Aligning your core values to create a culture that drives customer experience
Values are fundamental to every wedding business and each business will have a unique set of values. Defining your business values is important for everyday business operations, however it is essential to have these clearly defined when it comes to hiring your team, whether in house or freelance. It is also important to ground your customer journey map and experiences in your core values to help set you apart from your competitors and allow you to provide the best possible experience.
Values in recruitment
If team members values aren’t aligned with yours then it is going to be an uphill battle, and likely result in both friction and a negative impact on the wider culture. As a personal anecdote I can confirm that hiring team members whose values aren’t aligned causes a large expenditure of time and energy in the wrong direction. You don’t need a team member that is constantly causing you to firefight and consequently draining energy and morale from you as a business owner and your team.
When it comes to building your team, whether that is full time, part time or freelance, alongside the focus on those all-important skills, knowledge and experience it is vital that you look at an individual’s values. I recommend adding this into your ideal team member candidate profile and referring to your values when looking at experience and during interviews.
Values in the customer journey
As well as providing the model for how your customer interacts with your team and business, your customer journey lifecycle also includes touchpoints for those that never become a direct customer, but they do interact with your brand, and as such you want them to walk away with a positive response to the service they received, or product they interacted with.
Your businesses chances at long-term success come down to one key variable: delivering a great customer experience every single time, and in our industry, this extends to the guests and suppliers at a wedding, as well as the couple. For venues it could range between how supported the couple feel in their planning process to how clean the venue is on the day. For catering companies is can be how attentive your team members are to the guests, through to whether the linen is ironed (a personal bugbear of mine!).
It is important to set a standard that everyone in your team can work towards. This can be done through defining your core values and then setting them as goals for the team to reach daily. Example goals could be making sure you touch base with couples a minimum of X times between booking and their wedding day. Another could be putting systems in place to keep inboxes and phones monitored, even during the busiest weeks.
When you map out your customer journey experience, take time to ensure your core values are consistent and evident in every phrase and touch point. Highlight key moments of influence in your customer journey and look at how your values can be seen and felt by your customer at each point.
To do:
Brainstorm all the words or characteristics that describe the culture you desire to build within your wedding business. Your words will be unique, and this can take some time to define but my advice is to not rush or force this step.
If you have an existing team, or even a trusted industry colleague get together and brainstorm the words that you think represent your business values. Then take time alone to step away, look at this list and highlight the ones in alignment with your vision for the growth of the business.
Cross reference your values with those of your target audience or ideal client profile. If there are any conflicting values, then this client might not be your ideal and this exercise can help you to re-define an ideal client that is in alignment. If something comes up that is no longer serving you and the business and now is the perfect time to look at how to let, go of it to make way for this next season.
Cross reference your values with your team members. A range of personal values is vital for a healthy environment, personal growth and development; however, the team do need to be aligned on the core business values so that you can work towards the common business goals and provide gold standard customer experiences.
In summary, I want you to be able to provide exception customer journeys and to achieve this sustainably and for the long-term you need your business DNA of values and culture to help set you apart.
If this is something that you feel you need support on I cover it in depth in my group programme, and it is also one of the foundations I cover when working 1:1 with my clients before facilitating a team training day or team retreat. For more information on any of these please do get in touch