3 min read
There can be many interpretations of what Customer Delight means. To me, Customer Delight is a step above customer satisfaction because it means being consistently good but when it matters “going above and beyond” what is normally expected. I focus on this because it directly ties to business outcomes. Customer delight leads to loyal customers who drive higher gross retention rates and net retention rates and referenceable customers. Customer delight convers the customer into a partner. As a partner, they share their acute pain points and jointly innovate with us to drive our roadmap and business direction. Everything we do as an organization builds on Customer Delight.
Building an organizational culture focused on driving Customer Delight is a key aspect of enabling high performing teams that drive customer loyalty. When the customer is kept in mind while planning and making decisions, you are forced to think about the overall value being delivered and how that customer will be impacted. To do this consistently, every level in the organization needs to focus on building a strong culture around Customer Delight.
How did I form my perspective?
I recently joined SpinSci as the Senior Vice President of Delivery with responsibility for our Delivery Managers, Implementation Engineers and Customer Support Team. These teams are key to enabling customer interaction capabilities for our clients. Not only do we make sure that our resources are technically capable for their roles but there is an underlying awareness of how our efforts will impact our client’s customers.
Over the course of my career, I have been fortunate enough to help many different organizations deploy technology that enables collaboration and customer engagement. As seen in the bullets below, my perspective has been built while leading teams both from the advisory side as well as managing technology resources from an operations perspective.
- 10 years as a management consultant with Accenture designing contact center and technical architectures while leveraging best practices for customer service engagement and satisfaction.
- 3 years driving contact center transformation and regular operations on the other side of the consulting table with responsibility for the actual technology operations.
- 15 years back on the consulting side pulling together all the lessons learned to help clients deliver the best customer experiences through technology.
- On the healthcare side, I’m personally grateful for Parkland Hospital having recruited my mom from nursing school in India which created the path for my life in the U.S. and exposed me to many hospital departments and aspects of healthcare.
Customer Delight is core to my DNA. My mom’s path is a healthcare practitioner. Ever since a very young age, I’ve seen her relentless passion to help patients and hospital administrators achieve meaningful outcomes. Customer responsiveness is intrinsically built into me. To me, when a client asks for something, its more than the requested tasks. It should include looking at how that request fits within the overall strategy and current state of the organization. The key is for me to take this intrinsic customer responsiveness and replicate this as a subconscious behavior for each and every employee inside our organization.
I’ve known SpinSci for 15 years and the fast pace of innovation and disruptive thinking is why I’ve joined SpinSci. SpinSci is touching over 40 million patient lives annually and has now over 100 major health systems. Each one of the health systems is not just a customer but a true partner who wants SpinSci to co-innovate and bring value-add outcome focused solutions. Not only is there a great opportunity from a business perspective to help shape where the change is headed for health systems, but there is potential to help healthcare systems really impact people’s lives through Patient Engagement and Assistance.
For me personally, the most impactful healthcare interaction was when my twins were born prematurely and underweight. They spent a month in the NICU. It was a scary time for my wife and I, but the people on the floor made us feel comfortable and confident that things would be okay. Even the people that answered the phones when we called in for help, made us feel like they knew us and understood what we were going through. The experience was more than we expected, and I can saw we were truly delighted with the support. However, when the bills started to come in, we were lost and confused by all the codes and couldn’t really figure out what we owed or even if it was right. As I learn more about Value-based Care and the potential to move away from “Fee for service,” I believe the healthcare system will become more personal and less confusing to regular people. I’m excited to be part of making this more patient focus future a reality through SpinSci. It’s important to view the customer perspective as the cornerstone of building a “Customer Delight” culture across our organization. Through empathy, we achieve better customer focused outcomes.
In my next blog, I’ll talk about 6 core reasons why every organization should build a “Customer Delight” initiative. Until then, when you take that next customer call think how can I delight the customer!
