The Six Pillars

For the last 20 years, offers have been synonymous with experience. The Six Pillars of experience excellence have been repeatedly established as the universal set of emotional qualities. They define outstanding customer experiences which can create loyalty and drive growth. More relevant than ever, these pillars are providing businesses with an essential way to navigate the coming change.

Organizations that understand and deliver against The Six Pillars have showcased enhanced outcomes, quick growth, and greater shareholder value.

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Integrity

Being trustworthy and engendering trust.

Integrity is an outcome of consistent organizational behavior that demonstrates trustworthiness. There are trust-building events where organizations have the need to publicly react to a difficult situation, and trust building moments where individual actions by staff add up to create trust in the organization as a whole. For all customers, it is the degree to which the organization delivers on its promises that is consistently top of mind.

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Resolution

Turning a poor experience into a great one.

Customer recovery is highly important. Even with the best processes and procedures things will go wrong. Great companies have a process that not only puts the customer back in the position they should have been in as rapidly as possible, but also make the customer feel really good about the experience. A sincere apology and acting with urgency are two crucial elements of successful Resolution.

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Expectations

Managing, meeting and exceeding customer expectations.

Customers have Expectations about how their needs will be met, increasingly set by the best brands they have encountered. Understanding, delivering and, if possible, exceeding Expectations is a key skill of great organizations. Some organizations are able to make statements of clear intent that set Expectations (e.g. “never knowingly undersold”) while others set the Expectation accurately (“delivery in 48 hours”). And then delight the customer when they exceed it.

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Time and effort

Minimizing customer effort and creating frictionless processes.

Customers are time poor and are increasingly looking for instant gratification. Removing unnecessary obstacles, impediments, and bureaucracy to enable the customer to achieve their objectives quickly and easily have been shown to increase loyalty. Many companies are discovering how to use time as a source of competitive advantage. Equally, there are clear cost advantages to saving time, as long as the other Pillars are not compromised.

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Personalization

Using individualized attend to drive an emotional connection.

Personalization is the most valuable component of most experiences. It involves demonstrating that you understand the customer’s specific circumstances and will adapt the experience accordingly. Use of name, individualized attention, knowledge of preferences and past interactions all add up to an experience that feels personal.

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Empathy

Achieving an understanding of the customer’s circumstances to drive deep rapport.

Empathy is the emotional capacity to show you understand someone else’s experience. Empathy creating behaviors are central to establishing a strong relationship and involve reflecting back to the customer that you know how they feel. Then going that one extra step because you understand how they feel.

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Julio Hernandez

Global Customer and Operations Service Line Lead

KPMG International

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