I read with great interest an article by Sir Terry Leahy, ex CEO of Tesco.
His comments about leadership particularly drew my attention. He says: “I found that the marketing officer can step forward and be the voice of the customer for the business. That’s the basis for transforming the customer experience. You have to call the whole organization to the needs you know the customer has. Increasingly the chief technology officer can also give that leadership…and can even guide the board and CEO. A leader takes you further than where you would have gone. It’s what you enable other people to do, how you empower teams, how you inspire, and the direction you can give them. You don’t want one leader in an organization; you want thousands of leaders.”
I so agree with Sir Terry Leahy on this aspect. In order to provide a “great customer experience”, every single person who comes into contact with the customer in any organisation needs to subscribe to and understand how they play a role in creating the “great customer experience”. It’s no good just having the CEO signed up to the concept of great customer experience. Every employee at every level needs to be informed, educated, inspired and empowered to deliver the “great customer experience”. After all, a “great customer experience” is formed through EVERY TOUCHPOINT with an organisation, be it a phone call, a mailshot, an email, use of a product or service, a delivery driver, or an after sales repair.
So yes, empower your staff and create thousands of leaders who understand how each and every one of them contributes to “great customer experience”.
Read about how one of our clients, Holidaybreak, now has 25 members of staff using the Feedback Ferret dashboards, all of them “leaders” in their own areas, using data to improve their customers’ experiences.
by Piers Alington, Managing Director at Feedback Ferret Ltd