Customer Experience as a Differentiator

Don't forget about Customer Experience and your Systems and Procedures

Recently, I've been looking at premises for the New Way Growth Academy to do the workshops, seminars, and set up a business-style hub. While I was looking at them, I used Rightmove from a commercial point of view to see what was available in my local area.

When I clicked on the properties that caught my eye, it said "Enter your details and we'll contact the agent for you." So, I entered my details…and waited. And waited. And waited some more. 10+ days still waiting!

I finally got a call from them today saying that they'd like me to look at their property and apologised for not being in touch, but they had been on Holiday. 🤔

Now I know that agent has actually got about three or four people in the team, so imagine how I felt when this gentleman came back to me saying "sorry I've been away on holiday."

For me, systems and procedures need to be working in a way that anybody who moves out of the business or goes on holiday the process is covered. Your roles and responsibilities, standard work instructions, and procedures come into play so the output of you process isn't affected in any way.

I learnt that the hard way whilst working in manufacturing many years ago, that for every process we have we need to have three people fully conversant in it. That's just to cover for absenteeism and holidays—that should be exactly the same for any other business, regardless of whether it's manufacturing or not. The last thing you want is your customer experience being impacted by something like this. The experience with the estate agents above has certainly left me p***ed off, would I ever use them? NO!

Imagine: I've now gone (and they weren't the only ones, there have been 2 or 3) 10 days without hearing anything from them. My thought processes are, why are you putting this on your website? why are you allowing this ineffective process? why are you not concerned about your customer experience?

It made me feel as though, "you're not bothered about your potential customers, and you actually don't want a sale".

In business, you need to ensure that anything you do from a process point of view, you are covered and can respond to it, it's written down so anybody could pick it up and work the process. You're then covered when you've got on holidays or absenteeism, and your customer experience is NOT going to flatline.

Customer Satisfaction and Experience is a differentiator, don’t let process slip, it can have a huge negative impact.

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