Wednesday, September 18, 2013

The Talent War and Customer Experience

It isn’t a war for talent. It’s a war for Attitude. Just ask Seth Godin.

Attitude trumps most Talent. A grumpy CCNA isn't an asset buta liability.

Take a hotel chain. They have spent billions on property, amenities, advertising, sales incentives to get you to the hotel, only to leave the whole thing up to a poorly paid clerk. The first impression at the hotel is the doorman, then the lobby, then check-in. Three low wage workers are responsible for your entire experience. Hopefully, the manager isn't stuck looking at a dashboard, but manages by walking around.

We all have horror stories about customer service. The bar is set so low. It doesn't take much to knock it out of the park with your customers. It isn't necessarily talent, as much as it is Attitude. Tony Hsieh built Zappos to a billion dollar business on attitude in hiring or as he writes it Delivering Happiness.

Customer Experience is a huge factor in churn, repeat business, referrals, reviews (think Yelp), word-of-mouth and sales.

15 Stats on why Customer Experience is Vital to your business:

1. Price is not the main reason for customer churn, it is actually due to the overall poor quality of customer service – Accenture global customer satisfaction report 2008.

2. A customer is 4 times more likely to defect to a competitor if the problem is service-related than price- or product-related – Bain & Company.

3. The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60 – 70%. The probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20% – Marketing Metrics.

4. For every customer complaint there are 26 other unhappy customers who have remained silent –Lee Resource.

50 facts about Customer Experience from 2011. I doubt many have changed.

If you have a lousy customer service reputation, how can you hire good people? Top Talent (often labeled A Players) want to work at top companies, organizations with a culture of success and customer experience. So UX (user experience) does translate into hiring. And skills are important, but not as much as Attitude is. Skills can be learned. Attitude notsomuch.

No comments: