1 Leadership

Leaders of the organisation must set the standard, not just ‘talk the talk’ but also ‘walk the walk’. Demonstrate through their actions, that they believe in CX and then encourage the right behaviours by demonstrating them on a daily basis, every single day.

2 Ownership

Management at all levels must take ownership for their respective areas and push on with actions that will develop the CX with their teams. This is not about waiting to be told what to do, this is about taking the initiative and driving out actions – making things happen. Some stuff will work, some won’t. It doesn’t matter, be brave and experiment. If you are starting with your Customer in mind, that’s all that matters.

3 Accountability

People at all levels of the business need to be held accountable. There should be consequences (good & bad) for demonstrating the right behaviours and language, and also for not performing in the right way. No-one should be allowed to ‘opt out’. People opting out and deciding this is not for them will seriously damage an organisation’s ability to max out on the opportunity delivering a great CX offers.

4 Empowerment

Staff at all levels need to be empowered to make the right decisions for their Customers. In any situation, there is only one question which should be asked: “ What is the right decision for the Customer”.

As Richard Branson says ‘ ask me for forgiveness not for permission’

You may wish to set some boundaries/guidelines, but your people must feel empowered to deliver a great CX for your Customers.

5 Support

Initially your team may not find this easy to grasp. They have many (potentially bad) habits which will take a while to eradicate. Support from the leadership team will be key. Ask them what support they need (collectively & individually) to move this on, then provide that support and work with them to help them make progress.

6 Momentum

It is critical that you start to do some ‘stuff’ quickly and that you start to build some momentum. Once started, activity (different ‘stuff’) should be driven/encouraged/made to happen every week/month/quarter until momentum is developed. This is very much like pushing the proverbial snowball up the hill, a great deal of effort will be required initially until you reach the top and push it over the crest, and then it will run & run.

7 Communication

Keep telling everyone what is going on. Weekly/Fortnightly/Monthly comms. (newsletter, emails) are essential to keep everyone up to speed with what is happening across the business.

Share success, catch people doing things right, share Best Practice, ideas, good news – anything related to Customers & CX.

This should be positive, upbeat and fun – and have lots in it about people! Certainly initially, CX needs to be kept top of mind, until it is embedded and becomes cultural (how we do things around here). Comms are the way to drive this.

8 Recognition

Praise people when they get it right, when they demonstrate great CX, when you get positive feedback, Customer compliments etc. This doesn’t need to be loads of ££££, this is about fun, making people feel good, feel valued and encouraging the right language and behaviours.

9 Measurement

You have to have a starting point (where are we now? How well are we doing?). Not a subjective starting point, but very much an objective starting point. Suggestion: Spend i.e. a month asking Customers to rate you on a 0-10 basis. Use these scores to determine your Net Promoter Score and you have starting point. Through regular feedback , you can then measure your NPS and see how you are tracking.

NB – you MUST measure, otherwise how do you know that what you are doing is working and how well you are progressing?

10 Fun

Quite simply this is critical! Initially all this CX stuff can all seem a tad ‘intense’. Help your team to want to do it – by making if fun!

Happy staff = happy Customers.

Take time (MAKE time!!) for you and your team to have fun and enjoy the CX work/progress you are making.

You either get it …or you don’t

I recently purchased a new car (from a certain German brand) and whilst their cars and their technology are amazing, it is so sad to see that, when it comes to people, they just don’t get it.

Delivering great Customer Experience is not about throwing money at it and introducing processes which employees have to follow rigorously (yes, process do have a key role to play, but only on the back of the right ethos and when used with employees who get it, and work in a culture where the organisation genuinely understands it’s Customers).

In my recent car buying experience, it was all about the product, the process and the sale. There was very little, if any, thought given to how the Customer was being made to feel at each stage of the sale.

I was told the car would be delivered to the dealership on ‘X’ day and would be ready for collection a few days later. As ‘X’ day approaches, how is the Customer feeling? Excited, curious, eager. Yes, and much more. So when ‘X’ day arrives and there is no call to say the car has arrived (or not arrived), how then does this make the Customer feel? And when, at ‘X’ + 1 days, there is still no call, where do the Customer’s emotions go then?

At ‘X’ + 2, I made the call to see where my car was. ‘Oh, no one has told me it has arrived’ was the response from the salesman I was dealing with. ‘I will go and check and come back to you’. Ownership? Empathy? In tune with the Customer’s emotions? I think not.

The story continued in this vain and I will spare you the detail and take you to collection day . (which was some three weeks after it arrived at the dealership, but let’s not even go there!!!)

The day before collection. Again, how is the Customer feeling? You will be collecting your shiny new car in less than 24 hours. This is a big moment. You did your research, you thought about it, you planned it, you placed your order, you waited for the car to come in, you waited for the car to be ready and finally, it is going to happen. You are going to go and collect your lovely new car and drive it home.

If you think about this from the Customer’s perspective, this should be all about them. All about how to make the event a great one for them, one they will enjoy, cherish and remember forever. One which will mean they will want to come back to your organisation time & time again to re-purchase. One they will tell all their friends & family about, bringing new, additional business to your company.

This is the exact email I received to arrange collection of my car:

Hi Steve,

I just wanted to plan my weekend as I am only in on Saturday and have some appointments already. Would you be available at 9am to collect tomorrow? Please let me know.

Whose agenda are we on here? Have we thought about the significance of this event for the Customer?

How did that make me feel? Valued? Cared about? Important? I think not.

These are the emotions which Customers want (and need) to feel. Great organisations will understand this and will plan how to make their Customers feel like this at each stage of the experience. That is what drives loyalty and keeps Customers coming back, time and time again.

Where do you think I might buy my next car?

2016 will be the year that Customer Experience moves higher on the agenda. It will no longer be the preserve of enlightened CEOs who adopted a customer centric approach and reaped the benefits while proving the business case for it. According to Forrester’s Customer Index these customer-centric companies gained 43% in performance compared to a 33.9% decrease for companies who have neglected Customer Experience.

Four key trends that will help drive the move to adopting a customer centric focus include:

1. Increasingly ‘Smart’ Customers

2016 will see the continued rise of the discerning, empowered customer who expect a convenient, seamless experience that is faster than ever before. And who are ready to take their business elsewhere if their needs are not met. Research by Accenture shows that this “Switching Economy” is up 29% since 2010 as companies struggle to keep up with their empowered, non-stop customers.

In response organisations will increasingly embrace Customer Experience making it a core element of their strategic plan as they seek to differentiate their offering by enhancing their Customer Experience and increasing customer loyalty, and thus move ahead of their competitors. As the Harvard Business Review noted: ‘Increased customer loyalty is the single most important driver of long-term financial performance’.

2. The Mobile-First Customer Experience

The statistics around the development of the mobile Customer Experience are, quite simply, staggering. With over 2 billion smartphones in use, mobile Customer Experience will soar in 2016. A recent study showed that 77% of those aged 18 to 24 use mobile devices at least once per month for customer support. 90% of consumers said they have had poor experiences seeking customer support on mobile, and, by the end of 2016, mobile search will generate 27.8 billion more queries than desktop searches.

This is a key area for Customer Experience with exciting developments in apps that serve as mobile shopping assistants in the customers’ palms. These apps will also interact with in-store beacons to support an augmented in-store experience, making it easy for customers to quickly access pricing and product information they want with minimal friction.

3. Quicker, easier ways to understand the Voice of your Customers

Technology in 2016 is increasingly useful to better understand what customers want. Mobile-focused, real-time, media-rich technology is now readily accessible to organisations wanting an objective understanding of their customers. However, the challenge remains in effectively embedding the programme processes and ensuring the employees are engaged in it.

Irrespective of whether it is qualitative or quantitative a successful Voice of your Customer programme must include:

1. Gathering and listening to customer feedback
2. Interpreting the resulting information
3. Reacting and make the required changes to improve the experience
4. Monitoring and measuring
5. Repeating the above!

Organisations who really know and understand their customer’s needs, wishes, likes, dislikes and aspirations in 2016 by embedding an effective Voice of your Customer programme will be those who are best placed to deliver a great Customer Experience.

4. OMNI Channel Refinement

The trend to unite online and traditional brick-and-mortar channels and operations in 2016 continues, but with more focus on breaking down information silos to better meet the needs of ‘everywhere’ consumers whilst adding the human touch to technology touchpoints.

The continued lack of a joined up thinking creates considerable frustration for customers, leading to high churn rates. In particular:

• Having to repeat their story over and over again
• Inaccurate or out of date information being held
• Lack of personalisation
• Lack of consistency across channels
• Not being able to communicate using their preferred channel

The organisations which are able to address these issues will be the ones which will achieve significant differentiation, leading to higher sales and profit. This is a game changer in the world of Customer Experience.

Conclusion

2016 promises to be an exciting year for Customer Experience as technology advances and the business case for delivering a great Customer Experience reaches a broader audience. To discuss any of these trends and their impact on your organisation please call Steve Dudley on +44 (0)1604 805 753.

Since August this year we’ve been providing leadership and teamwork training to eight supervisors and team leaders within a high quality manufacturer. The course has been specifically designed to meet the needs of the business. As a precursor to the training programme each of the senior management team received an overview and familiarisation of the training to be delivered.

The training programme was completed in December 2015. The final session was an evaluation event, where each participant delivered a short presentation to their senior managers, covering:

• What they had learnt.
• How they had applied their learning.
• The impact of the training on themselves, their team and on their productivity.

The results were truly amazing. The content of the training programme had clearly increased levels of knowledge and confidence. However, it was the process of learning that was so successful. For example the supervisors and team leaders reported:

• Improved communication between themselves and other work colleagues.
• Reduced conflict and when disagreement did arise it was dealt with professionally and constructively.
• Greater understanding of each others’ roles and responsibilities and how these knitted together to deliver the company’s objectives and key performance indicators.
• Increased morale and understanding of each other as people as well as work colleagues.

All very good in terms of measuring the ‘softer’ outputs. So what about those all important ‘hard’ measures that impact the bottom line?

When re-examining company data, the training coincided with an increase of 10% in productivity. Wastage was down and quality was up. Each of the participants agreed that this correlation can be directly attributed to the impact of the leadership and teamwork training. They each agreed that their environment is a better place to work.

So what happens next?

The training programme is considered to be a huge success. The following is being planned for 2016:

• A leadership development course will be delivered to the senior management team.
• The supervisors and team leaders are now organising their own communication meetings to maintain momentum created by their own training.
• It is likely that further training will be delivered to the supervisors and team leaders to support their appraisal process.

This case study is another example of how our leadership, employee engagement and customer service training is transforming business performance. Please contact us for more information.