Brian Mekka
Brian Mekka is the Director of Customer Experience at Charter Steel, in Saukville, Wisconsin. He has over two decades of experience leading Service organizations – from B2C contact centers with hundreds of representatives, to B2B experience teams fostering long-term customer relationships. Brian’s customers benefit from a drive to achieve the highest levels of Customer Experience, enabled through Employee Experiences designed to drive engagement, development, and shared success.
Shaping Leadership through Experience
Two things come to mind for me around this topic. First, there are the leaders in Customer Experience that I have had the opportunity to work with during my career. As concepts and technology develop over the years, past leaders have helped me to see aspects of Service and Experience that remain foundational. I reflect on the times that I first learned about some of those basic notions from my leaders, and I still connect them to new tools and emerging technology in today’s marketplace. Second, there are my own experiences as a consumer. I believe we all utilize our interactions with companies and their representatives to shape what we see as an ideal Customer Experience. Whether good or bad, we carry those examples with us to help shape the Journeys that we want our customers to have.
Evolving Customer Expectations Today
While manufacturing is one of several industries, the concepts used to provide the best Customer Experience are somewhat common. At Charter Steel, we are working to evolve and improve our abilities to be more Correct, Courteous, Convenient, and Consistent (our “4 Cs”) in every interaction with our customers. I believe that Manufacturing and more generally, B2B Customer Experience, lag a bit in providing technology and visibility to information that our employees and customers need.
“When your customers know that you are acting on their feedback and implementing change, you’ll find that they are even more willing to share ideas with you.”
As we have listened more to our customers through team interactions and survey opportunities, we have heard a need for those basic expectations. Provide the right information and answers for me; do it in a polite and professional way; make it easy for me to get it myself, from you, or to have it proactively sent without asking; and ensure my interactions are universal – regardless of how I choose to engage with you.
Building Responsive Customer Relationships
Listen constantly, act on customer feedback and communicate about your efforts. It truly is simple, but many organizations don’t have methods to gather and analyze customer feedback. A CRM system can be used to gain insight from every team member who interacts with your customer, and surveys can capture overall and/or very targeted feedback. Who better to drive your organization forward than the customers who purchase from you?!
Then, once you have gathered, summarized, and analyzed that customer feedback – take action. Whether addressing customer needs is a simple change or a multi-year strategic project, start down that path and make it happen. In my experience, when you can connect a project directly to what your customers want, resources to make it happen are easier to come by.
And finally, communicate about your efforts. Talk about them internally so all employees within your organization can understand what is happening, and why. But in addition to that, communicate with your customers about the initiatives happening to address their needs! If it’s a small change, broadcast it so it will receive recognition and usage. And if it’s a large change happening over time, keep your customers in the loop as the project progresses. When your customers know that you are acting on their feedback and implementing change, you’ll find that they are even more willing to share ideas with you.
Turning Data into Experience
With the customer feedback discussed above, I’ll concentrate on the data here. By using integrated systems to curate and manage customer information, orders, products, invoicing, etc. in combination with Service metrics to measure your success in being Correct, Courteous, Convenient, and Consistent, you can drive overall experience in a positive direction.
For example, if customer feedback tells you that they want more timely information or notifications about their order status, you should work to increase visibility to that information both internally and directly for your customers. Then, measure how quickly you respond to customer inquiries by tracking KPIs such as average handle time (AHT) and time to resolution (TTR). And gauge your success in self-service by tracking metrics like contact deflection and customer effort score (CES). Of course, your overall stats such as Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) and Net Promoter Score (NPS) should also see positive changes.
Career Advice for CX Professionals
A simple thing to remember here is “People.” First, the team you lead, including your leaders, needs your attention and support as valuable individuals. Yes, we all have a job to do. But to be successful you must truly care about and invest in your leaders and your team. Provide opportunities for your CX group to elevate their contribution, to truly understand how they fit into the organization, and to develop through their career path.
Then, similarly, recognize that the customer you work with – whether they are direct consumers or contacts at a B2B customer account – are also people. You have an opportunity, and maybe even an expectation, to connect with those people on a deeper level. If you can create a team that regularly goes beyond the transactions and forges a connection – maybe even a relationship – that breeds loyalty and advocacy, you are in for a long and successful career of leadership within Customer Experience.
