The Experience that you are committed to causing and then the Experience that you are actually causing is of incredible importance. With regards to the overall Experience created by your organization, it is incumbent upon every employee, manager and executive to 1. Know where they stand, 2. Know where they want to be and 3. Have a plan and a process to help them improve.
Ask yourself this question, “How much do you Care?” The beginning of the Experience is the commitment to the Experience. This is precisely why we have created a road map for you and your organization called the I. C.A.R.E Principles to engage the Experience and focus on specific points of inflection that will drive you towards that of the exceptional. In searching for the road map, my partner and I Bruce Loeffler, a former Service Excellence Coordinator at Disney, created 5 Principles that encapsulate the Experience you should strive to provide both externally, as well as internally.
They are:
I ~ Impression: The lasting imprint made through first and ongoing relational inflection points; the catalyst to building a relationship.
C ~ Connection: The pivot point between contact and relationship. Converting clients and customers from consumers to Ambassadors (those on a mission to tell the world specifically about you) hinges on the ability to create the cerebral, emotional and personal connection.
A ~ Attitude:The filter for everything you think, say and ultimately do. Attitude is the lens in which you see the world and the outward expression of inward feelings.
R ~ Response: Service is about personal responsibility and responding as opposed to reacting.The hallmark of customer service and an exceptional Experience is the Response. If the response time, tone and talent do not match up with every other aspect of an exceptional Experience, everything else is rendered useless.
E ~ Exceptionals: The secret behind the Experience is the relational expertise and execution that comes from the people in charge of delivering it. The management team and employees must be prepared and empowered to have the Experience living and breathing within them.
The main idea is to offer the highest level of Experience possible, thus creating Ambassadors for your organization. The I. C.A.R.E. Principles have helped to differentiate Disney and other fine organizations from their competition. We believe that attention towards the Customer Experience is applicable in virtually every industry where a service deliverable is dire to the success of the organization. I want to challenge you to create a strategy to begin to improve the areas of the 5 Principles that you feel need the most attention. You cannot change overnight, however, you can begin to effect the Experience, your employees, your customers and your revenues by getting better week by week. If you make this a focus for your organization, you are one step closer to creating one dynamic, focused and practical solution to what most companies are missing today: an exceptional Experience.
