This is the second of three articles on customer experience and its value to the organisation.

In our previous article 'Customer experience: goldmine or graveyard' http://www.changeboard.com/content/3692/leadership-and-management/diversity-and-equal-opportunity/customer-experience-goldmine-or-graveyard/, we discussed in general terms what organisations need to get right just to be in a position to deliver great customer experience. 

Specifically:

• Strategy, policies, values and culture
• Organisational structuring
• Workforce planning and competency 
• Performance management 
• Process measures and IT systems

Let’s start with a true story.

One rainy February evening at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Los Angeles a young, attractive couple, we'll call them Dick and Jane, went into the bar wearing luau shirts and ordered mai tais. The bartender, Fran, thought they were a bit morose, and soon discovered that Dick and Jane were recently married and had always planned to honeymoon at the Ritz-Carlton in Kapalua, Hawaii. 

Dick had just been diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, so rather than go to Hawaii; they pushed the date forward and were in L.A. for chemotherapy. This might be as close to Hawaii as they ever got, so they were trying to make the most of it.

Fran got someone to cover the bar, found the manager on duty, and together they went to the banquet hall prop room and collected anything that reminded them of Hawaii – a fishing net, a collection of starfish and seashells, a poster of Hawaiian hula dancers at a luau – and quickly gave the couple's room a makeover. They filled a cooler with sand and stuck in a sign that read: "Dick and Jane's Private Beach." The manager found an electronic key from the Ritz at Kapalua that a previous guest had left behind and reprogrammed it so it worked on Dick and Jane's room door. Then he put on a Hawaiian shirt and went out to deliver this new key to them.

He led them to their: "new Hawaiian Honeymoon Suite," where a complimentary bottle of Champagne was waiting. For the next three days the hotel staff did everything it could to make the couple feel like they were on a Hawaiian honeymoon of a lifetime.

From a customer experience perspective, the ‘gold standard’ is the concept of providing the best possible experience where the standard is judged by the customer.

In the example above, the Ritz-Carlton hotel got it right.  But it did not happen by accident or because they had one or two people who took initiative. It happened because the Ritz-Carlton worked hard to put the pieces in place to deliver ‘gold-standard’ customer experience.

Delivering the gold standard requires a 24/7 passion for excellence, starting with effective leadership and a customer centric approach aligned throughout the organisation.

Assuming the organisation’s strategy is aligned to a defined target, the next step is to develop compelling strategies that focus internally on people within the organisation that will deliver this gold standard.

Remember, people are the biggest single component in effective customer experience.

The company levers that need to be pulled to deliver the gold standard must be designed to ensure that every thought, action, reaction, interaction, standard, process, system and decision the company undertakes is designed for a consistent, authentic, premium experience.

In the case of the Ritz-Carlton, they: “develop strong emotional engagement between the hotels' staff and their guests such that a guest will not consider staying anywhere else, if they have an option”.

The elements that explain how companies help prepare to deliver this ‘gold standard’ customer experience are given below.

Recognised strategies, policies, values and culture are key foundations when organising for customer experience; these need to be shared and understood by the organisation. Strategy communicated by organisational leaders provides vision and commitment to resources.  Policies reflect guidelines to steer values, culture and intent to deliver a consistent gold standard.

Recognised culture must cut across the entire enterprise, from the board to front of house and across all organisational functions and divisions. Failure to build solid foundations often frustrates customers because they experience inconsistency, poor communication and inaccuracy between functions. Like so much in business, the weakest link will always let the side down.

In the case of the Ritz-Carlton, culture is communicated through recounting consistent stories about great guest experience and where staff showed exemplary service in 21 countries. Staff are then empowered to deliver this standard and use their initiative.

Building on the foundations mentioned above, gold standard organisations place themselves in the customer’s shoes and structure their organisation accordingly. This consistent co-ordinated activity effectively achieves strategic goals and customer objectives; provides clear responsibilities, accountabilities, continually improving relationships and communications between individuals and teams (internal customers). This provides flexibility and agility to respond to internal and external triggers that support a positive culture and increase employee satisfaction.

Gold standard leaders empower employees and delegate authority at the right level to deliver desired customer experience while maintaining accountability for the success of employees. At the Ritz-Carlton, Fran was able to get her manager to support her and develop a strong emotional experience for her guests. Without this organisational encouragement of initiative, Dick and Jane would have received a lacklustre experience. The Ritz Carlton has put in place a culture of employee empowerment through trust where Ladies and Gentlemen (staff) of the Ritz-Carlton are given the authority to spend up to $2,000 per day per guest without seeking the permission from supervisors.

Not many organisations could make that claim and in fact many put controls in place to prevent such initiatives.

Interestingly, one of the attitudes we have encountered is that the gold standard can only be delivered by the smaller bespoke suppliers. The Ritz-Carlton provides the perfect riposte.

Workforce management matches human resource supply to meet customer demand, using historical and current information to make informed workforce decisions. This enables organisations to:

• Allocate resources to deliver the gold standard by ensuring the right skills, in the right place at the right time
• Put in place contingencies to meet unplanned demand resulting in skills shortage or prevent suboptimal service delivery
• Provide a basis for making business decisions

At the Ritz-Carlton an underpinning policy is that all employees have the right to be involved in the planning of the work that affects them.

The Ritz-Carlton also has enough contingency in their resource management (skilled people in the right place at the right time) approach to handle an unexpected demand.

Competencies are work related skills, attitudes and behaviors needed to effectively perform a role; these apply to the board leadership team, management and staff. 

A key challenge is to identify specific competencies that enable the organisation to deliver the gold standard. A viable way to approach competencies is to model staff on the best demonstrated performer within a role and document competencies around their behaviours and where possible, use these same individuals to coach or monitor individuals against said behaviours. Organisations need to learn best practice and feed it back into the hiring, induction and development process.

In the case of the Ritz-Carlton hotel managers select performance appropriate measure for operations and senior management and employees share and replicate best practices on an ongoing basis.

Organisations that deliver gold standard understand that their process and IT systems must be easy to use and enable customer relationships, not hinder them.

The Ritz Carlton Hotel chain has won two Baldridge awards for quality processes. In doing so it has created an environment for organisational agility enabled through process and technology. The key to improved customer relationships is to map processes and technology to customer behavior and needs.

The Ritz Carlton Hotel has a structured flexible process enabling a quick response to customer needs, underpinned by IT systems. This allowed the manager form the Ritz to quickly reprogramme a key from the Ritz at Kapalua that a previous guest had left behind to recreate a great customer experience.

Putting it all together

It is no accident that the Ritz Carlton provides customers with the best hotel experience they have ever had, by pulling together all organisational levers with a passion and an internal commitment from all employees that keep their guests coming back for more.   

Aligning your company to deliver gold standard requires the following:

• Strong emotional engagement with customers
• A culture of employee empowerment through trust
• Have enough contingency in the workforce  management to handle unexpected demands
• Share and replicate the best individual performance in each function and reward it accordingly
• Create an environment for organisational agility

The next article will focus on Striking Gold – the 24 carat customer experience: Delivering the gold standard for your customers. Here we will discuss the financial implications of getting it right (and wrong).

Alison Benjamin-Shapiro has 14 years of experience advising to blue chip clients and is a facilitator and consultant specialising in Retail & Consumer, and Organisational Design. She can be contacted at alison.benjaminshapiro@molten-group.com or at www.molten-group.com

On March 16th, the London Business School Human Capital Network and Molten Group will host the fifth conference of its Organisational Development Speaker Series – Customer Experience: Goldmine or Graveyard. Organisational Development and Customer Experience Directors from customer-centric industries - Retail & Consumer, Retail Banking and Telecommunications - will share their insights into how to best align organisations with market demands, not only to win over customers, but to sustain their loyalty in the long term. Please, register for this event by clicking this link.

In the run-up to the event, Molten Group – will present you with a series of articles on organising for customer experience.

London Business School Human Capital Network

The Human Capital Network - is a discussion forum run by London Business School alumni that promotes debate on the latest issues in strategic change, organisational effectiveness and talent management. It has created the Organisational Development Speaker Series in order to facilitate discussion between HR practitioners and line managers. Some example topics addressed by previous events include Employee Engagement Strategies, Change-Ready Cultures and the Future of Work, and have featured speakers like Lynda Gratton (Professor of Management Practice at London Business School), Chris Bones(Dean of Henley Business School) and Paul Farley (Head of People and Organisational Effectiveness at British Airways). If you have queries about the event, please contact Oxana Popkova on opopkova.mba2006@london.edu.

Molten Group

Molten Group is the sponsor of the London Business School Human Capital Network. Molten Group provides transformation advisory to the Energy, Financial Services, Retail & Consumer, and Hightech & IT sectors, especially in the areas of change management, organisational & leadership effectiveness, as well as programme & project management.