Is there a need for customer coach in companies?

09.03.15 03:28 PM By S.Swaminathan

I have been reading a lot of recent articles(Consumer Expectations For Customer Service Don't Match What Companies Deliver) on the need for building world-class customer experience and how companies need to become customer-centric. But, when I searched for  professionals who could engage in this area - a customer coach, if I  may call them , I did not find a perfect fit at all - not too many of them! Quite strange, I must say.

Most of them restricted themselves to customer service, customer experience - more from training inputs for interactions online, call centre, customer care etc. etc. It almost looks like sales, marketing, R&D & other functions/departments  don't need customer coaching! 

But, there are a lot of professionals who call themselves - Executive Coaches- who are coaching execs 1-to-1 on how to improve themselves but none who could help execs individually or in very small groups holistically to address the customer needs across an enterprise or a company. This needs to be done to only a few executives at a time - that's what I call customer coaching! Also, customer privacy is becoming a huge issue too.

In my view, this is critical if companies need to really transform their customer experience. The real, hard difference lies with each and every employee who deals with  customers. No amount of software, SOPs, KRAs can help drive this change as the situation of the ground is dynamic. It needs to be internalized and practiced as a discipline by every employee in the company. It is an uncompromising attitude towards the customer and creating their own self-discipline to positively engage customers.

It needs far more customization,intensity, consistency and energy in companies than what we see today!

 

 

S.Swaminathan

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