Develop Your Employees for the Digital Kick Back

Peter PsichogiosCustomer Experience, Learning & Development

Technology is proliferating our business practices and all aspects of our lives and we have become extremely reliant on technology and automation to run our businesses efficiently. Yet, there is a digital kickback taking place whereby now, more than ever, customers want both highly personalized and high tech interactions with the organizations they buy from (and work for).

What this means for front-line workers is that they must be prepared for this digital kickback by providing their customers with personalized experiences that only another human being can provide, while also remaining as fast, friendly and hassle-free as their robot counterparts.

As an organization there are several ways that you can prepare your employees to become irreplaceable and create exceptional human experiences that your customers crave in this digital revolution. The principles that will protect their jobs from being automated by a robot are:

Being friendly & fun. Being friendly and fun cannot necessarily be trained, it is a personality trait that is engrained in humans at a young age. When you are friendly and fun with your employees and customers, it makes the interaction personal, light and shows that you don’t take yourself too seriously, but are choosing to create a joyful experience for everyone. You can encourage friendliness and fun in your organization by giving your employees the autonomy to make good decisions that reflect your company culture and values. And create a culture that embraces fun and isn’t stifled by too many unnecessary policies and procedures.

Being competent & committed. In order to be competent and committed you must first make sure that all obstacles that would get in the way of creating an exceptional experience are removed. This means thoroughly and accurately training and developing all employees to understand the workflow, what their role is in providing an exceptional customer experience, and how to execute any tasks that will be expected of them to carry out that experience. Then they must be committed to providing that experience, no matter what. When you invest in your employee’s learning and development, they will invest their discretionary energy back into creating an exceptional internal experience for their colleagues and external experience for their customers. And when you recognize and reward them for doing that, they will be committed to continue to create that experience at every touch point.

Being authentic, empathetic & hospitable. In other words, you must treat each individual employee and customer uniquely how they want to be treated. You must be able to empathize with their needs and wants and be able to authentically create a personalized experience that makes them feel welcome. This will create an exceptional experience for them that will create decades of customer loyalty.

Providing these personalized, humanized experiences for your employees and customer throughout the digital revolution is one excellent way to differentiate yourself from other organizations and be a winner in the experience economy now and for decades to come.

If you want to read more about the 7 Personalization Principles discussed above, click here and we’ll mail you a free copy of The Seven Personalization Principles: Learn the principles to thrive in these disruptive times.