Being customer-centric is more than building the right design strategy, it means embedding empathy.

The question on everyone’s lips is: “How do you create better experiences for your customers?” There’s much talk of digital transformation and designing customer experiences. However, when you put technology in the driver’s seat, the customer is left in the passenger seat, and technically you cannot “design” an experience. You can, however, “design” your organisation, so when an interaction with a customer happens—the experience will be a positive one.

So, how do you make your organisation more customer-centric? The key is a two-pronged approach. The first is having a human-centric development process.

Customer-centric organisations have evolved their product development process to systematically include the human aspect alongside technology and commerce at every step. It’s not just about having an established customer experience design budget and running some projects here and there. It’s about using customer experience design strategically, on every project, and having customer experience present at board level. But this topic is well discussed, I want to focus more on the second, building your corporate empathy.

Equipping your employees with the knowledge and methods of customer understanding can be a real eye-opener. Many employees see that technology and marketing alone don’t cut it in the service economy and embrace new methods enthusiastically. This complements the development process and makes happier employees.

Three Steps To Building Corporate Empathy

The first step is building empathy for the end-user of your product, service, or experience. This is about working face to face with your customers. Forget focus groups—go into their homes! And make sure you prototype and iterate, fast. Whether it’s prototyping digital products or life-size cardboard pharmacies, don’t be afraid to make and build.

One such case study is for Finavia, Finland’s airport operator. Helsinki Airport is a popular transit airport, with around five million transit passengers a year. Finavia wanted to support Helsinki Airport in becoming the leading transfer airport of Northern Europe. They launched the globally unique TravelLab project, which involved service concepts being tested during the transfer experience.

They tested 12 different kinds of new service prototypes chosen from 200 improvement ideas gathered from passengers. They included pop-up yoga classes “YogaGate” and midsummer (a popular Finnish holiday) celebrations, as well as technical services, such as digital boards on the gate buses providing information on what to do at the airport. All were live prototypes, quickly set up and quickly changed if they weren’t working. Nine hundred passengers took part across 75 days.

During the process, TravelLab invited passengers to take an active part in designing better transfer experiences. What was really happening was an agile, human-centric process of service design and prototyping, and a large corporation openly taking part in co-creation.

The project was a huge success. It won two awards: first prize in the prestigious Best of the Year (Vuoden Huiput) design award in Finland and the global Service Design Award in New York from the leading institution for expertise in service design. Also, Helsinki Airport won an award as the best airport in Northern Europe, based on Skytrax’s international airport survey.

The second step is to educate your project teams. Build a training structure for your teams, get them to partake in empathetic activities such as role playing, and create ownership and skills. Hire a third party to help you with this if needed, or organise it with your internal training and development teams if they are equipped to do so.

The third step is for everyone. All employees must live the culture. I often say: “Eat your own dog food.” What do I mean by this? Well, if you work for a large telco, you never really have to experience what it’s like to get a phone contract or look at and understand your phone bill, you get a free phone and the bill is automatically paid. How can you understand your customers’ concerns if you don’t do what they do? You must experience what your customers experience. But also you must have empathy for each other. Organise cross-silo activities and events. Get to know each other and get out of your comfort zone!

When you’ve climbed these three steps, customer understanding and empathy will start to get into your company’s DNA. You will build sound understanding of customer experience—it will permeate from the leaders down and to the experience customers have with you. Positively.

Markus Hohl

Trying to keep up with both the changes in your industry, innovations in sales and marketing together with the changing landscape of technology and management strategies is difficult.  With the world of business getting faster and more competitive it’s become more of a necessity for serious business owners to have a Business Mentor.

1) Where do you start?

Growth is not just in monetary terms, while that gives you what you want, there is also an element of doing the right things but more importantly an element of being which is also needed to get to as well as maintain the growth path you are on.

History shows those who win the lottery and do not know how to ‘be’ a millionaire are the also the ones that lose it as quickly as they win it.

Specifically we help our clients in the areas of

• Goal Setting – without a path defined to reach goals we have no way of tracking our success. One of the key areas we help our clients is to articulate their goals not just for their business but also for themselves personally.
• Leadership – ensuring our clients are creating the right leadership so they can lead their business forward vs being a traditional directive boss which creates an ‘us and them’ ineffective culture.
• Sales and Marketing – which includes advertising through the right channels and especially using emerging technologies and media platforms.
• Team – we help you create a winning team with the right engagement as well as culture across all levels in your business.
• Systems – creating the efficiency through not only the use of technology but also driving standardisation across the organisation reducing risk and driving up performance.
• Accountability – one of the most powerful benefits of business mentoring is driving the accountability. It is through this we get the right traction to reach the goals and trust us we know all those excuses that cause us to procrastinate and how to deal with them.

2) Alignment

Get faster results with less effort by developing organisational clarity and accountability. 

The Alignment is where the mentoring engagement begins with every business owner who is serious about taking their business to the next level.

There is some pre-work required which includes key information gathering as well as various tests we perform with you, the business owner to understand your unique learning style and preferences.

From this you and your business mentor will invest around 3 to 4 hours learning about your business, your goals, what you do well, what you don’t do so well, what current business success activities you do and don’t do etc.

This alignment begins a successful understanding about you, your business and the path in terms of an initial plan which continues every 90 days through a powerful planning day to ensure we maintain the right momentum towards your chosen goals.

Growing a successful business towards your defined goals is not always easy. There are ups and downs along the way but that’s ok, as you will always be in safe hands.

Initially, and within the first few months, it will take some work to adjust, some work to get over the initial humps and chaos so to speak. This is normal and expected. We need to first build a firm foundation for your business to which we can then plug in the growth and overarching structure to support the growth goals.

As you move further into the mentoring programme, there will be less work for you do as we implement the powerful systems, processes, procedures that ultimately leverage the business. This leads to the results we expect to see and overall supports these long term in your business.

4) Your unique knowledge and our business growth expertise = Growth Success

We fully appreciate you are the expert in your business, we will never take that away from you and in fact need you to continue to be the expert.

We are the experts in business growth, this covers things like sales, marketing, business development, business management, reporting and team building to name a few. With an ever expanding toolkit of profit building strategies, you’ll soon see just how powerful these tools and systems are that simply work.

We will never tell you what do to, we may with your permission offer you advice but the ultimate decision has to be yours, as it’s your business and you’re the ultimate decision maker. Just think of us as a non-executive director on your board giving you the guidance you need to take your business to the next level.

5) Your Cost vs Benefit

People do not believe us when we say that we expect our service to cost you nothing. They scratch their heads with confusion and thats O.K. Let me explain…

There is a difference between cost as an expense vs an investment. If you put in X amount of into a pot and out popped X + Y% growth, what would you do? You would probably put more into the pot right? We work on a similar principle, the difference is that our fee is fixed, we don’t take a percentage of your growth but we do however guarantee that for some of our programmes we will grow your business vs your investment into mentoring.

How do we do this? Well we have systems that work, we can predict using our specialist tools and project what the growth will at least be, based on key growth targets in one of 5 key areas. Through this magic formula we have grown our clients business on average by 61% in revenue and 42% in profit in 12 months.

Most of our programmes include additional learning tools such as books, CDs and videos to assist your training and development and these add to your investment in business mentoring as you move forward.

Having a qualified business mentor on your side is like having a marketing manager, a sales team leader, a trainer, a recruitment specialist, and a corporate consultant fully on board for the price of a secretary.

6) Your Guarantee

As mentioned above, we offer guaranteed results for some of our programmes.

These are never specific as we can not predict the future, however we want all our clients’ investment into mentoring to be a secure investment, so we therefore, for some of our high end programmes guarantee that we will at least grow your business more than your investment into mentoring.

We expect usually by month 3 to 4 that the mentoring for most of clients becomes free. Yes FREE! Why? Because we would have grown the business to a point where the mentoring would be paying for itself in the new growth we help to create.

7) Achieve the results you’ve always wanted

Depending on the goals set, clients usually see benefits in three key areas. They work less hours, build a winning team and make more money or profit.

Most business owners work in excess of 60 hours a week, our first task often is to manage this most valuable asset in your life which is your time. Through this we carve out time for you to work ‘on’ your business, not just ‘in’ it.

The next valuable asset, other than yourself, is your team. This is usually the largest cost base of a business so having the team fired up and running all on cylinders as it were is critical for success. Part of this includes everyone contributing and adding value to the business and it’s growth path.

Last and not least, the results of the business success are often measured as to the profit it creates. If the business is not profitable then we should question the point of the business. Sometimes value is not enough, you as the business owner should not be the slave in your business, your business should be a slave to you, to help you reach your personal goals and to live the life you once dreamed.

So whether it’s any of those key areas time, team or profit, or something else, we have you covered.

We will help you be 100% focused on your goals and a step by step plan to get you there. We will hold you to account to get the right things done, not just for the day-to-day running of the business, but for the dynamic growth of your business long term using as many of the powerful business building strategies as you need.

8) The perfect time to begin

To answer this question honestly, it’s probably yesterday or a year ago. You see we change our clients lives, it’s what we enjoy the most for them to live their dreams. We love to celebrate their successes and we know there is always a door open for success in virtually every situation.

To answer the question seriously, right now! Right this minute, before you do the next thing, spend another pound, lose another sale or customer, work those crazy hours, miss another important family event and forget another special occasion. The time to start is right now.

Far too many business people wait and see and think working harder on that hamster wheel of business will make it better. You have to work smarter and you need to look at your business overall differently than someone simply working ‘in’ it.

So simply said, there is no time like the present to get started on a new path to reach your dreams and goals.

It’s easy for you to start…just 5 simple steps and you’re on your way to success

FREE & UNDER NO OBLIGATION

1. Contact us and we will send you a short questionnaire to complete. This is a confidential form which is shared between you and your assigned business mentor and is held with complete confidence. It is used to ensure we focus on the right areas for you, your business and journey so far.

2. We will arrange with you an initial call with your assigned mentor and ensure we have a complete understanding of your needs. If you and your mentor believe there is a good fit for us to help you achieve your goals, you will be invited to attend a face to face meeting which is under no obligation to use our services.

3. During the face to face meeting we will advise you further on how we will be able to help you and give you the options on how you can get started. After your selection we will share an agreement of your mentoring programme, which is more so to ensure you keep above the line in working through the programme and towards your goals .

COSTS INVOLVED BASED ON YOUR CHOSEN PROGRAMME

4. We will send you some basic information and online assessment links to complete which you will do in your own time but before we meet for your alignment session which is a 3 to 4 hour initial session to get you started.

5. After your alignment and positioning sessions your mentoring programme will begin. We use a highly structured and organised approach where we share your focus sheets, templates, dashboards and other important information throughout the mentoring programme.

So what are you waiting for?

One of the key lessons we have learned about what stops organisations delivering great Customer Experience is not having enough of the right people. All too easily top performers leave because of a lack of awareness around of what they need to remain engaged and motivated.

The following are, in our view, the main 10 reasons your high performers will leave your organisation:

Lack of empowerment and freedom

No one wants to be micro-managed, especially highly-skilled talent. Show that you have confidence in your employees by giving them the freedom to perform in a manner or in a direction that suits them best. Provide the framework and the objectives and then let them run.

Tolerating mediocre or poor performance

Talented people want to work with others who will challenge and inspire them, not drag them down. If you allow under-performers to stay even after they’ve proved themselves to be less than capable, either your star players will end up carrying the extra weight or they’ll leave the team altogether.

Too many rules

Innovative and productive people don’t put up with bottlenecks, bureaucracy or arbitrary rules. While it is important to set clear expectations, it is also essential that you allow your talent some latitude. Too many rules also looks like too little trust and trust is a massive driver of loyalty.

Lack of appreciation

Everyone wants to feel valued, and recognition is a big part of that. Don’t wait for annual appraisals or monthly reviews to show you are pleased with them. Recognition should be timely, sincere and regular. It is easy to under-estimate the impact this can have in terms of motivation and feeling good.

Lack of clarity around the company Vision

Great people want to know where they’re going and why. High performers want to know the bigger picture and where all their hard work is taking the organisation. If you don’t share your Vision, you’re leaving them in the dark without any direction or reason to stay.

You don’t know them on a personal level

Your employees want to know that you see them as people, not just as cogs in a machine. This is not about being their best friend and going out with them all the time. This is about showing that you care about them, their family and the things that are important to them.

You don’t respect their boundaries

Motivated and engaged people will give, and will give a lot. At the same time, it is about what you can do for them. It can’t be take, take all the time by the organisation. This is about understanding individuals and ensuring a balance which works for both parties.

They don’t trust you

People need to know that you are true to your word – if you say it, you mean it and you do it. Of all the factors which impact on turnover, trust is arguably one of the biggest. Lack of trust creates fear and uncertainty – not an environment people will want to stay in.

The culture isn’t transparent and consistent

Do your people know what are the acceptable and unacceptable behaviours? Are people measured against these behaviours? When used in conjunction with a Vision, Values (the right behaviours) can have a significant impact on the performance of an organisation.

Constant changing of direction and strategy

Great organisations are bold and courageous and will stick to a course of action. Confidence and integrity and eroded when there are constant changes of direction and high performers do not thrive in such environments.

Lack of humility and within senior management

Even the best of leaders can fall into bad habits without realising it. Showing your people that you will accept feedback, that you are aware of your own shortcomings and that you value and welcome their thoughts and ideas will create an environment where top performers will thrive and want to be part of.

Ultimately, as we all know, having a successful business is all about people – the right people, high performing people and being able to keep them.

If you still doubt the impact that Customer Experience has on the bottom line – look at this new research by Ombudsman Services. It shows that 19% of consumers took their business elsewhere due to poor service, while another 15% made a conscious decision to spend less with a brand in future.

This cost businesses a staggering £37 billion in 2016 as consumers either spent less or switched to a rival following poor service.

Complaints on the Increase

The Consumer Action Monitor published by Ombudman Services is based on 2,477 interviews conducted between the 4th and 6th January 2017, with the results extrapolated to the adult population. It showed that 37% of UK consumers raised a complaint in 2016, with total complaints reaching 55 million – up 6% from last year.

Many consumers appear disillusioned with complaining with 19% believing that companies do not listen to consumers. 14% said they feel disillusioned with business and feel that complaining will not have any real impact. While 17% who had, an issue did nothing about it because they had complained previously and nothing improved.

Fortunately, research also shows that complaints don’t have to be bad for a brand with nearly half of consumers (47%) thinking more highly of a business that handles complaints efficiently, and three-quarters (75%) would be likely to return to a company if a complaint they made was handled well. Conversely, only 8% would be likely to return if a complaint was handled badly.

 

As Customer Experience retail experts, we know that the combination of individual and team retail sales coaching delivers compelling results. We saw this earlier in the year when we achieved a 7% uplift in sales at the Thorntons’ stores where we delivered our renowned sales coaching programme.

Our team of CX trainers and coaches worked with Thorntons’ store managers and retail assistants across the UK to improve the Customer Experience in Stores, by focusing on changing behaviours and language.

Retail Sales Coaching Programme

The initial One Day Workshop with the Store Managers was followed up with two days spent in each Store observing the team on a one-to-one basis, while giving ‘in the moment feedback’ and coaching.

By focusing on rapport and trust building, understanding and meeting customer needs, overcoming objections and closing in a supportive way, sales results improved immediately.  In the five weeks of coaching, an additional £95,000 was generated across the six stores.*

If you would like to find out how we can help improve sales and Customer Experience get in touch we would love to hear from you. Alternatively, you can find out further information of our popular one day workshop here.

*This was calculated by measuring ATV and conversion against a control set of Stores

Steve Dudley