Looking for a simple Move that will transform your organization into an unmatched high performing machine?
As I’ve said many times before, it’s not the technology, products and services that make teams standout in the marketplace.
Virtually all competitors have access to equivalent technologies and their product features are all basically the same, give or take.
Customer experiences, on the other hand, is the playing field where winners are created. Organizations that deliver dazzling, ‘gasp-worthy’ and emotionally drenched experiences for their customers always come out on top of the competitor heap.
These organizations understand that it’s the customer-infused culture that consistently delivers WOW! customer moments, and often in ways that create a great deal of discomfort for the leadership hierarchy.
My ‘Customer Hero’ Move is an incredibly powerful loyalty building tool that essentially dispels the ‘formality’ of an organization—hierarchical structure, internal rules & policies—in order to take care of a customer and their immediate needs.
Now a definition.
The Customer Hero is someone who advocates for a customer on the inside of an organization. This is the person who ‘does battle’ with all the rules, policies and red tape that is preventing the customer from getting what they want.
This is the ‘warrior on the inside’ who fights for the rights of the customer in the sea of restrictions that exercise the needs of the organization and not the customer.
And this is the zealot who is prepared to put themselves at risk and fight against the organizational ‘injustices’ that sometimes unfairly disable customer rights at the expense of horrific experiences and body blows to customer loyalty.
We need cultures that honor Customer Heroes.
We need Customer Advocacy to be something organizations WANT to do to themselves because they understand how important it is to long term growth and performance.
We need organizations that exist to serve the customer even though at times we have to ‘suck it up’, admit that one of our rules or policies is DUMB and break it for the greater good of long term customer loyalty.
We need leaders to get over themselves, lose their ego and practice what they preach. All too many espouse the Holy Grail of creating memorable customer experiences, yet don’t ‘eat their own dog food’.
They force policy down the customer’s throat and punish the employee who fights against it in order to actually deliver what the customer experience demands.
It’s time.
Time to declare the Customer Hero philosophy in our organizations and espouse advocating against disempowering processes that destroy customer loyalty.
Time to make customer advocacy inside our organizations a priority plank of our Values platform.
”We will be the customer’s Hero in our organization, fighting for their rights at all cost.
Time to honor and reward those Heroes who, against inertia and resistance, push forward unrelentingly to advocate for their customer.
And it’s time to assume the customers’ pain when they are forced to fight for their rights on their own.
It’s time to do the audacious thing.
Related: Why Dumb Rules Must Be Destroyed if You Are To Be Successful