Do the good customer experiences obscure the bad ones for management?

As consumers we know that a company is only as good as the last experience we had with them.  But it does seem that some companies assume if they are able to give a good experience once, they are doing it every time, everywhere.  It’s obviously a very dangerous assumption.

inconsistent customer experiences

It’s not easy when things are inconsistent

I’m often asked who we should look to for customer experience inspiration. Who gets it right and what do they do?

We all have our favourite brands and stories to go with them.  There is no shortage of companies to learn from.  They have the right mindset and are doing great things.  But, organisations not only need to be proficient at walking before they can run, they can’t afford to forget how to walk once they can run.

And so before trying to emulate the great and the good, a question that many businesses should ask is “What do we do today that we should stop doing?”.  What is causing customers and employees, including (especially) the ones who don’t complain, frustration, angst or simply to not engage?

Business leaders may say they are profitable, they have many satisfied customers and their people are proud.  Yet the laws of unintended consequences, of cross-functional operations working to different agendas and of short-term profit-taking throw a protective veil over complacency and corrosive experiences.

The issues are laid bare these days for all to see, especially on social media and review sites.

Take, for example, Trustpilot.  I’m increasingly seeing businesses using the rating as a customer metric in addition to Net Promoter Score, customer satisfaction, effort scores and so on.  It’s freely available and constantly updated.  Companies can track their score, benchmark against competitors and compare parallel sectors.  Crucially though, the unsolicited comments contain a rich seam of qualitative insight that tells us exactly why things go well or not.  Why would you not want to tap into that?  Or, at least learn what makes competitors’ customers unhappy to make sure it’s not happening closer to home?

To illustrate the point, I’ve picked out a few examples and I’ll start with, for me, two surprises…

 

John Lewis is one of the UK’s favourite places to shop.  It keeps winning awards for its in-store service.  The employees have a real stake in making sure customers are happy and it shows.  However, go online and the story is very different.

Where their stores and people will be rated 9s and 10s out of 10, the website scores just 1.4.  That’s as rated by more than 2300 recent reviews.  There’s a lot of good stuff that happens at John Lewis but right now, online they are keeping company with SouthernRail (0.9/10) and lag behind even Ryanair (2.2/10).

Broken promises, conflicting information, inflexibility and being difficult to communicate with are just some of the reasons cited.  Whether that’s a consequence of outsourcing or handing over the post-sale experience to suppliers, only John Lewis themselves fully understand.  However, there are many comments that illustrate the commercial consequences, as one unhappy customer said: “Have spent thousands at John Lewis over the years but after this will go elsewhere”.

Employees answer the negative comments with a resigned “Sorry, we really didn’t mean this to happen” tone.  And one customer summed the gap between expectations and reality by saying “Because it’s John Lewis, it feels worse”.trustpilot jlfd

 

Another brand struggling to keep up with the expectations it has spent much time, money and effort creating is firstdirect.  For many years they were always at the top of the list of exemplars.  Personalised and friendly service, easy to get hold of and no need to repeat issues were just some of its credentials that set it apart from other banks.

At a time when the one thing retail banks need is differentiation, they seemed to have it in spades.  Now though, firstdirect scores just 1.9 out of 10 with many unhappy customers venting their frustrations about things being slow, disinterested employees and not keeping promises to call back or follow-up.

 

Meanwhile, the airline that claimed to be “the world’s favourite” is also no stranger to having a mixed bag of reviews.  On Trustpilot at the moment British Airways’ score is just 2 out of 10.  Reviewers talk of getting “better treatment with Ryanair”, of misinformation and of empty apologies.  At the same time though, happy customers rave about the friendliness of staff, easy booking processes and clean aircraft.  On the aviation-specific review site Skytrax, BA sees a similar spectrum of views from “Cannot fault the airline” to “Terrible service”.

 

Finally, but no surprise this time, is BT.  Every time I run a customer experience workshop I ask people to share a couple of stories of good and bad experiences they’ve had.   There are brands who feature regularly in both camps but BT is by far the most frequently cited company for bad experiences.

On Trustpilot, they score just 0.3 out of 10 from the last 1700 reviews.  Worryingly, if you were leading BT, many comments talk about the highly negative emotional impact – “I’m being driven to despair, I’m distraught and powerless” is just one recent example but reflected by many others too.  The recurring themes here are an inability to find someone to take ownership of a problem, staff attitude and promises that aren’t kept, again and again.

That really isn’t what you want people to be sharing about your brand.  It’s proof the brand is purely what people tell each other it is, regardless of what the strapline says it should be.  And so BT’s internal rhetoric, it would appear, has some way to go.   They talk openly about their approach being to “put customers first”, about wanting to create “the most customer-focused company in the world” and having an ambition by 2020 to “deliver great customer experiences”.  Easy to say, much much harder to do.

 

And in a way, that’s the point. Whether you have made a public declaration to be the best customer experience company or you are simply about making profit, it doesn’t matter to us as customers – the very least we expect from any business is that we can trust them to do what they promise, they’ll make it easy and we won’t have any reservations about doing it again.  Surely, the basics are not too much to ask?

 

As with most review sites views tend to be polarised.  So at the other end of the spectrum, regularly attracting fans and scores of 9s and 10s are the likes of Moo.com, Mr Memory, Outdoorkit and Dial-a-Flight.  These are not corporate giants but by and large they consistently get the basics right , the things those at the bottom of the pile can’t seem to manage.  Common themes cited by customers are that they all have friendly and knowledgable employees, they do what they say they will and they keep customers informed. They make it feel like they’re on the customer’s side, they are perceived as good value and are easy to do business with.  It’s no more complicated than that but the consequences for the bottom line are summed up neatly by one Outdoorkit customer who says “I seem to shop here more and more lately”.

good or bad cx

Are you creating despair or fans? Or both?

I’ve looked at the ends of the scale to make the point. But is there anything to learn from those in the middle? I’d say lots.  In terms of rising expectations, today’s scores of 8 will be tomorrow’s 7 and next week’s 6 so beware of complacency.  Average mid-range scores also show these companies can and do get it right sometimes – they’ve done the hard bit but just lack the consistency.  They have the ability, they just need to make the good things happen regularly rather than sporadically.

Having the aspiration to give great experiences is one thing but the people who lead and manage in organisations must also be sure they have a total self-awareness about what it’s really like to do business for anyone at anytime and anyhow.  By all means protect and improve the good experiences but their presence doesn’t automatically mean an absence of more damaging experiences.

 

I hope the blog gives you some food for thought about your own customer experiences but do get in touch if you have any questions or comments.  Use this site or send an email to me at [email protected] or call me on +44 (0) 7917 718072.  Thank you for taking the time to read the post.  Jerry

Who hangs around longer: complacent employees or valuable customers?

In the world we live in it seems to be very easy to over-complicate things; to make a cottage industry out of lots of stuff.  Inside a large corporate recently I saw a project managed by several highly-paid people whose goal was to document all the organisation’s other projects.

So it’s not surprising that when people talk about customer experience there are some who roll their eyes and want to get back to their day-job.  It’s seen as interfering with running their bit of the business. Or it’s too expensive and “we’ve got more important things to worry about”.  They’re the ones who will say, “It’s ok, we’re making money, we’ve got customers, why do anything differently?”…042

Ian Golding wrote an emotional blog last month about why Ritz Carlton has the reputation and repeat business it does.  Yes, Ritz Carlton is at the premium end of hotel accommodation but the core of the experiences they offer is not expensive; it’s a mind-set and an attitude that’s as easily and as effectively adopted by a hotel chain as a telecoms business, utility or a local café.

The point is that not only does it cost very little, the flip-side is that leaving such basics untendered can cost huge amounts in revenue, profit and customer loyalty. Putting a poster on the wall, a powerpoint slide or a statement on the website proclaiming that “We put customers at the heart of everything we do” is easy.  It’s not easy to do but it’s not impossible either.

At the risk of being accused of being a grumpy old man take, for example, common courtesies.  A “Thank you” here and a “Please” there.  Are they a consistent part of our customer experiences? They often won’t feature in any journey mapping exercise because they are so basic.  Of course that happens all the time, doesn’t it?

I know it’s not the case for two very well-known food retailers.  One sets out its stall to “give excellent customer service with an emotional benefit that feels good and feels right”.  The other has “a renewed focus on the consumer …to achieve success”.  The reality though is somewhat different.

I live in an urban area where I’m lucky to have had these two chains within walking distance for many years.  Despite the high turnover of staff in that time, by and large the people have always been polite.  In both stores though, things have changed and increasingly the people there are rude and contemptuous.  They are not offensive, but there is the impression of complete disinterest.

Where once we would get “That’s £5.10 please” followed by “Thank you” as they hand me my change, I now hand over my goods and get an impatient look back.  Apparently, I’m magically supposed to know exactly how much I owe them without them telling me or moving the lottery cards stand out of the way so I can see the display on the till.  Having had to ask what I owe, the change is unceremoniously dumped into my hand with no comment, let alone it being counted out with a “Thank-you”.

Instead, I find myself saying thank-you to them, then cursing myself as I leave, knowing it should be them thanking me for paying their wages.

If it happened once I could dismiss it as someone having a bad day.  We all do and there are more important things in life to worry about.  However, to happen each time creates a real feeling of being treated with a lack of respect.

Contempt is a corrosive thing in any relationship.  If either side senses it exists, the going of separate ways becomes an inevitability.

As it happens, one of the big-four opened one of its local supermarket stores recently. It wasn’t needed and the arrival of one of the major players met lots of opposition.reputation

However, the local incumbents didn’t deserve the loyalty they thought they were entitled to and as a result I and many others choose the more corporate option.  Local people work in there too and they are every bit as polite and as professional as you want them to be. They say hello, smile and help make things quick and easy. Why would I choose an unpleasant experience over a friendly one?

So when it comes to designing customer experiences there are a couple of lessons here.  One, are we overlooking the things that are really important?  It doesn’t have to be complicated.

The second is that when a sceptical Operations, Sales or Finance Director asks how much it will cost to have better customer experiences there are a hundred such stories that show the cost of keeping customers can be pretty much zero yet the real cost of not having those basics in place is huge.

Unfortunately for the bottom line, complacent employees will out-last customers who would be loyal but who also have a choice. The not-so secret to the right customer experience is attitude – especially at the organisational level.

John Lewis, npower and Ford – in very different places with customer experience

 

Depending on the way you look at it, complacency is either the arch-enemy of customer experience or the reason it exists.  I’ve seen many a sceptical director shrug and say “Why bother? We’re making money so we must be doing it right”.

Yet while the heart of customer experience might be more a way of thinking than functional, the warning signs of where it’s going wrong can be very obvious and very tangible.

Take John Lewis.  Over the years it’s been one of our most celebrated brands, synonymous with straightforward, easy and helpful customer experiences.  And the partnership has seen the benefits in its commercial performance as a result.

So here’s a question:  out of 10, where 0 is rubbish and 10 is brilliant, what would you say JohnLewis.com scores on Trustpilot at the moment?  I know there have been a few issues of late but I’d have said 7s and 8s at worst.  Time to think again.

Based on over 2,000 customer reviews the average score as of this week is …..  1.4 out of 10.

 

john lewis 1.4

 

How and why did that happen?  Only those inside John Lewis know the answers but one suggestion is the outsourcing of its customer experiences.  Handing over your brand to a third party is no excuse, only a reason.  Outsourcing may promise hand-offs that are invisible to customers and a lower per-transaction cost.  However, without the controls to ensure consistency of the intended experiences the number of unnecessary contacts increase, the costs go up and customers’ loyalty goes down.  Years of goodwill being unravelled for all to see.

As with any customer measurement system, there are caveats and foibles.  But I wonder how many organisations would act differently if public metrics such as the Trustpilot score or Tripadvisor rating were more visible internally and part of the voice-of-the-customer mix.

Ironically, over in the energy sector, npower maybe further along the organisational self-awareness curve.  It’s often in the news for the wrong reasons;  scrapping its dividend payment, being fined £26m by Ofgem for failing to treat customers fairly and being told if things don’t improve they will be barred from selling their services.   And on the back of its results this week came the announcement that there will be a significant human cost with 20% of its workforce to be laid off.

With that news though came a plan, a two-year recovery programme.  So for npower, at least the reasons for its difficulties are known and it is trying to do something about them.  Lower wholesale energy prices, government obligations and a quicker than expected shift to renewables are to blame in part.  However, it is the self-inflicted broken processes and billing infrastructure that are driving many customers away.

I’m a customer of npower and of John Lewis.  For the people who work there and for my own sanity I really want them to come right.  Npower has plans but the signs are that things have a way to go.  For example, I recently received three identical envelopes in the same post.  Inside, three identical annual statements with identical supporting information notes – tripling the cost at a stroke and leaving me playing the spot-the difference, wondering if I’ve missed something subtle but vitally important.

npower statement

 

Do they know that’s happening? If not, why not?  But if they do know, wouldn’t a quick letter or email to explain that I don’t have to worry about missing something help?  It’s about knowing what the experience is like today and how it feels compared with what it should be like and having the appetite to do something about it.  Making things worse, the main call-to-action appears to be to switch suppliers so exactly what the statements mean and what I’m supposed to do next will have to be the subject of a call to their helplines…  I hope the recovery plan will be using lower customer effort as a measurement of success.

In contrast, the organisational self-awareness that Ryanair had prompted it to launch the ‘Always Getting Better’ programme.  The about-turn in being customer focused is bearing fruit in its forward bookings, load factors and customer feedback.   Meantime, motoring giant Ford meantime is also setting about the way it does things.ford wheel logo

Speaking earlier this year, Ford’s President and CEO Mark Fields talked openly about changing the culture to be more empathetic to its customers.  The mindset was no longer one of being a manufacturer or even a technology company but an innovative, user-experience company.   Ford employees are encouraged to challenge the status quo, to question tradition and to not take anything for granted.  They won’t get penalised in their performance reviews for trying something new;  the view is that succeed or fail, you learn.  And on digitalisation and data, Ford aims to identify the right experiences first then seeks the technology to deliver it.  Not, trip over itself to install latest IT systems just because it’s the latest IT system.

 

Very familiar brand names with varying degrees of organisational self-awareness.  It’s what shapes their customer experiences and as a direct consequence they will see very different results.

 

Thank you for reading the blog, I hope you found it interesting and thought-provoking.  I’d love to hear what you think about the subject so please feel free to add your comments below.

I’m Jerry Angrave, founder of Empathyce and an ex-corporate customer experience practitioner.  I’m now a  CX consultant and an official trainer for the CXPA’s professional qualification to be a CCXP. If you’ve any questions about improving customer experiences or CX professional development do please get in touch.  I’m on +44 (0) 7917 718 072 or on email I’m [email protected].

To subscribe for future posts please send an email to [email protected]

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Customer experience culture: Ford’s perspective

A customer-centric culture doesn’t happen simply because it’s on a presentation slide as a strategic pillar.  It’s a topic that risks being swamped by platitudes and theory so I was curious to hear Mark Fields, President and CEO of Ford Motor Company, talk about what the transformation to a customer experience culture looks like in reality.  

The size of the organisation is irrelevant but I wanted to share some of his thoughts from a recent FastCompany interview .  There are a number of characteristics that we can all identify with, learn from or at least be reassured that we’re heading in the right direction.  

 

Firstly, Mr Fields emphasises the need to be very clear about who you are.  In Ford’s case they have been a manufacturing company.  With connectivity and the internet-of-things creating huge possibilities they are now moving through being a technology business to a user-experience and mobility company.

Transformation can be a scary word for many employees.  Ford’s approach therefore is to be clear that it’s not about moving from an old business to a new business, they are moving to a bigger and better business.  And that will need to include winning over everyone in the supply chain and the franchised sales and service teams too.

Wherever they work, colleagues are encouraged to challenge custom, to question tradition and to not take anything for granted.  Having worked for large corporates who frowned upon seeking and sharing learnings from outside the sector, that alone is refreshing to hear.

Ford reassures its people they wont get penalised for trying things, knowing that some will fail and some will succeed.  It might be in product design, customer engagement or stakeholder management.  It might be in new methods of customer feedback or in innovative ways to bring to life what it’s really like to be a customer.  But, so the approach goes, you learn whether you win or lose.

Virgin Atlantic has a similar philosophy.  Google Glass had certain benefits but the airline wanted to see how else it could make the lives of its employees better.  With wearable technology, they knew it would take some time for a critical mass of customers to use it but they found real advantages for their operations team.  As a result Virgin’s dispatchers now use smart watches to improve the turn-around efficiencies of aircraft.

On technology, with all the data, sensors and processing power we now have, Mark Fields is clear.  He wants Ford to be known for being an automotive and mobility company but is very aware of the risk of falling into the trap of technology for technology sake.  His answer is to think about the experiences first then find the best technology to deliver them.  It’s the same principle with customer measurement;  get the experience right first and the metrics will look after themselves.

It means that at Ford, there is a new and relentless focus on empathy.  They are using ethnography to better understand their customer personas, their interactions and how the products and services are used.  It gives greater certainty that the changes being made are the right ones.

road to success no shortcuts

There are no shortcuts on the road to cultural change

Cultural change is never quick.  After all, it’s a state of mind and isn’t something that can be project managed.  The right changes will not happen if the organisation is not open to the very idea of customer-centricity.  So to have the boss eulogising about the focus on customer experiences suggests the chances of longevity are good.

That said, Ford will be very aware that changing a culture takes years.  Back in 1909, customer-centricity had a different meaning.  To improve productivity and make the car affordable to the masses, the company’s founder Henry Ford restricted customers’ colour choice to black.  Those with memories of more recent times may recall Ford’s 1990s advertising campaign in which Brian May’s rousing soundtrack promised “Everything we do is driven by you”.  Albeit a strapline with an inward-looking perspective, it was well-intended.

So while first challenge is to have the right mindset, it doesn’t stop there. The key is then to keep up the momentum, to make sure everyone understands what that frame of reference is, why it’s important and what it means for them on a day-to-day basis.

Ford is not alone in having such a philosophy and Mark Fields isn’t the first CEO to say they are customer-centric.  Time will tell.  To succeed, I believe an organisation must combine a deep understanding of its customers with highly motivated employees.  But most important of all is that the business must also nurture a culture where those insights and enthusiasm are allowed the opportunity to prosper.  At best, it will drive a business forward as it adapts to the changing world.  At worst, it will stop it being from standing still and being overtaken.

 

Thank you for reading the blog, I hope you found it interesting and thought-provoking.  I’d love to hear what you think about the subject so please feel free to add your comments below.

I’m Jerry Angrave, founder of Empathyce and an ex-corporate customer experience practitioner.  I’m now a  CX consultant and an official trainer for the CXPA’s professional qualification to be a CCXP. If you’ve any questions about improving customer experience or CX professional development do please get in touch.  I’m on +44 (0) 7917 718 072 or on email I’m [email protected].

To subscribe for future posts please send an email to [email protected]

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Interview: learning from MOO about the link between culture, customers and the certainty of growth

Whatever your definition of Customer Experience, it’s a means to a commercial end and not a platitudinous end-game in itself.  It’s a way of being better at business and that’s especially important to those holding the purse strings where having confidence about the returns is everything.
But a cost-benefit analysis is only credible if the assumptions upon which it is dependent are given a culture in which they can become reality.  I therefore want to find out if those putting up the money could see culture and customers’ experiences as a better predictor of ROI than a spreadsheet calculation.  To help me on my quest, I met recently to speak with Dan Moross of MOO.

 

Customers of MOO rave about what it’s like to do business with them.  Tech gurus and start-up commentators have them on their “ones-to-watch” lists.   And this nine-year old web-to-print company seems to have little problem attracting top talent and securing investment.customer centric culture

They must be doing something right so I’m keen to know how a company increases its chances of success and what roles customer experience and employee engagement play in that.  I want to know if the positive customer feedback and positive investor sentiment is a happy coincidence or deliberate cause-and-effect.

Being confident about future business growth is about making the right decisions about investment and resource.  How we use these finite commodities is often based on a mechanical cost-benefit calculation, the bit we flick to first in a business case.  However, the likelihood of that ROI being realised is totally dependent on something rarely assessed to the same degree – the culture.

Is that a fluffy nice-to-have or an essential characteristic of a successful business?

Proving it, quantifying it and justifying it are all harder to do especially when the audience to be won over is a sceptical investor such as a venture capitalist or finance director.  Meaningless platitudes, buzzwords and excuses of legacy systems don’t cut it.  Certainty and predictability do, so I want to understand how reliant that commercial confidence is on having engaged employees who deliver the right customer experiences.

 

 

I meet Dan at MOO HQ – a whitewashed, converted warehouse in the bustling backstreets of London’s Shoreditch.  It’s a light, airy and spacious workplace, made more so by relocating the heavy printing machinery to accommodate the growing number of people in its team, or crews as they are called here.  It’s friendly, energetic and has the confidence of a company that’s perfectly at home in using design and technology to bring together the best of the digital and physical worlds.

Dan Moross, Director of Customer Services at MOO

Dan Moross, Director of Customer Services at MOO

At a quick glance, MOO’s proposition is simple.  They’ll print your business cards and business stationery and they want you to go away feeling good about it.  But look a little further and there is something very exciting going on here and it’s all rooted in the culture.

Dan is MOO’s Director of Customer Services but as job titles go he’s much more comfortable with the website’s more straight-talking version: “He’s in charge of making sure everyone is happy with their order”.  It’s his passion, he tells me, never happier than when making one of his customers happier.

We pass two huge TV screens that track real-time performance.  Nothing new there.  But it’s not call volume, average handling time, or agent availability on show, that type of data is collected and shared elsewhere.  The purpose is to help build the connection between customers and employees.  One screen relays in real-time what customers are saying about MOO on social media.  The other celebrates every customer purchase with a picture of the order, which country they are in and whether it’s their first, second or twentieth order.  It’s the digital version of ringing a bell every time there’s a sale.

 

 

Dan has been with MOO since the very start and as I learn later, didn’t consciously set out to manufacture a culture.  They simply did what felt right and it’s paid dividends as the past has put MOO in a strong position for the future. They have just been awarded a multi-million pound rolling credit facility by Barclays’ new Fast Tech Growth Fund.  MOO is in the Future Fifty, a showcase of the UK’s brightest digital businesses.  It recently appointed a chairman whose CV includes top jobs at LoveFilm and Mothercare.

And customers like them a lot, evangelical even.  They serve people in over 200 countries and have offices popping up around the world.  Their Net Promoter Score, based on the totality of the experience is something many organisations will seek but rarely achieve.  On Trustpilot they have a score of 9.4 out of 10, with 86% giving the full five stars.

Not surprisingly then, the company is justifiably proud of what it’s done and confident about the future too. “For our customers, quality and premium is standard.  We want people to be thrilled with what they get from us.  We’re the Apple of printing. If anyone’s going to disrupt the market we’ll make sure it’s us”.

Those are not convenient sound-bite aspirations, the mindset is one of a business that’s already there.  They may not be the cheapest but they know very well that people will indeed pay a premium for the right experience.  They also know they can’t be complacent and that however good the experience is today, it will need to evolve to ensure the business evolves.

 

 

So inevitably, MOO will fly the start-up nest and move into what Dan describes as the next and hardest phase; continuing the rapid growth that investors demand while protecting what got them there in the first place – outstanding customer service.  Certainty of growth is what makes them attractive to investors and talented people.  The risk is simple:  lose the growth and everyone loses interest.

MOO knows that the brand is only as good as customers tell each other it is.  It’s the reason why MOO’s growth in future will be focused on helping its customers through design and technology.  Crucially though, there’s an acknowledgment that creativity and digitalisation alone are not enough.

Dan talks about how important MOO’s people are.   “They work hard, take the job seriously but also have some fun along the way.  We encourage people to be part of MOO’s culture, part of the customer experience.  People who work here are part of a community. They’re ambitious. They do a good job, look out for each other, tackle things together and love what they do.”

“We’ll hire those who are good at their job but we also want people who are already passionate about design, technology and human beings.  And we want to feel we could go to the pub with them”.

Cultural fit is not the sole preserve of customer services either.  People joining for non-customer facing roles such as Legal, HR, Marketing and Finance are expected to be every bit as part of the community, immersed in and helping to preserve the brand, as anyone else.  Those who start at MOO will spend time in most other parts of the organisation to create a better understanding of each others’ role, contribution and challenges.

 

 

Having the right culture that leads to the right commercial outcomes doesn’t happen by accident and I’m intrigued how that happens.  Dan smiles proudly.  “We didn’t set out with a piece of paper and write a policy. It’s just been organic. Nothing is prescribed. No-one likes to be told what to do.  It’s implied, not scripted.  It’s about outcomes and we give our people the tools that allow that to happen.  We trust our people.  We don’t want them to lose their personality, their creativity and their engagement.  If they do, they won’t give great customer service.”Customer centric culture

The slightly maverick anti-corporate tone belies the fact that the business is as tightly run as any serious commercial operation.  There are effective controls in place everywhere, vast reams of data are analysed to drive efficiencies and a robust performance management process ensures that and risks are addressed before they become issues.

Trusting people to be creative leads us on to talk about MOO’s customer promise:  “We move heaven and earth to make sure you’re happy with your order”.  It’s something that would make most finance directors and lawyers nervous.  But it’s that very approach which fuels the growth FDs are looking for – customers buying again, buying more premium products and telling others to do the same.

The result is an upward spiral, one key benefit of which is a gross margin that creates headroom for doing things differently and better than their competitors.  Reprinting a pack of business cards at no additional cost to the customer because of a typo, even where it was the customer who made the mistake, is done without flinching or escalating.

 

 

It’s that kind of empathy with what’s emotionally important to their customers that influences people to buy from one company over another. Competitors could replicate the promise but if they don’t replicate the culture, it will get treated it as an incremental cost and won’t last beyond the pilot stage.  Culture, it’s clear already, is a real competitive differentiator.

Making its customers feel important is not an empty promise.  Many companies try to put themselves in their customers’ proverbial shoes to get to know them better.  MOO though, already has a genuine affinity with its customers.  Dan explains, “We might have the best part of 400 employees but we were a small business once, like most of our customers now. We identify with them”.  MOO now has large global corporates as clients but back in the day they could easily have been one of their own customers.  “We think like them”, Dan asserts.

For a company whose future is so reliant on technology, it means they must also be dependent on another quality that many businesses struggle with: change.  They have kept their tech development in-house and despite being a confident start-up, MOO has internal challenges common to most organisations. Securing project resource where demand outstrips supply, prioritising IT activity where there is a finite budget and questioning whether they are too nice to customers.

So I’m interested in whether having such engaged people makes it easier to lobby for, and deliver, the right changes. “Yes it does, but the stage after start-up is the most difficult.  It’s one thing to be nimble and fun but rapid growth means it’s even more important to instil the original ethos and keep the start-up mentality in a workforce that’s very new to the company.  It’s also about having the right processes for the right people.  The culture, our future, is our people”.

 

 

Dan’s final thought on what keeps him and the crews pursuing the next level of success is typically understated. “Work should be enjoyable. The day it stops being exciting is the day we all stop”.

I ask if there’s any scepticism internally about the link between good customer service and commercial success. “That’s not even debatable.  Our business relies on people coming back because the products are good.  They know we’ll help them get what they need, when they need it. If we degrade the customer service simply to prise open margins a bit, we won’t be able to do what we do.  We won’t be any different, people will be less likely to come back and it will cost rather than make money as a result.  If we do that the predictability of our business dies”.

Do investors see it that way too and believe that engaged customers and employees are essential for predictable growth?  Dan’s reply is emphatic.

“Investors value it massively.  They’re also very proud to have something so highly regarded in their portfolio.”   And if you think about it, customers are investors of a sort too and they’re making it very clear that they like being on the receiving end of the right culture.

So is culture a better predictor of ROI than a number on a cost-benefit spreadsheet?  There’s a place for both but the numbers mean little if there’s not the values to turn them into reality.  For me then, possibly predictably, it’s a certainty.

 

The author Jerry Angrave wishes to express sincere thanks for Dan Moross of moo.com for being so generous with his time and for sharing his thoughts. 

 

 

Thank you for reading the blog, I hope you found it interesting and thought-provoking.  I’d love to hear what you think so please feel free to add your comments below.

I’m Jerry Angrave, an ex-corporate customer experience practitioner and since 2012 I’ve been a consultant helping others understand how best to improve their customer experiences.  If you’ve any questions about nurturing customer centric cultures or any other CX issue do please get in touch for a chat.  I’m on +44 (0) 7917 718 072 or on email I’m [email protected].

Thank you Jerry

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jerry Angrave

CCXP LogoCustomer Experience awards judge