Customer-centric cultures (or not, as the case may be)

Taking a Customer Experience perspective has a canny knack of revealing an organisation’s real culture.

 

A CX maturity exercise I ran for a well-known consumer brand unearthed a shock for the leadership team; contrary to the employee survey, pride in the brand was pretty much non-existent.

I sat down with a number of colleagues and asked what they’d say to someone who enquired where they worked. An unnerving amount of them told me they would rather say they were unemployed or make something up than reveal who they worked for.

The reason they were fielding so many costly calls from customers was that although the team had given plenty of feedback on what needs improving, it was never acted on. They didn’t have the tools or information to help customers, hand-off processes went into black holes and communications were confusing and inconsistent. They’d tried to get things fixed but everything was ‘in next year’s budget’ or not seen as a priority. They’d given up trying to change anything so the cost of failure demand was left to write its own invoices.

And the reason the employee survey was giving a false reading of ‘highly engaged’? The team ticked that box in the belief that the “right” answer would secure their end-of-year bonus. Some interesting conversations followed.

In stark contrast, this year I experienced an employee going not just “the extra mile” for me but, literally, several miles. It’s an often-used phrase with good intent but translating it into colleague behaviours is not easy.

Long story short, my flight from London to Amsterdam was subject to an 8-hour delay. So, it was getting on for midnight when I arrived at the airport’s railway station. I needed information on how to get to an unfamiliar suburb of the city for my conference. The airport’s taxi queue snaked into the night for miles and there was hardly anybody else around. Thankfully, on the platform was a friendly-looking guy in a Schiphol-branded high-visibility jacket.

He explained it wasn’t a straightforward journey to navigate and without hesitation he said he’d go with me to show me the way. I tried to insist that while it was very kind he didn’t need to do it. He was, after all as I found out later, on his way home in a different direction after a long operational shift.

A short train ride was followed by a walk across a park and then onto a bus for a few more stops to the hotel.

He got me there and he made it easy for me.  I’ve lived and worked in cities around the world so am used to getting from A to B on my own but on that dark, wet night after long delays and feeling less than chipper, I was – and still am – so grateful.

His response to my gratitude has stuck with me ever since. As we parted ways he smiled and with a huge amount of pride simply said “We’re Schiphol. It’s what we do”.

With the help of Marcel Stroop of Schiphol’s brilliant innovation team, we tracked him down to make sure his ‘above and beyond’ actions were acknowledged.

I get it, that sort of thing doesn’t happen every day and is fairly extreme. But when we talk about employee pride and about “going the extra mile” for our customers, it reminds me that we should give it a stress-test to understand how genuine it is. Do actions mirror the words?

Even with the poster on the wall with its carefully-worded proclamations, would everyone – really – be willing to do something extra, however small it may be? Not every day, but when they feel it is right.

Or does the culture mean that in reality they dare not do anything outside their process-based remit for fear of recrimination by their manager? Do they think “Why bother?” or “We don’t have time for that”. Are they proud enough to wear your brand’s logo outside of work? Do they look at each other and shrug, assuming and hoping  that someone else will do the extra bit?

It’s important stuff and a telling topic to discuss in your team meetings. What examples of good or bad cultures have they heard about or seen in their own experiences outside work? Should or could the same happen in your organisation and what are the lessons to learn?

Thank you Michel, Marcel and the Schiphol family for a memorable and thought-provoking experience!

 

As a Customer Experience practitioner and now CX consultant, Jerry Angrave supports leaders and managers who are driving forward their organisation’s Customer Experience programme.

He helps shape the thinking and plan the doing in a way that gives structure, influence and momentum to the CX activity.

Securing buy-in for Customer Experience

For anyone in the early days of their CX career, securing buy-in for Customer Experience from sceptical stakeholders can be daunting.

It needn’t be. Yes, there are always those who don’t get it or don’t want to get it. It’s a fact of life for a CX professional that not everyone will be as passionate as we are about it.

Because the best outcomes start by making time for a conversation

People change roles, they leave, they join, they have their own priorities, their own metrics by which their performance is judged and they’re not going to lend an ear or time willingly without good reason.

It’s made harder without any air cover support from the CEO and Exec team. Compelling data, forensic insight and irrefutable evidence are always going to help tell the right story but that’s easier said than done especially in the early days of a CX movement.

I often say that if you do nothing else in the name of Customer Experience, carry out a piece of journey mapping work and see where it takes you. It will stimulate conversations you’d otherwise not have, it opens colleagues’ eyes to the reality of what being a customer is like and it brings them together in improving things.

But even before we get to journey mapping, we need those stakeholders to give us access to their information and people. We need them onside.

At this point we could go into the depths of psychological profiling and take a professional qualification in stakeholder management. It’s true that we need to recognise the personalities involved and flex our own style to suit but a little empathy goes a long way.  It’s a key ingredient as far as our customers are concerned and it’s no different for colleagues internally and partners.

Short of a three-line whip from the CEO telling them to join your gang, here are just four quick examples of how we might go about winning them over. There will be some effort needed but it will get the momentum going and the rewards will be bountiful.

 

Get them to tell their own stories

Create a connection between what you’re doing and something they can relate to. Ask about the best and worst experiences they’ve had in their own lives. Explore what happened and what their response was.

Not surprisingly they’ll say they’re very likely to go buy again from a company who was on their side and helped them succeed. Conversely, where they had a bad experience they’ll acknowledge they won’t go back and they’ll tell others too.

And where it’s just ‘ok’, they’ll recognise that it wouldn’t take much to investigate what a competitor had to offer.

Each of those responses comes with a commercial impact one way or the other. They’ve just made your argument for you.

Broaden the conversation out and ask if anything like the good or bad experiences – and the ensuing consequences – could happen on our shift.

Asking about their emotions will dig even deeper. They may have denied emotions have anything to do with it but they’re a key driver of behaviours. It’s no coincidence that “How do you feel?” is a favourite go-to question of a journalist or TV presenter.

I recall a B2B Head of Customer Experience becoming frustrated at her Board’s refusal to see why investment in a new contact centre system was necessary. She walked into the next meeting and told the story of a stressed cafe owner customer who was calling in for help between having customers of their own. She started to play the on-hold music with the “Your call is important to us, thank you for waiting” recorded message and left the room.

After a very awkward and long 9 minutes and 25 seconds, the average time taken to answer as she pointed out when she returned, the penny had dropped. Stories and empathy meant she secured her investment.

 

Spend time getting to know them

In the world of internal politics there’s a saying about “Stay close to your enemies”.

We all like to feel we’re heard and acknowledged, so find an excuse to have a chat with them. Listen to the language they use, their challenges and their priorities. Understand their views on how the business makes its money, where its costs are and what the strategic issues are.

What impact do they have directly or indirectly on customers and revenue streams? How close are they to the key movers and shakers in the company and how political are they? Which competitors and organisations outside the sector do they admire?

The more familiar you are with their world the more relevant you can make your positioning. If we know their objections, however irrational, we can work out ways to dismantle the blockers or reframe their arguments.

Show how a focus on customers internally and externally can help them achieve their goals and still be aligned to the overall business aims.

It also gives you a real window into how committed the business is, or not, as the case may be. Many companies will have a mantra or a poster to say they put “customers first”. It won’t take many conversations to see how committed everyone is really and therefore how big a task you are about to undertake.

And, if everyone is rewarded and recognised for the ‘wrong’ things you have plenty of collateral now to explain to the Exec team what is going to be needed to make the vision a reality.

 

Talk to other peers and colleagues as well as senior stakeholders
Admittedly, it’s harder at the moment to have those informal chats around the office, at the drinks machine or onsite to kick around a few issues and ideas. Our online world makes it tricky to bump into people we don’t (but should) know and strike up a conversation.

However, we do still meet and for some it’s more regular than in pre-pandemic times. With an appropriate audience, when the original business of the meeting is done, there’s no harm in asking for a few minutes at the end to ask for their candid feedback about things.

What would they improve? What are customers saying to them? What information, tools or resources do they need? Is it clear what the company wants its customers to say about it and so on. Most online chat functions allow the comments to be collected anonymously too if that helps generate the most telling insight.

However it’s done, talking to colleagues freely and openly is hugely beneficial in understanding what works, what doesn’t and why. Overlay that with customer feedback in any existing survey or from unstructured comments in social media and your influence with senior stakeholders and your case for where the focus should lie just gets stronger.

 

Make the business case, even informally

Be pragmatic and focus on the basics before the “Wow”.  If stakeholders think you just want to spend money on spreading magic fairy dust around the place, click your heels three times and hope for a miracle they’re going to be tough nuts to crack.

If the data doesn’t yet exist to link better experiences with better business, borrow it in principle at least.  There is also no shortage of “ROI of customer experience” data freely available on the internet. And there are plenty of case studies too.

For example, the delivery company who reduced costs by realising it had over-engineered its parcel tracking capability for customers. It was able to cut the number of tracking points without any detrimental impact on customers. Or, the online printer who enjoys wider margins than most. Their customers are happy to pay a premium because the company will fix mistakes on the spot and at their cost, even if it’s the customer’s own mistake.

Better still, try a small change yourself and measure the difference in costs, in employee pride and customer response. Proof of concept is a compelling convincer.

When starting out, it quickly becomes apparent how much of a Customer Experience programme is cultural; a mindset that acknowledges and believes we need our customers more than they need us.

Winning round colleagues isn’t always easy and as time goes by the methods can become more sophisticated. But, for those charged with being the catalyst for a more customer-centric business, engaging stakeholders, especially the sceptical ones bit by bit, will secure their interest, involvement and support.

 

Jerry Angrave is Customer Experience Director at Empathyce, a CX consulting and coaching company. Jerry is a CCXP (Certified Customer Experience Professional) and author of The Journey Mapping Playbook published by De Gruyter in October 2020.

[email protected]

+44 (0)7917 718072

Treating customers unfairly – savvy or naive?

 

Airlines around the world are communicating heavily in an effort to welcome us back. Understandably, they need the revenue and are enticing us with reconnected routes and reassurance about hygiene protocols. Like the rest of us they’ve been through a lot this year and sure, they’ve much to be proud of.

But the approach to refunds (or lack of) by some UK and European airlines is undermining that effort. Is it worth risking years of brand-building and the loss of passengers just when they’re needed the most? A false economy or is it calculated short-termism, a storm that just needs to be weathered?

It might be a genuine survival strategy but the way passengers are being treated, it feels more like opportunistic cash-flow management. In which case, do they know or even care about the impact it’s having on their brand and therefore the bottom line?

They are sending an “Open for business” message but hundreds if not thousands of customers are receiving a very different message: “We’ve got your money now stop bothering us. You’ll have it back when we’re ready“. One look at airlines’ social media posts wooing travellers back shows how their brand is anything but welcoming. Passengers respond not with “Oooh, thank you, that’s nice, I must book” but with a weary tirade of anger.

Still not being able to get their money back is one thing. Feeling ignored and being lied to, having expectations mis-managed, complex voucher processes and being unable to make contact in the first place are not the foundations of any good relationship.

Yet these emotions are being created by the same airlines who declare “We’re on your side, we’re in it together” and “If something goes wrong we’re here to help”.

Many comments online, as visible to the leadership team as to you and me, say the way they are being treated means they will never fly with that airline again. It’s Customer Experience in a nutshell. Airlines are simply gift-wrapping their customers and handing them over to competitors. I’m no business guru but I’d say that’s not the best outcome.

Thankfully there are some who do treat their passengers with the respect that a key source of revenue and salaries should be shown. The sharing of those stories sets the bar against which others are measured.

In the early days of this pandemic it was said many times that we will remember how companies treated their employees and customers. Our real character shows through in times of adversity. Adapt and work together to get through it or take advantage?

Months on and the continuing treatment of some means, unfortunately, it’s become another case study in proving that how you make your customers feel isn’t some fluffy, tree-hugging abstract concept; it’s an intentional business strategy with hard, commercial outcomes.

I’m sure they’ve done the numbers and know what they’re doing. Not everyone will complain, they will settle eventually and other passengers (the ones who don’t read the news) will be unaffected.

But dragging their feet on promised refunds on the one hand while spending huge Marketing dollars to get more passengers on the other doesn’t sit comfortably. It might be that it’s about silos doing their own thing, a leadership ego that wants to be the hero by squeezing every last drop out of this year’s cash-flow or a deliberate and necessary way to keep the business alive.

The risk though is they achieve quite the opposite because their number-crunching hasn’t taken account of the emotional impact of what they’re doing. They’ll take on a heavy cost in lost customers, new customers won’t like what they see, employee pride is deflated and brand reputation suffers just at a time when they need it all to be flying high.

 


 

Jerry Angrave is Customer & Passenger Experience Director at Empathyce, a CX consulting and coaching company.

[email protected]     |     +44 (0) 7917 718 072     |     www.empathyce.com

 

Making the hidden disability experience visible

How good would it be if this sunflower icon, to help identify people with a hidden disability, was as recognisable everywhere for what it is as the white stick that tells us someone has impaired sight?

It’s brilliant to see Liverpool John Lennon Airport adopt the sunflower and lanyard, the latest in a growing list of organisations, especially in the aviation and travel sectors. To be clear, it’s not about queue jumping or special privileges. The sunflower helps employees identify those who have a hidden disability so they can provide pre-emptive and relevant support in their built environment.

Speaking as a parent of someone with a learning disability, they really make a difference. To know that employees understand you might be just a hair-trigger away from a major meltdown, and the consequences that brings, is incredibly reassuring.

But airports, airlines, rail companies and supermarkets are just the tip of the iceberg.

I’d love to see a day when we’re just walking down the street, in the park or in a shop and the sunflower sends a recognisable yet subtle signal to anyone nearby that there’s a perfectly good reason not to jump to conclusions about the behaviour they see.

I tie a lanyard to my son’s scooter in the hope that, one day, people coming the other way will see it and so diffuse any awkward or unpredictable situation. A quick glance at Charlie may not reveal any signs of what lies beneath. But there are times when his social skills are not typical. I don’t blame employees or other members of the public for judging but it’s not great to know they are wondering “Are they stoned?”, “Are they a threat?”, “Has he got no control over that lad?” or – if they take advantage of support available – “Oh, the cheek of it”.

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So on behalf of people – and the family or carers with them – who might find interacting with the environment your organisation has created a challenge, a small plea: if you have customers visiting you, how might you provide sunflower icon on lanyards or wristbands? Or, at least, train your staff to recognise them for what they are if they appear at your place?

Other symbols and devices are available but there is also an argument for just one to become ubiquitous, to help your customers whether they’re on your site or on their home turf.

The wider its use, the more recognisable it becomes in Society and the better that must be for everyone.

A low-cost, simple design that can make a huge difference.  And for those whose leadership team still needs a business case beyond being the right thing to do, the commercial benefits are there too. If you make the experience easier, calmer and more empathetic for a customer why wouldn’t they want to keep coming back, spending their money with you and telling everyone else to do the same? Get it right for people with a disability and chances are, you’ll get it right for everyone – and your balance sheet too.

Finally, once again, huge credit and thanks to the brilliant, passionate people who are creating real momentum around these issues especially in the aviation world – people like Maria Cook, Geraldine Lundy, Samantha Saunders, Roberto Castiglioni, Chris Wood, Graham Rice, Cathy Nyfors, Eric Lipp, Bonnie Haye, Linda Ristagno, James Freemantle and many more.

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Thank you for reading the blog, I hope you enjoyed it and found it thought-provoking.  

I’m Jerry Angrave and I help people in organisations create better and more commercially-minded customer experiences. I’m a CCXP (Certified Customer Experience Professional), a CX consultant and am one of a handful of people globally who are authorised by the CXPA to train CX professionals for its accreditation.

Do get in touch if you’ve any comments on the blog, any questions around the wider competencies of CX or are interested in consultancy or training support.

Thank you,

Jerry 

[email protected]   |   www.empathyce.com   |   +44 (0) 7917 718072

When the sales experience falls into, rather than bridges, the gap

Depending on your definition of a customer, their experience starts well before they actually buy anything.

It might be what they’ve heard from others or what they’ve seen in the news. But if the brand comes knocking on their door that first impression is also a critical experience. Many get it right because it’s based on a real empathy with those they are trying to engage with.

However, it’s not always the case. Absent a clear customer experience strategy, what we think do as a business often looks very different when looked at from the customers’ perspectives.

 

For example, if any CEO is wondering why their Sales teams are not getting better results, maybe a quick look at how their initial engagement makes yet-to-be customers feel will give some big clues.

The quotes below are all real examples I’ve had in my inbox just this last week. There are others and I’m sure you’ll have your own ‘favourites’.

They are not trying to sell me something I don’t want. In fact, I could be interested. Just not with them. If I was ever asked for feedback about the Sales experience (a rare thing indeed), it might go along these lines:

  • Putting “Our 9am meeting” in the subject heading doesn’t spur me into replying out of panic.  Sorry to burst your bubble Sales folk, but changing it to “Our 10am meeting” in the follow-up really doesn’t make any difference either.
  • Saying “I’ve tried to reach you” is just lying – technology is quite good these days so I know if you’ve tried to get in touch as often as you claim. And when your colleagues use the same line every week, several times a week, it becomes very transparent.
  • Gasping “I can’t believe you’ve not signed up yet” and “I’d hate for you to miss out” is at best patronising and lacks any sincerity.
  • What’s more, should I be interested a reply to the email will go into a generic mailbox, not to the person who is (presumably) trying to create a relationship. It just shouts even louder about how you really don’t care if I get back in touch or not.

Does somebody seriously believe this type of approach is going to create an experience I want to repeat, share and pay a premium for? If these companies had any genuine interest in what I do and how they might help me achieve success, they’d look at their Sales activity as a meaningful experience not a bullying, volume-led, can’t-really-give-a-**** transaction.

I often come across businesses who fear the Sales team always over-promise because of the way they are rewarded. They then disappear off the face of the planet while everyone else tries to rally-round, clearing up the mess to deliver something close to an unrealistic promise.

On the flip-side, maybe the Sales team is frustrated that everyone else can’t keep up. Maybe they’re just doing what they’ve been told is best. But to create a first impression experience that is confrontational, misleading and deceitful creates no trust, no relationship. No commission.

They say the experience on the outside reflects the culture inside and they’re right. In the middle of a busy day, to be on the receiving end of these type of messages says heaps about what it must be like to work there. No clear strategy, just a numbers game where some very talented people will be wilting under the stress.

Intended or not, what they are saying to me is that it’s clear their focus is just on revenue, not on me as a potential customer. They don’t care if I buy or not, there are plenty more fishes in the sea. Friend and colleague Ian Golding wrote about a similar mindset very recently in this blog.

These companies are not some anonymous outfit in a far-off land that’s acquired an email list; often they are large, global businesses who should know what they are doing. These companies will make some money for sure but that short-term approach breeds complacency and stores up problems for down the line.

If they applied a dose of customer experience thinking they could, however, make a whole lot more money. If only they didn’t push their potential customers away before they’ve even got close.

 

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Thank you for reading the blog, I hope you enjoyed it and found it thought-provoking.  

I’m Jerry Angrave and I help people in Customer Experience roles do what they need to do. I’m a CCXP (Certified Customer Experience Professional), a CX consultant and am one of a handful of people globally who are authorised by the CXPA to train CX professionals for its accreditation.

Do get in touch if you’ve any comments on the blog, any questions or are interested in training or consultancy support.

Thank you,

Jerry 

[email protected]   |   www.empathyce.com   |   +44 (0) 7917 718072

Ten hidden benefits of customer journey mapping

The benefits of customer journey mapping are well documented; it’s an incredibly valuable exercise that gives the business a shared understanding of what it’s like to be a customer. And, therefore, a clear picture of what should be celebrated, what should be done differently and why.

Journey mapping is a means to an end. It’s not, as some people see it, about having a pointless happy-clappy day with Post-it notes and Sharpie pens.

Done effectively and on an ongoing basis, what customer journey mapping tells you can be one of the most effective strategic and economic tools a business has in its armoury. But not everyone sees it that way and as CX professionals we often need to help sceptical stakeholders ‘get it’.

So, for what it’s worth and to help anyone trying to convince a non-believer to begin mapping customer journeys, I’ve put together a list of some of the additional pleasant surprises – sorry, “commercial benefits” – journey mapping delivers.

 

1 Catalyst. It’s a great place to start.

Companies often struggle to get momentum behind a fledgling customer experience programme. If you do nothing else in the name of customer experience, map a customer journey and see where it takes you.

The beauty of journey mapping is that it’s easy to do and even just a couple of hours or a day’s workshop can set things on the right path.

It will challenge dangerously complacent beliefs that there is no burning platform. And even if it becomes apparent that today’s customer experience isn’t inherently broken it will provide plenty of ideas for how to keep up with expectations in future.

 

2 Engagement. Hey presto, you’ve created a CX focused, cross-functional team.

At a recent workshop I facilitated, one participant stopped in her tracks when telling her persona’s story to the group. She observed that this was the first time that organisation had brought everyone together who had some involvement across the entire journey. Pennies dropped, dots were joined and new relationships created there and then.

They’ve stayed together as a group ever since and have created mini-task forces for other journeys.

Involvement in these types of workshops creates excitement but also an expectation that things will change. That has to be managed carefully but what you do have now is an army of internal CX champions who will help spread the word.

 

3 Value. The outputs have all sorts of uses, just make sure they’re not filed away.

The biggest risk to journey mapping is that once the journeys are mapped, the persona stories are told and the findings are documented, they get filed away and never see the light of day.

Make it a living beast so it never fades away. Put the journey on a wall or on the intranet so it’s visible to everyone. It’s a great opportunity to get thoughts from other employees who can to wander past and add their thoughts over a cup of coffee. Keep it alive, use it to generate interest and action.

It prompts all sorts of conversations about the issues and opportunities. And it’s also a great visual to show new employees what their customers experience too.

 

4 Simplicity. As they say, simplicity is a very sharp knife.

It doesn’t have to be complex to be value-creating. As with many things in life it’s easy to over-engineer. Journey mapping does need to work hard to be from a customer’s perspective but often the simpler the structure and framework the better.

One client told me they were keen to do some mapping but couldn’t take the team out for a whole day. Instead, they took a bit of time in a team meeting; better than nothing. The format was quick but follows the same approach as a full workshop; sketch out what the customer is trying to do and why, then across the stages, look at what they are thinking, doing and feeling.

Then ask what you measure; do you know how well you do the most important things?

Review what you’ve written down and agree some actions. First journey map, done.

 

5 Themes. Over time, helpfully, common issues rise up to the surface.

Journey maps should never be reviewed in isolation. Whether you run one journey from the perspective of several personas or you look at multiple journeys, it’s very likely you’ll find common threads emerging.

So, while one specific issue raised may not be critical to that journey itself, we should take notice when that same issue appears in other journeys for other customers, employees or third parties.

A quick example from a mapping programme I ran late last year. Although they weren’t cited as major challenges in their individual workshops, it became apparent in every one of a dozen or so sessions that three themes stood out; there was a lack of understanding about what the brand stood for, employees desperately wanted/needed a good CRM system and there was a genuine concern about a lack of consistency in delivering the experience across all touchpoints.

 

6 Education. For me, the biggest benefits in mapping customer journeys is often the conversations happening between colleagues during a journey mapping session.

It’s common to hear things like “Oh, I didn’t know that’s what you did”, “Does anyone know what happens if…?” and “If you can get that information across to me in a different format I’d be able to do my bit for the customer better”.

Because we have people from all steps of the customer journey in the room, those conversations can happen and are invaluable. They might not be the conversations you want in front of customers, which is why I’d always advocate bringing them in to the process once you have your initial draft journey. Which brings me to the next point.

 

7 Connection. As if you needed one, it’s a great excuse to connect with customers.

The good news is that you now have a journey map. The better news is that it needs validation by customers to have any credibility.

So once you’ve had those awkward educational, internal conversations you can invite customers to give their views. Even if they end up not participating, the act of asking their opinion goes a long way.

 

8 Outliers. Small sample sizes should always be treated with a big degree of caution.

However, journey mapping can unearth some behavioural outliers that are worth noting and following up on.

I recently ran an employee experience mapping session where one of the personas was that of someone getting promoted. In the “What are they thinking?” section, a comment was made that they hoped their previous peers would now “fear me”. The sticky note was written and put up on the wall. No-one challenged it despite many internal communications extolling the values of ‘our family’ and ‘camaraderie’.

Likewise, one comment from a senior executive who said they – a company who claimed to give “exceptional client experiences” – would only ask clients for feedback if the client can be billed for the time.

Such anecdotes might be limited to one or two people. They’re easy to brush aside, but if there’s a latent attitude problem – especially if that’s coming from the leaders of the business – it’s better to find out and address it.

 

9 Focus. The whole point of journey mapping is to generate ideas and be confident in what you do next.

That said, the workshops will give you tens if not hundreds of suggestions. It’s a nice problem to have but can also feel overwhelming. Where now?

Part of the solution is right there on the day in the journey mapping workshop; your colleagues. Make the most of the opportunity and ask them to vote on the issues that they think are the most important.

You might have a thousand sticky notes, but voting will give you an instant proxy for where the top issues lie and which warrant further investigation.

One word of caution though. Be prepared that when you validate the journey with your customers, they may highlight different priorities. Far from being frustrating, treat it like gold-dust. Without going through that process you wouldn’t know what’s important to them. You’d have everyone doing lots of stuff, just not necessarily the right stuff.

 

10 Fun. Seriously, have some fun.

One of the best benefits of customer journey mapping is that it’s simply a great way to bring people in your business together. It’s far from being a dry exercise and is, unintentionally, often a great way to foster employee engagement.

They’re on their feet adding value, not being talked at. They’re being asked for their opinions, to role-play personas and to think creatively. They’re asked to think about different scenarios and “What if…?” ideas.

It might stretch a few people who haven’t totally bought in to why they are there. Look at journey mapping workshops as you would a customer experience though. You want them to come away engaged and enthused, telling everyone else about it.

So if they get distracted, go off on wild tangents and have a laugh they’ll share the stories.

Before you know it, you’ll be everyone’s best friend and more and more people will want to get involved in helping you making your business customer-centric.

 

If you set out to convince a sceptical stakeholder to do one activity that increases employee engagement, deepens customer empathy and prioritises finite resources all at the same time, you’d really have to go a long way to beat journey mapping.

I hope that gives some food for thought but I’m sure you’ll have other benefits of customer journey mapping too – let me know!

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Thank you for reading the blog, I hope you found it thought-provoking.  

I’m Jerry Angrave and I help people in Customer Experience roles do what they need to do. I’m a CCXP (Certified Customer Experience Professional) and am one of a handful of people globally who are authorised by the CXPA to train CX professionals for its accreditation. I founded Empathyce after a long career in CX and Marketing roles and am now a consultant and trainer. 

Do get in touch if you’ve any comments on the blog, any questions or are interested in training or consultancy support.

Thank you,

Jerry 

[email protected]   |   www.empathyce.com   |   +44 (0) 7917 718072

Why wouldn’t we make customer experiences easy?

Last week I had the pleasure of speaking at an event about how to nurture a customer-centric culture. One of the key issues I referenced is that too often we have a gap between the sky-high corporate ambition (such as “to be the world’s best customer experience company”) and the lower-altitude commitment to making that a reality.

We see the consequences of that misalignment regularly. Just in the last couple of days alone I’ve experienced a tale of two cultures. Two very simple questions put to two organisations with two very different results.

I’m sharing them in the hope that one inspires and the other prompts us to ask ourselves, “Could that happen in our business?”.

Firstly, my bank. I had a general enquiry about one of their processes. A client bounced a cheque on me so the bank had automatically represented it. When it was returned the second time I was charged for the pleasure. So, I wanted to know what the bank’s policy was on how many times they would represent the cheque (and therefore how much I’d be charged too).

Their brand proposition proudly talks about wanting “to help businesses thrive…to help people realise their ambitions”. But they’re one of the world’s biggest players anyway and as I had a simple question my expectations of a quick response were high.

My problem though was not that I didn’t get an answer. More, it was ridiculously difficult to ask it in the first place.

My first attempt started after 10pm and the helpline was closed. Fair enough, though people managing their own businesses necessarily tend do the admin at either end of the day. I resorted to the FAQs on the website but after much trawling there was nothing relevant . The LiveChat was not live either.

So next morning I called back. The IVR route made me enter my branch sort code number. Then I needed to type in my account number followed by my date of birth and two digits from my security PIN. For some reason I then had my balance read out automatically. Twice. Topped off with a declaration about the difference between the balance and cleared funds.

I then had to navigate three further levels of IVR options before listening to the on-hold music for five minutes. Then someone picked up the call.

At that point they very helpful. The question was answered inside a minute. Added to the time I’d spent the night before though, the effort to get that point was disproportionate. I only hope they measure customer effort rather than, or aswell as, overall advocacy otherwise things won’t change.

Compare that with my second experience the same day. Next week I’m chairing sessions on passenger experience at the Rail Festival in Amsterdam. I was wondering how I get from Schiphol airport to the city centre by train. So, when a reminder about my flight popped up on my KLM app with a very clear ‘Contact Us’ button I sent them a quick question via Twitter (I could choose which messaging platform to use).

I sat back and carried on with my evening. Twelve minutes later, I had a response from the airline pointing me to where the rail ticket office is inside the airport. Sorted, with very little input from me.

But more than that, after only nine minutes, a delightful lady who runs a company helping law firms in Holland intervened and forwarded my request directly to the rail company, NS. They too then quickly confirmed what I needed to do.

Not only were the airline and rail company right on top of things, one of their own customers was willing to help another. I was very grateful but also intrigued about why she’d done that. She told me the motivation was that she is very proud of the Netherlands and wanted to help anyone who was visiting her country. Her intent was not so much to help the airline or rail company directly but subconsciously had confidence the issue would be resolved quickly.

And indeed, I’d had a swift response. But beyond her wider motive I thought about rail passengers in this country. If we happened to see a message from someone coming to the UK and they’d asked the airline about rail travel here, would we put our own reputation on the line by trying to help out? Would we be so confident that the rail operator would pick up the baton so quickly and easily? Hmmm.

 

They say the experience on the outside reflects the culture on the inside. If it feels like wading through treacle to get answers to simple questions then that business is more than likely carrying excess costs. If it’s easy for customers there’s less processing and support needed from the business. Unnecessary complexity also does nothing to support the wider brand promise; quite the opposite. If the reality of the experience is working against the expectation so much of the Marketing budget is wasted.

It’s easy to set sky-high ambitions but as CX professionals we need ensure there are no gaps between them and what it’s really like to be a customer. As KLM and NS have shown, if it can be easy, why wouldn’t it be? We already know that better experiences mean customers will come back more often, spend more and tell others to do the same. And if that then makes customers feel willing and able to help others customers too, that’s got to be a win for everyone, surely.

(Oh, if you’re interested, in the UK a bank will usually represent a cheque four times. Some though apparently will keep representing many more times, conveniently charging you each time. Be warned!).

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Thank you for reading the blog, I hope you found it thought-provoking.  

I’m Jerry Angrave and I help people in Customer Experience roles do what they need to do. I’m a CCXP (Certified Customer Experience Professional) and am one of a handful of people globally who are authorised by the CXPA to train CX professionals for its accreditation. I founded Empathyce after a long career in CX and Marketing roles and am now a consultant and trainer. 

Do get in touch if you’ve any comments on the blog, any questions or are interested in training or consultancy support.

Thank you,

Jerry 

[email protected]   |   www.empathyce.com   |   +44 (0) 7917 718072

 

 

Lessons in how to embed Customer Experience

At the recent CXPA networking event in London hosted by Pen CX, the world of the CX professional was thrown into the spotlight. I wanted to share thoughts from two of the presenters, who reminded us of some of the practical yet vitally important things we need to do to bring about the right change.

First, Ali Lawrie, Head of Customer Experience at Akzo Nobel, owners of the Dulux paint brand among others. Ali talked about the challenges of bringing the customer agenda to the fore in a B2B organisation which, understandably, has had a keen focus on technical product development and the sales supply chain.

A lesson she’d learned early on was to not underestimate the time it takes to win stakeholders round where they have their own priorities. Perseverance and resilience are essential qualities of the CX practitioner.

It’s time well-spent though and an investment that pays dividends. Getting the attention was also helped in no small part by demonstrating the reality of today’s experience using customer verbatims.

To see a metric that says customers are waiting three minutes for a call to be answered may not be a catalyst for instant transformation.  But hearing the direct impact on the customer, who might be an architect about to see a key client or a hospital property manager reaching out for some quick advice, expressed in their words with the emotion that goes with it, is infinitely more powerful.

Furthermore, it can show how a company’s brand and advertising is potentially being wasted because the experience does not deliver the promise of (a variant of) “We put customers first”. It’s a valuable and necessary conversation to have with the Marketing team.

Journey mapping provided many of the insights for Ali and those exercises also created six key stages of the experience, each now represented by an icon. Bringing to life the customer experience is at the heart of an effective CX programme and so the more visible it is the better. Sharing the icons and explaining the stages now references any activity to a specific part of the journey, has helped engage and involve colleagues and makes communications clearer.

Empathyce

Your CX momentum will take off, eventually

Creating a stronger business by using Customer Experience thinking will not happen without complete engagement right across the business. To engage not just those who are customer-facing but also those who are back-office or in management roles is a big stretch for many fledgling CX teams,.

So Ali’s advice is to spread the message and create movement from within through the extended use of CX champions – finding people from all parts of the business who take an interest, want to be part of the movement and see it as a good development opportunity. They will be the eyes and ears of CX inside and across the proverbial silos.

Mike Bellis of Pen CX and formerly of Pfizer, then reflected on how he changed his approach to win people round. “I started by highlighting issues that were affecting customers and trying to get them fixed, but this was seen as creating new problems within the organisation rather than trying to fix those which were perceived to be there already”.

As this approach wasn’t developing very much engagement, Mike quickly changed tack. The new approach was to understand internal stakeholders’ issues first and then show how a focus on Customer Experience could help overcome them. Before long he was everyone’s best friend. The momentum grew as colleagues from around the globe came knocking on his door for his methodologies and thinking.

 

Anyone who works as a CX professional will know how hard these things are to do. It’s therefore reassuring to hear that with persistence they can still make a difference.

As Mike Bellis summarised, “In principle, Customer Experience is simple. It doesn’t mean it’s easy though”.

Thanks to Ali and Mike, also to Neil Sharp of Pen CX for organising and hosting the event.

If you’ve any thoughts on what can be done at a practical level to help a business become more customer-centric, please share them!

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Thank you for reading the blog, I hope you found it thought-provoking.  

I’m Jerry Angrave and I help people in Customer Experience roles do what they need to do. I’m a CCXP (Certified Customer Experience Professional) and am one of a handful of people globally who are authorised by the CXPA to train CX professionals for its accreditation. I founded Empathyce after a long career in CX and Marketing roles and am now a consultant and trainer. I give CX professionals the skills, tools and confidence to be the ones to drive their Customer Experience efforts forward.

Do get in touch if you’ve any comments on the blog, any questions or are interested in training or consultancy support.

Thank you,

Jerry 

[email protected]   |   www.empathyce.com   |   +44 (0) 7917 718072

 

Customer Experience says mind your own business

So we now know that United breaks customers as well as guitars.

customer experience risks, customer experience consultancy, customer experience trainingKnowing how your business treats its paying customers is one thing; understanding the impact it has on them is quite another. If the organisation is focused primarily on operational logistics, load factors and revenue per mile then such practices are going to be carried out regardless.

But, there’s a real disconnect when, as the airline states, it wants to be a leader in the industry and its goal is “to make every flight a positive experience”.  I doubt anyone at United has set out to design a customer journey that involves losing blood and teeth but comments by CEO Oscar Munoz, that it will prove a “watershed moment”, acknowledge the need to be much more aware of the unintended consequences of how they operate.

 

United’s most recent problem was exacerbated because they had too many people wanting to be on that flight. At the other end of the spectrum is a UK-based airline whose problems appear to arise when there are too few passengers. Bruce Temkin recently published a report into the best and worst customer experience companies in the UK. One of the brands towards the bottom of his list is a well-known regional airline. For years the word on the street (and I can vouch for the experience) is that they have a reputation for delaying or cancelling flights. At the gate, the message is that the aircraft has a technical problem but anecdotally passengers say it often coincides with less-than-full flights. Such is the regularity of schedule changes that many now choose an alternative route and carrier if they really, really need to get from city A to city B at the agreed time.

It must be hard for loyal employees to take the criticism and yet the practice continues. Maybe it’s a cost-led strategy rather than customer-led, which is fine if that’s your choice of how to fly. Maybe.

 

A few months ago I was presenting research findings back to a Board. It wasn’t all good news. “That was spectacularly uncomfortable to hear” – the words of a Chief Marketing Officer in response to learning what his customers really thought. Thinking I was about to be shown the door, his comment was followed by “Thank you for telling us, we needed to hear it”.

That conversation stuck in my mind, serving as a warning bell about complacency; if we don’t understand our business from our customers’ perspective how do we know we’re anywhere near where we think we are? We do, absolutely, need to mind our own business.

 

I love facilitating customer journey mapping workshops. Not least, because I always ask for people to share stories about great and awful experiences they’ve had. Sadly, when it comes to bad experiences it’s often the same brands who crop up time after time.

One of those is energy company npower. I’m one of their customers and to be fair, I haven’t had a bad experience with them until now. I do, however, expect anyone in business to get the basics – such as my bills – right. But after my own first tangible experience, amplified by their reputation for customer service, I’m now heading for the switch button.

I’m a dual-fuel customer so I get two annual statements through the post – one electricity and one gas (I had asked for e-statements but that hasn’t been actioned, that’s another story). It’s a weighty envelope so I assume they’ve stuffed it full of newsletters, offers and new terms and conditions. Inside are indeed two annual statements but then each has an exact duplicate. Not only that but there is a third duplicate of each where the only difference on that version is that the amounts are all set to nil.

So if anyone at npower is wondering why their costs are heading in the opposite and wrong direction to their customer satisfaction scores there’s a big clue, right there. How do you do that? In 2017 how do you get it so wrong? I’m assuming they don’t know as I’ve had nothing by way of apology or clarification. But then if they are not so customer-centric in the first place maybe I shouldn’t expect anything.

 

In a meeting with a subscription services provider recently I was asking about how processes worked. For customers who turn up, buy and go again, everyone was all over it with metrics galore. But enter the world of the ‘What-if’ scenario and things rapidly became less clear. “If I’m this sort of customer, can I do this?”. “Do I need to do that first or do you do that for your customers automatically and if so, do they know that?” “What does this bit mean?”. And so on, all met with lots of “Umm…” and “I think…”.

I make no apology for mentioning again an example of one of the most head-the-sand cases I’ve come across. A utility company I did some work for had, according to its leadership team, very high employee engagement. It followed that while they believed their processes could be better the problem wasn’t their people. On investigation, it transpired the people were totally and utterly disengaged. They didn’t care about fixing customers’ problems and did just enough to get by. They were intelligent people but were fighting a lost cause. If they met someone in a pub who asked where they work, they were more likely to say they were unemployed or make something up than admit to working at the brand. They’d told management time and time again what was going wrong but nothing had been done. And the reason why the employee engagement score was so high was because they deliberately ticked the 10/10 box, thinking that if they didn’t say they were fully engaged they wouldn’t get a bonus. The leadership team had no idea of the extent of the true levels of engagement.

 

And that’s the point. When we take an operationally-led view we know where we think we’re at because we’ve built the processes, plugged in our systems and measured what we think is right. But look at the same processes from a customer’s perspective and we have a very different view of our world.

If we don’t know our own business, we can’t be confident about understanding how we are making our customers feel. They determine what a customer will do next and how they’ll talk about us to others. It has a real commercial impact and so we need to understand both the experience and the consequence.

We should, literally, mind our own business before our customers are the ones who bump us off.

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Thank you for reading the blog, I hope you found it thought-provoking.  

I’m Jerry Angrave and I help people in Customer Experience roles do what they need to do. I’m a CCXP (Certified Customer Experience Professional) and am one of a handful of people globally who are authorised by the CXPA to train CX professionals for its accreditation. I founded Empathyce after a long career in CX and Marketing roles and am now a consultant and trainer. I give CX professionals the skills, tools and confidence to be the ones to drive their Customer Experience efforts forward.

Do get in touch if you’ve any comments on the blog, any questions or are interested in training or consultancy support.

Thank you,

Jerry 

[email protected]   |   www.empathyce.com   |   +44 (0) 7917 718072

 

The biggest risks to our Customer Experience efforts

Stress-testing customer experiences reveals flaws elsewhere

When people with different agendas build an experience, what could possibly go wrong…?

Ambition, commitment and perseverance. All three are critical to success but a weakness in any one of them is a huge risk to our Customer Experience plans. It will almost certainly ensure we don’t achieve what we set out to. While we focus on doing things in a new way it’s every bit as important to be aware of the warning signs that the old, destructive ways haven’t yet evaporated totally.

 

From what I’ve seen the most effective approaches to customer experience have three things in common. They have people who are passionate about their subject and a deep understanding of what it’s like being a customer. Critically though, they also enjoy a culture where the first two are allowed to thrive.

I’m often asked how organisations can cultivate those three ingredients; what should they do when they set out to become more customer-centric? There’s a long list to work through.  So assuming those things are in place, once the Customer Experience momentum is up and running what could possibly go wrong? Another long list, this time of spanners that are poised to throw themselves into the works – if we let them.

As a CEO recently told me: “If we don’t keep pedalling uphill, gravity takes over, all the effort is wasted and we’re back to square one before we know it”.

In this post I’ve highlighted just three of the biggest risks; different agendas, the day job and an obsession with metrics. They’re inextricably linked and will be of little surprise but they are chosen because, from my observations inside a wide variety of businesses, if the ambition, commitment and perseverance isn’t genuine enough these risks have a habit of becoming very real issues.

 

First up, people working to different agendas.

When employees have divergent priorities, whether they are just following their leader’s instructions or there is simply no common purpose, we get silos. It’s a convenient label that somehow explains, excuses and – worse – gives credibility to value-destroying ways of working.

You know you’ve got silos when you ask 10 people in a meeting room why the business exists or what the customer strategy is and you get 10 or more different answers. At best, there are variations on a theme, often educated guesses and sometimes no answer at all. Nor do they seem bothered, they’ve got their job to do (see below).

A large player in the financial services sector had an internal goal “to be the best”.  It was admirable and aspirational but no-one knew exactly what that meant. The highest savings rates and lowest mortgage rates in the market? Or widest net interest margin? Highest adoption rates of its app of any company in the world?

Despite the cleverly-worded posters on the wall about putting customers first, if there is not some common, meaningful customer purpose and metrics that everyone has a vested interest in there’s no way any cross-functional improvements will happen.

As a result of the fog, everyone carries on doing the things they do have clarity about. They know how their boss is going to decide whether they are meeting or exceeding expectations in the annual review and that’s their priority. No surprise therefore that we then see tensions, politics and stress with all the consequences that leads to.

Meanwhile, all the good customer-centric intent has rolled back down to the bottom of the hill.

 

The day-job default.

While part of the business is embracing Customer Experience with raw passion, the reality is that there is also a day-job to do be done. Sadly, it’ll stay that way until Customer Experience becomes just the way things are done rather than CX being seen as a function or division – and therefore seen an ‘optional extra’.

That might be because many of those who are asked to go and ‘do’ customer experience are having the responsibility added to their existing workload. Or at an organisational level, there’s just too much noise going on for anything new to make itself heard. Some don’t get it, others don’t want to get it and a few get it but resist a move out of their comfort zone.

It’s very easy to run a customer strategy session, a journey mapping workshop or an ethnographic study and then while the notes are being written up and we get it on the next Steering Group agenda, attention turns to the more ‘important and urgent’ things in our inbox.  There might be a seasonal spike in activity that needs all hands on deck.  “Project Invincible” has meeting coming up that needs a cast of thousands to attend or a new campaign is due to launch and that’s taking all available resource. Lots of reasons, but are they plausible or just a convenient excuse?

Because Customer Experience in its purest sense is about a cultural mindset, when there’s lots of firefighting to be done today it’s often seen as something discretionary, something that can wait until tomorrow.  But we know how often tomorrow comes.

 

An obsession with the score not the experience

I’ve always taken the line that if we get the experience right first, the numbers will look after themselves. Of course, whichever measurement method we choose we need to know what drives the numbers or drags them back but at least that means we’re looking at things from a customer’s perspective. Chasing the number is purely a vanity exercise.

A rallying cry to increase a customer score by 10 points might sound admirable, and it is. The issue is the way the business then sets about increasing the score. Without robust governance in place, those running the surveys will be coerced into changing the way the feedback is collected; they’re told to ask only those who’ve gone through the complete purchase cycle rather than include those who dropped out half-way. Customers will be offered incentives for giving higher scores or respondents will be given a false scale to flatter the real score.

Gaming the system is a real issue for many businesses and not all of them are aware that it goes on within their organisation. If you’re interested or concerned and want more food for thought, I wrote about a culture where the numbers are more important than people in this blog.

It’s one reason why we’re seeing more companies adopting the scores from independent review sites such as Trustpilot, Google and TripAdvisor as their key customer metric.customer experience perseverance

 

What to do about them?

There’s no rocket science here and there will be other issues that can derail our best Customer Experience efforts. Like gravity, we can only escape their pull with a bit of effort. They have patience and we have to assume they’ll wait a long time, hoping  for changes or a weakness to appear.

But if we share the principles of the Customer Strategy and show employees how the brand promises to treat its customers, if we have a governance process that informs and involves people from every corner of the business, if we ensure there is a visible commitment from the top that this is a priority for the business and if we have common customer metrics in everyone’s scorecard the risks have to be much, much lower. We’ll stay ahead of competitors and keep up with rising expectations too.

To say they are all obvious issues is, well, obvious. But if they are so well known, why do they keep getting in the way and what can we do about them? I’d love to know what you think.

 

Thank you for reading the blog on what can derail CX efforts, I hope you found it thought-provoking.  

I’m Jerry Angrave and I help Customer Experience people do what they need to do. I’m a CCXP (Certified Customer Experience Professional) and am one of a handful of people globally who are authorised by the CXPA to train CX professionals for its accreditation. I founded Empathyce after a long career in CX and Marketing roles and am now a consultant and trainer. I give CX professionals the skills, tools and confidence to be the ones to drive their Customer Experience efforts forward.

Do get in touch if you’ve any comments on the blog, any questions or are interested in training or consultancy support.

Thank you,

Jerry 

[email protected]   |   www.empathyce.com   |   +44 (0) 7917 718 072