual contact with customers mandatory for their employees, either by listening to calls, either by calling customers regularly either by acting as customers themselves.

The NS (Dutch Railway) asks their employees to travel by train regularly. That way they can sense the sentiments of passengers and get a stronger focus on ways to improve the journey for the customers. Likewise, the CEO of KPN (Dutch telecom provider) has a mobile phone subscription just like everybody else, so he can feel what it’s like to be a customer of his own company. Other organizations facilitate Customer Arenas where few employees listen and observe a group of customers while they discuss among themselves how they are treated and how the organization could improve. All these initiatives give great insights and should be incorporated in every organization that wants to deliver better customer experience.

Understanding your customer is crucial when it comes to customer experience. Listen, observe, get a deeper understanding of their emotions and their feedback, then you’ll make a good start!

Want to grow your Customer Experience competences?

These are only some of the highlights Milou took away from attending the Customer Experience Masterclass. Would you like to know more? Join a CX Masterclass.

Customer Experience Framework and complete list of blog posts in this series

This post is part of a wider series about all the 6 CX disciplines that represent the CXPA Framework around which the CCXP exam is structured and that we cover in the CX Masterclass.

Find here the complete list of the other posts in this series:

  1. CX Strategy
  2. Customer Understanding
  3. Design, Improvement and Innovation
  4. Measurement
  5. Governance
  6. Culture

Extra: CXPA exam & Becoming CCXP (will be published on the 11th of December)

About this series

This post was originally posted on Wow Now and is part of the CX Framework series by Rosaria Cirillo and Nienke Bloem.

The foundations for these blogposts are written by Milou van Kerkhof following the June 2017 CX Masterclass given by Nienke Bloem and Rosaria Cirillo. Milou attended this as a newcomer in Customer Experience. These blogposts have been slightly edited and reflect only the highlights of the content of each module

 

*****

Nienke Bloem is often called the Customer Experience speaker in the blue dress. 

She’s a global CX thought leader, educator and a global keynote speaker who inspires audiences with best practices and proven methodologies. She leads a speaking practice, a CX game company and a training business; she breathes Customer Experiences and is author of two CX books.

Her two-day Customer Experience Masterclass is known as the best program to prepare for your CCXP and she is the go-to person voor CX leaders who want to advance their leadership and bring direct results from their Customer Experience transformation programs. Since 2020, she hosts a CX Leadership Masterminds program and helps leaders spice up their leadership and deliver an engaging CX Story including a solid CX Strategy. Besides, she is a modern-day pilgrim and found the parallel with leading customer centric transformations. 

With her over 20 years corporate experience, she speaks the business language. Her keynotes and education programs in Customer Experience are inspiring and hands-on. She is one of the few Recognized Training Partners of the CXPA and it is her mission to Make Customer Experience Work and help you deliver business results. 

/door

CX Framework Series #1: How your CX Strategy is a fundamental when it comes to customer success

Delivering an excellent Customer Experience isn’t just about having friendly people in your customer care and instructing them to treat the customer as king. Creating great customer experiences is all about strategy. What is the identity of your organization? What experiences do you want your customers to have? How can you transform your organisation into a customer centric one? Through a very thoroughly defined Customer Experience Strategy, because great customer experiences don’t happen by accident.

Defining a CX strategy

As with all changes in your organisation, there should be a firm strategy as a starting point to deliver customer centric services. Start with the question, “I am a CEO/VP/Director/Manager at my company, what do we stand for when it comes to Customers? What is our Why? What do we promise, where do we make the difference?” Try and put it into words and you might experience difficulty. That is why customer experience strategy is needed.

When defining your strategy, it is imperative that you know what your company and its brand(s) stand for and how you can give exceptional service.

Your brand experience

Your organisation probably has some idea as to where to plot itself in relation to competitors. Maybe you deliver high end products, but your service is not aligned with that. Or you give your B2B customers a hassle-free service, but your products are not hassle-free. Plot your organisation in your field by asking the question: “How does my company differ from our competitors?” That is what your customers will remember, that is where you can make the difference.

When you know what makes your organisation unique, you will need to make that very explicit in what that means for your customer. Use a brand promise, or even stronger: create customer promises. Take this example from Easyjet. As a customer you know what to expect, now it is up to Easyjet to deliver on these promises.

 

Have a look at the actual experiences of your customers and what you want them to experience. Are they receiving the hassle-free service your company stands for? And how strong is your organisation’s brand in the mind of your customers?

Do they have memorable customer experiences, but in a negative way? That means your organisation is de-branded. People are not receiving the service they expect based on your Brand and Customer Promise and they will create a negative buzz around your organisation. When your customer doesn’t even remember your brand, they are also not inclined to do more business with you. They don’t even know who you are. So, when you are in this non-branded position, you need to make sure that customers link in with their positive feeling about doing business with your brand.

And of course, the best experience you can give your customers is a branded one. In that situation, people have a positive attitude to your brand and organisation and are very much inclined to return to you the next time they are in need of your service. Because delivering memorable experiences is what Customer Experience is all about. How can you organize these branded experiences?

You can read more about the best practise in branding by Yogi tea, including what a branded experience is, at how Yogi Tea stands out by branding.

Make your company branding stand out

Having a strong brand stems from the quintessential question: WHY? The Golden Circle of Simon Sinek is used very often and for a good reason. This methodology helps you to turn to broad brand promises like “we make phones” into “we provide products that make your life organised and pleasurable”. If you want to make a brand promise that inspires and entices your customers, you need to answer a specific set of questions:

  • Purpose: what do we stand for? What is our Why?
  • Strategy: what strategic choices will make this purpose reality?
  • Brand Promise: what can we promise our customers based on this purpose?
  • Customer Experience: what experience do we want to deliver on this promise?
  • Alignment: are the products and services distinctive enough? What skills do our employees need to develop to deliver this experience? And what technology is necessary to be able to deliver it?

Putting your strategy into motion

When you have determined what your company stands for, it is time to take the next steps. First you need to assess your maturity. How far along the road is your company in CX?  For example, you can plot your organization in the maturity path of Beyond Philosophy. In the MasterClass, more maturity models are shared.

Based on the outcome of your assessment, you plot which steps are needed right now and which need to be taken in the future to grow CX towards a higher level of CX maturity.

Defining your strategy and determining your brand promise is a very strenuous task and can easily become a too-diluted version of the powerful message you want to bring across. So take this process very seriously. It is often a process of co-creation with Marketing, Communication and Customer Experience departments to define and later share with colleagues to start the daily delivery on the promises.

Want to grow in Customer Experience?

These are only some of the highlights Milou took away from attending the Customer Experience Masterclass. Would you like to know more? Join a CX Masterclass.

Customer Experience Framework and complete list of blog posts in this series

This post is part of a wider series about all the 6 CX discipline we cover in the CX Masterclass and that represent the CXPA Framework around which the CCXP exam is structured.

Find here the complete list of the other posts in this series:

  1. CX Strategy (this one)
  2. CX Understanding
  3. CX Design, Improvement and Innovation
  4. CX Measurement
  5. CX Governance
  6. CX Culture

*The foundations for these blogposts are written by Milou van Kerkhof following the June 2017 CX Masterclass given by Nienke Bloem and Rosaria Cirillo. Milou attended this as a newcomer in Customer Experience. The blogposts are edited a little bit and reflect the highlights of the content of module 1*

 

*****

Nienke Bloem is often called the Customer Experience speaker in the blue dress. 

She’s a global CX thought leader, educator and a global keynote speaker who inspires audiences with best practices and proven methodologies. She leads a speaking practice, a CX game company and a training business; she breathes Customer Experiences and is author of two CX books.

Her two-day Customer Experience Masterclass is known as the best program to prepare for your CCXP and she is the go-to person voor CX leaders who want to advance their leadership and bring direct results from their Customer Experience transformation programs. Since 2020, she hosts a CX Leadership Masterminds program and helps leaders spice up their leadership and deliver an engaging CX Story including a solid CX Strategy. Besides, she is a modern-day pilgrim and found the parallel with leading customer centric transformations. 

With her over 20 years corporate experience, she speaks the business language. Her keynotes and education programs in Customer Experience are inspiring and hands-on. She is one of the few Recognized Training Partners of the CXPA and it is her mission to Make Customer Experience Work and help you deliver business results. 

/door

3 manieren om KLANTEN met een klacht te laten kramperen

Er zijn van die momenten dat je niet kan geloven wat een medewerker doet en zegt. Dat je totaal verbijsterd in een winkel staat en je in je hemd gezet voelt als klant. Dat je het liefst iets heel boos wilt zeggen uit pure onmacht. Ken je dat gevoel?

Het was voor mij even geleden, maar vorige week heb ik het weer aan den lijve meegemaakt. Wat gebeurde er en wat kan je daarvan leren? Read and Weep…

Mijn 16 jarige dochter wilde heel graag naar Appelpop en daar met haar vriendinnen kamperen op het festival terrein. Dan moet er iemand van minimaal 18 jaar mee en de dames haalden me over om ze te vergezellen. Vroeger noemden we thuis Kamperen=Kramperen, dus je weet dat ik niet stond te juichen. Maar je doet alles voor je kinderen! Ik had geen kampeer uitrusting, dus toog naar de Buitensport winkel voor een tent en een luchtbed.

Ik werd perfect geholpen. Had zelfs de mazzel dat de tent in de uitverkoop was. Dus ging ik blij met mijn aankopen naar huis, waar de tent door de twee puber dames binnen no-time werd opgezet in de woonkamer. De eerste test was geslaagd.

Het festival

Vrijdag 11 september. We kwamen aan op camping de Betuwe en kregen een mooi plekje toegewezen, ook nog eens met top buren. Tent opgezet, luchtbed opgepompt en wij gingen richting het fantastisch leuke festival Appelpop (ik ben fan!). Na een muzikaal feest kwamen we midden in de nacht thuis en toen ik mijn tent in kroop, viel me gelijk op dat het luchtbed wel wat zacht was. “Had ik de dop er niet goed opgedraaid?” Gelukkig lag de pomp binnen handbereik en viel ik uiteindelijk in slaap. Halverwege de nacht werd ik wakker en raakten mijn billen de koude Betuwse grond. Oei, een luchtbed wat langzaam leegliep. LEK.

Maar goed, het is een festival, “you win some, you lose some”. Het hoort er een beetje bij. Zaterdag net zo’n festival dag met verschillende muzikale hoogtepunten. Helaas was het regenachtig geworden en toen we om 1u ’s nachts op de camping terug kwamen, regende het pijpenstelen. Ik kroop snel mijn Wildebeast tent in en toen ik eenmaal lag, hoorde ik “Drup, Drup, Drup”. Na een kort onderzoek bleek de rits van de voortent zo lek als een mandje. Het water liep zo mijn binnentent in. Gelukkig werd het na een paar uur droog, maar ik baalde. Moest ’s nachts nog twee keer mijn luchtbed oppompen, want er waren helaas geen kabouters geweest die het lek hadden gerepareerd. Zondag ochtend kwam ik behoorlijk gebroken mijn tent uit en besloot die dag gelijk terug te gaan naar de winkel. Met tent en luchtbed, want dit kon niet de bedoeling zijn.

Het retourneren

Daar stond ik bij de balie. Een meisje stapte op me af. Vroeg wat ze voor me kon doen. Ik legde de situatie uit en ze riep er een collega bij. Of ik het bonnetje nog had. Natuurlijk! Ze keken moeilijk en vroegen of ik de tent wel goed had opgezet. Of ik wist dat ritsen in voortenten altijd lekken, als de regen erop staat. Ik vertelde dat ik me dat niet kon voorstellen. Dat ik graag een nieuw luchtbed wilde en mijn geld terug voor de tent. Want het kampeer seizoen is echt over en stel als ik nu ook tent krijg met een ‘foutje’, dan kom ik daar pas volgend jaar achter. Daar konden ze niet aan beginnen, maar ze gingen uitzoeken wat ze voor me konden doen. Draaiden zich met hun rug naar me toe en liepen weg. “Wacht u hier”.

Tuurlijk. Daar zat ik. Tussen tenten, wandelschoenen, rugzakken. Er was geen empathie voor twee gebroken nachten op een lek luchtbed. Geen “vervelend dat u een lekke tent heeft gekocht”. Ik kon mijn oren niet geloven en door die gebroken nacht was mijn incasseringsvermogen ook niet optimaal. Maar ik besloot me te beheersen. Wachtte en ja hoor daar kwamen de zondaghulpen weer.

“Hallo mevrouw, in principe geven we geen geld terug. Maar voor deze keer doen we dat toch wel”. Zo, mocht ik me even in mijn handen knijpen…. En toen kwam het. “Maar als u de volgende keer een tent koopt, en het is belangrijk dat de voortent niet lekt? Zorg dat u zich beter informeert. En koop dan een duurder exemplaar. “ Mijn mond viel open. Ik kreeg mijn geld terug en nu nog een trap na, dat ik zelf verkeerd had geïnformeerd. Met een boze stem antwoordde ik “ Ik was hier donderdag en heb advies gekregen van een collega van je en die heeft niet gevraagd of ik een lekke rits wilde in de voortent. Ik ben afgegaan op zijn advies en heb daarom deze tent gekocht. Zorg dan zelf voor beter advies en in alle eerlijkheid; verkoop geen rommel.”.

Maar ik wilde nog wel een ander luchtbed. Dat kon helaas niet. Die waren in de winkel uitverkocht, maar ik kon gewoon thuis een nieuwe bestellen. In mijn ooghoek zag ik een tablet, ze hadden dat natuurlijk even voor me kunnen doen. Maar nee, dat meedenken en doen zat er niet in. Dus ik kreeg mijn geld terug voor het luchtbed en de tent. Het was een heel gepruts met bonnen achter de kassa en het geld zou worden teruggestort op mijn rekening. Ook al had ik mijn geld terug, een goed gevoel had ik er niet over. Licht briesend ging ik naar huis.

Hoe niet om te gaan met een klacht

Welke lessen kun je hiervan leren? Vooral wat je NIET moet doen in geval van een klacht.

1. Vertel klanten precies wat ze zelf fout hebben gedaan

Zonder enige empathie voor de twee gebroken nachten en het gedoe, vertelden deze dames dat ik de tent vast verkeerd had opgezet. Dat ik zo dom was, dat ik niet wist dat alle ritsen van voortenten altijd lekken. Mijn tip: Toon empathie. Leef mee. Vraag door. Knik, hum. Maar laat alle kritiek achterwege. Je maakt het alleen maar erger.

2. Vertel wat er allemaal niet mogelijk is

Op het moment dat ik aangaf, wat ik graag wilde qua oplossing, vertelden ze gelijk dat dit niet kon. Geld teruggeven deden ze niet in dit soort situaties. En luchtbedden hadden ze niet meer. Wel wonderlijk dat de oplossing uiteindelijk was, dat ik mijn geld terug kreeg. Met me meedenken in andere scenario’s; dat zat er niet in. Mijn tip: Luister goed naar wat de klant wil. Vraag door naar het waarom van deze oplossing. Zoek dan uit wat de mogelijkheden zijn en denk mee. Vraag na of dit de klant tevreden stelt, dan weet je zeker dat je goed zit.

3. Geef een trap na

Toen ze hadden uitgelegd dat ik mijn geld terug kreeg, werd ook nog even haarfijn uitgelegd, dat ik de volgende keer beter mijn best moest doen bij het uitzoeken van een tent. Oftewel, de tent met de lekke rits in de voortent, was mijn eigen schuld. Want ik had mijn voorwerk niet goed gedaan. Mijn tip: als je tot een oplossing bent gekomen, vraag dan of dit een goede oplossing is. Inventariseer daarna of je de klant nog ergens bij kan helpen. Ik had best hulp gewild met het kopen van een luchtbed.

Gaat dit alleen over deze buitensport winkel? Nee! Want dit gebeurt veel vaker. Helaas. De dames die mij hielpen waren weekend krachten, die als student bijverdienen. Vast goed kunnen verkopen, maar ernstig tekort schieten op het service vlak. Waarschijnlijk niks hadden geleerd over het oplossen van klachten en het belang van meeveren en het tonen van empathie. Ze volgden de interne regels en wisten me deze perfect uit te leggen. Zorg zorg voor gekwalificeerd personeel. Niet alleen qua product kennis, maar ook qua oplossend vermogen. Investeer daar in, want dit kost klanten en is slechte PR.

De nachten in het weekend was ik kamperend best ok doorgekomen, ondanks de ongemakken/ Maar bij het afhandelen van mijn klacht had ik het gevoel dat ik was gaan KRAMPEREN. Jammer en niet nodig.

Wat wil jij dat een organisatie het liefst doet als jij een klacht hebt? Wat is cruciaal voor jou bij het oplossen? Ik hoor het graag als reactie op deze blog!

PS. Deze foto maakt ik als selfie tijdens het opzetten van de tent op vrijdag.

 

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Nienke Bloem is often called the Customer Experience speaker in the blue dress. 

She’s a global CX thought leader, educator and a global keynote speaker who inspires audiences with best practices and proven methodologies. She leads a speaking practice, a CX game company and a training business; she breathes Customer Experiences and is author of two CX books.

Her two-day Customer Experience Masterclass is known as the best program to prepare for your CCXP and she is the go-to person voor CX leaders who want to advance their leadership and bring direct results from their Customer Experience transformation programs. Since 2020, she hosts a CX Leadership Masterminds program and helps leaders spice up their leadership and deliver an engaging CX Story including a solid CX Strategy. Besides, she is a modern-day pilgrim and found the parallel with leading customer centric transformations. 

With her over 20 years corporate experience, she speaks the business language. Her keynotes and education programs in Customer Experience are inspiring and hands-on. She is one of the few Recognized Training Partners of the CXPA and it is her mission to Make Customer Experience Work and help you deliver business results. 

/door