Are you familiar with this situation as a customer? You contact customer services to change an order, but are told that you have to go through another department. The same department explains that the request must be validated by a manager. The manager is waiting for information from the logistics department. Three days later, you receive a product you no longer wanted.
This situation has an impact on the customer experience, yet it does not reveal a problem with the interface or a poorly thought-out message. It exposes an internal malfunction. If internal malfunctions can have an impact on the customer experience, can the reverse be true? This article looks at solutions that could help improve the experience internally.
1- Deal with internal irritants to improve the customer experience
Internal irritants rarely accumulate by chance. They arise from a bug that drags on or a tool that malfunctions. Individually, they may seem minor, but collectively they create permanent friction for your teams that eventually reaches the customer. Taking account of internal irritants has two effects: it gradually reduces internal friction and restores team confidence. in their ability to pass on information. In the long term, this also improves the quality of what is reported.
What's important is not so much the system itself as the principle behind it: considering that what teams report deserves a response and visibility of the timeframe for resolution.
Correcting internal irritants
There are simple mechanisms such as a dedicated channel where field teams can report a problem, or weekly reviews of recurring irritants.
2 - Invest in internal and customer tools
Teams are expected to deliver a fluid, fast, personalised experience, but they are sometimes given tools that don't allow them to do so: slow interfaces, systems that don't communicate with each other and processes that force information to be duplicated. Apply the same standards to internal tools as to customer interfaces ergonomics, accessibility and performance. This saves time, avoids errors, increases team satisfaction and, ultimately, improves the quality perceived by the customer. Because an employee who spends less time looking for information can concentrate on the answer itself.
3 - Aligning the external promise with the internal reality
A company that promises simplicity to its customers but imposes complex processes on its teams is experiencing a contradiction. This incoherence is always visible in the end. Employees feel it and it is transmitted, consciously or unconsciously, in their interactions with the outside world. Check alignment between external promise and internal reality. What an organisation promises on the outside must really be lived on the inside: trust, transparency...
If these values are promised to customers externally, they must be transcribed internally. This is a slow process, but it builds a coherence that is perceptible. The teams naturally embody what they experience.
4 - Mapping the customer journey to give teams a shared vision
The segmentation of teams is an organisational reality but it must not prevent a shared understanding of the customer journey as a whole. When everyone sees only their part, inconsistencies multiply without anyone really noticing.
Improve team overview
Why not make these maps available to everyone? They enable each team to situate its action within a wider context and make it easier to arbitrate in the face of diverging priorities.
Another option is to organise cross-immersion days: these experiences create an embodied understanding that goes beyond organisational charts.
5 - Creating the right conditions to hear what the field has to say
Teams in direct contact with customers have an empirical knowledge that dashboards do not capture. They know where the journey is going wrong, what bugs are recurring and what questions customers are really asking. This expertise is invaluable, but it doesn't come up spontaneously, so we need to set up rituals to capture this knowledge on the ground: inter-team meetings, collaborative tools or even audits...
The important thing is not how the feedback is collected, but to show its effects: a bug reported by three different advisers must be corrected within a week. A suggestion for improvement must be tested and then implemented. Friction identified by the field must be taken into account in the next iteration. This loop creates a virtuous dynamic.
These five levers are not independent projects: they feed off each other. What links them? One conviction: the customer experience cannot be decreed. It is built on the experience of our teams, the quality of their tools and their ability to understand and act on the customer journey as a whole. The results can be spectacular, sometimes in a matter of weeks.
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How can we improve the customer experience internally? Five levers to consider.