It’s our duty to empathize with customers and act on our findings
With social responsibility matters such as environmentalism and diversity now playing influential roles in customer buying decisions, Joshua Tye, Customer Experience Leader at Wellstar Health System discusses what it looks like to be a socially responsible brand that instils customer loyalty.
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Social responsibility
It is our responsibility as service oriented leaders to activate our immense privilege by a commitment to the communities we serve. In its highest form, loyalty is built by consistent delivery on a brand promise, this begins with the organization’s leaders casting a compelling and explicit vision that “arrests” the attention of its consumer and then aligning its operating model with the vision.
A socially responsible organization empathetically evaluates customer’s decisions. They also evaluate decision impact and how it could potentially flow onto other customers’ journey. Consequently, the most responsible teams leverage diversity and environmentalist perspectives to elevate consumer outcomes.
How to be a socially responsible brand
When considering the elements of a socially responsible organization it’s vital to harvest enough information to understand the pain points of the customer, build a 360 view of the customer and then to activate internal resources to create momentum.
Loyalty is best described as building strong operating systems, putting them in a backpack and taking them closer to the customer. Loyalty isn’t idling in the lagging nature of customer sentiment assuming that one day consistent service delivery will be the hallmark of an operation that doesn’t pivot. In elaborating, it’s really important to understand that the first sign of a socially responsible organization is the span of effective and sustainable listening methods. This insight informs the inner workings of the organization to best embrace the identity of its consumers. Coupled with effective listening is the thought that the customer is a partner or “owner” within the continuous improvement journey rather than just a transactional exchange because engaged customers are loyal customers.
Insight activation
Upon maximizing and iteratively improving listening methodologies the organization must activate this information. Activation doesn’t stop at just coaching it actually goes as far as revamping and defining processes that align with the customer voice yet decreases variance in staff service provision. The consistent adaptation and pivoting is what makes the operating system fit into a proverbial ‘backpack’. The consumer may never read documents on an internal operating process but they will experience it, so the “backpack” makes it digestible and easy to navigate.
Operationalizing social responsibility
An organization is only responsible when the use of consumer insight is instilled into the day-to-day operation, this turns responsibility into reliability. It’s as simple as huddles and using this information to iteratively and incrementally improve the service delivery teams. Responsibility is simple, it is using the information to guide the daily operating behaviors of the team. If the organization cannot invest time, energy and resources into the strengthening of socially responsible behaviors then an organization cannot expect to be socially reliable.
Social responsibility is the gateway to leveraging insight that creates top performing CX hubs rather than just CX teams. This commitment builds long term loyalty and over time creates an atmosphere to which the customer is loved so much that “they never want to leave”.
