In this next post in our Customer
Experience Conversations series, we sat down with Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit’s speaker
Janet LeBlanc, who is also President of Janet LeBlanc + Associates Inc. LeBlanc
discussed how empathy and emotion has a critical impact on customer experience today.
This year, TCEL will explore the new
realities of building brands and relationships in today’s socially driven and
data abundant world. The event will shine an important lens on the power of
insights and the critical need for marketers to focus on factoring emotion into
the bigger equation to get a return on customer relationships.
Your experience at TCEL will include three
full days of high-level visionary keynote presentations and in-depth case
studies illustrating linking insights & data, data measuring & mapping,
design thinking, synthesize intelligence from B2B and B2C companies across
verticals, disciplines and cultures to march forward with a sound total
customer experience plan.
Here is what LeBlanc had to say:
IIR: Describe your best customer experience.
LeBlanc: The best customer experiences are those that elicit the strong
positive feelings and emotions that strengthening the relationship and loyalty
a customer has with a company. Statements such as: “I felt like she understood
what I wanted or they treated me with respect” are the best examples of a great
customer experience.
IIR: How is empathetic leadership changing leadership in customer
experience today?
LeBlanc: Empathy is considered one of the five categories of emotional
intelligence. It will enable a leader to develop a closer, more collaborative
relationship with others. Taking a personal interest, showing that you care,
and having a genuine concern about another person’s point of view fosters an
environment of trust and caring—the ideal environment for employees to perform
at their best and for customers to feel appreciated and valued.
IIR: Why are empathy and emotion so important in when it comes to
customer experience?
LeBlanc: Recognizing the power an emotion has on determining the outcome of
a customer experience is paramount to a successful customer experience
management program. We may forget what someone says to us, but we rarely forget
how they make us feel. Having empathy and understanding emotions throughout the
customer experience journey helps organizations to stay connected to their
customers, to design a better problem resolution process, and to create a more
collaborative empathetic work environment.
IIR: What are the key traits of a great customer experience leader?
LeBlanc: Today’s savvy business leaders recognize the shift towards
collaborative leadership capabilities. Implementing a large-scale customer
experience program requires the commitment and collective forces of the entire
leadership team. No one leader can drive customer-centricity alone. Strong
alignment and collaboration is a must to be successful.
IIR: If your customers have a bad customer experience, how do you
reconnect with them moving forward?
LeBlanc: When a problem occurs, the
bond between a company and the customer is broken. It places the relationship
in crisis and creates a pivotal time for a company to re-establish the
relationship and repair the damage. Most companies will train employees to apologize,
but often will forget the most important ingredient needed for successful
resolution—empathy. Even when an apology is offered, without recognizing the
emotions at play or a statement acknowledging the gravity of the situation, the
apology will not have a positive impact.
IIR: Employee recognition can positively influence employee behaviors
and cultivate a customer-centric culture. How do you recognize and motivate
your employees?
LeBlanc: Recognition programs motivate employees to make an extra effort or
go the extra mile. By acknowledging and giving special attention to an
employee’s actions, an organization is reinforcing the specific behaviors
needed to realize its customer experience strategy and goals. The best employee
recognition programs use a combination of informal and formal approaches that
balance feedback from leaders, peers and customers. An effective employee
recognition program not only recognizes top performers but also motivates all
employees to reinforce and achieve the desired customer-focused behaviors.
Want
to hear more from Janet on customer experience in person? Join her at Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit 2014 in
Miami in April. To learn more about the event and register, click
here: http://bit.ly/1dmzfJe
About
the Author: Amanda Ciccatelli, Social Media Strategist of the Marketing Division at IIR USA, has a background in digital and print
journalism, covering a variety of topics in business strategy, marketing, and
technology. Amanda is the Editor at Large for several of IIR’s blogs
including Next Big Design, Customers 1st, and ProjectWorld and World Congress for Business
Analysts, and a regular
contributor to Front End of Innovation and The Market Research Event,.
She previously worked at Technology Marketing Corporation as a Web Editor where
she covered breaking news and feature stories in the technology industry. She
can be reached at aciccatelli@iirusa.com. Follow her at @AmandaCicc.
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