Customer value
WE ARE EVALUATED ON THE CUSTOMER’S/USER’S/CITIZEN’S EXPERIENCE – NOT THE TECHNICAL DELIVERY
Basically, service is intangible. It is what the individual makes of it and perceive. In a number of service organisations, either physical products or documents of a case constitute the core service, making it easier objectively to assess the quality of the service delivery.
Other types of service deliveries are characterised by the fact that the significance of the core service is less important, while the subjective perception of the service delivery, i.e. the experience, is more important. This means that customer value becomes more diffuse and harder to describe and measure; therefore, it becomes harder to improve the processes by traditional improvement of efficiency and improvement methods. Instead, there is a need for shifting focus towards the customer’s experience of the service delivery. This requires a new understanding and new approaches and tools – and they exist!
In order to improve service experiences, the starting point is an accept of the fact that experiences can be analysed and are to be designed and measured
It is in the interaction between processes, customers and employees that the changes need to take place. Therefore, the starting point is taken in analysing the customers’ way through the process, the service journey, by means of contact point analyses, which are performed by managers and employees, possibly with involvement of the customer.
Good experiences and high customer value can go hand in hand with high productivity
The rationale behind the wish to create good customer experiences is that the customer becomes more loyal and displays a more desirable behaviour seen from the organisation’s point of view, e.g. in the form of an increased amount of rebuy or by creating fewer problems and hereby non-productive time to the organisation, typically in the form of reduced failure demand. Just as significant is that good experiences and satisfied and loyal customers affect the employees’ own job satisfaction and happiness in a positive direction. Overall, the good experiences therefore lead to higher productivity as it is possible to do the right thing for a larger part of the time. These correlations are described in the organisation’s service value chain.
From strategy to warm hands
In everyday life, the employees in the front line or ”on the floor” are the ones who are daily in contact with the customers. The distance from the top management’s service strategy to the many daily service deliveries may be long. Therefore, formulation of a common service concept is a central pivotal point. The work behind creating good experiences and high customer value therefore requires involvement and commitment from the top management to the employees through a structured but to the organisation adjusted course of development.
