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.

Customer Journey Mapping – a fun day with sticky notes or a strategic and cultural catalyst?

Done effectively, mapping the customer journey of today’s experience generates an invaluable list of tactical improvements. Unfortunately, it’s also often the limit of what organisations think customer journey mapping can do for them. There is, however, so much more value to be found.

For example, one of the many benefits is that cross-functional teams work together, sometimes for the first time, focused on one thing that unites them – customers.

They learn about their own business and forge new relationships with colleagues. They see ‘obvious’ things they witness or walk past several times every day.

From years of doing this type of work my advice, for what it’s worth, is simple: make time to explore why things are like they are because it surfaces issues that are more strategic and culture in nature.

Those conversations need to be had but are often drowned out in the noise of our daily work.airport passenger experience journey mapping

But armed with evidence of actions, behaviours and (the sometimes unintended) consequences of decision making, we can hold the leadership team to account. We can invite the CEO in to our sessions, look them in the eye and ask if the company is really committed to delivering the vision and values.

Because if it is, the customer journey mapping shines a spotlight on what needs to change if they are serious about it. The priorities for the overall Customer Experience and Employee Engagement programmes then also, crucially, take shape.

Or, when there’s an excuse for everything that won’t get fixed, it’ll become obvious that saying “We put customers first” is just convenient, platitudinous rhetoric.

Journey mapping – don’t let it be just about having a fun day with sticky notes. Done properly, it’s a compelling tool for customer-led change and a stronger business.

If you’ve not done it before, give it a go. See what your customers see. Talk about how it compares to your vision. See where those conversations take you.

If you have done it before, what did you get out of it – and how? It’s always good to share and learn!

 

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Jerry Angrave is Customer & Passenger Experience Director at Empathyce, a CX consulting and coaching company. Jerry works with airports and travel groups as well as in others sectors such as financial services, professional services, utilities and housing associations across Europe and in the Middle East to build strategic and effective Customer Experience programmes. 

Jerry is also a Certified Customer Experience Professional and trains others for the accreditation.

[email protected]    +44 (0) 7917 718 072

 

 

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

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

 

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

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

inconsistent customer experiences

It’s not easy when things are inconsistent

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

good or bad cx

Are you creating despair or fans? Or both?

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

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

 


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

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.passenger experience

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.

Proof that better customer experiences mean better results

If you’re looking for more evidence to show a sceptical stakeholder that better customer experiences mean better results, the recent wave of financial reporting yields a helpful trend.

Not so long ago, updates were all about how a business was coping with the headwinds of tough economic times, exposure to foreign exchange movements, provisions and restructuring costs.  By comparison, little was said about how a business was improving things for the element that generates the bulk of revenue – customers.

In what is emerging as a push-pull scenario, that balance is changing.  One the one hand, companies are doing some great things on the customer agenda and are rightly and proudly shouting about it.  They know they need to be very aware of how what they do impacts on their customers in order to survive, let alone thrive.

On the other hand, investors want to know more.  They too know the commercial value that comes from having more customers coming back more often, spend more on higher margin products and telling everyone else to do the same.   In considering the future value and predictability of the business, they also now want to know how things are being made better and easier for customers.

The back-story to this week’s results from low-cost airline Ryanair is a well-documented but great example.

ryanair investor pres

Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary and CFO Neil Sorahan deliver the Q1 results FY16 to investors

A few years ago, despite a very clear proposition they were not liked.  People tolerated them to a point but their apparent contempt of passengers played into the hands of competitors like Easyjet.  Having managed the cost-base to the bare minimum the wavering of higher-value customers was a serious threat.

In response, the “Always Getting Better” initiative was launched with a view to stopping doing the things that irked passengers unnecessarily and to do what they value better.

In its latest results announced this week the airline confirmed it has 380 new aircraft on order.  It has one of the strongest balance sheets in the industry.  Load factors, margins and forward bookings are rising. And it flew over 100 million people in the last year.

But what really stood out in this week’s video briefing by Michael O’Leary was how high up the agenda customer experience now is.  Once not apparently even on the agenda, customer experience is given the spotlight right after the opening headline performance numbers and before an update on fuel hedging, the wider strategic view and financial details.

Not only is the renewed focus on customers having an immediate and beneficial impact, it also helps protect the business in future when the market gets tough.  Two years in to the Always Getting Better programme, it is described as performing “extraordinarily well”.   The increases in load factors and forward booking are, Mr O’Leary asserts, a sign that customers are responding positively to the programme.  And, we are told, that such is the strategic role now played by customer experience at Ryanair that the commercial interest in Aer Lingus is deemed no longer relevant.

 

greggs

Greggs’ focus on in-store customer experience pays dividends

Over in a very different sector, but citing the same focus on customers in its strong results this week, is UK food-on-the-go retailer Greggs.   Despite a 6% increase in sales, growth in its Balanced Choice range of healthy food options and benefiting from low inflation leaving more money in people’s pockets, it is not complacent.  Reporting its operational highlights to the market, CEO Roger Whiteside shares and celebrates what Greggs is doing to achieve ‘great customer experiences’ – one of the four cornerstones of its business strategy.

 

Elsewhere, the reverse is true.  Market analysts who see little growth potential or who are surprised by lacklustre results often cite brands being ‘out of touch’ with their customers and not being organised to serve them properly.

In Japan, Honda chief Takahiro Hachigo recently told markets about how he will rebuild the company following a wave of product recalls that has eroded trust and production targets that have left it with excess capacity in a mature market.  Mr Hachigo’s plan is not about aggressive growth for the sake of it or chasing headline target numbers.  The focus now is on understanding customers better to “deliver their dreams”.  Quite what that looks like remains to be seen, but paired with an ambition to “strengthen communication with people on the ground” the message to investors that it will be about organic, customer-led growth rather than an obsession with metrics, is clear.

 

Giving investors confidence in a predictable business was also the subject of an interview I did recently with Dan Moross of MOO.  The online printer of business cards and stationery enjoys rave reviews from customers, attracts top talent and is regarded by industry commentators as an exemplary start-up.

Key to it all though, is the culture where their people are given the tools, processes and permission to help their customers any way they can.  On a per transaction basis the margins might be shaved, but that is more than made up for in the greater volume of customers attracted by what they hear about MOO.  Are investors happy with that approach, I asked Dan. “Absolutely” was the emphatic reply.  Read that interview here.

 

The focus on customers is not the whole story for many companies.  But, not only is it giving them a good story to tell, investors want to hear how it will help them – and that goes for those sceptical stakeholders too.


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 the relationship between customer experience and financial strength or any other CX issue do please get in touch for a chat.  I’m on +44 (0) 7917 718 072 or on email I’m [email protected].

Thank you Jerry

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jerry Angrave

CCXP LogoCustomer Experience awards judge

Little things versus Wow customer experiences

Having real coat hangers in the wardrobe of a hotel-room might not make a Wow customer experience or a Moment of Magic.  But, it’s a great illustration of how small things can make a big impact.Wow customer experiences

Stakeholders often baulk at the idea of improving customer experiences for fear that it will cost more, it will force employees to do jobs they are not targetted on or it will require new, complex processes.  But those customer experience sceptics would be reassured by an example set by Marriott’s Renaissance Monarch Hotel in Moscow.

I’d been invited there to speak at a conference about customer experience.  Always keen to observe and learn, I developed a real liking for the hotel and its people but at first couldn’t put my finger on exactly why.  Yes, it was very nice but there was no fanfare, no obvious “Tad-dah!”, nothing forced. It just worked.

It became apparent that there was simply a series of little things that were personal and relevant when they needed to be.  None of them are costly, none of them distracting for the employees and no complex systems involved.  They could be done just as well by a 7-star hotel in the sun or a draughty backpackers in the rain.   Here’s what I mean:

  • It goes without saying that the people had the right attitude.  They were attentive, engaging and helpful. They could spot this Brit a mile away and had their English reply to my awful attempts at Russian ready.  A smile costs nothing yet its absence (we won’t go into the airport experience here…) can be so costly.
  • Whatever training they have, it is effective.  Everyone who worked there had a genuine desire to help their guests, something that was epitomised in the name badges of the front-line team – they were all called “Navigators”.  Maybe a bit cheesy but whatever the label, the intent was authentic.
  • I was joined at the event by Customer Experience Specialist and fellow CCXP Ian Golding.  After our speaking sessions, Ian and I had the opportunity to jump on the metro for a couple of stops to visit Red Square and the Kremlin, places I never thought I’d be.  The guy behind the hotel check-in desk was very helpful in giving me instructions and directions.  In that, there was nothing special but just as we headed off, he produced a business card and said – in English – “Here. If you get any problems or have any questions, here is my number. Call me and I will help you”.  In an unfamiliar city and with limited time to get back and catch a flight home, that was reassuring. I wondered how many hotel staff in the UK would afford a foreign guest the same level of respect.

    Our experience, made better by the hotel

    A gratuitous selfie experience, made easier by the hotel’s people

  • For too long, wi-fi connections in hotels have been used as an income generator and treated as a cost centre for which customers must pay.  At this hotel though, not only was the wi-fi free (again, nothing particularly special there) but what was very helpful was that the connection remained valid for the full 24-hour period even after checking out.  They know that many guests will continue to remain in the hotel and it actually encourages them to do so in order to have breakfast, hire meeting rooms or take lunch.
  • It’s often said that a company’s true approach to its customers and employees is revealed by the state of the toilets.  These were spotlessly clean as you’d expect but what I didn’t expect was that the urinals were filled with ice to reduce odours and maintain the cleanliness.
  • And those coat hangers?  Actually, it’s not about the coat hangers themselves; its about what it says.  To me, it says “Welcome, we trust you, have a nice stay”. Compare that with the message you feel you’re getting with those hangers that can be removed but have no hook and are therefore useless anywhere but that (often just as expensive) hotel room. To me, that shouts out “Ha! Gotcha! Thought about nicking it did ya? Well we don’t trust you so we’re not going to risk losing the cost of one hanger every now and then just so you can feel at home”.

These little things make a big difference and for little cost.  I have no connection with Marriott Hotels Group other than I am occasionally fortunate enough to be put up in one.  But the point here is not about the hotel;  it’s the food for thought that it gives about how other companies across very different markets might take the same approach. Forget searching for that contrived “Wow!” moment and understand the little things that are really important to your customers.

The ironic reality, of course, is that the combination of getting simple things right and executing the basics well every time gets close to being a “Wow” experience anyway.  They are the things that make us feel like someone understands us and is on our side.  It’s not much to ask but means such a lot.  We’ll be a lot more forgiving if something does go wrong but the real commercial benefit is that we’ll tell everyone else about it and when we can, we’ll come back.  I hope I do.

Let me know what you think.


 

If you have a customer experience issue – strategic, cultural or tactical – that you need a hand with, or if you’ve any questions about this blog post do let me know.

I’m on +44 (0) 7917 718 072 or email [email protected].  ja speaking

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

Jerry Angrave, CCXP

 


 

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.Stress-testing customer experiences reveals flaws elsewhere

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.ja speaking

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