Category Archives: Customer Experience

Aligning Leadership Goals with Customer Service Excellence

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Aligning Leadership Goals with Customer Service Excellence

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

My friend Sterling Hawkins just wrote a great article about the tension between the leadership of a company and the salesforce. Hawkins reports the president of a Fortune 500 company told him, “Tension between the salesforce and leadership is normal. One is always bargaining with the other for more. The sales team wants more time and budget, and the leadership wants more sales.”

That made me think of the tension that is sometimes created between leadership and the customer service team. In the end, it’s mostly because of unrealistic expectations.

Customer Service Goals Cartoon

It reminds me of an episode of Amazing Business Radio when I interviewed Bill Price, Amazon’s first VP of global customer service, who shared founder and CEO Jeff Bezos’s philosophy about customer service, which was that the experience should be so frictionless that customers wouldn’t need support.

Obviously, a retailer the size of Amazon not needing customer support is unrealistic, but the goal is lofty. Bezos recognized the need for a customer support department and needed someone to run it. In the job interview, Bezos asked Price, “What’s your definition of customer service?” Price answered, “The best service is no service,” and it was apparently the right answer. Price got the job.

In customer service and CX, it’s impossible to be perfect, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. Still, you must have reasonable expectations. You can’t expect there to never be a problem. You can’t expect a perfect NPS or customer satisfaction rating. But what you can do is create goals, expectations and KPIs that positively impact forward progress.

Here’s another – more generic – example. There are 32 teams in the National Hockey League, and only one will win the Stanley Cup. At the beginning of the season, it’s reasonable for a team’s leadership to say to the players, “Let’s try to win the Stanley Cup!” That’s probably what most teams strive for. What the teams’ leadership doesn’t say is, “You must win every game.”

Creating unrealistic goals and objectives is demotivating. In CX (and just about every other part of a company), leaders should meet with their teams to define success, create realistic goals, include some “stretch goals,” and push their people to continuously improve and be more successful. The right conversations lead to a unified organization headed toward the same goal.

So, what’s a reasonable goal for your customer service teams? Is it higher customer satisfaction scores, higher percentages of first-call resolution, shorter hold times, or something else? Whatever it is, everyone must get in sync and agree on a plan. Then, as a unified team, execute it with a commitment to always doing their best and improving.

Image Credits: Wikimedia Commons, Shep Hyken

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The Key Customer Service Pillar

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The Key Customer Service Pillar

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Megan Jones of Call Centre Helper recently interviewed me about the “Pillars of Customer Service.” In preparation, I did a Google search and asked, “What are the pillars of customer service?”

There are many correct answers. In other words, there are no definitive answers. Some of the information and articles included words and phrases such as:

  1. Personalization
  2. Responsiveness
  3. Integrity
  4. Knowledge
  5. Empathy
  6. Patience
  7. Problem-solving skills
  8. Communication
  9. People first

There were many others as well, but one I didn’t see in any of the Google responses was respect. I’m sure some companies have incorporated the word respect into their Pillars of Customer Service; however, the almighty and powerful Google didn’t mention them. I even asked my close friend, ChatGPT, and it didn’t come up with the word respect either. I responded, “I’m surprised none of my Google searches or my query with you didn’t mention the word respect. Maybe I’m on to something.”

ChatGPT came back with a great answer. “Your observation highlights a valuable insight into possibly under-served areas of discussion in customer service. … This could be a compelling topic for your next customer service keynote speech, article or book, offering a unique viewpoint that can resonate deeply with businesses striving to elevate their customer service quality.”

Thank you, ChatGPT!

So, let’s talk about the never-mentioned pillar: respect. First, some definitions.

  • Cambridge Dictionary includes “politeness, honor and care shown toward someone or something that is considered important.”
  • Merriam-Webster Dictionary includes “high or special regard.”
  • Dictionary.com includes “to show regard or consideration for.”

All customer service pillars involve some degree of respect. They all aim at one single idea: to give the customer the best experience possible. In other words, respect their decision to do business with you in all possible ways, and they will respect you as a company or brand, hopefully in the form of repeat business—maybe even loyalty.

Respect is a lofty goal. Unfortunately, the majority of companies and brands don’t deliver on the concept, at least according to the more than 1,000 customers we surveyed for our annual customer service and CX study. Specifically, we asked if customers felt brands and companies respected their time. Why time? Because it’s something that, once it’s gone, can never be recaptured. It’s precious to many and one of the easiest ways to show a level of respect—or in some cases—a lack of respect. The results of the survey were telling:

61% of customers don’t think companies or brands respect their time.

This is not the answer most of us would hope for. There are many ways customers feel they are disrespected. We asked them what would likely cause them to switch to a different company or brand.

    • More than half (51%) are likely to switch companies or leave a brand because they had to wait too long on hold. How long someone is willing to wait is an individual preference, so maybe this should be the next question on your customer satisfaction survey: How long are you willing to wait before you become frustrated when holding to talk to a customer service or sales agent? If a bad customer service experience includes the customer feeling disrespected for any reason, don’t be surprised if they don’t come back.
    • Even more—60% of customers—are likely to switch companies or leave a brand because the company didn’t respond fast enough. How fast is fast enough? If a customer wanted to wait six hours for an answer to their question, they would have waited six hours to ask it. Once again, time is an opportunity to show respect (or disrespect).
    • And 75% of customers are likely to switch companies or leave a brand because the company didn’t respond at all. This sends a message that the company doesn’t respect the customer at all.

Respecting a customer’s time is just one way to show respect. Kindness, being proactive and recognizing and appreciating a customer for their business are just a few more ways—of many—to show respect.

Here’s a homework assignment. Sit down with your team and ask two questions:

      1. How do we show our customers we respect them?
      2. Are we doing anything that would show our customers we don’t respect them—even if that’s not our intention?

These two questions could give you answers and ideas that will enhance your relationship with your customers by proving your respect and appreciation for them.

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com

Image Credits: Pexels

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Five Keys to Personalizing the Customer Experience

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Five Keys to Personalizing the Customer Experience

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Earlier this year, we surveyed more than 1,000 consumers in the U.S. for our 2024 State of Customer Service and Customer Experience (CX) Study. We asked about the importance of a personalized experience. We found that 81% of customers prefer companies that offer a personalized experience, and 70% say a personalized experience in which the employee knows who they are and their history with the company (past purchases, buying patterns, support calls and more) is important. They also want the experience to go beyond people and include the platforms where they prefer to do business.

For a recent episode of Amazing Business Radio, I talked with Elizabeth Tobey, head of Marketing, Digital & AI of NICE, which helps companies apply AI to manage customer experience. The focus of the discussion was personalization. Here are some of the highlights from the interview:

1. Channel of Choice: This is where the modern-day concept of personalization begins. Tobey said, “In a world where people carry computers in their pockets (also known as mobile phones), it’s important to meet your customers when and where they want to be met.” Customers used to have two main choices when communicating with a brand. They could either walk into a store or call on the phone. Today, there are multiple channels and platforms. They can still visit in person or call, but they can also go to a website with self-service options, visit a social channel like Facebook, conduct business using an app, communicate with a brand’s chatbot and more. Customers want convenience, and part of that is being able to connect with a brand the way they want to connect. Some companies and brands do that better than others. The ones that get it right have educated customers on what they should expect, in effect raising the bar for all others who haven’t yet recognized the importance of communication.

2. Communicate on the Customer’s Terms: Tobey shared a frustrating personal experience that illustrated how some customers like to communicate but a brand falls short. Tobey was getting home late from an event. She contacted a company through its support channel on its website and was communicating with a customer support agent via chat. It was late, and she said, “I have to go to sleep,” expecting she could continue the chat the next morning with another agent. But, when she went to resume the conversation, she was forced to restart the process. She logged back into the website and repeated the authentication process, which was expected, but what she didn’t expect was having to start over with a new agent, repeating her conversation from the beginning as if she had never called before. Tobey made a case for technology that allows for asynchronous conversations on the customer’s timeline, eliminating the need for “over-authentication” and forcing the customer to start over, wasting time and creating an experience marred with friction.

3. Eliminate Friction: How could an interview with an executive at a technology company like NICE not bring up the topic of AI? In the story Tobey told about having to start over with a new agent, going through the authentication process again and repeating her issue, there is a clear message, which is to eliminate unnecessary steps. I shared an experience about visiting a doctor’s office where I had to fill out numerous forms with repeat information: name, address, date of birth, etc. Why should any patient have to fill in the same information more than once? The answer to the question, according to Tobey, is AI. She says, “Take all data that’s coming in from a customer journey and feed it into our AI so that the engine is continuously learning, growing and getting smarter. That means for every customer interaction, the automation and self-service can evolve.” In other words, once AI has the customer’s information, it should be used appropriately to eliminate needless steps (also known as friction) to give the customer the easiest and most convenient experience.

4. It’s Not Just About the Customer: In addition to AI supporting the customer’s self-service and automated experience, any data that is picked up in the customer’s journey can be fed to customer support agents, supervisors and CX leaders, changing how they work and making them more agile with the ability to make decisions faster. Agents get information about the customer, enabling them to provide the personalized experience customers desire. Tobey says, “Agents get a co-pilot or collaborator who listens to every interaction, offers them the best information they need and gives them suggestions.” For supervisors and CX leaders, they get information that makes them more agile and helps them make decisions faster.

5. Knowledge Management: To wrap up our interview, Tobey said, “AI management is knowledge management. Your AI is only as good as your data and knowledge. If you put garbage in, you might get garbage out.” AI should constantly learn and communicate the best information and data, allowing customers, agents and CX leaders to access the right information quickly and create a better and more efficient experience for all.

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com

Image Credits: Unsplash

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Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of July 2024

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Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of July 2024Drum roll please…

At the beginning of each month, we will profile the ten articles from the previous month that generated the most traffic to Human-Centered Change & Innovation. Did your favorite make the cut?

But enough delay, here are July’s ten most popular innovation posts:

  1. Organizational Debt Syndrome Poses a Threat — by Stefan Lindegaard
  2. Do Nothing More Often — by Robyn Bolton
  3. Is Disruption About to Claim a New Victim? — by Robyn Bolton
  4. What Top Innovators Do Differently — by Greg Satell
  5. Four Hidden Secrets of Innovation — by Greg Gatell
  6. Rise of the Atomic Consultant — by Braden Kelley
  7. Do You Bring Your Whole Self to Work? — by Mike Shipulski
  8. Giving Your Team a Sense of Shared Purpose — by David Burkus
  9. Creating Effective Digital Teams — by Howard Tiersky
  10. Smarter Risk Taking — by Janet Sernack

BONUS – Here are five more strong articles published in June that continue to resonate with people:

If you’re not familiar with Human-Centered Change & Innovation, we publish 4-7 new articles every week built around innovation and transformation insights from our roster of contributing authors and ad hoc submissions from community members. Get the articles right in your Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin feeds too!

Have something to contribute?

Human-Centered Change & Innovation is open to contributions from any and all innovation and transformation professionals out there (practitioners, professors, researchers, consultants, authors, etc.) who have valuable human-centered change and innovation insights to share with everyone for the greater good. If you’d like to contribute, please contact me.

P.S. Here are our Top 40 Innovation Bloggers lists from the last four years:

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Satisfied Customers Could Ruin Your Business

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Satisfied Customers Could Ruin Your Business

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

What if I told you that satisfied customers could ruin your business? Most people think satisfied customers are happy and will come back. At least, it appears that way.

Many years ago, I used to begin my customer service keynote speeches with a question:

By a show of hands, how many of you believe it’s important to satisfy your customers?

As you might imagine, just about everyone raised their hand. Then, I shared the findings from a study by Vanderbilt University professors Anthony J. Zohorik and Roland T. Rust. They found that up to 40% of satisfied customers don’t come back – even though they are satisfied! And the reason is that they are just satisfied. The experience was average – not bad, but not great either.

In the competitive world we are in, this makes sense. So many companies and brands are trying to win customers over by delivering a better service experience. It makes sense that “average” or “satisfactory” doesn’t cut it.

In my recent customer service and CX research (sponsored by RingCentral), I included a question that would give us an updated number for this concept. We asked:

If you were to rate a customer experience on a scale of 1 to 5 – where 1 is bad, 2 is fair, 3 is average or satisfactory, 4 is good, and 5 is excellent – how likely are you to return to this company or brand if you rated them a 3?

There were five possible answers: Never, Not Likely, Not Sure, Likely, and Very Likely.

The survey results are worth paying close attention to. In 2024, almost one in four American consumers (23%) will not likely or never return if the experience is just satisfactory.

If you search synonyms for satisfactory, you’ll find words like acceptable, adequate, bearable, and more. By today’s standards, satisfactory is mediocre. And most customers won’t put up with a mediocre experience.

I’ve said this many times before. Our customers are smarter than ever when it comes to customer service and experience. They have learned from the best. Companies like Amazon, Chick-fil-A, Apple, and other customer experience luminaries promise great service, deliver on their promises, and set the bar higher for others.

You don’t have to be an Amazon or an Apple to deliver amazing service. But you do have to meet expectations. If you do that consistently, customers will positively describe their experience with you. They will say your people are always helpful, friendly and knowledgeable. None of that is over the top, but when you put the word always in front of those words, you’re operating at a level beyond average or satisfactory. That’s a big part of what gets your customers to say, “I’ll be back!”

(To get the full report, download The 2024 State of Customer Service and CX Research.)

Image Credits: Pexels, Shep Hyken

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Harnessing the Secrets of Successful Customer Engagement

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Harnessing the Secrets of Successful Customer Engagement

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

What is customer engagement? A Google search will provide plenty of definitions to consider. Here are a few to give you a clear understanding:

  • Qualtrics defines it as “the emotional connection between a customer and a brand.”
  • A recent Forbes article defines it as “building relationships with customers at every touch point.”
  • Wikipedia offers numerous definitions from multiple sources, including this one from Forrester from 2008: “creating deep connections with customers that drive purchase decisions, interaction, and participation over time.”

All of these (and more) are correct. They work. As a modern marketer, the new question is about how to deliver on the foundational definition of customer engagement using current tools and technology.

I had a chance to do an Amazing Business Radio interview with Spencer Burke, SVP of Growth at Braze, a customer engagement platform that offers messaging solutions to multiple communication channels. We discussed the innovative ways marketers and customer experience (CX) leaders are taking customer engagement to new levels.

Burke simplified the marketing and customer engagement definition to four words: connecting brands to consumers. That’s really the job of a marketer. The result is that customers want to buy, come back and buy more.

It may sound simple, but there are obstacles to the optimal customer engagement experience. According to Burke, “Marketers have a lot on their plate. It’s not easy to be creative when there’s an emphasis on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and time-draining routine tasks.”

To support this statement, Burke shared findings from the 2024 Global Customer Engagement Review, in which Braze interviewed 1,900 marketing decision makers to learn about challenges and opportunities in the marketing and CX industries.

Marketing used to be about finding creative ways to engage with customers, but today’s marketers are burdened in four areas:

    1. Too much emphasis on KPIs: Forty-two percent of marketers surveyed felt KPIs inhibit a focus on creativity. Numbers/KPIs are important. After all, you can’t manage what you don’t or can’t measure (Peter Drucker). But if they get in the way of creativity, then consider pushing the numbers aside for a moment—or maybe just focus on one or two KPIs.
    2. Too many routine tasks: Forty-two percent feel too much time is spent on “business as usual execution and tasks,” leaving less time for creative work. If there’s something that can be automated, then automate it. Don’t waste any employee’s time—especially when they are trying to be creative—with tasks and processes that drain energy and take up too much time.
    3. Lack of technology: Forty-one percent feel that a lack of technology hinders the execution of creative ideas. This is where Artificial Intelligence (AI) can support the process. How can AI make a creative marketer’s life easier? There are many, many ways!
    4. Return on Investment (ROI) is hard to track: Forty percent said it’s hard to demonstrate the ROI impact of creativity. Leadership wants ROI. Often, they demand to know the ROI before a project starts. You can’t fight this. Start with the end in mind. Understanding the benefits of the work that is to be performed is important to getting leadership to buy in and support the marketing and customer engagement efforts.

AI should be used as a tool to free up time and let creatives be creative, according to Burke. For example, he says, “When you know what you want to say but haven’t been able to articulate it just right, it’s a huge confidence booster to know you can drop the message into an AI interface to get feedback and suggestions for improvement.” The time savings are substantial, but more importantly, the marketer’s focus gets to be on creating, not finishing.

Burke also mentioned how important personalization is in today’s customer engagement strategy. There’s a tremendous amount of data on customers, and brands must be thoughtful in how they manage that data. AI can help interpret the data and deliver insights about customers that can be useful. For instance, Netflix learns its customers’ viewing habits and suggests TV shows and movies. Amazon remembers what its customers have bought in the past and can accurately predict when the customer should order more. The best brands use the data AI provides to create a better experience. But, it’s a balancing act. Too much personalization creates “the creepiness factor,” where being too detailed or specific has the opposite effect of what marketers want to achieve.

Astha Malik, Chief Business Officer of Braze, says, “Today’s marketers face growing expectations from increasingly connected consumers, who want value in exchange for their attention. In response, we see a growing number of marketers tapping into first-party data and utilizing AI to ignite creativity and craft personalized experiences that both resonate with consumers and foster brand loyalty.”

In addition, brands need to be consistent with their personalization. You can’t recognize a customer one time and not know them the next time. That defeats the entire personalization campaign.

All of this takes us back to Burke’s original definition of customer engagement, which is connecting brands to consumers. That connection must be consistent and accurate. There are more and better tools than ever to help create an optimal customer engagement experience, one interaction at a time. The closer you can get to meeting customers where they are, when they need you and provide value in those interactions, the more likely they will see you as a trusted brand and say, “I’ll be back!”

Image Credits: Pexels, Shep Hyken

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com

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It’s Easy to Say No to Customers

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It's Easy to Say No to Customers

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

If a customer asks you to do something you haven’t done before, “No” is an easy answer. Why? Because …

“We don’t do that.”

“We’ve never done that.”

“We don’t carry that product.”

“That’s not our policy.”

And more reasons – or excuses – like these.

Recently, I was the keynote speaker at a conference, and the CEO, who spoke just before me, teed up my presentation perfectly when he talked about going the extra mile. His approach to this concept was realistic. He said, “No one will be able to go the extra mile every time.” He emphasized that unless the customer has some kind of emergency, the extra mile is often something small—something we typically don’t do.

Customers can be our best source of innovation and opportunity. If we survey our customers and ask for feedback, we may find ways to improve our products and services. Or sometimes, they will come right out and ask for something out of the ordinary. It’s easy to ignore feedback or say “No, “when someone suggests something we’ve never done before. But what if we looked beyond the words and thought, “What if,” instead of, “That is something we don’t do.”?

Years ago, I wrote an article about the Anti-No Zone. The premise was employees at a restaurant were trained to find ways to say “Yes.” If you want to dig deeper into this idea, check out my article about Cameron Mitchell, a very successful restaurateur who authored a book titled Yes Is the Answer! What’s the Question? And I wrote another article featuring Christine Trippi on How to Say YES – Every Time.

All of these articles are about avoiding the word no. At the same time, it’s unrealistic to say yes to every request; however, maybe we can say “No” without really saying “No.” Instead, you can offer alternative solutions that, while not what the customer is asking for, will still make them happy.

So, going the extra mile is more than a customer service strategy. And it’s more than avoiding the word no. It is a mindset that customers will appreciate. At the same time, it’s recognizing that anything that you might say no to at first is a possibility to innovate and grow.

So, the next time you are about to say “No” to a customer or an employee, catch yourself and before you answer, and think, “If I could say yes, what would that look like?” Practice the mindset of not just going the extra mile but being proactive about finding ways to do so.

Image Credits: Pexels, Shep Hyken

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AI Can Help Attract, Retain and Grow Customer Relationships

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AI Can Help Attract, Retain and Grow Customer Relationships

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

How do you know what your customers want if they don’t tell you? It’s more than sending surveys and interpreting data. Joe Tyrrell is the CEO of Medallia, a company that helps its customers tailor experiences through “intelligent personalization” and automation. I had a chance to interview him on Amazing Business Radio and he shared how smart companies are using AI to build and retain customer relationships. Below are some of his comments followed by my commentary:

  • The generative AI momentum is so widespread that 85% of executives say the technology will be interacting directly with customers in the next two years. AI has been around for longer than most people realize. When a customer is on a website that makes suggestions, when they interact with a chatbot or get the best answers to frequently asked questions, they are interacting with AI-infused technology, whether they know it or not.
  • While most executives want to use AI, they don’t know how they want to use it, the value it will bring and the problems it will solve. In other words, they know they want to use it, but don’t know how (yet). Tyrrell says, “Most organizations don’t know how they are going to use AI responsibly and ethically, and how they will use it in a way that doesn’t introduce unintended consequences, and even worse, unintended bias.” There needs to be quality control and oversight to ensure that AI is meeting the goals and intentions of the company or brand.
  • Generative AI is different than traditional AI. According to Tyrrell, the nature of generative AI is to, “Give me something in real time while I’m interacting with it.” In other words, it’s not just finding answers. It’s communicating with me, almost like human-to-human. When you ask it to clarify a point, it knows exactly how to respond. This is quite different from a traditional search bar on a website—or even a Google search.
  • AI’s capability to personalize the customer experience will be the focus of the next two years. Based on the comment about how AI technology currently interacts with customers, I asked Tyrrell to be more specific about how AI will be used. His answer was focused on personalization. The data we extract from multiple sources will allow for personalization like never before. According to Tyrrell, 82% of consumers say a personalized experience will influence which brand they end up purchasing from in at least half of all shopping situations. The question isn’t whether a company should personalize the customer experience. It is what happens if they don’t.
  • Personalization isn’t about being seen as a consumer, but as a person. That’s the goal of personalization. Medallia’s North Star, which guides all its decisions and investments, is its mission to personalize every customer experience. What makes this a challenge is the word every. If customers experience this one time but the next time the brand acts as if they don’t recognize them, all the work from the previous visit along with the credibility built with the customer is eroded.
  • The next frontier of AI is interpreting social feedback. Tyrrell is excited about Medallia’s future focus. “Surveys may validate information,” says Tyrrell, “but it is often what’s not said that can be just as important, if not even more so.” Tyrrell talked about Medallia’s capability to look everywhere, outside of surveys and social media comments, reviews and ratings, where customers traditionally express themselves. There is behavioral feedback, which Tyrrell refers to as social feedback, not to be confused with social media feedback. Technology can track customer behavior on a website. What pages do they spend the most time on? How do they use the mouse to navigate the page? Tyrell says, “Wherever people are expressing themselves, we capture the information, aggregate it, translate it, interpret it, correlate it and then deliver insights back to our customers.” This isn’t about communicating with customers about customer support issues. It’s mining data to understand customers and make products and experiences better.

Tyrrell’s insights emphasize the opportunities for AI to support the relationship a company or brand has with its customers. The future of customer engagement will be about an experience that creates customer connection. Even though technology is driving the experience, customers appreciate being known and recognized when they return. Tyrrell and I joked about the theme song from the TV sitcom Cheers, which debuted in 1982 and lasted 11 seasons. But it really isn’t a joke at all. It’s what customers want, and it’s so simple. As the song title suggests, customers want to go to a place Where Everybody Knows Your Name.

Image Credits: Unsplash

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These Forgotten Customers Are Key to Your Success

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These Forgotten Customers Are Key to Your Success

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

“There is only one boss. The customer.” – Sam Walton

With all the buzz around human-centered design, customer-centric businesses, and external-facing organizations, corporate America is (finally) waking up to the importance and value of creating things that people actually want and that solve people’s problems.

Teams of innovators, ethnographers, socialists, researchers, and consultants scurry about gathering customer insights, soliciting customer feedback, and generating reports that can be funneled back to R&D, innovation, and product development teams to inform the development of the Next Big Thing.

While this is all important work, amidst all of this activity, one customer is consistently overlooked. And it is this customer that often decides the fate of the Next Big Thing

There is only one first customer. Your boss.

Let’s start with what a customer is:

“The recipient of a good, service, product, or idea obtained from a seller, vendor, or supplier via a financial transaction or exchange for money or some other valuable consideration.

Yes, you should spend a lot of time getting to know the people outside your company who will eventually be asked to exchange money for the good, product, or service you are creating.

You also need to spend time getting to know the people inside your organization who you are currently asking to exchange money (give you a budget) or some other valuable consideration (time, people, permission) for your idea and its development.

And you need convince them that “a financial transaction” is worth it because, if you don’t they can and will spend their money elsewhere.

Your boss is a tough customer

No matter what type of company you are in — from a company of 10 to a company of 10,000 — you are faced with limited resources. A dollar spent in one place means a dollar not spent in another place. A person allocated to one team means one less person on another team.

Managers have to make resources allocation trade-offs all the time but are often moving pieces between functions and teams where they know the ROI of additional investments. This situation changes dramatically when a manager must decide whether to invest resources into a new and uncertain venture or to invest in the core, and much more certain, business.

Convincing your boss to buy your idea, especially if that idea is a new venture, is tough because you’re asking your boss to buy (or invest in) something with an uncertain ROI rather than buy (or invest in) something with a more certain ROI. But you can be successful if you understand your boss.

Your boss can be understood (and their decisions anticipated)

First, get comfortable with the fact that your boss is a human being. And, just like other human beings, your boss makes lots of decisions, believes that these decisions are based on logic and reason, and actually bases most decisions more on emotion and instinct.

As frustrating as this may be when you are at the receiving end of these decisions, take comfort in the fact that you can actually use the tools you use to understand external customers to understand, and even anticipate, your boss’ decisions.

Here’s how:

  1. What is the current business situation? While this is usually an easy question to answer, it can be hard to anticipate what impact it will have on your boss’ willingness to invest. Just as most people are hesitant to invest in something new when the current business environment is poor, many people are equally hesitant to invest when business is booming. This is usually because investments in the core business are generating more than usual upside and that’s great for your boss and/or there is no urgency to do anything new because people assume the good times will go on forever (news flash: they wont’). So while you can’t anticipate what impact the answer to this question will have on your odds of securing investment, you do need to know the context within which you are asking.
  2. What is your boss being asked to deliver? How is she measured and rewarded? Is your boss expected to deliver revenue increases? She’ll be drawn to new ideas that increase revenue. Cost savings? Then pitch ways to improve efficiency. How much time does she have to deliver results? If she needs to show results quarterly, you have to generate results quickly. If she has a year to show improvement, you have a longer runway to show results.
  3. What is your boss’ reputation? Does she like it? Humans are hard-wired to be social creatures so, whether we admit it or not, we really care how other people see us. What is your boss’ reputation — is she known for being a steady hand that consistently delivers or a renegade willing to rock the boat and take risks? And how does she feel about her reputation? Does she like it or does she see herself differently? If you have a boss that likes being seen as reliable and a defender of the status quo, you’re going to have a much harder time selling your new idea than if you boss is seen (or wants to be seen) as the next Steve Jobs.

With the answers to these questions, you can figure out the likelihood that your boss will buy your idea. If you boss is managing a business that is struggling, is expected to increase revenue after years of decreases, and is happy to be known as someone who always delivers, it’s unlikely she’ll be willing to invest resources in a new and unproven idea. But if your boss is managing a struggling business, is expected to develop new revenue streams that will replace the old ones, and enjoys a reputation as a someone who challenges the status quo, odds are she’ll support a reasonably well-thought out proposal for initial investment in a new venture.

Bottom Line

Before you get the opportunity to sell a new product or service to external customers, you need to sell your idea to internal customers…your boss. Take the time to understand you boss, the things that motivate her and the issues and challenges that she faces. Then, just as you create a product or service to solve your external customers’ problems, you can create a pitch that shows your boss how your idea solves her challenges.

Approach your boss as you would a customer and you’re likely to get the support you need. Forget that your boss is your first customer and you may never get the chance to pitch to the ones you’ve spent so much time studying.

Image credit: Pexels

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It Takes Hard Work to Make It Look Easy

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A Customer Experience That Will Be Appreciated

It Takes Hard Work to Make It Look Easy

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

My friend Norman Beck recently shared a quote that inspired him: We work hard to make it look easy. Isn’t that what the best people do? Whether it’s sports, entertainment, or business, some people are so good that what they do looks easy.

I Googled the quote to find out who to attribute it to and found numerous variations:

In sports, Ken Griffey Jr., a professional baseball player, said, “Just because I made it look easy doesn’t mean that it was, and you don’t work hard and become a Hall of Famer without working day in and day out.”

In entertainment, Ben Mitchell, a fictional character from the BBC television series EastEnders, said, “It takes a lot of effort to make something look effortless.”

And in business, Steve Jobs of Apple said, “It takes a lot of hard work to make something look simple.”

There is some very practical wisdom in these motivational and inspiring quotes that we can apply to the customer service and customer experience (CX) world.

Think of the best customer experiences you have had.

Perhaps it was a person who was helpful, knowledgeable, and friendly, which, by the way, are the three experiences customers say are most likely to get them to come back, according to our 2024 CX research (sponsored by RingCentral). They made your experience enjoyable and easy. What you probably don’t know is that other than a pleasant demeanor – hopefully a natural part of the employee’s personality – there was a lot of training to get this person educated about the company’s products so they could deliver a knowledgeable and helpful experience.

Or consider the simplicity of ordering a product from Amazon. How complicated is the behind-the-scenes process that takes you from a few clicks on their website to what you ordered showing up on your front porch? It is incredibly complicated, but the Amazon experience is so easy!

When I’m invited to speak to a group of business leaders as the keynote speaker, I often share my Six Simple Steps to Building a Customer-Focused Culture. Yes, the steps are simple, but that doesn’t mean they are easy. There’s a difference!

The point is that simple is usually not easy. There’s lots of work, thinking, planning, practice, experimenting, training, and more that goes into creating an easy experience. And one thing customers really want, whether they express it or not, is an easy experience. So, consider this simple – but not so easy-to-answer – question: What do you do to give your customers an easy experience?

Image Credits: Pixabay

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