Want to Create a Memorable Customer Experience? A Little Empowerment Goes a Long Way

February 6, 2015

Do your employees have the authority to make decisions, bend the rules, issue credits and refunds, and take other steps on behalf of the customer without getting permission from a supervisor? If not, they are not empowered — and that could be undermining your customer service efforts.

In an online world, there’s no hiding poor customer service. How you handle your customers can directly affect your organization’s reputation and performance. With instant access to information and the ability for customers to easily share their experiences with millions of others through social media sites, blogs, and word of mouth, your customer service practices can make — or break — your organization. Handled properly, complaints can actually help you understand issues impacting your customers and improve your current policies and procedures. Problems can help build customer loyalty. When an issue is resolved well, the customer often forgets about the original problem and focuses on the fact that someone gave them amazing, memorable service.

One way to improve the customer satisfaction of your organization is by empowering frontline employees so they can provide better customer service. To get passionate customers, you need passionate employees who are empowered to do the right thing. Empowerment is all about providing people with the knowledge, skills, authority, and desire to decide and act. Most importantly, empowerment is about senior management believing in the organization’s culture and trusting the decision-making abilities and expertise of their staff.

Training people to think for themselves so they can act within the rules, policies, and procedures of the organization is crucial for success. A simple problem-solving framework should be identified so employees have a shared language and thought process for diagnosing root causes of problems and exploring customer needs. Staff that are trained to listen, exhibit empathy, and display a great attitude contribute to a memorable customer experience. This freedom to act within reasonable limits produces highly customer-oriented employees which should be the goal of any customer service program.

For Example...

CEO, Tony Hsieh worked with every employee at Zappos to write the core values that act as a road map of desired behaviors for the company. Employees were trained to understand both the culture and service vision of the company and the why behind the policies and procedures, so they would be fully empowered. Employees knew they could take the necessary action to handle a customer issue, provided the action they took followed the rules, policies, and procedures of the organization.

Virgin America strives to provide customers with more than just a flight from one destination to another: According to Richard Branson, Virgin is in “the experience business.” Employees of every level and department are encouraged to provide customers with a complete experience, encompassing everything from the greeting they receive at check-in to the service they receive within the mood-lit aircraft. Senior management must specifically define where front-line employees are and aren’t allowed to deviate from established rules and processes — and then must give them the flexibility to experiment with new ways for serving customers.

The Ritz-Carlton has for many years given staff $2,000 of discretion per guest to be used to solve any customer complaint in the manner the employee feels is appropriate. The Ritz-Carlton defined the standards they expect their employees to reach. Then the employees are allowed to help customers however is needed — so as long as the standards are maintained, there is no need for formal guidelines on every single problem that might occur.

Empower Employees

Every employee has a role to play in creating memorable customer experiences; the role of leadership is to create the right culture and environment for them to exceed customer expectations. An empowered employee is able to create a memorable customer experience that can contribute to greater customer loyalty. Trust your team and empower them to do what's right. Organizations that give employees the freedom to make decisions on the spur of the moment find that service to customers is greatly improved. In addition, empowered employees take pride and ownership in their jobs when they know that they can use their own judgment when necessary. When employees enjoy their jobs and understand what the customer expects, amazing things can happen — like customers who enjoy interacting with your staff!

Deb Dupnik is the director of certification and customer service for the Commission for Case Manager Certification