#11 Use the learner's experience (good or bad) - don't ignore it!

Client Enquiry:

Have you any ideas on how we can get staff to really consider what they can do to improve our customer experience? Its more than just a list of things (that people probably already know anyway!) about what we say we (want to?) deliver! 
 

RSVP Design Response

If everyone has a slightly different role, or different opportunities to engage or interact with different parts of the customer journey through the organisation, then you need each staff member to create an individual response and action plan. However this needs to come from the customers point of view and not the staff member. Use something like Images of Customer Experience to help individuals recognise and empathise with the qualities, experiences and behaviours that contribute to their personal view of good and bad customer service. Then compare and contrast that individual reflection with the experience and reflections of others in the group - in this way you can widen an individuals view on what they think  their personal impact could be on a customers experience.

Get them to create lists of good and poor behaviours and actions rather than present them with a single list of best practice. Get them to engage and discuss with others, reflecting on where they can make structural, process or organisational changes or recommendations that can improve their specific interactions with customers.

Tip #11

Use a learner-centred method (a focus on questioning, metacognition, and reflection) to get people to first be open to the need for change, then give them some opportunities to practice that change. Assess them on how they behave and the effect of their behaviour, not on what they know. Experience is valued – experience is a ‘subjective’ resource that can be applied to learning. (Knowles, 1990)

Create a learning environment that encourages and offers opportunity for learners’ prior experience to be considered and selectively utilised. Ensure elements of the learning environment encourage learners, individually and collectively, to make connections with similar or parallel prior experiences

 

Read more about some remedies to help cure Customer Service Blindness in your organisation here!