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According to Dr James Barnes from Bristol Group, wrote an incredible piece on the five critical elements of customer satisfaction. Each of these elements represents a level of the offer or the value proposition that your business can deliver to its customers. At the top level of the cone, we find emotional elements, it is these messages which will leave your customers with either positive or negative FEELINGS toward your business, and which will determine whether or not your business is capable of developing genuine relationships with your customers. The way you deal with your customers, through all points of contact and all interactions, affords you the opportunity to make an impression. Virtually everything that you do has the potential to make the customer feel certain emotions. You should make them feel important, valued, special, recognized, and pleasantly surprised. Instead carry on businesses as usual and make them customers feel neglected, unimportant, frustrated, disappointed, let down, and angry will ensure they go and give their loyalty and hard-earned cash to your competition.

Assessing your customers, external and internal, is now widely recognised as a vital input to any strategy for customer-focused business performance improvement. Understanding customers is the key to giving them an exceptional experience. To give good customer care you must deliver what you promise, but exceptional customer experience involves getting to know your customers so well that not only do you meet your customers’ expectations but you can anticipate their needs and exceed their expectations.

DO NOT take the time to listen, have more compassion and increase your receptiveness by creating opportunities for honest feedback from your stakeholders, and you will never had the necessary measure to implant changes which will benefit the company as a whole. 

Customer-centric businesses don’t let their customers wander in search of information or help; instead, they provide customer experience excellence. They guide their customers through a carefully planned series of interactions called a customer journey. A customer journey comprises experiences which are, in turn, made up of touch points — human, physical, sensory or communication, and connect with them at an emotional level either in person or virtual — and which are influenced by factors like price, convenience and location. Ever faster change, greater customer choice and channel proliferation are realities every business faces today. In this still challenging time, BY NOT developing effective customer centric strategies and an excellent caring customer experience programme, businesses will be unable to focus their attention across multiple touch-points to unable them to build loyalty so they can grow their profit.

A few years ago, I was talking to a new potential customer, and explaining how training will improve his bottom line, trained employees sell better, are happier because they know what they do and ultimately bring more money in the till. At the end of the conversation, that man said to me: ‘my staff don’t need training, they know how to work the till!’ I didn’t know what to say to that and to my knowledge that business has closed their door. Training your employees isn’t just a need; it is a necessity. It isn’t only good for you as an employer, but it is also good for your employees too. Through training, your employees will feel valued because you are spending time and money on their development and have given them the tools to do their job. Continue NOT to train your employees or use the budget for marketing and see how long it will take before you too close your doors!

Because you just ‘can’t manage what you don’t measure’. It is an old management adage that is still very accurate and used today. Unless you measure something you don’t know whether it is getting better  or worse, you can’t manage for improvement nor can you celebrate success. You need to measure those activities or results that are important to successfully achieving your organisation’s goals.

DO NOT measure your Key Performance Indicators and will never be able to demonstrate how effectively your company is to achieving their business objectives and how successful you are.

A 5% increase in customer retention can lead to an increase between 25-95% in annual profits. (Bain & Company)

We are entering a new era, it is the time to start evolving into the next phase where a deeper more authentic connection occurs, where businesses are becoming accountable for their customers, their people and their environment. Nurturing a truly caring service culture isn’t easy but it is the only way to have a thriving business, with happy employees, happy customers and happy bottom lines. Not doing it? Well that's just scary.