Customer Experience
The Customer Experience Value Chain
By Dr . Wale Akinyemi
One day recently , my wife and I were traveling out of the country and we had a stopover in a particular country before proceeding . The flight was absolutely beautiful from purchasing the tickets , to checking in , to in-flight entertainment , to the food , to the service of the attendants . It was first class all the way . When we landed , however , something happened . The people who were supposed to bring the external flight alighting steps did not bring them , and we ended up staying on the plane for another half hour .
This story embodies everything I have been shouting all over the world about customer experience . Customer service is a snapshot ; the experience covers an ecosystem and that is an experience value chain .
The experience value chain for our flight did not stop with a perfect flight . That flight for us and for everyone who worked on it will forever be remembered as the flight where we were kept in the plane for half an hour because the ground staff did not bring the steps for us to disembark .
This leads to a very important conversation about customer experience . Most organizations focus on customerfacing people when they train on customer experience . However , the bulk of the experience that your customers receive comes from non-customer-facing people . This is why customer experience has to be ingrained in the culture of the organization . If it ' s not cultural , it ' s going to be a struggle because people always remember experiences at the lowest level .
Another word for customer experience is customer memories . Memories are shared whether they are good or bad , and when memories are shared , they are accompanied by the same emotions that existed when the memories were created .
Most organizations focus on customer-facing people when they train on customer experience , yet the bulk of the experience that customers receive comes from non-customer-facing people . This is why customer experience has to be ingrained in the culture of the organization . If it ' s not cultural , it ' s going to be a struggle because people always remember experiences at the lowest level .
So , when you ' ve had a bad experience with an airline like I had , it becomes a customer memory . Anywhere I ' m talking to people , when they mention that airline , what will come to mind immediately is the memory of the 30 minutes we had to stay on the plane because the ground staff did not bring the steps .
We may never see who was in charge of that ground staff operation . But this is the problem : if it is not cultural , some people will think , " Oh , we are not in customer service or customer experience ." But you know what ? Everybody is in customer experience .
This same example repeats itself in many areas of our lives . It happens with banks
16 MAL60 / 24 ISSUE