Have you ever walked into a shop and met a warm shop attendant who welcomes you with a smile and wants to know how your day is going? How did you feel? I bet you walked out of that shop with more than what you had intended to purchase. Have you ever dialled a company line for an enquiry and the person on the receiving end greets you warmly and attends to all your needs promptly? I bet you noted their name and the next time you contacted the company you wanted to speak to that specific person. On other occasions, you have referred someone you know to that person even though their concern may not have been that person’s role.

Customer experience is critical to business growth.

Happy customers stay loyal to a company’s products or services and refer others, thus increasing a company’s opportunities to generate revenue. A great customer experience is created by both people and products. The needs of customers must be met at every touchpoint in their interaction with your business.

As customers, we are often first delighted by the excellent service or attention we receive from a company’s employees as we interact with its products or services before testing the performance of the product or service. Humans, being social, are delighted by positive experiences: We want to be happy at every stage of the purchase journey. Besides, the ease with which customers can access a company’s information regarding products and services, place an order and receive the order on time are all part of the customer experience.

Customers today have the power to steer your business to success by their words and actions.

The increased use of social media gives customers easier access to alternatives to choose from. Besides, customers can connect worldwide and share their experiences and can hence offer businesses brand advocacy. Businesses are increasingly aware that providing products or services alone is not enough. Businesses are increasingly making the effort to create positive experiences at every stage of the customer journey as a differentiator.

Customers interact with people as they interact with products.

It is, therefore, critical that businesses become customer-centric and support their staff to improve all the skills they need when interacting with customers.

I bet you’re wondering why we are harping on customer experience on a process improvement site. We talk of customer experience because as we’ve supported businesses to improve their processes, we’ve seen another side to this skills conversation.

A business can have great people yet frustrate them in their efforts to create great customer experiences. Frustration can be in limiting decision-taking options, cumbersome ordering or payment options, and unavailability – things that are difficult to explain or justify to customers.

As process improvement people, we’ve seen that the businesses that are great at linking what they do internally with lowering customer effort, create great customer experiences. Streamlining your business processes should therefore be about checking that what you do today makes it easier for customers when they interact with you. Where it does not, change how you do what you do. Change your process.

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Lucy Moragwa is a Business Process Analyst with dynamic experience spanning several industries including construction, technology, retail, media, advertising, and branding. She is specialised in helping organisations develop operational efficiency and increase revenue, business process improvement and using root cause analysis to identify issues and develop process improvements. The heart of her work is to help organisations achieve cost savings through exceptional planning and implementation of business processes.