What is the link between customer experience and team culture?

I once saw a bank cashier almost get into fisticuffs with a customer.

As a Nigerian living in Nigeria, I have had my fair share of bad customer service (both witnessed and experienced), but that occurrence still stands out to me as the worst of them all. For obvious reasons, I will not name the bank.

According to the Nigeria Cusomer Service Index, customer service/experience in Nigeria is at its lowest ebb. This is in spite of marginal improvements in some sectors over the past two years, and the fact that more companies are now conscious of the need to optimize customer experience.

If you are a business owner or executive and are trying to improve customer experience in your company, you need to understand the following:

• There are no quick fixes to creating great customer experience
• You need to stop seeing customer experience as a goal to be achieved but as a result of good leadership, positive culture, and clear values – in that order
• Customer experience is a result of team culture and team culture follows the path of least resistance
  

Great customer experience is never an accident and a lot has to go wrong before an employee gets into a fight with a customer. (By the way, that bank staff was not fired. I know this because I saw him several times at the bank after that incident, and I saw him engage in heated arguments with more customers).

Written by Oluwatotan