Relationships are revenue - the connection between the customer and the brand is at the heart of great CX. It’s this equation that influences how the customer reacts after a negative experience and determines if they turn into brand advocates after a positive experience. But how can companies foster this personalized and authentic customer rapport that’s based on trust and transparency?
In this episode of One-to-One, Scott McArthur, CRO, Statflo, hosted Matthew Gould, a renowned leadership coach and co-author of Lead from your heart: the art of relationship-based leadership. They discussed how customer-facing teams can get past misalignment and conflict to create stellar CX.
One-to-One gives you a glimpse into the world and mindset of CX leaders. If you liked this conversation and don’t want to miss future episodes, catch us on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or your favorite podcast app.
Here are some of the key takeaways from their conversation:
As CX is constantly-evolving dynamic between customers and companies, it can get messy if there’s no transparency or clarity on both sides of the table. CX is a relationship-based experience that needs a top-down approach to be successful. If leaders don’t have a good relationship with their teams, if there’s no transparency in the organizational culture, employees won’t have a good relationship with customers. A great experience stems all the way from the goals of the company to the end-user.
There will always be mistakes, misinterpretations, and assumptions when nurturing customer relationships because business relations are never perfect. Leaders who are constantly frustrated by these incidences of misalignment make life terrible for their employees, which leads to negative CX and ultimately, to churn and revenue loss. The key is to turn these WTF unhappy customer moments into So-What-Now or ‘SWN’ moments. Acknowledging the issue or the friction point, accepting responsibility, and asking, “What can we do next to solve this problem?” will help leaders foster a positive customer experience. WTF is just misalignment and implies something is out of control, whereas SWN puts leaders in control of the situation.
People want to be seen and heard, especially when they are frustrated or have had a negative experience. So, when a customer raises a particular issue, the focus should be on asking for more information to get to the root of the problem. Problems should be construed as an opportunity to improve CX – by flagging a problem, customers are giving the company a chance to fix it. The real complication arises when the customer doesn’t tell the team there’s an issue. It’s better to have those rough conversations on a regular basis versus avoiding a conflict and hoping everything works out.
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