Towards my last years of working at a fashion e-commerce, I thought I knew it all. Or most of what I needed to know about the company. I had been working there for a good number of years and I knew the product, I knew the pain points, every operational flow, and I knew that many areas had room for massive improvement–we weren’t performing so well in the eyes of our customers.
One of the founders fell in love with the concept of Customer Centricity and I was willing and more than happy to help her implement a customer centric angle in the company’s mission. We knew it wouldn’t be easy, as a company that’s nearly a decade old has its vices, bad practices and no longer holds the enthusiasm for fresh starts amidst bad numbers. In spite of this, she made the brave decision of moving forward with the research and implementation of a customer centric approach.
These are 4 things that made trying to improve the CX quite painful:
Not everybody believes in it: More so when things are not going great. No matter how optimistic a few are about improving the customer’s opinion about your team and company, there will be people whose sole attitude comes in the way. These people should understand very bluntly, that if they’re in a decision making position, they’re either part of the solution or the problem. Hopefully, this kind of people aren’t many.
The people that should help are too busy: People are under pressure to squeeze the best KPIs out of their hard work. The idea of them giving you 30 minutes just so that you can do your audit and know what is going wrong is overwhelming to them. Sometimes they’ll join a follow-up call, sometimes they won’t, sometimes they’ll forget to.
Customer Support areas aren’t taken seriously: I’ve always found it unfair that the people paid the least in a company are customer support staff. These people are seen and treated as the bottom of the company. They are in fact the front line that should be consulted and heard about what customers are saying–Where we’re succeeding, where we’re failing. Instead, I found people thought the Customer Support staff was just whining about other areas.
Plain lack of knowledge (and empathy) by company stakeholders about the customer: Not everyone is a natural born customer-minded person. We get that. I beg all stakeholders in charge of teams, of setting goals and overseeing progress, to know your customer. Don't just assume you know them. Get to know the different customer personas you are servicing. Then you'll see where they come from, what they want and what they don't. Have some empathy.
In the end, Customer Centricity sessions carried on and there were great things that came out too. I’ll share the 4 things that made improving CX, an awesome experience.