I’ve written in the past about the benefits of following a CX strategy and Watermark Consulting did some great analysis a couple of years back on how CX Leaders have outperformed CX Laggards on the stock market.
So seeing these benefits, more and more businesses are now following a CX strategy.
And that’s wonderful.
But the Comcast call that went viral earlier this week highlights a disconnect between organisations’ CX goals and how they are hiring, incenting and motivating their sales and retention employees.
Let’s look first at what customers want. Their expectations of the service they will receive from you have been set by companies like Amazon, Apple, and Zappos (I dream of the day I’ll be able to add an Australian company’s name to that list). In short, they rightly expect nothing but the best – service par excellence.
Businesses, meanwhile, hire salespeople based on how successful they’ve been at closing sales in the past. For retention specialists, its about how much business they’ve been able to save a company from losing. They then weight these employees’ financial incentives heavily towards their respective objectives of achieving new sales or retaining existing business.
Is it any wonder then that salespeople do not hand hold a customer through a complex implementation process preferring to move onto their next deal and you get belligerent attitudes from retention specialists like the one Ryan Block encountered at Comcast? They don’t get paid to help you in that way.
To further exemplify this, yesterday I had lunch with an old colleague of mine who works in sales for a global IT company. He said “at the beginning of the quarter its all about providing a great customer experience. In the last 2 weeks of the business quarter its: “close those deals!””
What’s the Answer?
Here are a five things companies can do to help align themselves with the level of service their customers are expecting:
If your company is doing something similar or different to this I’d love to hear about it. Please share your experience in the Comments section below.
This post is the result of a collaboration with Luke Soon. Many customer experience transformations stall because leaders can’t show how
....READ MORE
Today, I'm pleased to share a guest post by Jeanicka Rhey. Navigating the intensely competitive business landscape of today has
....READ MORE
I’ve always found CX case studies hard to come by. Organizations tend to play their cards close to their chests
....READ MORE