3 Easy Ways to Incorporate a CEM Process without Additional Resources

Our relationships with dealerships and manufacturers span over 20 years. And in listening to their stories about customer experience management we have heard both about their successes and their challenges, and ultimately how our process was beneficial for their business.  But some organizations are hesitant about learning customer insights and implementing a customer experience management program because they believe that overseeing a customer experience process is a huge undertaking and one that can’t be done with a small team or with constrained resources.

If you have (or had) any kids in grade school, you may have heard the saying “Shoot for the moon, even if you miss you’ll land among the stars.” This really fits well in today’s environment. While you may not feel you have the spare resources or staff that you need to focus on customer feedback, there are ways you can utilize the resources that you have and start shifting your company perspective and culture to making your customers a priority. By doing so you will land your organization among the stars.  Here are some ideas to keep your customer experience game strong using the resources you already have.

Delegate work

  • Assign someone in each department to be accountable for following up on open issues.
  • Empower your team to recognize and select certain opportunities that are ripe for improvement. Have each department flag specific surveys that share insights and suggestions. Review the insights monthly and identify opportunities to enhance processes or incorporate small improvements/changes based on those insights.  Small changes can have a huge impact on customer experience. For example: How easy is it for a customer to reach your service department? Do your customers share that the only phone number they have is the main number for the dealership and that each time they call they get transferred 4 times before getting to the right person? Is the interruption to your staff something that reduces their productivity?  You could fix this simply by adding the service department phone number to your website and online information so that customers can reach them directly, saving them time, decreasing their level of frustration and increase their satisfaction with your dealership.

Use the time you have

  • Utilize your weekly department meetings or communications to share customer feedback received during the prior week. If it’s not your busy season, make the most of this opportunity and have your team reach out to your customers to thank them for providing feedback or to share how you have incorporated their insights into your processes.
  • Record how you resolve issues so that they are available should a similar issue arise in the future. Create a template for common responses and follow-up procedures and pull from these to save time in your future interactions. Your team will relay a consistent professional message and won’t struggle for words or feel put on the spot.
  • Block out time on the calendar- keep check-ins regular and meetings small.

Automate whenever possible

  • Get notified every time a customer survey is returned. While we recommend you follow up with every customer, if you have limited resources, your first priority should be to focus your attention and notifications on detractor and neutral respondents. (Not sure what a detractor or Neutral customer is? Click here to read more on Net Promoter Score.)
  • Utilize an automatic survey approach to send out surveys for every transaction. To keep survey volume manageable and affordable, assign limits to only survey a customer if a certain dollar amount is reached or type of services occurs.