Customer Journey Mapping Archives - Page 2 of 6

Customer Journey Mapping, done. What next?

Here’s a familiar scenario in the customer journey mapping process. Your workshops went well, everyone was engaged and the team is bursting with ideas. You added extra value by creating an environment where people from across all functions shared their behind-the-scenes stories. In doing so they learned a lot more about their own business, which wouldn’t have happened without you. All in all it’s a good result. Customer journey mapping process

With plenty of actions and food for thought there is now momentum. Expectations are high but the ‘journey of the journey’ has only just begun. So as you unplug your laptop, switch off the light and leave the workshop your attention turns to what happens next.

In the first part of this series I explored ways to get buy-in from skeptical stakeholders for customer journey mapping workshops. Last time I looked at how to make sure the workshop stays on track and is efficient use of time. And for this last instalment I want to share thoughts on what to do after everyone’s gone back to their day job.

And that’s part of the challenge we now face. We’ve got people interested and we’ve flushed out some great initiatives. However, the reality is that whatever gold we uncover and however energised we feel, we have to make it part of their day job before the wave of enthusiasm loses its energy. We don’t want it lost in the noise of inboxes and meetings.

A large utility company I worked with recently told me they’d done some journey mapping a couple of years previously. They’d had it illustrated and they’d dig it out to compare then with now. Only they couldn’t find it. After much searching the mystery was eventually uncovered. In a sea of hot-desks at corporate HQ was a line of table-high storage units. Beneath the glass top, but also barely visible under stationery boxes, photocopying paper and a guillotine was a cleverly illustrated customer journey. Had it been on show it would have been a powerful way to engage stakeholders. It told a compelling story and could have been a catalyst for badly needed change. But all the effort had, literally, been shelved.

So what can we do to make sure the path down which we’ve just started doesn’t wind on aimlessly? Here is my take on just some of things we can do.

Share it

First things first, thank everyone for attending and write up the journey (s) you’ve looked at. Beyond that, share it personally with other stakeholders who you need to be involved and demonstrate the momentum you now have, inviting them to be part of it. Get everyone to share the outputs with their own teams and make it part of the governance process to have them reviewed and critiqued.

Sharing it widely increases the collective ownership. It will also then keep evolving into a more accurate picture of the real-world customer experience.

Show it off

Customer journey mapping isn’t, as some organisations seem to think, all about creating a pretty picture. It’s important but not the end-game, far from it. What it looks like will depend on what works for your own business and who your audiences are. Some will be at a high-level and others more detailed but if you can turn the brown paper and sticky notes into something pleasing to the eye that’s great. Make it large and put it somewhere that will stay visible. Ask passers-by in the office to comment on it.

Unless you have easy access to a graphics team, my experience is that, at worst, it’s better to have a well-organised table made in PowerPoint, Keynote or Excel to tell the tale than to lose time trying making it look like a storyboard for the next Peter Jackson film. The aim is still to help colleagues understand what they need to change and why.

Validate it

When you feel it’s in good shape, try it out on a few customers who match the persona from whose perspective it was done. Ask them if they recognise that as their journey and their issues as they pass through it. Play it back to them so they know you’ve understood and ask them what they don’t want to happen at each stage. Having that extra layer of customer validation gives enormous credibility, something that’s hugely beneficial when dealing with stakeholders, especially the one who love to pick holes in things.

Act on it

It’s the most obvious and important thing to do with a journey map but there’s simply no point in doing the maps if there’s no way of using them. It must become a regular feature of the CX governance. Or, as I’ve seen a few times, the creation of a journey map is the very stimulus needed for creating oversight in the first place. The maps need nurturing and harvesting if they are to continue growing and yielding more insights.

Prioritising what to do next is then the issue. Hopefully you’ll have no shortage of possible actions but the mapping exercise will reveal what to do first. You will have identified what’s most important and how well it’s done and that then gives confidence about what to do in the short, medium and long term for customers, colleagues and stakeholders.

Picking off those things that are easy to implement and have a big impact will also demonstrate the proof of concept for when you are seeking greater investments in time, people and money.

Do more of it

It’s not a one-off exercise. The world keeps changing so the mapping will need repeating to stay relevant. That might be at least annually if not more frequently, especially as your changes get implemented and the experience evolves. Even if nothing within the front-line business changes, customers’ expectations shift, competitors up the ante and an IT systems upgrade always seems to have an unintended consequence somewhere down the line.

It’s likely you identified several other personas in the workshop so map the same journey for them. You’ll also have different journeys, some made by yet more personas, to map out too. And time spent mapping what it’s like for a colleague and/or third-party to deliver the experience is as invaluable as it is necessary to complete the picture.

The customer journey mapping process is an essential competency of any business. It’s only part of the CX mix and without it the risks, wasted costs and commercial consequences can be significant.

But with the right engagement and preparation, with robust facilitation and with the resilience to build the momentum you’ve created, your influence will be greater, the connection between CX and the bottom-line will be clearer and the cogs of the business all fit together neatly to deliver the right experiences. A good result indeed.

Follow Jerry Angrave on Twitter @jerryangrave

Thank you for reading the blog about journey mapping, I hope you found it useful. I’m Jerry Angrave, a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP). I’m a CX consultant with an extensive corporate background and I also specialise in professional development for those in, or moving to, customer experience roles. Feel free to contact me with any questions – by email to [email protected] or by phone on +44 (0)7917 718072. More details at the website www.empathyce.com.

Keep customer journey mapping sessions on track and effective

Facilitating a customer journey mapping session for the first time can be daunting. However, assuming you’ve invited the right people from across the business, and those who said they’d come do turn up, you should have an audience eager to get involved. Make customer journey mapping effective

Even so, your collaborations have to work hard and show that the time is well spent. In your workshops some people will feel they can’t be seen not tapping away at a keyboard. Others will have to duck-out half way through to take a call and there will always be at least one who is there because they’ve been told to but have no idea why.

In the opening segment of this three-part series I looked at ways to get buy-in from sceptical stakeholders. The next and final instalment will suggest what to do with the ‘map’ once it’s been created.

This second piece therefore is about keeping your journey mapping workshop on track. It’s easy to get derailed so asking the right questions, documenting the answers and making it an enjoyable experience for those taking part are central tenets of any journey mapping session. Here though, are five more suggestions for making sure your time with others is going to generate compelling insights and position you as the go-to person for customer experience.

Firstly, we need to be really clear about exactly who is doing what and why.

#1 Personas

To improve an existing experience or design a new one we must have genuine empathy with those on the receiving end of what we do. Traditional segmentation approaches that give us Millennials, socio-economic groups or B2B vs B2C are helpful but only to a degree. Generational Marketing for example, assumes that everyone born around the same time will follow similar behaviours.

For an organisation wedded to metrics, processes and projects, commoditising customers in that way may feel more comfortable. Yet it fails to highlight that we’re dealing with real people who interact with us because of real needs and wants. They have different motivations, hopes and expectations. And there are real, personal consequences if we get it right or not.

By bringing customers to life as a person not a segment, we can show the rest of the business what’s most important to them and why in a more meaningful and engaging way. Give the persona a name, draw a picture of them or a day in their life. Take time to discuss what they think, say and do.

We’re talking here about customers but the mapping exercise can – and should – be done equally for employees delivering the experience, stakeholders and partners to empathise with them too.

#2 Prioritise

Chances are you’ll identify a number of personas, all of whom have the potential to go on many different journeys with you. We can’t do justice to journey mapping by trying to do everything at the same time so we need a focus and a clear scope. Multiply the number of personas by the products or services they’re buying, the number of reasons they are interacting and then by the channel permutations and the number of possible journeys can quickly be measured in the hundreds if not thousands. Which one to map?

Some will jump out more than others especially where there are burning platforms. Others will emerge as you go along; a touchpoint can be drilled into in more detail to become a mapable journey in its own right. But as far as possible, choose one persona doing one thing and stick to it; have a crystal-clear scope for this journey and plan to deal with the others later.

The journey maps will then highlight the things are most important to your customers. They will show how well you do those things – if indeed they are measured – so you know how well (or not) you do the most important stuff or where you’re wasting effort.

You’ll end up with a long list of ideas but they can be organised so you focus on protecting the important things that are done well, pounce on the significant experiences that are done badly and stop doing the costly work that customers don’t value.

#3 Stay in character

It’s one of the most essential elements of journey mapping yet it’s also the easiest to fall foul of. Short of asking customers directly (more of that in a moment) the only way to truly see things from their perspective is to act and think like them. The personas you’ve created will guide you. Take on the persona and pretend, role-play their interactions.

If you’re facilitating the session watch out for comments like “Yeah, but the reason why we have to do it like that is because ….” and “The customer doesn’t appreciate that what we have to do is…”.

We are not creating a process map. When the team is in full flight it’s very easy to revert to the day-job. Just for the avoidance of any doubt, I repeat. We are not creating a process map. Quite the opposite: we need to know what it is like to be on the receiving end of our processes.

An effective discipline here is to use “I… “ statements. In other words, use their language not yours. When the sticky notes are flying onto the brown paper, use phrases like “I’m choosing” or “I’m paying” rather than “Browse website” and “Purchase” respectively.

#4 Customer in the room…eventually

A valuable by-product of journey mapping is that cross-functional teams get to know their own business better. By all means share the ins- and outs of what you do, it’s a great – and from what I see an all-too-often unique – opportunity to do so.

But while those conversations nurture internal understanding, they are not always ones you’d feel happy having in front of customers. For them to hear that their premium-priced service is actually quite fragile and held together with string and tape isn’t great. Or, that one part of the business really doesn’t know what the next bit does.

It’s the main reason I advocate that customers only get the opportunity – and they must at some point – to validate and iterate the journey once you’ve agreed the starting point internally.

On the flip-side, where you are mapping “What could the future look like?” scenarios, having customers’ input and creativity coupled with successful design-thinking and ethnography is as essential as it is priceless.

#5 Start/Finish points

Unless you magically happen to burst into someone’s life the instant they think they might need you and then disappear forever just as quickly when you’ve got their money, the traditional end-to-end thinking can be flawed.

From a customer’s perspective, it won’t start with the initial enquiry. More likely, it will begin with an event in the customer’s life that triggers the need or desire for the first or next interaction. It’s best to start where there is no current or active relationship with the brand as it will then become clear how what you do fits in with their life, not the other way around.

The final end point may equally be a shade of grey but one thing every journey should have is touchpoint under the heading of “I’m sharing my experience”. It may be during or at the end of the experience but if nothing else, it forces the team to think about where a customer might tell the story of their experience, however unstructured, usually once it’s over. If that’s not plugged into the current feedback system and usual reactive surveys, there’s one action to add to the list already. I wrote about that specific issue in a separate blog here.

So journey mapping is an incredibly insightful tool but it must be done effectively and with discipline if it’s to yield the results that will drive a business forward.

The final instalment in this three-part series about customer journey mapping will look at what should happen next. In the meantime, if you’ve your own suggestions on how to ensure journey mapping is working hard for you I’d love you to share them.

Follow Jerry Angrave on Twitter @jerryangrave

Thank you. I’m Jerry Angrave, a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP). I’m a CX consultant with an extensive corporate background and also specialise in professional development for those in customer experience roles. Feel free to contact me with any questions – by email to [email protected] or by phone on +44 (0)7917 718072. More details at the website www.empathyce.com.

Customer Journey Mapping? Why not?

Customer journey mapping. It’s probably the easiest starting point for anyone looking to improve the right customer experiences.

Why do customer journey mapping

That said, I still encounter business leaders who see customer journey mapping as a waste of time. They don’t see it as a means to a very commercial end; to them it’s about employees pretending to be customers and having fun with post-it notes. At best, they won’t release any of their people from doing their day-job to go on a ‘jolly’. At worst, the journeys get mapped to tick a box, after which they simply gather dust.

So, this is the first in a short series of three posts on why journey mapping is important, how to make it effective and what to do with it.

First, let’s deal with the “Why?”. Customer experience professionals need the tenacity and resilience to win everyone over, whether it’s buy-in to the very concept of CX or asking for cross-functional representation in workshops. It’s not easy when those leaders want instant gratification for any activity.

Showcasing how journey mapping leads to better experiences, which in turn improve sales, revenue and retention is acutely important. But that alone sometimes isn’t enough to shake cynics out of the complacency tree. They’ll say the business is making money, they have satisfied customers and employees know what they’re doing; why change, why spend time doing what we call “journey mapping”?

One approach to get them to sit up and take notice is looking at the flipside; ask “Why not?”. What if we don’t do journey mapping, will we miss out on anything? What happens if we don’t try and understand what it’s really like today and should be like tomorrow to be a customer? Well, here are just a few things that will happen…

No meaningful purpose

The mission statement and vision, the guiding principles, should be about customers not the organisation. Absent a real understanding of customers’ needs, hopes and expectations a business can only operate in a vacuum. There’s no consensus around what should be done so everyone will carry on doing their own thing, preserving the corrosive effect of silos.

We waste money on the brand

Advertising expenditure in the UK this year is expected to be over £20bn. Yet such investments will be wasted if the promises made by the brand are not backed up by the reality of the experience. After all, the brand is what people tell each other it is, based on what they remember – not what the strapline says. And we all know what impact the presence of broken promises has on a relationship.

That’s the customer experience team. They do what they call customer ‘journeys’…

We measure the wrong thing

It’s easy to measure the most obvious things but is that simply a process audit of what the business thinks should happen? Journey mapping will highlight the things customers value the most; we need to know how well do we do what’s most important. It also avoids employees feeling pressured to chase a number rather than feel empowered to give the right experience.

We waste effort

Money, time and resource are all finite but one of the great things about journey mapping is that it is very helpful at prioritising what to do next. With a deep empathetic view of customers it becomes a lot easier to challenge personal agendas, inwardly-focused projects or new products that fit in the “technology for technology sake” basket. It’s easy to work out what things are really important to customers but we’re rubbish at doing, as well as preserving the things we’re good at.

Complacency eats away

The gap between customer expectations and reality is one of the key drivers of a sustainable business. A company may feel secure because there’s no obvious burning platform. As consumers, we have exposure to many companies across a variety of sectors and so our expectations of better experiences are rising as quickly as our tolerance of poor ones are falling.

We miss a big trick

An essential component of effective journey mapping is to see it from the employees’ perspectives, otherwise we have no idea how easy or difficult it is for our people to deliver the right experiences. They know about fragile processes, about broken hand-offs, about a lack of risk-free empowerment and inflexible policies. Their ability to deliver the experience is a link in the chain that can’t be kinked or broken.

We hand over an advantage to competitors

Chances are, your competitors are mapping their customer journeys too, meaning they will be in a better position to take customers away from you. They are de-risking the sustainability of their business by understanding what their – and your – customers will respond to positively

CJM does many things, not least it informs the customer strategy, it gets employees behind a common purpose and it focuses effort in the right place. More than that though, it gives a business confidence and context for what it does, organising the thinking that will start to change things for the better.

It’s an incredibly powerful tool but it must also be disciplined and structured. Therefore next in the series I’ll look at the ‘rules’ for how we can map journeys effectively and finally we’ll look at what to do next once the journey is mapped.

Thanks for reading the post, I’d love to hear what you think about journey mapping.

Jerry

Jerry Angrave is a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP), a CX consultant with an extensive corporate background ‘doing the doing’ and specialises in professional development for those in customer experience roles. Feel free to contact him with any questions – by email to [email protected] or by phone on +44 (0)7917 718072. More details at the website www.empathyce.com.

Poor emails undo all the good brand work

We talk a lot about delivering the brand promise. It’s one of the most critical balancing acts in the business strategy. On the one hand, a very clear proposition so that everyone understands what they need to do and how. On the other, what it feels like as a customer to be on the receiving end of what they do.

They should, of course, be one and the same. The true test of whether a brand has been delivered and safely reached its destination is what customers say to each other, not what the strapline says it should be like. Stress-testing customer experiences reveals flaws elsewhere

Yet I share with you here three very recent examples of where a business has set out with good intentions but the execution has been inconsistent to say the least. The brands as such have all have been ‘delivered’ into my inbox.

A membership organisation with global reach wrote to me about renewing my subscription. They are a very well-known body representing professionals in business and were extolling the virtues of how much more I would learn about customer experience if I renewed. They say – that is, what they want us to believe the brand is all about – they are there to help companies grow.

The reality of the experience was somewhat different. They had already reminded me to renew a few months back, then apologised that they had got the dates wrong. And now, with an invitation to spend money on renewing my membership the email invitation was from someone called No Reply. Not personal, not helpful and hardly inviting. All the good effort that goes into creating the brand promise in the first place, undone in a simple email header. That’s a careless brand, not a global professional one.

I’m sure you’ve had others too like it.

Our attention spans are short and there’s no shortage of advice in writing compelling emails.

I had one email this week with a subject heading “Private invitation”. It looked intriguing but then the opening line was “ Hey guys…I’m a little surprised you haven’t taken me up on this yet “ – it was from a training company whose brand intention is all about engagement, learning and development. I checked and it was the first email I’d had from them. The brand reality as I experienced it is simply arrogant and contemptuous. Why would I now bother wasting more time and reading any further let alone respond. Meanwhile the Marketing and Finance Directors are wondering why their ROI isn’t looking good.

In a similar vein, another email arrives with the heading “Re: Our call tomorrow” . At a quick glance scanning through emails that is one I ought to take a look at. But no, it’s a sales pitch for an event, nothing to do with a call that I’ve set up with someone. Presumptuos and arrogant again. It makes me feel like they are trying to con me – and they did. I opened the email and so their click through rates will look great. But now far from believing they are as they say, the provider of the world’s leading conferences, my emotive reaction to their tactics just shot them in their foot.

Having a crystal clear brand proposition is essential. Sharing it with everyone around the business critical. Organisations have competitors; customers have both a choice and a voice. Having the governance to ensure that customers’ experiences match the intended ones should be treated as a matter of survival.

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, founder of Empathyce and an ex-corporate customer experience practitioner. Since 2012 I’ve been a CX consultant and am also an official trainer for the CXPA’s CCXP exam. 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].

ccxp and art

The future of airline passenger experience

The last two years have seen big steps forward in the airline passenger experience. Some airlines doing great things in the name of creating a sustainable business. Others appear to be wedded to a get-rich-quick strategy. So it’s not surprising that some have customers who help spread the good word while others feel they are been treated with contempt.

But both make money, so which is more important – long-term survival or short-term P&L? Different strategies for different airlines, but there is one common thread that is treated very differently: people. Or as they are known in some circles,“revenue generators”.

Last week I had the pleasure of once again being part of Terrapinn’s World Low Cost Airline Congress. That the name of the event evolved this year into the Aviation Festival is testament to huge shifts within the industry even in the very recent past. Airline passenger experience

Only two years ago the mood in the airline sector appeared dark. It was distracted by existential challenges of economic pressures, merger activity and geopolitical forces. Few were talking about customers let alone measuring what is was like to be one. The focus remained on process efficiency, cost and short-term survival.

Forward a year and 2014 felt more positive. It seemed that every conversation and presentation now contained reference to people, passengers or customers. Yet while something customery needed to be done, it wasn’t entirely clear exactly what or how.

This year though, things moved on again with airlines and suppliers embracing the concept of passenger experience. Maybe a more stable economy and lower fuel prices have helped move the spotlight. But, so the theory goes, by aligning the business strategy, operations and partners with what customers value most, passengers will come back next time, spend more and tell their friends to do the same.

For airlines passenger experience is a sound business philosophy, neatly illustrated by two of the industry’s heavy-hitters.

Forward thinking for forward bookings

Ryanair has won awards for its “Always Getting Better” programme. In a move unthinkable until very recently, Michael O’Leary put passenger experience at the top of his agenda when delivering the latest financial results to the markets. And CMO Kenny Jacobs talked last week about the focus on passengers going beyond an initiative to become a lasting cultural ethos. It will move Ryanair from, in his words, being the baddest to the biggest and best. Letting others make mistakes gives the airline what Jacobs, with a mischievous smile, calls its 4th-mover advantage.

It’s fair to say that over at Virgin Atlantic, they have enjoyed a longer history of benefiting from doing what customers appreciate. That’s not to say they are taking their foot off the gas. Moving on from using Google Glass to enhance its experience for Upper Class passengers, the airline’s dispatch team are using smart-watches to improve efficiency of turn-around times and communication with customers.

They embody the test-learn-refine approach, happy to see where a new piece of technology might lead them. If it’s down a dead-end route, so be it but without that culture they will have no foundation upon which to differentiate their experience or operations.

So in contrast to those who are doing some great things with culture and experiences, it was still a surprise to hear one airline doggedly beating the ‘grab every penny’ drum. To name them will serve little purpose but you will know them. I admire any organisation who has a clarity of proposition, though the explanation of their strategy sits less comfortably. To quote one of their senior executives: “We don’t look at what customers want. We look at what they are prepared to pay for”.

Least-cost processes and inflexible policies are then built rather than experiences. Meals (when paid-for) appear to meet approval but passenger feedback suggests that is a superficial and money-making priority compared with the things that should be a priority: long queues at check-in, dirty aircraft and unfriendly staff.

This airline and many suppliers talk of passenger experience because it seems to be the fashionable thing to do rather than be a way of thinking. The reality is that they already give their passengers an experience but because the driving forces remain revenue per passenger, operational efficiency and spreadsheets full of metrics, those experiences – whether deliberate or unintended – are not the ones that win favour.

Are they getting in their own way? Maybe it’s a deliberate, successful short-term strategy of survival and they will worry about next year, next year. Or will they see the balance that Ryanair are working towards as something to emulate?

Only they know the strategy, but passengers know what they’ll do next time.

What do passengers say to each other?

I’ve recently conducted some research into what passengers say to each other about airlines. Increasingly, whatever we are buying, we look to see – and are influenced by – what the experience of other customers has been. It’s no different when we choose which airline to fly with. too much effort

For this sector though, one factor shone through as being the biggest single reason why passengers rave about a particular airline or warn others to give them a wide berth; people.

Whether a positive or negative experience, a third of passengers cited the attitude and helpfulness of people as the reason for the good or poor experience. In the positive camp, it was all about the cabin crew, attentive and friendly. When things went wrong however, it was people outside the aircraft who were at the root of the problems – ground crew, contact centres and service desks. As passengers, we do not know nor do we care whether those roles are in-house or sub-contracted out. Whatever the clever strapline says, it’s the airline’s brand in their hands.

The future is already here

David Rowan, Editor of Wired magazine, proved at this year’s event that the future is not something that we can wait until tomorrow to get ready for. Flying cars exist today. Astronauts in the International Space Station are emailed instructions to make tools they didn’t know they’d need by using an onboard 3D printer. And tetraplegics can use brainwaves to guide a robot to help them drink.

Yet in 2015 we still have airlines with grumpy employees, slow and inflexible processes and scruffy aircraft. Other markets outside aviation are moving fast and they are the ones who set our expectations as passengers about what a good experience should be like. It doesn’t have to be “wow” or expensive; if it’s empathetic it will be profitable.

There is clearly of a sense of optimism about the future for the industry and there are many airlines doing great things. It’s a future that will be no less challenging but one where a genuine focus on passenger experiences will help secure a stronger future for load factors, revenue and forward bookings.

So for those who still don’t get it, beware the economic upturn because that will simply prise open the gap even further between the airlines that keep passengers, partners and investors coming back and those who simply run out of options. And passengers.

Thank you for your interest in this post about PaxEx. I share these thoughts simply in the hope it will stimulate some thought about the consequences (intended and unintended) of how your business treats its own customers or helps others with their customers.

I’m Jerry Angrave, a Certified Customer Experience Professional, independent consultant and authorised trainer for the CCXP accreditation. As founder and managing director of Empathyce, I’ve worked for or with organisations in the aviation and travel, retail banking, utilities, legal services and pharmaceutical industries across Europe and in New Zealand.

If you’ve any question on the post or on customer experience in general, please feel free to get in touch. I’m on +44 (0) 7917 718072 or by email at [email protected].

Passenger experience: managing disruption without disrupting relationships

The delicate, reciprocal balance of any alliance between airline and passenger shifts dramatically when there’s a planned or unplanned change in schedule. One party very quickly becomes totally dependent on the other to get them through the next few hours. It puts the relationship on a knife-edge with the stakes and expectations equally high.

Get it right and we know the benefits of salvaging relationships that have teetered on the edge. Get it wrong and research shows that the majority of people won’t even complain; they will simply take their contribution to load factor metrics elsewhere. Abigail Comber of British Airways summed it up succinctly recently when she said: “The best products in the world are no good if they’re not delivered brilliantly”. Passenger experience

To have and to hold

The longevity of fulfilling relationships between people or between people and brands will not survive if, so we’re told, one party feels the other is showing it any trace of contempt.

Passengers travel for a reason. Arrangements have been made with people at the other end. So where there’s a loss of certainty, it’s no surprise that anxiety levels rise. And while passengers accept that some delays are unavoidable, expectations are quite rightly very high that information will be timely and accurate and that action will be swift.

As passengers, we expect the airline to respond and communicate in a timely and relevant way. We don’t know or, frankly, care whose responsibility it is. What we don’t expect or want is any suggestion that the airline doesn’t know, care or acknowledge just how important and emotive the situation is to us at that moment.

How the airline responds has a direct consequence on how it makes people feel. And that is what they will remember next time they come to choose who to fly with.

Seeing it from the other person’s perspective helps know what to say, when and how in a way that not only protects the relationship in times of instability but strengthens the bonds of trust for the future.

Expectations are always rising

How a passenger expects to be treated is not set by today’s airline or by other carriers who do things better. When they’re not being a PRN, the same people are doing business with, or are hearing about, a raft of other organisations each day. They might be online retailers, telecoms providers or local cafes. Some of them simply get the basics right every time, some do unexpected things we wish more companies would do, while others are horror stories to be wary of.

When there’s a problem developing we’ll hear about it on the radio, followed by an advisory to “Contact your airline for more information”. Passengers expectations are changing though from “Ok, I’ll do that” to “They’ve got my details, why haven’t they contacted me?” and “What would have happened if I hadn’t just heard that radio broadcast?”. In fairness, more airlines are taking a more proactive approach not least because automating the initial message reduces the cost of handling volume of inbound calls and frees up finite resource to focus on the passengers who need help the most.

Such are the expectations that the perception of the response takes on a sharper focus. Consider the airline that sends an SMS inviting a passenger to book travel insurance through them but is silent when a flight has been cancelled. A passenger can be forgiven for thinking “The airline had no interest in me other than getting me to spend more money”. People do have a choice and so the consequences for airline and airport are predictable.

Your brand in their hands

The very nature of an airline’s business model hands over the delivery of many aspects of the brand and passenger experience to a third party. In many cases it’s seamless but that’s not always the way. Sullen gate staff and disengaged baggage handlers have the ability to throw away millions of dollars worth of brand building in an instant.

Whatever the posters on the wall say about putting customers first, unless everyone in the chain understands why that’s important, how it will be delivered and how success will be measured, the nicely-worded platitudes are meaningless. The myopic focus on costs will prevail without a view of the consequences of that cost obsession.

Outsourcing the sensitive management of communications that are natural around disruption can be a sound commercial move but also requires high levels of understanding between airline and agency. I spoke about the issue to John Milburn, general manager at Bosch Service Solutions who handle customer contacts for a number of leading global airline brands.

John told me: “Our client’s knows how critical it is to get the right information to the right people in the right way. They take our agents to their in-house brand training facility to immerse them in their brand and crucially allow them to experience what their passengers should expect ether flying economy or first-class, and – importantly – why. It means that when there is a problem our people can be highly empathetic, managing a relationship rather than executing a transaction”.

Frequency risks breeding complacency

According to Flightstats, in the 30 days to mid-August 26,300 flights were cancelled globally with 692,000 being delayed. With an average 100 people on board, that’s the best part of 700 million people having their plans disrupted – in one month.

So with my passenger hat on, compensation rules aside, it’s not unreasonable for me to think that if something changes, the airline will be well drilled in letting me know important information.

Airlines can compete on costs, metrics and processing efficiencies but as Ryanair is discovering with its “Always Getting Better” initiative, there are greater commercial rewards to be found by paying more attention to the things customers are most interested in – and that includes communications at the most important times. I wrote a blog just recently about how high up the agenda a customer focus is for the airline that not so long ago appeared proud of the contempt it shows passengers (read here).

It’s a trend that disruption management specialists 15below have also seen. They report a rapid growth in the demand for its collaborative workshops that help airlines understand what it’s like to be the passenger, what they should do and how.

At a recent event in Dubai, 15below highlight some very telling facts, including that of the top 10 on-time performing Middle East and African airlines, 21% of their passengers are – over 8 million a year – are disrupted.

Yet the workshops reveal that while the intent in one part of an airline is good, significant barriers still remain. Doing things on the customer agenda remains a contentious subject in many a boardroom in any sector, not just airlines. If a business case cannot show an immediate ROI it won’t make the short-list. The marketing and customer experience teams might be making the right moves and articulating the cost of lost customers. But if the culture means their insight is not adopted by every other part of the business, the focus will remain on doing the wrong things really well.

IT understandably has a loud voice at the table and often wants to manage innovation and change in-house. Falling into the clutches of its normal programme management governance and competing for resource around the business equally retains control over the time-quality-cost triumvirate and helps negotiate the portfolio of legacy and merged systems, but anecdotal evidence suggest it often slows things down too. And that simply lets others get ahead.

The to-do list

15below has some sound advice (and a JetBlue case study here) to help airlines do things better.

First, planning with stakeholders and partners so whether ground staff or outsourced contact centre, they all have the same information and the right information at the same time. For a passenger the only thing worse than no information is inconsistent information between gate, Google, contact centre and departure board.

Strike a better balance between automation and human communications. Technology offers some fantastic opportunities for handling issues of scale. But airlines must also recognise when passengers need reassurance that comes from speaking with a person and not interacting with an algorithm.

Solving the problem before a passenger knows it exists is also a way to retaining passenger faith. Making it easy to understand what’s happened, making it easy to talk to someone about their own specifics and having a ready-made solution in place takes a little effort but is immensely appreciated.

Proactive communications with those who are expecting the passenger such as hotels or family takes the experience to another level. Automated voice messages are more popular in the US than in the UK. But calling at 2am or assuming that a passengers first language is English despite what they’ve already made clear is not right either, yet it happens.

The “So what?”

It is well accepted that there are three elements to the customer experience. Did it do what I expected it to?, Was it easy? and How did it make me feel? Research also shows it’s not an equal three-way split in terms of importance. The memory of the emotional aspect from last time can drive upwards of 70% of decision-making for the next time.

So passengers are far less likely to buy a ticket from an airline that has previously showed them any degree of contempt, whatever the customer charter and brand promise say. The brand is what passengers tell others it is, not what the strapline says. They have a voice and they have a choice.

Airlines who still see no reason to change or who don’t make the right changes will therefore get left further behind by those at the next gate or the next airport who do get it.

The stakes are high, the expectations are high. It’s not just a relationship that’s under threat or about to flourish – by definition its also revenue, load factors and forward bookings. And none of those want to be disrupted.

Jerry Angrave is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and consultant. Managing Director of Empathyce, Jerry has worked for or with organisations in the aviation and travel, retail banking, utilities, legal services and pharmaceutical industries.

Jerry will be chairing sessions a the AirXperience event in London in September 2015 – feel free to ask Jerry any further questions on this subject.

Making technology relevant to the passenger experience

(This post was created as a guest blog for Total BlueSky in August 2015)

The speed and breadth of technological change not just in the aviation world presents fantastic opportunities. The challenge however, is to take advantage of the right opportunities not just the latest opportunity. Understanding the things that passengers value most helps prioritise where investment and resource is best focused.

“We need to think like retailers, we need to be more digital” is the rallying cry in many away-day strategic planning session. After all, the retail sector is often the first roll-out new technology and in stores, online and bridging the divide between the two. Passenger experience

On the flip side however, why not use technology to create an airline that retailers aspire to be like?

As passengers we are all also consumers in other markets. It is those interactions when buying a coffee, returning an item bought online or getting our telecoms provider to explain the latest bill that set our expectations. Replicating best practice creates nothing new and is soon overtaken. Even mobile, Apple and contactless payment methods quickly become established. Applying the right technology to the right problems on the other hand is a winning strategy.

That however, raises a few questions, not least in the debate about using the latest tech because we can, or using the most relevant tech.

Should our planning horizon be months rather than three or 5 years? If mobile, beacons and wearables are the answer, exactly what is the question? And if technology is so good, why do airlines automate check-in for passengers in economy yet retain the personal touch for those in business class.

It might make processing more cost-efficient but if I’m using it for the first time or it’s not working properly I’ll still expect someone there to help me. It feels very transactional, all about barcodes and processing with no apparent desire for any kind of relationship. If I fly business class one week and economy the next, I’ll be paying less but I’ll also remember how the different approach made me feel when I’m booking my next business-class flight.

So another question might be “Who is benefiting most from the technology?”. Is it the airline or airport who can leverage the benefits of data, measure processes more efficiently and drive down operating costs?

Or is it the passenger, for whom technology makes it easier to do business than with a competitor and so they return more often, spend more and tell everyone else to do the same?

At an aviation conference recently I asked a fellow speaker for their views on where technology and passenger experiences meet. Will there be a time in the not too distant future, I wondered, when I won’t be able to fly if I don’t have a smartphone? The immediate and enthusiastic response was an unequivocal “Absolutely!”.

Nothing wrong with ambition, but there’s a real risk of making the assumption that owning a smartphone means being willing and able to use it in the way that airlines want passengers to.

A large US carrier launched its lost baggage app with a big fanfare and indeed, it did shows where a bag was and how that compared with where it should be. That’s not an inconsiderable amount of time, money and opportunity cost to develop technology that is unlikely to be at the top of a passenger’s wish-list.

As a passenger, I expect my bag to make the same trip as me. I accept that problems happen and that bags do go missing or not make onto the flight. BA’s recent problems at LHR Terminal 5 highlighted that all too well. But would I download an app and keep checking it when the chances of it going missing are slim anyway and I’ve got a hundred other things to do?

On a trip to Poland recently, my bag didn’t make it. I went to the information desk and got things sorted. Having just landed in a foreign country late at night, the baggage reclaim area was not where I would have expected to try and connect to a new mobile network and rely on an app to know more than the people in the room. I would still have gone to the information desk anyway.

I put it to the airline who had developed the app that its usefulness was there, but limited. The response was that passengers always want to know where their bags are. Personally, I assume they’re where they are supposed to be but if you go to the effort of producing an app, I’m inclined to feel less confident and believe now that’s a frequent occurrence.

And, I was told, as people in transit can run through an airport quicker than bags can be processed, it’s good to check if your bag is going to make it or not. We then fell into a debate about designing (unintentional) experiences where people have to run, whether they’re fit, have just had a hip replacement, have amplified anxiety and so on.

The point is relevance.

We hear headlines that people are “always connected”. They will be connected to the things that are most relevant to them and help them do what they want to do. In the case of lost bags, I know the airline has my cellphone number – they’ve reminded me to check-in early and stock up on duty-free goods - and I know they can link the bag to its owner. So if there is an issue why can’t they get in touch with me before I even know there is a problem and solve it.

The slightly introspective approach also manifests itself in the green, orange and red “How was it for you?” buttons that greet us after security, by the gate or exiting customs.

They give a score, an indication of satisfaction at the point of interaction and add to the wealth or metrics and data. What they don’t yield is a qualitative element; why did someone tap the green button with a smile or punch the red button in frustration?

Without that, how do we know what to change? And as a customer, if I’ve already told you what I think, why should I bother telling you again when I get an email the day after travelling back?

Thinking like a retailer might be a step in the right direction and there is obviously a place for technology. But what makes the technology a good investment is the mindset and culture that it’s nurtured and developed in. For example, where everyone in the project team understands and can keep on top of how and why passengers and therefore the business will benefit.

London City Airport has a huge focus on technology but for the primary reason of making the travelling experience better. From that, they know, will flow more passengers and more revenue. And the results are testimony to that approach; passenger numbers are expected to exceed 4 million this year. Customer reviews suggest it’s the kind of airport you hope your airline will fly to. And commercially, the owners have just put the airport up for sale with an estimated price tag of £2bn.

Technology plays a huge part but I recall LCY’s chief executive Declan Collier keeping things in perspective about how it’s used in an interview with Forrester in 2013. He said “Customer experience is nothing without delivery, and in our business, our propositions stand or fall on the ability of our people to deliver them”.

Adding to the sentiment from New Zealand is Andy Lester, Chief Operating Officer of Christchurch airport. Such was the devastation of the tragic 2011 earthquake that much of the city is yet to be rebuilt. However, speaking in Barcelona about how the airport has got back on its feet, he said “We have a great opportunity … but if we think like an airport or think like an airline we won’t see things the way our customers do”.

Airlines have access to some amazing technology. Passengers have a choice about who they fly with. Understanding the two sides and bringing them together in the right way will create a winning combination.

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

Thank you Jerry

Jerry Angrave

Customer Experience awards judge

Customer experience reveals segmentation limits

By applying a little customer experience scrutiny to traditional segmentation models we see their limitations. Being more empathetic with real people rather than grouping customers with similar profiles helps turn successful short-term activity into a differentiated, more profitable and sustainable business.

When creating a segment there is by definition an assumption that we can find round pegs to put in the round holes we make. We profile customers into a group that allow us to predict that they will respond in the same way to the same messages. They have similar behaviours, similar lifestyles, similar needs. And, by and large, that approach works – but it could be so much better.

The principles of customer segmentation have been the bedrock of marketing activity for decades. They are used to design new customer experiences and spawned an industry where sales leads are now created scientifically by analysing vast amounts of data in the name of customer lifetime value.

The problem is therefore two-fold. On the one hand, traditional approaches to segmentation risk retaining an inward-looking business-centricity around one question: “How can we sell more?”. Secondly, segmentation models are easy to replicate by competitors and are therefore not driving the differentiated and better experiences that are key to business survival.

That step, to move beyond the same segmentation principles as our competitors requires a different perspective; that of the customer experience and therefore – not surprisingly – the customer.

Whichever segment a customer falls into, and let’s remember while reading this that we’re all people and we’re all customers, it is irrelevant when we’re dealing with a company. What matters to me as a customer is that I get done what I need to quickly, easily and in a way that makes me feel I would do it all again if I had to.

Today, it’s much less about how many kids I have, which postcode I live in, whether I run my own business, what products I’ve bought previously or how I spend my spare time.

As people we all have life going on around us when we interact with a business. It is the one small window a company has to make the right impression. I’ve worked in and with large corporates where there is (sometimes unintentionally) a real belief that the customer’s life revolves around them.

There are over 525,000 minutes in a year. More than half a million of them. And with many companies we do business with, they are only getting a handful of the most precious of commodities that we possess. As customer we want to make the most of them, get things sorted when we need to and move on. By their actions, the impression many businesses give is that customers are never far away, that customers will amble into their world, drift around their processes and then tell everyone how great it was. That’s not the real intention but that’s often how it feels.

How do we move things on from a business driven by segmentation to one that thrives by giving the right experience? One way to really understand what it’s like to be a customer is to (get the CEO to) become a customer and stress-test those experiences and show what it can really be like. For example:

Go without sleep for 24 hours then try and buy your product or ask a question. You’ll soon find out how easy things really are
Five minutes before an important meeting ask someone to look for the number and make a ‘quick’ call to your own business with what should be a straight-forward query
Ask someone, or put yourself in the mindset of someone, who has depression, recently had a close family bereavement or struggles to comprehend instructions and feel the impact of unempathetic employees, processes that treat people like widgets or a myopic quest to close the sale at all costs
Walk into one of your stores knowing that you’ve only got a couple of minutes left on your parking ticket, tell the employee and see what happens
Try to use your products and services while sat on your own in a wheelchair. Then try it with a blindfold on or one arm tied behind your back.
Give each of the directors a task that a customer might do and make them do it irrespective of their schedule within the next 24 hours – it’s only what we as customers have to do.

I wrote recently about how companies can learn from those with physical or mental disabilities. Organisations will see a benefit in all their customer experiences and therefore commercial results by stretching the thinking to understand better the world of customers who have, or care for those who have, disabilities.

It’s the same here. Some scenarios may rarely happen but the point is that taking a genuine customer perspective and building experiences, processes and communications around that rather than limited segmentation models, experiences that work at the margins will be brilliant at the core. It shows where the weaknesses are and where opportunities for making the right changes lie.

The insights that get flushed out help bring the reality of what customers experience to life for those who need to see and hear it. A great example I came across recently was a customer experience lead who wanted to drive the message home about the difference between what the brand promised and the appalling wait times in the contact centre. Her Executive meeting started then immediately and to the surprise of all present was put ‘on hold’. She played a recording of the music customers hear for the average time they hear it when they try to call to buy, or need help. Uncomfortable? Yes. Brave? Absolutely. Impactful? Without question. And in the kind of scenarios we’ve talked about here, even more effective at inspiring change.

It’s a bit like shooting for the stars if you want to get to the moon. Segmentation will take a business so far. But building experiences based on genuine empathy will ensure that when customers need you most, or simply they interact on a routine basis, there’s a much greater chance that the way it’s done will keep them coming back and telling others to do the same. And that’s what it’s all about.

If you’d like to know more about this or any other strategic or tactical aspect of customer experience do please get in touch – I’m on +44 (0) 7917 718 072 or email [email protected]. My background is as a CX practitioner in the corporate world. That’s the foundation for me being an empathetic customer experience consultant. I also run workshops and speak about customer experience at events across Europe. I’m a Certified Customer Experience Professional and a judge at the UK Customer Experience Awards.

Thank you, I hope you found the post interesting and thought-provoking, and please feel free to get in touch or add your own views below.

Jerry Angrave, CCXP

Three effective open questions to ask customers

Organisations have an insatiable appetite for customer feedback and with good reason. Asking effective open questions, however, is easier said than done. Customers are being asked several times a day what they think and with our customer hat on we all know what that feels like. It’s therefore commercially vital that the questions we ask in those surveys make it easy for customers. And yet one of the most popular questions used today is also one of the most difficult to answer.

There are variations in the wording, but to ask “What’s the one thing we could do differently?” would appear to be a good starting point. It is certainly better than nothing or simply focusing on the scores.

Its flaw however, is that it’s a question that has been transposed from the performance management frameworks of corporate HR departments. Back in the day, my boss and I would seek the views of my peers and stakeholders (my “internal customers”) on what I should do more of, do less of and do differently. They all knew me well and they knew what I should be trying to achieve in the context of the culture and company.

Giving customers the same line of questioning assumes that they live and breathe the brand, its operational limitations and regulatory mandates day-in day-out. It assumes that they know what the business and its purpose is all about and that they know what the limitations or ambitions of the company are. They don’t, and in fairness I see many companies where the employees struggle to articulate the purpose and customer strategy, let alone their customers.

It’s a little ironic therefore that at the very time when we’re trying to find out about our customers, this question is all about us. At best therefore, it seems an unfair question to ask customers to comment on things they are not familiar with. At worst, customers will try and second guess or make assumptions of their own. Responses might give a sense of direction and indeed, some qualitative context is better than a void, but either way there are other questions that will produce better results.

Here are three effective open questions that might give your feedback programme better insights:

What would you say to a friend about what it’s like to do business with us?

The first one here is a question I always urge my clients to ask. It gets straight to the root of what a customer feels. It’s easy for them to relate to as the starting point for their observation is familiar ground. It’s personal, empathetic and is asking for the whole truth, however uncomfortable that may be to hear. Of course, the follow-up question “Why?” is on hand if extra colour is needed but often this simple question generates rich insights on its own.

What do you think our employees would say about you?

I’m indebted to Piers Alington of Feedback Ferret for sharing this one and is a brilliant litmus test of the real culture versus what the leadership team believe it to be. It also strikes at the heart of what it feels like to interact with a business. Ordering the widget might have been easy, the product might work as it is supposed to but if there’s even a hint of contempt or lack of understanding – issues that silently send customers to competitors – this question will flush that out.

If you had 2 minutes with our CEO what would you say?

Jamie Ziegler of Convergys reminded me of this searching question in a CXPA forum recently. It really focuses the customer’s mind on what’s important and reaches out to either end of the spectrum of what’s brilliant and what’s terrible. As Jamie says, it also creates a human connection. It increases the sense that the feedback is listened to and passed on, something that is a welcome change from the clinical nature of most surveys.

If we are going to the effort of creating a survey, getting buy-in for an internal governance framework to act on the insights and we are going to get the most from a customer’s limited attention span, the questions need to work really hard to be really easy.

There will be other great questions to ask – let me know your thoughts so we can share those too!

If you’d like to know more about getting the right type of feedback or how I might be able to help with any other strategic or tactical aspect of customer experience do please get in touch – I’m on +44 (0) 7917 718 072 or email [email protected]. I’m a CX consultant with a real-world background, I run workshops and speak about customer experience at events across Europe.

Thank you, I hope you found the post interesting and thought-provoking, and please feel free to add your own views below.

Jerry Angrave, CCXP

British Gas and United: learnings from their customers with special needs

Understand where customers and companies meet

Understanding what happens when customers and companies meet

Companies who treat Special Needs customers with genuine empathy, supported by internal engagement and education, not only do the right thing but see benefits for all their other customer segments too. There are two contrasting stories here about how companies deal with the same type of customer in completely different ways; the differences being understanding and communication and clear answers to “Would you buy from us again?”.

There is no upper limit on how strongly I feel about how organisations should really understand their customers; and for personal reasons, even more so when those customer have special needs. Those people have conditions that may not necessarily be visible but are nonetheless extremely real for them and the people they are with. They see, and interact with, the world in different ways and a company that is genuinely customer-led will get it. Others will try to shoe-horn round pegs of customers into the square pegs of their processes and wonder why – or worse, not realise – they do more damage than good.

This is not just about it being the right thing to do. Companies can be so much more efficient and profitable with the right thinking and attitude. And for those companies saying it’s a customer segment too small or complex to worry about, neither the planning nor delivery is expensive but can be so rewarding in many other ways. Elite athletes and leadership gurus say that we need to exaggerate what we are trying to do and stretch our imagination if we want to get anywhere near our goals. If you want to fly above the clouds, shoot for the stars. The brilliant thing about people with special needs is that they can teach us so much about ourselves, put what we see as the norm into perspective and really challenge the way we do things. If we get it right for them, we get things right for most other people too. I wrote more about that in a blog on customer experiences for people with special needs last year.

I’m highlighting two very recent examples here to illustrate what an unintended (to give them the benefit of the doubt) lack of empathy looks like compared with one where they have it sorted.

United Airlines were once again in the headlines this week for less than good customer experiences. According to the headlines a pilot made an emergency landing and had police officers remove an autistic 15-year old girl and her family – because she had been displaying behavioural signs that most autistic people do. I’m not privvy to the facts and I have every admiration for pilots who get me home safely and are making life and death decisions day-in day-out. However, the airline knew about the girl’s condition, the family had let them know that before flying. Flying with an autism is a brave thing to do, for the family aswell as the child. That anxiety-filled experience would have started as soon as planning the trip began. People with such conditions rely on routine, on understanding what will happen step by step and can live moment-by-moment so if certainty and boundaries are absent, any emotion becomes amplified. Autism isn’t a rare condition and for me, the airline and crew should know that and be able to respond accordingly.

So being in a state of heightened anxiety, maybe just about getting through life emotionally and probably not having had a good night’s sleep for years, how must they have felt at being ‘responsible’ for diverting the aircraft and delaying others while trying to keep calm and the situation under control? How must they feel to have police officers escort them off the plane? How did the airline then help them cope with the unplanned visit to another destination when they are so dependent on routine, familiarity with the environment and certainty?

From a personal and a commercial customer experience perspective I would love to understand what happened and what the airline did. The airline itself says “The United brand vision is more than just words on paper. It is shaped by every aspect of our customer and co-worker experience“. Very true. The brand is what customers tell each other it is.

Other airlines know it’s an issue and deal with it well. Even Los Angeles International Airport now lets customers with special needs pick up a discrete sticker badge to wear, so that staff can be quicker to anticipate issues and help when it’s needed.

Continuing on that more positive note and with the other example, it was refreshing to see that a switch can be flicked to send a company into a different mode when they know they are dealing with someone with special needs. A British Gas engineer came to service my boiler at home. He was very polite and got on with the job quickly, leaving with a message to say all was well. I then left for a meeting and returned later that afternoon to discover that not only was there no hot water, there was no water coming out of the hot taps. That’s not a great scenario heading into tea-time and bath-time for the kids. I rang the helpline, who told me I could not have an engineer out until tomorrow at the earliest. Things were not looking great, feeling that I am now having to pay for their mistake. “Really? There’s nothing you can do? You’re leaving us with two kids and no hot water?”. “Sorry, I’ve checked again but no.” was the reply.

I’m lucky to live in a country where we take fresh and hot water for granted and there are bigger problems people face day-in day-out. But at that point in time I was concerned – my son has special needs that mean he needs a wash each day, something he can’t do by himself. And like the position the girl on the plane found herself in, without the routine and at the tired end of the day, things were now predictably going to be stressful and unpleasant. I mentioned it in passing to the lady on the helpline, thinking out loud and not to get any special favours but just because I wanted her to know the consequences of their actions. “Special needs?” she asked. That changed things immediately. She asked about the condition and then for what they call “vulnerable” customer, all the stops were pulled out. “It won’t be a problem, we’ll get it sorted tonight. Leave it with us”. Sure enough, an engineer rang back and was able to talk me through fixing the problem – the previous engineer had left a valve closed, which needed turning 90 degrees to open it. Simple. All sorted, over the phone.

I appreciate what British Gas did in the end and am grateful the evening remained calm. But I couldn’t help wondering why they keep that process tucked away for vulnerable customers when it’s what any type of customer needs if they are in a predicament, especially one created by the company in the first place. That will remain the prerogative of their commercial decision-making.

But in one of many sectors where differentiation is sought as much as it is a necessity, the companies that show their employees how to genuinely understand customers will be the ones who get more people coming back, spending more and telling others to do the same. By paying attention to those with special needs, the treatment of all customers will benefit. The companies that don’t will simply have all the wrong headlines and wonder why their customer base and profitability is shrinking.

If you’d like to know more about this subject or how I might be able to help with any other aspect of customer experience do please get in touch – I’m on +44 (0) 7917 718 072 or can be contacted by email at [email protected].

Thank you, I hope you found the post interesting and thought-provoking, and please feel free to add your own views below.

Jerry Angrave