How can delivering exceptional customer experiences impact directly to your bottom line?

I was at a meeting of the Nottingham City Business Club the other day and listened to an impassioned talk by Center Parcs UK CEO, Martin Dalby, which answered many of the questions often asked by prospective clients about how delivering exceptional customer experiences impacts directly onto growth and profitability.

Martin detailed how Center Parcs UK has grown year on year despite the recession because of the customer concentric ethos running throughout the business. Figures like occupancy rates of 97% and 60% of customers returning every 3 years with staff turnover at only 25% being the envy of any business in the travel and hospitality sector, all driven by the provision of excellent customer experiences delivered by the total organisation. Martin gave an example by asking the audience "How many litter pickers do we employ?" Answer "Aound 6,000 - everybody in the organisation including himself"

The ethos of making the Customer the centre of any organisation has to be embedded and nutured, it is not a quick fix. The results can be significant:

• Brand Protection 
• Improved customer retention rates
• Loyal, happy customers
• More profitable business from existing customers
• Ambassadorial customers
• Extra Referral business
• Less selling costs
• Reduced customer complaints
• Less stressed employees
• Highly motivated workforce
• Reduced staff turnover 
• More PROFIT

 Improve customer experience to improve growth & profitability.

Paul Clayton is business management & training consultanct specialising in business growth, strategic Sales & Marketing planning and Customer Experience Management (CEM).

www.healdi.co.uk                  t: 0845 3081377

Customer experience is emotional and different for every individual.

Customer experience is emotional and different for every individual. What one customer might find really good another might class it as just OK!

It's all about communication and unfortunately to date I haven't come across a proven, affordable methodology that can respond to emotion except for people who have empathy and the ability to build rapport.
So how do organisations that really care get the balance right between the use of people and software to deliver exceptional customer experience?

The organisations that I work with believe that human reaction is the best at interpeting the needs of the customer and embed it throughout their businesses. Yes, we need software to handle, measure & track customer interaction and for the customer to be offered the alternatives. Unfortunately, as I wrote in another post, a lot of the software guys seem to think you can get away with 'chat', social networking and email responses alone to keep down costs and really don't take into account the human element of actually talking with the customer and the finacial implications if this isn't what the customer wants - it's not what you say it's how you say it that makes the difference in interpretation.

Paul Clayton is business management & training consultanct specialising in business growth, strategic Sales & Marketing planning and Customer Experience Management (CEM).

www.healdi.co.uk                  t: 0845 3081377

Are soft skills really essential to business success?

Why are ‘soft skills’ – communication, building rapport, questioning & listening skills etc. - seen as nice to have and non essential when they are in fact fundamental and crucial to building strong business relationships?
If employees in all departments are not provided with these ‘soft’ skills in the stressful and pressurised world we call business, then how can we expect them to answer customer queries, identify and exploit additional sales opportunities while building those business relationships essential to the survival and prosperity of business today?
Soft skills are as important, and just as hard, as any other business skills such as sales and negotiation, and need to be learned.  Your people need to achieve effective communication, call control, building rapport, phone etiquette & techniques, problem solving, and objection handling to continually improve your business. Having a strategy to improve those skills in communication and the use of the telephone will gain you new customers, boost business with existing accounts, increase service levels from suppliers and strengthen internal team cohesion and motivation;  increased sales and profitability! http://goo.gl/WAtgr

Contact the Author - Paul Clayton for more details