Your business must be FCS-21 Vaccinated if you want employees and customers to knock the doors down to get to you

 Part 1

It is 5.00 am, almost "dawn" in the United States, as the dark clouds of the pandemic slowly recede. So far in the United States, 304 million doses have been administered. For the first week of June, an average of 1.07 million doses were administered daily.

The aroma of normalcy is fast returning – and yes, it has got us salivating. Provided the vaccination momentum and societal adherence to health protocols are sustained, authorities expect us to be much closer to the borders of normalcy by July 4th, Independence Day!

You will agree that the lockdowns have sucked gallons of life and happiness from us. Just like you, millions across the country are itching to jump back outdoors, back into their regular routines to enjoy the famous thrill of American life.

Characteristic of the renowned American resilience, the U.S is bouncing back, and it is bouncing back quickly. Between December and January, personal income enjoyed a 10% growth. Manufacturing surged by almost 10% point YOY (year on year), with the annualized GDP growth for Q1 enjoying an estimated rise to 10%. Yes, that is America for you!

Summer could be coming for your company…

As a business, there is more than the patriotic love of America to excite you in these economic resurgence numbers. The broader implication that customers are coming back to your business armed with fatter wallets (in terms of dispensable income) is thrilling, isn't it?

Yes, customers have money and the enthusiasm to spend, but they wouldn't be too excited to throw their dollars at you without world-class customer experience. Simply put, you want their money, they want to be treated right while giving you that money. The same applies to employees.

Indeed, many businesses are struggling to recruit employees with staff shortages increasingly complained about. Yes, it is easy to dump the blame on the White House (in terms of the Biden-Administration's $1.9tn stimulus plan offering stimulus payments and unemployment payments). However, a more objective introspection would reveal a significant gust of the repulsive odor keeping employees and customers off your business are from your festering customer and employee experience.

But are you properly poised for the boom?

Ex-employees will not forget in a hurry their experience in your company. Good, and they would have rushed to come back. Regrettable, and they would stay back home, exploring more options.

Precisely for the latter, employees who felt terribly handicapped when working for you will prefer days spent on Netflix over returning to the penitentiaries you disguise as offices.  

Or would it be wrong to call employees despicably starved of the operational ammunition (in terms of the inventiveness and education) they need to provide the requested world-class customer experience, "prisoners on the frontline"?

Not only do your ex-employees have a fantastic memory, but your customers also do! They still remember the customer service experience you dished them. Savory, and they would rush back after the pandemic. Sour, and they would rightly go back to the catalog, examining the offerings from your competitors' menu -- a really lengthy menu by the time life returns to normal.

Before the scenes set for the corporate post-COVID soap opera, it is time to get your cast and script right. Before customers start coming back in their droves, now is the time to perform an accelerated autopsy of your customer and employee experience.

What infection killed it before the pandemic? Leadership failure, lack of employee education, or administrative rheumatism (in terms of an inability of leadership to twist and turn readily in adaptation to changing market conditions)?

Introducing the lifesaving FCS-21 (Fresh Customer Service 2021) vaccination

More than ever, now is the time to get your business FCS-21 (Fresh Customer Service 2021) vaccinated against an anemic customer and employee experience. This is your surest way of inoculating your business against the set-to-boom competition after the pandemic.

Take the old-school customer experience approach of putting the customer first and employees second, and you risk having dissatisfied buyers and disgruntled employees. Two fatal cancers in their individual rights.

The contemporary socioeconomic dynamics of the post-COVID American 2021 society call for an innovative disruption of your traditional customer experience model. The conventional customer experience machinery corporate America previously rode on is broken – screeching for a structural and ideological overhaul.

How did I know?

Only 1% of customers feel that their expectations of customer service are always met. - RightNow

84% of customers report that their expectations had not been exceeded in their last interaction with customer service. - Harvard Business Review

35% of customers have become angry when talking to customer service - American Express

How costly has been this customer experience malfunction?

$1.6 trillion is lost by companies in the United States due to customers switching due to poor customer service. - Accenture

82% of customers have ceased business with a company because of a poor customer experience. - Zendesk

78% of customers have given up on a transaction because of a negative customer experience. - American Express

How beautiful would it have been if businesses were getting their customer experience right?

Businesses that deliver better customer experiences obtain revenues between 4% and 8% above their market. - Bain & Company

73% of customers fall in love with a brand because of friendly customer service representatives. - RightNow

55% of customers are willing to spend more money with a company that guarantees them a satisfying experience. - ThinkJar

Customers overwhelmingly agreed (83%) that they feel more loyal to brands that respond and resolve their complaints. - Khoros

70% of customers report that technology makes it simple to take their business to a competitor if need be. - Salesforce

This affirms the urgency of adopting the Fresh Customer Service model, which places the employee first and the customer second, effectively empowering the employee to provide a top-class customer experience for your customers. This is a win-win by all dimensions: happy employees and happy customers.

The frontline employee is actually #1

The frontline employee deserves to be the center of your adoration. Yes, you are the heart of the company, but they are the arteries through which what you produce is transmitted across board as far as to the customer.

Yes, a dysfunctional heart is a dead being. Similarly, a dysfunctional artery is almost a dead being too. This means your business needs more than your sparkling entrepreneurial genius to succeed after the pandemic. It yet needs a state-of-the-art conduit for such genius to be transmitted to your customers: your frontline employee!

The Fresh Customer Service 2021 model is astonishingly effective because when you emotionally and intellectually equip your frontline employees, you get happy employees oozing expertise garnished with cheerfulness. This is a delicacy your customers gluttonously enjoy.

Buyers want to be infected with the enthusiasm and passion your frontline employee leaches. Mathematically, the Fresh Customer Service 2021 model states that Happy employees = happy customers = happy P&L statements!

While your arms need the likes of the Moderna and Pfizer shots as biological vaccination against the COVID-19 virus, your business critically needs the socioeconomic FCS-21 (Fresh Customer Service 21) vaccination to prevent sickening your potential & current employees and customers.

The good news is that we have done all the hard work of developing and proving the efficacy of the FCS-21 (Fresh Customer Service 21) vaccination. Injecting the FCS-21 vaccine into your business is your part of the work.

In the next part, we will take you through the 6.5 steps to get your business FCS-21 vaccinated to run successfully after the pandemic.