Experience is the new battlefield

Experience is the new battlefield, popular opinion is the new marketing and today’s exceptional experiences are the expectations tomorrow. Customers are better informed, more knowledgeable and most importantly, more experienced than ever before. No matter how big or small, businesses across the board are being forced to address the experiences their customers, and colleagues, have with their brand. Expectations are increasingly more ambitious and sophisticated. For customers good is no longer good enough, whereby your customers and employees expect to be engaged and empowered continuously; today, tomorrow and thereafter. A positive experience that genuinely exceeds expectations says more than any ad campaign ever will!

It generates true fans!

Fans are energetic, loyal and prepared to invest more money and time than the average customer. If they are happy, they show their passion open-heartedly and in an impactful way: by writing detailed experience reports on rating platforms, tweeting ecstatic Tweets, creating their own product reviews on YouTube or posting impressive snapshots on Instagram. Fans are delighted and infect others with their enthusiasm.

Meeting expectations will create satisfied customers, which is important. Yet ‘good’ and ‘satisfaction’ are simply not enough anymore.  You need to go beyond operational excellence, and delight your customers to make them a fan or a promoter of your brand.

Customers won’t become raving fans when your processes and basic delivery are ‘just okay’. Operational excellence will help build satisfaction, whereby it is important to realize that merely satisfied customers will not immediately share their experiences with others. Exceeding expectations at every touch point will bring delight, and ideally helps build the desired identity. Ultimately, this will create fans and evangelists, who will actively promote your company, and who are even willing to defend your organization/brand, when you are being criticized.

Companies that create exceptional customers experience can set themselves from apart from their competitors.

What do my customers want? Leading companies understand that they are in the customer-experience business, and they understand that how an organization delivers for customers is beginning to be as important as what it delivers.

Explore the fundamentals of customer interaction, as well as the steps necessary to redesign the business in a more customer-centric fashion and to organize it for optimal business outcomes.

Think reverse and enable the desired customer experience to lead and influence everything you do. Start with the desired customer/guest experience in mind, and work your way back to products and services instead of the other way around. Experience is always leading, so you don’t have to compromise. Design the desired customer experience that has the potential to turn every visit into an unforgettable experience.

Reverse thinking drives your desired identity (your who), your reason for being (your why) influences your behavior, interaction, and processes (your how), as well as your products, services, and processes (your what).

Only if you know what your brand stands for, you can create an environment that brings your strongest benefits and true ideals to life. “Start with WHY” enables members to tell their customers their story and offer experiences that are inspiring and authentic. As the WHY is a brand promise that springs from the honest believes of the executives, its message rings true; an honesty the customer can feel.

The Reverse journey covers all aspects of an organization, from brand and customer experience to operational excellence. Here are a few questions to kick off your Reverse journey right here, right now!

CLOSING THE GAP BETWEEN BRAND PROMISE AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Experiences have become the new currency in the interactions with customers and employees. Emotional bonding has become indispensable for companies. Delighting others means creating authentic and personal marketing that impacts inward as well as outward relations. Brand promise and reality are rarely congruent. Customer experiences often turn out to be disappointments as the level of expectations is not met.

Reverse Thinking  puts your desired customer experience first. From this position it shapes factors like the corporate culture, your company’s leadership style, talent development and desired employee behavior. A brand promise that expresses: WHO am I? WHY do I do, WHAT do I do? Has to be defined. This core identity is the starting point for closing the gap between brand promise and customer experience. Turning customers into raving fans!

Only in the the moments between your customers and your employees does your desired customer experience become a reality. Here business transactions turn into positive moments and cherished memories that are being shared with potential new customers. Your staff represents your brand and makes it come to life every day. A clear corporate identity and a confident WHY help to strengthen your employees’ self confidence, create orientation and motivation. Thus, putting your desired customer experience first also means putting your employees first. This way your employees can develop their talents to the fullest and use them to create the best possible customer experience, resulting in :

TURN MANAGERS TURN INTO STEWARDS

Whereas management is a rational process, focused on the technical aspects of management, leadership relates to people and their role in the company. Developing a new corporate culture connected to a focus on the desired customer experience requires a concentration on the personal aspects of cooperation. Employees need leadership and talent development to fulfill their role as brand ambassadors and to create the perfect customer experience.

Leadership requires personal dedication. You have to channel energy, generate enthusiasm for the brand promise and convince through credibility. It is up to you to create an environment where team members contribute with their talents and potential. Reverse Thinking put your employees in the spotlight. As a steward, you are often the ‘invisible presence’, a motivational voice in the background.

REVERSE LEARNING and NEUROLINGUISTIC PROCESSES

Traditional learning starts with remembering and ends with creating. However, 70% of learning occurs on the job while actively doing something, and 20% happens while being instructed by colleagues or supervisors. Only 10% of someone’s learning development comes from theoretical courses. Of those, 10% people are likely to forget almost everything if their environment doesn’t support what they have learned. This makes it hard to develop new skills and create a new perspective for the corporate culture.

To create a new corporate and leadership culture, one that turns your customers into fans, it is necessary to switch to innovative learning methods: Reverse Learning and Neurolinguistic. Reverse Learning starts with your shared context, your WHY, which is geared to the desired brand promise. Trainings that inspire people to reflect on their behavior and their patterns. Instead of teaching something and making your employees simply learn it by heart, they are being shown what the connection is between their behavior and the customer experience. Thus, ‘actively doing’ is the focus right from the start.

Training is most effective when it has been integrated into the everyday work schedule, so, I  do not coach your employees, but you and your executives do. In a selection of tailored trainings and workshops, you and your colleagues become trainers yourselves.

To guarantee you a swift execution, we will assemble a training program designed for your needs and tuned to enhance your desired customer experience. Here, your employees will become empowered to bring the desired customer experience to life on their own. You also get an extensive toolkit containing everything you need for your trainings.

 “Each person holds so much power within themselves that needs to be let out. Sometimes they just need a little nudge, a little direction, a little support, a little coaching, and the greatest things can happen.” – Pete Carroll

If you can breathe, you can perform. But only if you’re inspired, can you excel and achieve the exceptional. Many companies, however, focus on performance instead of potential.

Getting better at what you’re already good at is fun. This happiness is the key to development. Whereas competence management focuses on what you’re not good at (yet), talent management encourages and facilitates you to do what you’re passionate about. Learning and working based on your strengths costs less energy, in fact, it gives you energy! Knowing your strengths, enables you to understand why certain things cost energy, while others are effortless.

Everything comes together in the WOW moment, that very instant when the employee and customer meet and the brand experience positively exceeds the customer’s expectations. The previously defined brand experience is being brought to life by the employee who acts as a brand ambassador. Now the customer becomes a fan. To make this happen the foundations have to fit. This means the company’s leadership style has to be tuned to supporting the employees, to make it possible for the employees to use their talents to enhance the customer experiences in the most authentic way.

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Offering a selection of courses, coaching and workshops to give your company  insight into how you can actively influence and define the leadership culture in your company. Furthermore, empowering to develop your own leadership style based on the desired customer experience.