Benefits of having consistency throughout organisation Essay

There are many benefits of having consistency throughout any organisation, whether it is in the workplace or in customer interactions. Meeting demands consistently requires the attention of top leadership and it is becoming an increasingly important factor in various industries (Pulido, Stone and Strevel, 2014). This brief will highlight the advantages of having consistency throughout ‘Prestige Worldwide’ and how we can adopt it. Consistency is the key to making customers happy, which is the aim of this organisation. In order to provide maximum customer satisfaction, the customers must have a consistent ‘customer journey’, i.e. the cumulative experience of interactions that a customer has with a company (Pulido et al, 2014). Research by McKinsey & Company (2014) suggested that evaluating the customer journey is 30% more predictive of overall customer satisfaction than individual touch points, which makes increasing customer satisfaction easier to do. Even more importantly, Hallowell (1996) found that improved satisfaction leads to increased customer loyalty. Loyal customers are likely to retain our service and recommend our service to others, thus increasing our customer base and generating more business. McKinsey & Company found that consistency improves customer satisfaction by 20%, lifts revenue by 15%, and lowers the cost of serving customers by 20%. There is also a correlation between overall customer satisfaction and journey experience consistency, as shown in the graph to the right (Pulido et al, 2014). Research has highlighted many advantages and no notable disadvantages; hence this issue is something Prestige Worldwide should consider as part of its management strategy. McKinsey & Company lists three aspects that must be consistent which we should target; 1. Customer journey consistency: Customers interact with different branches of our organisation throughout their customer journey, and it is important for their interactions to be consistently exceptional. This is harder to maintain in a large corporation, but because we are relatively small it will be easy to adopt. 2. Emotional consistency: Customer satisfaction and loyalty are heavily influenced by emotions encompassed in a feeling of trust (Beard, 2014), meaning that consistency is important to forge a relationship of trust with customers, which is important for long term growth. We must strive to be a company that customers comfortable with and trust. 3. Communication consistency: It is important to make and meet promises, and equally important to highlight the delivery of these promises. Our marketing communications should focus on the delivery of promises, because that will influence customer perception and enable us to generate a reservoir of goodwill and first-rate reputation. Slogans are commonly based on customer satisfaction, with an example being â€Å"Satisfaction guaranteed† by Wal-Mart, and Prestige Worldwide should follow this process (Henard, Szymanski, 2001). Concluding the consistency for Prestige Worldwide, it is recommended that we implement it into our business. A suitable plan of action would be to adopt a journey-based approach with customer interactions by making their transitions between departments more seamless while tracking progress, fix areas where negative experiences are common due to them having 4-5 times more impact than a positive experience, and to do it now (Morris, 2014; Pulido et al, 2014). In order to build intense customer loyalty and reap its benefits, we must be consistent; otherwise our customers may lose confidence in our service. References Beard, R. (2014). Is consistency the secret ingredient to customer satisfaction?. Retrieved from http://blog.clientheartbeat.com/consistency-customer-satisfaction Hallowell, R. (1996). The relationships of customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and profitability: an empirical study. International journal of service industry management, 7 (4), p. 27-42. Hyken, S (2013). Amaze every customer every time: 52 tools for delivering the most amazing customer service on the planet. Np.: Greenlead Book Group Press. Morris, T. (2014). 3 Tips for Creating a More Consistent Customer Journey | Parature. Retrieved from http://www.parature.com/consistent-customer-journey/ Pulido, A., Strevel, J. and Stone, D. (2014). The three Cs of customer satisfaction: Consistency, consistency, consistency. McKinsey & Company, March. Redbubble. (2014). Prestige Worldwide logo.[Image] Retrieved March 24,2014, from http://ih0.redbubble.net/image.13336929.5818/sticker,375Ãâ€"360.u1.png Pulido, A. and Strevel, J. and Stone, D. (2014). Customer satisfaction survey: Who’s up and who’s down. [Image] Retrieved March 24, 2014 from http://mckinseyonmarketingandsales.com/customer-satisfaction-survey-whos-up-and-whos-down Szymanski, D. M. and Henard, D. H. (2001). Customer satisfaction: a meta-analysis of the empirical evidence. Journal of the academy of marketing science, 29 (1), pp. 16-35.