The importance of focussing on the customer experience in facilities management

Once you come to terms with the fact that your competitors have many of the same capabilities, the question of how to differentiate yourself from the crowd becomes much easier to do.

Stick with me on this…

For the vast majority of facilities management companies, the ability to deliver cleaning ability, security, engineering skills or any of the other 100 skills displayed up and down the country is a given.

Identifying the one area where you can truly standout: Customer experience.

Success in facilities management today revolves around the added value your team or company can bring to a client that others cannot.

For successful bid teams, it is now incumbent upon them to identify and convey ways in which they will enhance the experience of stakeholders across the contract. For example:

·       This will apply to Staff or Visitor experience,

·       In healthcare, this might be the patient experience,

·       In education, student experience

The fact is, that in order to stand out from competitor facilities management companies who can all maintain, clean and secure buildings to an adequate level, being able to develop a solution and effectively outline how you will deliver it is crucial for success.

In order to achieve this, it is important to consider five key aspects

Ensure your answer is bespoke.

From the outset of the bid, ensure you and your team are asking the right questions to find out what is important to the client. What is the thing, above all else, that they are hoping you can address.

Prior research will give you clues and allow you to tailor your responses to get to the crux of what appeals to them specifically.

Avoid generic response.

This is not a shareholders update where generic, company wide information will do the job. Let’s be honest, the decision makers do not care.

Instead, they are looking for you to show what you will do for them, not what another part of your business achieved three years ago at the other end of the country.

Do however, use previous success as evidence that you can deliver on your promises.

Be creative

Novel solutions backed up by reasoned explanations and a realistic plan of how they can benefit the client and be achieved will enhance your bid significantly.

It is likely that assessors will have read hundreds of previous submissions and dozens for your particular tender, meaning creativity has the potential to set you apart.

Illustrate it

You have heard the phrase “a picture paints a thousand words”? It really does.

An image such as a ’Day in the life’ illustration can often paint a picture of a customer experience .

Don’t make them work hard to score you higher, propose a solution, illustrate it clearly to drive home just how you intend to enhance the customer experience.

Measure it

Too often, bids are proposed without writers setting out how they intend to measure the effectiveness of their work or what “success” looks like to them.

With no KPIs, promises and initiatives can fall by the wayside. Most people have sat through enough corporate lectures on SMART goals to understand what the “M” stands for. Set out your plan and explain how you will measure it and identify when it has been achieved.

Featured Image: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/