Purposeful Leadership and Customer Experience

In a recently published Temkin Group Insight Report, the Temkin Group revealed and explained their four Customer Experience core competencies. These core competencies are Purposeful Leadership, Compelling Brand Values, Employee Engagement and Customer Connectedness. Second To None is publishing a four part blog-series expanding upon each of these Customer Experience pillars provided by the Temkin Group. This is part one, expanding on the role that Purposeful Leadership plays in curating a great Customer Experience.  Thank you to the authors of the report and the Temkin Group  for providing this material free to the public, you can access their report by clicking here.

To have a leading Customer Experience an organization must have the proper infrastructure and engaged employees, but even more importantly there must be transparent and established leadership. You will find that brands that are known for providing unmatched value to their customers will have outspoken, passionate and relevant leaders that are controlling the ship. This is important for brands of all different sizes because of the trickle-down nature that goes into establishing a company culture. The Temkin Group calls this, “Purposeful Leadership,” or positioning the leaders within an organization as essential catalysts to transmitting employee expectations into customer interactions.

The Temkin Group Insight Report states that the best leaders will encompass the following five P’s of purposeful leadership. Those leaders that can display a passionate, persuasive, positive, propelling and persistent attitude are according to Temkin, fully embracing the purposeful leadership mindset. But how can a brand leader truly apply these 5 P’s to their daily practice? Firstly, it is important that leaders are self-aware about the role that they play within an organization. If leadership only displays this desired passion in closed meetings there will be no way for the rest of the organization to replicate this passion. By making their emotions public, leaders are not only showing the customer that there is a lot of love and effort put into the product, but also their dedication to being a role model for the rest of the employee base.

The next step that brand leaders can do to apply these 5 P’s to their organizational structure is to find measured ways to value the Customer Experience skills of their employees. Use metrics like NPS® to measure, analyze and reward those employees that display a dedication to Customer Experience, or to capture feedback directly from employees themselves. This emphasis on proving the worth of Customer Experience is encompassed with several of Temkin’s P’s, most notably propelling and persistent leadership. Tracking and rewarding employees based off their Customer Experience abilities will prove to the rest of the organization that the passion for Customer Experience displayed by leadership is persistently transmitted through all levels of the employee hierarchy, and proves to the customer that what orders from leadership are being taken seriously by employees. Use these analytic metrics as a tool to propel employees to retain the consistent and passionate attitude started at the top.

In addition to applying Customer Experience metrics to employee evaluations, purposeful leadership should always be positive. According to Temkin, “employees that regularly receive positive feedback are 3X more likely to make a recommendation for improvement.” While criticism is not out of the question, an overall positive analysis of employee activity in tandem with numerical assessment will result in the best-performing team. This leadership style positions employees for success, by clearly acknowledging the values that lead to a great Customer Experience.

Implementing these leadership methods into your organization is the first step in establishing an industry-leading Customer Experience. However, the actual activities of leaders are mostly unseen by the customer, and most the responsibility and action is in the hands of those employees directly in contact with customers. The 5 P’s of purposeful leadership is a great way of encouraging great Customer Experience within an organization, but how can an organization capitalize on these impacted employees? In the next part of this series, we will break down the Temkin Group’s second core competency, compelling brand values.

Second To None empowers customer-centric brands to deliver consistent, intentional and authentic consumer experiences.

We adeptly design and manage mystery shopping, compliance, engagement and voice of customer solutions grounded in strategic relevance, program integrity and actionable insights. Our solutions are developed on the basis of solid research and statistical science. We achieve success through a relentless focus on quality and innovation, consultative relationships and a talented team of professional associates.