Page 60 - Print 21 Magazine Nov-Dec 2018

Business
Did you have a happy Customer Experience Day?
Believe it or not, there
is an actual Customer Experience (CX) day worldwide. This year, it was on October 2 and celebrated by many CX specialists across the globe, with events hosted by the CXPA (Customer Experience Professional Association).
OK, the title might be a little glib; however, the point is we need to be mindful that every day in our print and graphic businesses we should be trying to make our customers happy and satisfied with us, so we get their repeat business. This is a natural course of doing business, but for how many of us is it front of mind?
Getting repeat business or more share of wallet from existing clients is far easier than acquiring new business. Your ROI (return on investment) is a lot better – research shows it costs 7.5 times as much
to gain a new customer – yet here
is the crazy thing: the majority of companies spend more of their budget on attracting new customers.
Here is an interesting fact that I come across recently. According to Forbes magazine, ‘companies that
excel at customer experience have
1.5 times more engaged employees than companies with poor customer experience’, and ‘companies that invest in employee experience are four times more profitable than those who do not’.
So you can see it’s a win/win/win all round for the company, employees, and customers.
Now the sad truth is that according to the same Forbes report, ‘only 31.5 per cent of employees in the USA say they are engaged in their work'. That means a staggering 68.5 per cent of all employees are not engaged. According to the Temkin Group, a bad experience
“Take care of associates and they will take care of your customers.”
– JW Marriott
Are business owners and managers blind to what their employees are really thinking? Well, it would appear that way. I know from
60 Print21 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018
Print veteran and now industry consultant Scott Telfer says
there is a direct link between employee engagement and customer satisfaction.
costs money: ‘after a bad experience with a company, 22 per cent of consumers decrease their spending and 19 per cent completely stop doing business with the company.’
Scary, but where does your business fit into these statistics?
Businesses are missing out on the pot of gold that can be attained by simply looking after their employees. Engaging with them is a low-cost solution that can pay huge benefits to the company.
Almost all business, some 89
per cent, expect to compete based primarily on customer experience; however, if only 31.5 per cent of employees feel engaged, there seems to be a massive gulf between what businesses want and what reality is.
a new customer, yet the majority of companies spend an amount of their budget on attracting new customers.
Richard Branson says that engaged and happy employees deliver superior customer experiences. His business Virgin enters markets where customers are dissatisfied, and quickly wins a strong market share by providing
great service with a touch of magic. Employees want to be part of the solution and feel that they belong. They want to be listened to and feel that their feedback contributes to the success of the business. Your employees are the ones that retain or lose your customers.
With engaged employees, the evidence points toward more satisfied customers. In an era where more than ever before disruptive businesses
can single handily alter the course
of a mature industry like ours, it is imperative that as business owners and leaders we make sure we can build a wall around our customers that means loyalty to our brand.
The best place to start is to look at your employees and ensure they are engaged in the business.
Scott Telfer, leading Customer Culture specialist at Customer CX (www. customercx.com.au), has worked in
the graphic arts industry for 35 years, going from an apprentice litho printer to owning a business. He has worked on both the supply and manufacturing sides of the industry, so has great insight. Now a member of CXPA working in customer experience, he is keen to make sure that businesses have the latest knowledge in regards to CX.
For a free 1 hour consultation, please contact Scott about how you can improve your internal culture on +61 413 382 528 or scott@customercx.com.au. 21
personal experience of owning my own print business, however, that generally you know how your staff are feeling. The real issue is around what you, as the leader, are focusing on.
I know in my case most of the time it was on the financial stability of the company, chasing the sales, ensuring the pipeline was big enough, ensuring production were focused on meeting deadlines. Let’s just say that I was looking after the transactional value of the company, not the relationship value of the business. The customer came second, and so did our employees.
Clear evidence has shown that by putting the employees and customer first, the financial returns will happen. As mentioned earlier in the article, it costs over 7.5 times as much to gain