All across the Caribbean, there are busi­ness­es knock­ing cus­tomer de­light out of the ball park and rack­ing up suc­cess sto­ry af­ter suc­cess sto­ry.

Great sto­ries are be­ing told by cus­tomers every day. Do you know where the bulk of those sto­ries are be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced?

At the front­line. Right here in T&T, it’s re­fresh­ing to see that some busi­ness­es have be­gun to pay un­prece­dent­ed at­ten­tion to these cus­tomer res­o­nant points of con­tact.

Mak­ing the front­line ex­pe­ri­ence one that is im­pec­ca­ble, is a good place for a busi­ness to start, if its in­ten­tion is to fin­ish strong with its cus­tomers.

As I men­tioned in last week’s ar­ti­cle, in­vest­ing in front­line strength, works well as a pil­lar in a wise strat­e­gy aimed at out-com­pet­ing one’s com­peti­tors.

As a reg­u­lar con­sumer, I feel the ef­fect of the front­line ex­pe­ri­ence like every­one else.

As a ser­vice and lead­er­ship trans­for­ma­tion con­sul­tant, my di­ag­nos­tic lens al­lows me to see the lead­ing and lag­ging fac­tors as­so­ci­at­ed with the ex­pe­ri­ence. Front­line teams pro­vide im­me­di­a­cy val­ue.

They act as ear­ly sen­sors for de­tect­ing cus­tomers’ ex­pec­ta­tions, frus­tra­tions and de­light, long be­fore sur­veys con­firm the facts.

These teams sit at the in­ter­sec­tion of cus­tomer im­pres­sions, op­er­a­tional de­liv­ery and brand promise.

From this van­tage point, a busi­ness can have a “live” view of its op­er­a­tional weak­ness­es, bot­tle­necks, de­lays and where the cus­tomers’ jour­neys are bro­ken.

So, har­ness­ing the pow­er of front­line in­tel­li­gence, holds im­mense val­ue for re­duc­ing cus­tomer fric­tion and shap­ing the brand ex­pe­ri­ence.

It’s al­so a unique point of im­pact to mea­sure how well the busi­ness is build­ing and sus­tain­ing emo­tion­al res­o­nance with its cus­tomers.

Any busi­ness that sets its sights on be­ing at the top of the cus­tomer suc­cess food chain, will need to get its front­line ex­pe­ri­ence right.

Cour­tesy, ef­fi­cien­cy, warmth and ex­pec­ta­tions man­age­ment, con­vert in­to re­la­tion­ship gold and front­line in­tel­li­gence be­comes a re­port­ing met­ric for the board­room.

Front­line teams have a unique ad­van­tage. They are able to re­spond “in the mo­ment” to the needs of a cus­tomer.

This mo­ment of mag­ic can be­come etched eter­nal­ly in the cus­tomer’s mind and open the gate­way to life­time cus­tomer loy­al­ty.

When these mo­ments are mul­ti­plied dai­ly, the busi­ness forges quan­tifi­able cus­tomer val­ue that can ri­val its mar­ket­ing bud­get.

Or­gan­ic growth is sup­ple­ment­ed by tes­ti­mo­ni­als of hap­py cus­tomers and their re­fer­rals.

Front­line mat­ters. Its val­ue lies in pro­vid­ing pre­dic­tive in­tel­li­gence that feeds the busi­ness use­ful da­ta on ex­ist­ing cus­tomer re­al­i­ties and out­comes.

When the front­line is ig­nored, the busi­ness be­comes blind to valu­able cus­tomer in­sights.

If the front­line is em­pow­ered, the busi­ness gets an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be­come un­stop­pable.

Isn’t it time to stop treat­ing front­line as sim­ply a point of en­try and be­gin to har­ness its pow­er to mul­ti­ply busi­ness rev­enue?