Behind 5 Star Rating: How to deliver a great customer experience (part 4)

When we founded Daytrip in 2015, Tomas and I knew that delivering a great customer experience was going to make or break our business. In this series, I will take you through each element of how we make sure our customers come away happy and satisfied.

So what’s next after you have put together a customer support team, set your customers’ expectations and integrated customer feedback into your business?

The next step is scaling up. And as with scaling any other part of your business, it comes with its own particular challenges.

Here’s what you need to keep in mind if you want to keep delivering great customer experience.

Tip 1: Give up direct responsibility and start delegating

The first tip is the hardest one for many people, especially founders, who have spent time growing something from scratch.

Giving up direct responsibility feels like giving up control. It both is and it isn’t. The reality is that there is simply going to be too much for one person to handle as you’re scaling up.

You also want to motivate the senior people who have been with you longest and shown the most potential by empowering them. These are the people you trust and want to make sure you retain as you scale.

To do that, you have to place your trust in them and give them responsibility while personally taking a step away and relinquishing direct control.

You simply have to accept that, at first, things may not go as smoothly as they did when you were in control. That’s absolutely fine. As is taking a slightly different approach to the same problem than you did.

Your role as you scale is to have indirect oversight and to offer support to the people you have empowered through coaching, problem solving, and sometimes conflict handling.

Expect to be a bit more hands-on at the beginning and gradually take more of a back seat as your people find their feet.

If you put your trust in people and give them your support with some patience, you are going to find that they will eclipse how you were able to perform in their role when it was one of many things you were responsible for because it will become their area of focus.

Tip 2: Create streamlined processes for hiring and training new people

Another reality of scaling is that you’re suddenly going to need people. A lot of people. Fast.

Luckily, by this time you already know the kind of person who will thrive in the customer experience roles you are going to need. You could probably write a book about them — or at least a few blogs!

Put this knowledge to work by creating clear profiles for the candidates you are looking for. Make sure you are in agreement with your newly-empowered senior team members who will be doing the hiring and managing of these new joiners.

Once you get the right people in, you will need to get them trained as quickly as possible so they can start becoming net contributors to the team.

As you were growing gradually, it had been easy for your existing team members to learn new things because they had to learn them one at a time. You will find that once you bring in a new joiner to an environment that is changing, you will need to revamp and optimize your training processes.

Work with your senior team to create a quick process covering all the most essential aspects of the roles the new joiners will be performing: what they need to learn, who will teach them, when and where, what systems they will need access to, and so on.

Your training and hiring processes need to be replicable and efficient. You want to get your new people up to speed as quick as you can!

Tip 3: Keep people informed as things are changing fast

One of the most-overlooked elements of scaling up your customer experience teams is the need to communicate to keep everyone informed, aligned and motivated.

Scaling up can happen very quickly. There’s constantly something happening, things are moving fast, and you have to be ready to adapt quickly all the time — even from one day to the next.

That’s why it’s so important that changes are communicated to the team clearly and in time so everyone is on the right track and there are no unexpected surprises.

If you find yourself hesitating about whether to communicate a change or not, err on the side of over-communication. Your people appreciate hearing from you about what’s going on, whether it’s in their team or beyond.

Tip 4: Turnover is normal, so make sure you’re prepared

As you are scaling up and your teams are growing exponentially, it’s inevitable that turnover will happen more often than before. You simply need to be ready for it if you don’t want it to become a stumbling block in the way of growth.

That’s why replicable processes for hiring and training are so important. Your senior members will be doing a lot of it.

And turnover isn’t necessarily a sign that your newly-empowered senior members aren’t doing a good job managing and motivating your teams. Sometimes turnover is healthy.

You want to make sure that it’s happening for expected reasons like career or life changes (say, moving somewhere else in the case of expats) and not for any red-flag issues having to do with management and motivation.

Scale your customer experience like a pro

If you empower your most trusted people, streamline your hiring and training processes, communicate clearly across all teams, and prepare for turnover when it comes, you will be well on your way to continuing to deliver an excellent customer experience as your company scales up.