Customer Innovation

NickB

Five Go Mad at GWR

Even a fictional character can have a bad customer experience

George was feeling a bit strange. Together with her cousins Dick, Julian and Anne – not forgetting her dog Timmy – The Famous Five, as they’d become known, had been revived for an advertising campaign by GWR so here they were, sitting on a brand-new electric train, heading down to Dorset for some jolly adventures, no doubt involving spies and some crude characterisations.

But being brought back in 2018 was making George feel uncomfortable. It wasn’t just that, as the most “woke” member of the Five, she was beginning to find her fellow adventurers’ attitudes more than distinctly outdated. It wasn’t that everyone was sitting on the train staring at their smartphones instead of chatting and sharing out bottles of ginger beer like in the good old days – George had got her own iPhone and was looking forward to discussing the manipulation of social media by foreign powers with her father the world-famous scientist later. No, it was that she was really actually, physically uncomfortable in her brand-new seat.

To take her mind off it, she flicked to the GWR page on Twitter. There was that rather annoying picture of the Five turning cartwheels on an imaginary picnic in an imaginary countryside with a brand new high-speed train running in the background. From some of the comments on Twitter it seemed like the train might be imaginary too, as quite a few seemed to be cancelled on a regular basis. That might explain why there were so many people crammed into her compartment.

Oh well, #GWRAdventures seemed like a jolly hashtag and, of course, was all part of a jolly campaign that The Famous Five were part of. Some customers didn’t seem to be keen on joining in the fun though, and a suggestion that they should tweet some lovely views seemed to produce pictures of broken seats, worn carpets and more overcrowding. Honestly, people could be really grumpy at times!

As she reflected further she realised her brand-new seat, whilst not broken, was really quite uncomfortable, even for an imaginary character in a children’s adventure story. Having become bored with the incessant trolling on Twitter she took look at Facebook. Goodness, people were even more grumpy on the GWR Facebook page than they were on Twitter! There was a lot of moaning about cancelled trains and, she was encouraged to read, some people found the new seats were jolly uncomfortable too.

Strangely though, there wasn’t much response from GWR to these complaints on either the Facebook page or the Twitter account. They seemed awfully keen to respond if someone said something nice but didn’t really engage with any negative comments at all other than to say that “people’s concerns would be recorded”. Really, thought George, that seemed rather impolite to say the least.

Although George liked being out of doors, solving crimes and rescuing her father from the clutches of evil villains, she thought if she ever grew up and had to settle down she’d like to be a head of customer complaints. You could really get things done if you listened to what the customers found most annoying, were honest with them about your shortcomings and then did something about it. That sounded like the kind of grown-up adventure she’d really enjoy.

But maybe for another company, not for GWR.

NickB

Don’t waste your time going on a “CX Safari”

Spend time with your own experts – on the front line

Of all the greatest myths in management, the idea that you can improve by going on an inspirational tour of great companies is one of the biggest. This is particularly true in the area of customer experience – why?

The answer is simple: you know what you need to do, and happy-clappy trips to the likes of Zappos or Amazon won’t alter that fact.

Is all study a waste of time?

I’m not saying that there’s no point in trying to understand what innovative practice looks like or that you’ll never pick up some insight from hearing about another company’s change programme. Indeed, The Next Ten Years was set up precisely with this in mind so it would be highly disingenuous of me to suggest otherwise. And it would have been a waste of my time judging at the Complaint Handling Awards last month (it wasn’t).

But study tours? Getting on an aeroplane and travelling half way around the world to find out how great Disney are at customer service? With some other executives? For a week? Do the math! This isn’t an effective way of using senior management time.

What’s interesting is that senior managers can, unconsciously, invest quite a lot of time and effort in not improving customer experience – and the study tour, CX safari or whatever is symptomatic of avoiding the issue. Big time.

The answers to your CX challenges are in front of your nose: in the feedback from your front-line staff and from your customers when they complain or praise you for a really good experience.

Put simply, instead of a study tour, why not invest the time and budget in:

  • Analysing the heck out of the journey or process that attracts the most complaints.
  • Finding out what the units/teams that attract the most praise do right and using them to train up the lower-performing ones.
  • Spending time on the front line.

I used to work for a company that had a regular “back to the floor” days where senior managers would spend the day in a contact centres or on customer calls. These were great, but it baffled me that such a fuss was made about it, since I figured that it should be a part of any non-customer facing executive’s job to find out more about the people who dealt with the people who paid their salaries.

So, by all means read up on what role model companies do, but apply the lessons judiciously, and recognise what great work you’re already doing.

Just do more of it.

NickB

True agility trumps customer experience – here’s why

When a great customer experience isn’t the only answer

A few weeks ago, I wrote a glowing account of my post-Christmas experience with bed supplier Warren Evans and, more recently, The Next Ten Years gave an upbeat – albeit quite conditional – assessment of the future of High Street retail.

SINCE THEN

Warren Evans, despite its customer-centric approach and reputation for quality has not been able to overcome its recent financial woes and is now in receivership. A whole swathe of other retailers continue to experience difficult times.

Does this imply that being customer-centric is not a strong enough guarantee for business success?

99 problems…

The problems facing retail are many and multi-faceted. Tightening consumer spending fuelled by Brexit uncertainty, rising material and labour costs, high levels of personal debt and the threat of rising interest rates. The answer for many companies has been the traditional focus on cost-cutting, with the loss of managerial roles in Sainsbury’s and Debenhams being recent example.

So, is cost-cutting the real answer in these troubled times? Should CX take a back seat?

The solutions adopted by surviving retailers would appear to suggest this is the case, given yet another apparently customer-centric retailer having failed.

…1990s solutions

Back in the 1990s I worked for the consultancy that originated business reengineering. Like any company that majored on process-driven innovation, we invested heavily in looking for the “next big thing”. Business or organisational agility became, at a conceptual level at least, the candidate with the biggest potential. How could companies who had reengineered themselves into streamlined super-beasts move themselves to the next business performance level?

By becoming more agile, of course!

Great idea – what did it mean in practice?

We looked out for examples of companies who could demonstrate success through re-inventing themselves and we discovered Silver Platter – the originators of the CD-ROM as an information-storing medium.

I remember attending a workshop with their CEO, Bela Hatvany. Bela radiated gravitas and wisdom as he described the Silver Platter philosophy – being big on empowerment and innovation was an emphasis as I recall. Then one delegate asked him a great question: “who was the most important – customers, employees or shareholders?”

Bela’s response became abstract and practical: “If you have an injury in your leg, you get your leg bandaged; if you have a head-cold, you take aspirin; if your arm hurts, that’s where your attention is.”

I may be paraphrasing somewhat but the essence of his response was that you treat what’s painful, but you keep the whole body together.

Focus

I suspect Warren Evans’ problem was that they focused on a great customer experience without balancing the more traditional factors that impacted their business.You could make the same argument that strong values and outcomes came at too high a price – ethical sourcing, pioneering the option to return a mattress after 120 days – as being potential weaknesses.

The sad truth is that looking for a factor to “blame” is an exercise in 20:20 hindsight – what is the lesson for those businesses trying to avoid a similar fate?

It’s a combination of great customer centric strategic thinking – the trajectory concept described in last week’s article really helps here – and being agile enough to switch attention when required.

If you’re a customer-centric company you should not stop being customer-centric all of a sudden, you maintain the focus on the customer – an investment you wouldn’t ever want to throw away – whilst managing downsizing, de-layering, product rationalisation or whatever gets you through the tough times.

It’s the ability to seamlessly add the necessary extra dimension to core focus – that’s true business agility – which will give you the best chances of success.

NickB

Closing the loop – listen to Yoda

For a really effective way to manage complaints profitably, you have to be prepared to learn

I don’t often look to fictional characters for management advice, but if you’ve had any exposure to the Star Wars universe, you’ll know that diminutive Jedi master Yoda is capable of some cornball wisdom that occasionally hits the spot.

When it comes to complaints management his line from The Last Jedi “the greatest teacher failure is” pinpoints the difference between organisations that thrive on complaints management and those that would rather sweep their customers’ gripes under the carpet.

As I’ve mentioned before, complaints are a goldmine of opportunity for turning grumpy customers into raving fans and gaining enhanced revenue as a result. But to do this you have to have a fully joined-up approach that covers detection, handling and learning.

Back in 1990, Peter Senge, then Director of the Systems Thinking and Organisational Learning Programme at Sloan School, MIT, published a seminal book, The Fifth Discipline, that introduced the idea of the “Learning Organisation”. Re-reading it, I’m struck by how much advice it offered appears to fall into the category of the “bleeding obvious” – but on reflection has still not been adopted by most businesses.

Maybe the concept of a learning organisation sounds too academic, non-action orientated, even un-business-like to have gained real traction, but in the world of customer complaints a learning organisation focused on customer outcomes is exactly what you should strive to become.

Discipline

Let’s reflect on Senge’s five disciplines of a learning organisation and see what they tell us:

  1. Systems thinking – the need to view the organisation as a joined-up whole, where actions in one part may have a positive or negative implication in another. Forgetting to think systemically is a trap that complaints managers can fall into. Actions with a positive effect in one area may result in negative effects elsewhere. Looking at end-to-end process rather than silo boundaries can help prevent this.
  2. Personal mastery – the requirement for individuals to commit to a process of wider learning, as the basis of organisational learning and therefore impact. This is straying into Yoda territory, but you need people who are committed to their continuous development so whilst fairly obvious, is key to managing complaints effectively, particularly as wider perspectives can be considered.
  3. Mental models – the need to test the assumptions held by individuals and the organisation about the way things work. Challenging these is essential for customer-centric innovation, particularly in response to complaints.
  4. Shared vision – seen by Senge as essential in motivating staff to learn. Although vision is seen by some as an outmoded concept, anything that motivates staff – I’d prefer a strong statement of purpose (e.g. our purpose is to use our customers’ feedback as the basis for improvement) – is valid here.
  5. Team learning – this“Fifth Discipline” is where the organisation builds on its individual responses to learn collectively about how it can improve. The benefit of this approach is that the problem-solving ability of an organisation is significantly enhanced, so arriving at a solution to a complaint-generated issue should be easier with this discipline in place.

In the loop

My back-of-an-envelope analysis of Senge’s model says that at least 80% of it is critical to closing the loop on complaints, but what is this loop that needs closing?

Put simply, there is a virtuous circle that organisations can put themselves in where what you learn from a failure to delight your customers feeds into improvement activity and a renewed commitment to detect when customers are unhappy.

In fact, this process is a version – admittedly rather high-level – of Senge’s first and most important discipline, systems thinking. So, how do you inject this approach into learning from customer complaints?

Beat the system

Anyone reading this piece who’s involved in complaints will be familiar with the various quality and other techniques used in Root Cause Analysis (RCA). I won’t reiterate them here – like any tool different techniques are applicable in different circumstances – but there’s a danger with the RCA approach. You may be able to get solutions that address the complaint but miss the big picture – or the organisation may feel that the big problem that’s preventing a breakthrough in customer satisfaction is too difficult to address.

The organisation can then find itself in the opposite of a virtuous circle where the solutions implemented from RCA fix point problems in the customer journey but don’t have much overall impact. As a result, RCA will be starved of the resource it needs to do a thorough job on the complaints in its workstack, results will be sub-optimal, and the cycle will continue.

To avoid this, complaints organisations need to make sure that they focus on customer outcomes – i.e. the underlying reason why the customer was using the product/service in the first place before things went wrong. This big picture thinking increases the likelihood of everyone addressing the underlying issues and, if your organisation is practising the other disciplines, it will pull together to fix them.

Chicken

Here in Britain we’re recovering from a crisis (I may be exaggerating) in the fast-food world. Fried chicken purveyor KFC found itself unable to meet demand for its fowl-in-fat products following a switch of logistics supplier. The situation was so bad that it had to close most of its stores while it sorted out the issues. This is a clearly a big cock-up (I’m not the first to make that joke) and the advantage, if there is one, is that the error is glaringly obvious and therefore getting to the root cause should be straightforward – and resources will be thrown at the problem to solve it quickly.

KFC have done a good job of responding, at least in terms of publicity, with a public apology and long-term probably won’t suffer too much.

However, what’s obvious, to me, is that KFC failed to pass on the learning from one supplier to another: the logistics involved in getting chicken hygienically from slaughter to fryer are highly sophisticated, apparently. I assume that their previously logistics supplier had refined their approach in response to customer and front-line feedback, but this learning clearly hadn’t made it to the new provider. In an outsourced environment, keeping the virtuous circle of a learning organisation in motion is even more of a challenge.

As Yoda might have said, “learning organisation the biggest challenge is”.

 

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NickB

It’s no joke: discourtesy hurts your business

Picture the scene. An 85-year-old woman walks into a pub on the outskirts of Chippenham, Wiltshire to check on a lunch booking she’d made to celebrate her husband’s 92nd birthday. His hearing isn’t so good these days and, knowing the pub can be noisy when busy, she asked if the party of seven could be seated at a quiet table.

“Oh, I don’t know, we may be busy, we can’t guarantee it”, said the manager.

My mother-in-law – for that’s who it was – reiterated the need for a quiet table to make sure the occasion went off successfully.

“Well, maybe this isn’t the pub for you”, said the manager.

At which point my mother-in-law cancelled the booking and re-booked at another, quieter venue.

There are two ways to interpret this:

1) This pub has a laser-like focus on its clientele and doesn’t need to pander to the whims of someone who’s not in its target market

Or

2) THIS IS AN OUTRAGEOUS WAY TO TREAT A CUSTOMER.

I subscribe to the latter point of view, not just because it’s my in-laws, but because it was frankly discourteous and, since I’ve had many fine lunches at the pub with them, I know it’s possible to cater for someone with not-particularly-special needs.

All the more disappointing as their wait staff are normally very good and the food is great.

So, here’s the lesson from this little scene:

  • Customer experience doesn’t just cover the main event (the meal), it’s the whole journey from reservation through to departure from the venue.
  • All points in the journey provide an opportunity for failure.
  • If your front-line staff can’t treat people with respect and make accommodations for their needs, they will lose you money.
  • Excluding one group of customers has a knock-on effect: none of the party of seven – most of who are younger – will be inclined to go there in future.

Courtesy costs nothing.

Discourtesy will hurt your bottom line.

NickB

The missed opportunity in complaints handling that might save your marriage!

Complaint handling departments mostly miss the opportunity to turn a dissatisfied customer into a raving fan.

I recently talked about how critical it is to detect and, if possible, avert complaints before they even happen. If a complaint does occur, it is so important to make sure it is easy for the customer to provide as much feedback as they want – ideally in the form they want. Once you have received the feedback you have a critical and short time period to not only resolve, but create a raving fan.

Be careful, time is very sensitive in these situations. Any perception of slowness can quickly make a situation considerably worse. Dealing with the complaint effectively – and simultaneously creating a significant jump in loyalty – needs a new and more innovative approach.

Understanding the“hierarchy of needs”

I’ve noticed that complaints are something that most organisations avoid like the plague! No-one wants to admit to making mistakes –all too often the attitude is to deal only with the specifics of the complaint, throw some money or gift at the customer as compensation and then move straight on to the next one. Timescales are often set by a regulator, which leads to incorrect priorities and dysfunctional behaviour.

This is about as far away from customer-centric as it’s possible to get and ignores what I call the Complainer’s Hierarchy of Needs. This is  different from the Hierarchy of Needs developed by Abraham Maslow – except that it also has five levels:

1) Hear me. I want someone to be able to listen, understand and resonate with my complaint. I don’t need an argument, I don’t want excuses and I certainly don’t want shallow apologies with no real action. Ask me questions, but only if it helps unpack the full story.

2) Acknowledge my pain. I wouldn’t be contacting you unless I had suffered in some way. It may be minor, it may be a “first world problem” but you’ve fallen short and I’m upset. Don’t overdo it but please show some genuine empathy.

3) Sort it out.At an absolute minimum, I want to be put back in the state I was in before you screwed up and I’d like some form of compensation for my inconvenience. I also want it quickly – preferably almost immediately.

4) Satisfy me. Remember I was a pretty big fan of your company before this and I’d like to believe this is a one-off and get back to those happy times when you delighted me on a regular basis. Now, what have you got? I’m not talking about a box of chocolates – I’m talking about an outcome that has value to me – assuming you understand me well enough.

5) Delight me and keep me loyal. Give me a reason to stay with you – what’s our future together going to look like? If the value is perceived to be there I will invest a bit of time asking your questions but make sure the outcome is a great reason to stay.

The best part of breaking up

And if that sounds like getting back after a bust-up with your significant other then it’s supposed to be – yes, it’s that serious! Bad significant other experiences have resulted in divorce rates at46% in the US. Interestingly, according to data from NewVoiceMedia, 44% of US consumers switch to a competitor following a poor customer service experience.Like disenchanted marriage partners, customers will exercise that level of rebellion if they don’t get what they think they need.

People in a failing marriage often cite a lack of empathy as a key reason driving the split. Customer rebellion is driven by exactly the same issue. We simply don’t recognise the complainer’s hierarchy of needs sufficiently. We extrapolate that to a belief the company does not care, and our reaction is heightened as a result. In fact, as far as complaints handling goes, we only recognise part of it, getting as far as sorting out the problem and providing what the company views as appropriate compensation without sufficiently understanding the customer’s desired outcome.

The Missed Opportunity

Aligning the customer hierarchy to the what the company does in response is fundamental:

1) Listen. Provide a channel that “works for the customer” – which often means giving choice. Technology is now more widely available and relatively cheap as an enabler. Behind that enabler should be a non-judgemental, open and sympathetic “listener” for the complainer. If you receive the complaint in writing, responding quickly with follow up is key. Customers will react much more favourably to a personal conversation, so call them back within two hours of receiving the complaint.

2) Empathise.This bit is almost obvious to state but much harder to deliver. Empathy is acknowledging that whatever happened was in some way unpleasant or inconvenient for the customer and showing the customer you genuinely care. This is not as easy as it seems. Some customers want only a “leave it with me, give me ten minutes and I will sort it” style response whereas others want more time to air their views even if that is simply to “blow off steam”. Of course, some people are more naturally empathic than others, but it can be taught and if sufficiently practised, internalised into everyday handling that is repeatedly exceptional. Make sure it’s on your training programme for all.

3) Empower people to act – rapidly. It’s too easy to hide behind processes, procedures and rules. Too much “guidance” is in place because an organisation doesn’t trust its staff sufficiently to do the right thing. Having to check or refer upwards again and again, wastes time, reduces productivity, andmotivation, and further infuriates an already-angry customer. The key here is empowerment and flexibility to allow the agent to do what is right. Post hoc checks and regular reviews are a much better way to make sure that staff are doing “the right things” instead of “doing things right”. There is a big difference!

4) Make sure your customers are satisfied. The emphasis is on the word “your”. If you think of the customer as “your customer” rather than the company’s customers, then that is a subtle but significant first step.Very often customers are happy just to have the mistake corrected or a refund provided but equally often we don’t think of asking how the experience of complaining was for the customer and, more importantly, how they feel about the outcome at a detailed level. The investment required to find this out is minimal yet it’s a practical demonstration that you weren’t just following a process, you had flexibility and you really care.

5) Understand the customer’s desired outcome and take it up a level to delight them. Having got a satisfied customer, you need to enhance the relationship and take it to a level beyond what it was before. The single most critical success factor to achieving delight is to understand what their desired outcomeis and deliver it better than the competition. And the key to this lies not only in your feedback and handling on the specifics driving the complaint. The key is to drive a deeper understanding of the outcomes and related experiences that are most important to the customer and creating an environment to deliver against it. At a basic level, reversing their negative feedback – specifically the things they couldn’t do as a result of your screw-up – gives you the starting point for understanding their desired outcomes at a deeper level, aligning your products, services and supporting processes to make it happen. This might sound expensive but the loyalty and revenue uplift that this can bring will make it an immensely profitable and rewarding exercise.

You read it here:applying this approach can make customer complaints into a revenue generator and there’s a case for treating it a profit centre. That’s slightly different to the norm don’t you think?

In the next part of this series we’ll “close the loop” on complaints by making sure that you genuinely learn from your mistakes and build a better understanding of your customers’ desired outcome

NickB

Closing the loop: the vital missing component in complaints handling

You need a strategic approach to managing complaints that focuses on customer outcomes as much as what went wrong.

I recently described complaints as being an under-exploited goldmine of customer feedback. Companies need to widen their focus from purely complaints i.e. dealing with the “expression of dissatisfaction” to a more strategic approach that I refer to as “closing the loop”. This means joining up the three main parts of complaint management into a coherent programme that’s focused on change and improvement in the quality of overall customer outcomes as much as customer satisfaction in relation to the original issue.

Why is this important?

According to market researcher Pierre-Nicolas Schwab, in a 2015 article, the data shows that complaints from customers are not taken that seriously or are ignored.

  • More than 50% of companies don’t answer complaints
  • In 2013, post-complaint satisfaction was still at 1976 levels (RAGE survey 2013)

And, looking at the latest US RAGE survey, $313bn are at risk because of dissatisfaction in the US alone.

It’s time to get strategic.

It’s time to close the loop.

Opportunity

It’s rare that companies adopt this approach – or if they do it’s underpowered – and – as the statistics above show – it represents a great opportunity to create differentiating customer value. The underlying components are simple to describe:

  • Detection – identifying the complaint or the potential complaint and averting it if possible.
  • Handling – dealing with the complaint when made and restoring the customer back to the state they were in before the error occurred
  • Learning – identifying what went wrong at the “root cause” level in relation to either stated or expected customer outcomes and then taking action to:
    – prevent future occurrences
    – identify the potential contribution to the wider outcome-driven operating landscape.

This last part will be different from traditional best practice, but the complaint interaction creates a fantastic opportunity not only to repair the issue but create a level of loyalty – and therefore business impact–over and above what could have been achieved if the complaint had never happened.

In other words, customer complaints can be used as the basis for customer innovation – and in my experience very few organisations are currently doing this.

Detect and survive

Going back to basics. The front end of complaint handling takes place before a complaint is made and, at best, avoids the complaint being made at all. This requires the ability in each contact channel to detect imminent dissatisfaction and take action to deal with it.

Different channels will require different skills to carry out this, for example:

  • Face-to-face channels require staff who can pick up on the visual cues that a customer is potentially irritated.
  • Similarly, an experienced agent in a call centre should be able to detect from a customer’s tone of voice that they are unhappy.

In both these cases situational training and role play can help build competence since not all of your staff will be naturally empathic.

In the digital world we have not yet reached a point where machines can match an experienced front-of-house manager or call centre agent for empathy but there are various ways it can be simulated. It’s possible to detect if a customer’s online journey is particularly slow and then to prompt with help and support messages. Similarly, the availability of an online chat button means that customers can divert to a human (or chatbot) for support rather than getting frustrated with an online experience that’s not working for them.

But online doesn’t just mean websites: social media are increasingly an opportunity –in some cases the preferred channel – for customers to vent their dissatisfaction. Early detection here is crucial given the propensity for some grievances to go viral. It pays to have a light touch when dealing with these – as UK retailer Argos did in a “street speak” exchange with a disgruntled would-be PS4 purchaser back in 2014: the amplification performed by the Twitterati performs a handy bit of brand enhancement.

Dough balls

This front-end detection isn’t always possible however as the customer may be complaining about something long after that initial first point of contact so it’s vital that the customer can raise a complaint easily. In fact, complaint and feedback should invariably be encouraged.

Sometimes you can go to a company’s website and immediately find out how to provide feedback – I recently raised a complaint with UK bank TSB and could find it within a couple of clicks (the eventual resolution wasn’t great but that’s another story) and everyone’s favourite First Direct is similarly easy – but other businesses are a bit more coy, relegating complaints to a more obscure area – in the case of NatWest’s personal banking site for example it’s hidden in the Support Centre which, to me at least is less than blindingly obvious.

This attitude suggests that some businesses don’t welcome complaints or any kind of feedback, which is nuts, since finding out what customers think of you is, you know, quite a good idea.

But people don’t actually like complaining (unless they’re a CX-obsessive like me, but even I can get worn out by the sheer tedium of it) so it pays to make it easy or to incentivise through competitions – entering a prize draw – or vouchers (Pizza Express’s How Did We Dough? for example). Personally, I think the instant gratification of a low-value item is better than the chance of a prize, since it says that the business values your opinion – but maybe I just like dough balls.

Radar

Getting your “complaints radar” working on all channels is key to minimising the actual complaints you have to deal with. They may be a great source of feedback, but once a complaint is made it’s costly to process and provide redress so early intervention is always preferable.

In the next part of this series we’ll go on to consider how to handle the complaint effectively when it is made and how focusing on the customer’s intended outcome will help deliver a resolution and an enhanced overall experience that can change a detractor into a raving fan.

 

 

 

NickB

Forget Chief Customer Officer, welcome to the new “COO”

There’s a problem with the Chief Customer Officer role and rethinking it as the “Chief Outcome Officer” (COO) can help everyone get on board a customer-centric company.

Although not yet present in every organisation, the idea of a Chief Customer Officer is beginning to take hold, with an increasing number of organisations making the appointment.

But in my view, there’s a problem.

When you appoint a chief anything officer you expect them to be the ultimate solver of the problems in their area. This is OK when you’re in charge of, say, operations or sales: most people would expect the Chief Operating Officer or Chief Financial Officer to be the ultimate go-to person in when something needs addressing in those areas.

But customers? Is that sales, marketing, your contact centre or billing. Do those functions report to the Chief Customer Officer now?

No, they don’t. Which makes the term Chief Customer Officer a misnomer in many organisations. They have influence over those traditional functions for sure but not really the authority. It’s frustrating for the individual and his/her team because they can see the opportunity but all too often without the ability to create meaningful change. It also goes someway to explaining why the Chief Customer Officer has an average tenure that is on average the shortest in the C-suite.

Eagle eye

As one of our NextTen Inner Circle members pointed out in an email recently, the holder of such a role has a focus that involves “hovering around like an eagle” with nothing escaping their sight. This is spot-on: customer issues are all-pervasive so in some sense we need an all-pervasive role or someone with a roving brief who can pounce on and sort out issues wherever they occur.

That may be fine in some organisations but in most it can lead to a role that’s undefined or underpowered or, even worse, where all the other functions think the customer is “someone else’s problem”.

The Chief Outcome Officer has a different focus. By moving attention from “customer experience” to customer outcomes, organisations can get a view of the value each part of the organisation creates for the customer. It is also a strong catalyst to move departmental focus from being excellent at “what they do” to creating excellent “outcomes” – because that’s the ultimate measure the customer makes when they make a choice to buy or not.

But there’s an even more important distinction: the new COO isn’t one person’s role,

it’s everyone’s job

Really?

Yes, in a genuinely customer-centric organisation, every role must have something to do with creating a positive outcome for the customer. Even when a role isn’t customer-facing, the role-holder should be able to have some line of sight to the customer and the outcomes they are contributing towards.

So how does this idea work out in practice and how do you embed this kind of thinking into the organisation?

My customer, your customer

The first thing a Chief Customer Officer can do is map the traditional organisational structure to a outcome driven structure. This is just another representation of how a company is structured but if the overall superior customer outcome is both the goal the customer seeks and the no 1 strategic differentiator, then surely this is a critical representation than companies need which defines how they operate.

This viewpoint will certainly excite the CEO and the strategists but how do you ensure it becomes everybody’s job?

The best way to create this momentum for change is through a programme of “employee engagement”, although personally I don’t care for that term as it suggests that you’ve already failed to get your people engaged. Leaving that aside, it is possible to use a programme to move the organisation towards an all-pervading awareness of customer outcomes.

I was involved in such a programme when I worked at BT. The MyCustomer programme was a multi-faceted affair that ran for a few years and, as the title implied, was intended to create a much greater sense of ownership of the customer throughout the organisation. It included various events including competitions (I’m pleased to say that the solution I sponsored is still in use today) and “back to the floor” exercises, but one of the most inventive was the creation of an employee-only help desk for dealing with customer problems.

This addressed the problem that I and, no doubt, many of my colleagues experienced when someone you met asked you what you did and, when you answered that you worked for BT, would launch into a diatribe about the level of service they had received. Using an internal helpdesk made it easier to offer to take ownership of the problem there and then. The unforeseen consequence may have been that people would avoid saying who they worked for, and I have no data on how many queries the helpdesk handled and from which parts of the organisation, but the emphasis was very much on everyone in the organisation having an impact on the customer.

It was such a good idea that I wish I’d thought of it.

Mind your language

But programmes come and go, and the number of conversations I still have about BT with friends and strangers suggests that they should have kept the MyCustomer programme running for longer to embed it firmly into culture and processes. This is the million-dollar question of course: how can you embed customer-centric behaviour and attitudes across the whole organisation after the programme circus has left town or even avoid the need for a change programme altogether?

The key for me is the way that leaders at all levels talk about their work and the things that they emphasise when they talk. Many years ago, I talked to an organisation who, according to their publicity, would bring to a halt any meeting that had not discussed customers in the first 15 minutes. I was applying for a job with them and never got to find out if it was true or not, but even if only partly true, it was a great story about where the customer figured in their priorities.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that you might need a real Chief Customer/Outcome Officer to set the tone and change the conversation but ultimately in a real customer-centric organisation the customer must belong to everyone.

NickB

Customer service basics can make all the difference (part 2)

In the first part of this two-part article I dealt with some examples of keeping the customer informed and managing their expectations. There’s a common theme emerging in both those and the following examples of basic customer service – and my experiences over the post-Christmas period emphasised this:

Communication is everything

Here’s the remaining four of my six basics…

3) Don’t hassle the customer

My in-store experience at Warren Evans was a classic example of getting the level of attention just right. We were greeted by an assistant, Michelle, who determined our needs, then showed us the range of potential beds. She then left us to get on with working out which one we liked and when we’d made our choice, took us through the transaction, including the commitment to dates.

Warren Evans is by no means the only store that can get this right – it’s something every floorwalker in a store should be trained up in and, in my experience, most stores can get it right. However, when stores move online, the ability to judge how much attention a customer needs seems to go out of the window. In part this is understandable since the customer is not visible in the same way as a physical store, but sites often over-compensate by forever pestering you to provide feedback or reminding you that you had the temerity to leave goods in your cart without completing the transaction.

Feedback and nudging customers to complete make good sense commercially but don’t always lead to customer satisfaction. Involving customers actively in the evolution of online services helps you to get these details right.

4) Pay attention to unspoken needs

My most frustrating recent experience came on my birthday at the beginning of January, where I had arranged to meet family at a central London restaurant. It’s a reasonably well-established American-themed venue and seemed just about right for a lively celebration. On arrival it appeared to be too lively as our table was close to the bar area where a singer/guitarist was providing live entertainment for the evening. I did a quick tour of the restaurant looking for a quieter table, at which point the manager spotted what I was doing and immediately moved us to a better table. So far so good, sadly there will be some negatives to come…

5) Deal brilliantly with complaints

…and indeed, the restaurant managed to get so many basics wrong that a 15-point complaint email followed. However, the initial attention to my dissatisfaction with the table was a great example of one element of dealing brilliantly with complaints and that’s dealing with them before they happen.

A further example followed when two aperitifs took 20 minutes to not arrive. On raising this – an expression of dissatisfaction, so a complaint in all but name – we were offered them gratis.

Overall, despite good food and great company there were other basic restaurant service elements that left something to be desired, so I emailed the restaurant at length. I received an email the following day from the manager we had seen who demonstrated the following good practice:

  • Acknowledged the error(s)
  • Apologised
  • Offered compensation, even though none had been requested.

In this case the compensation is four free dinners, which we’ll take up soon, if only to check that the promised improvement in service has been implemented. Sometimes I think it’s a mixed blessing having me as a customer…

6) Don’t be average

Part of the problem with the restaurant was that, whilst Ben the manager was attentive, the other service staff didn’t seem to be on the same page. Certainly, they were not responding to what should be a given at a venue like this: that my desired outcome is a great evening out, not just some reasonable food and drink.

Many retail outfits – particularly in the food and hospitality sector – are content to provide average transactions. I reflected on this when writing the first part of this piece in a nearby outlet of a coffee chain (inexplicably named after a decadent Roman emperor). I ordered my flat white and it was prepared in short order but, whilst the assistant wasn’t in any way unpleasant he wasn’t exactly personable.

I don’t expect hugs or a life-transforming experience when I’m buying a coffee, but I couldn’t help thinking an opportunity had been missed for a bit more human interaction, otherwise I might as well be buying coffee from a vending machine.

First world problems?

Dissecting one’s own experiences like this is an occupational hazard when you’re in my line of business and sometimes it can seem like I am obsessed with what might be termed ‘first world problems’ but the problem for first world businesses is that competitive advantage can be gained from getting all these things right, particularly when so many companies don’t.

Will you seize the opportunity to fix your service basics and get ahead of the competition?

 

NickB

Customer service basics can make all the difference (part 1)

In focusing on customer experience, CX professionals can be guilty of forgetting that very often it’s the basics of customer service that can make the difference between customer loyalty and customer loathing. Some recent personal experiences as diverse as passport renewal, bed buying, a birthday celebration and a free cup of coffee have reminded me of a fundamental customer experience equation:

  • Get everything right and I’ll be more than 80% likely to recommend to friends and family

BUT…

  • Fail to deliver on the basics and I’ll be 100% sure to tell friends, family and if you’re me, my “world-wide media audience”, how you didn’t measure up. (If you’re not me, then TripAdvisor or any other opportunity to leave a point of view.)

And if you’re the kind of business where this isn’t important, you’re either getting by without loyal customers or you’re deliberately pursuing mediocrity as a goal.

Here is my take on the basics that you must get right:

1) Communicate

This is so basic that you’d think it didn’t need stating but I was pleasantly surprised when UK passport agency Her Majesty’s Passport Office (HMPO) showed me what good practice looks like, and therefore, by comparison, how this is so rarely achieved in both public and private sectors.

I took advantage of a bit of post-Christmas quiet time to get around to renewing my passport. It’s an intimidating process, with plenty of opportunity to make a mistake, so a degree of obsessive-compulsive checking meant I missed the last post before the New Year bank holiday weekend. I had provided my mobile number to receive SMS messages regarding progress but was still astonished to receive a text from HMPO the day after the application arrived setting my expectation I would receive the new passport in around three weeks. Later that day I had another text re-setting my expectation that it would arrive in a few days. The following day I was woken up early by a text from DX Delivery saying it would be delivered by the following day. Later that day the shiny new passport dropped through my door. From posting to receipt in less than a week – by public sector standards, positively supersonic!

2) Manage the customer’s expectations

Customer experience management is a misnomer, as the experience is personal to the customer and all you can do as a business is manage the conditions that create that experience. Setting expectations is one of the conditions you can definitely manage though: my passport experience is a great example: the initial communication was in line with the 2-3-week, non-urgent timescale set by HMPO on their website, but then when it shortened I was kept informed. And, crucially, the expectation set was exceeded by my experience. (It may be stating the obvious but this only works one way round!)

And so to bed…

Similarly, the prospect of a bargain in the January sales sent me shopping for a new bed and, since we bought one from Warren Evans over 30 years ago, their nearby store was first port of call. The range and quality of their products has certainly improved in three decades but whilst this, and the in-store experience, was impressive, what I really liked was the on-time fulfilment of my order.

It was this simple:

  • We chose a bed frame and mattress
  • We placed the order in the store
  • We were given a delivery date and a promise that the ‘window’ for delivery would be confirmed no less than three days before the date
  • This was confirmed in an email
  • An email duly arrived five days beforehand with a confirmation of a 9-12 window and a promise that the driver would call one hour beforehand with a more precise time
  • On the day, the driver called at 8.30, arrived at 9.30, assembled the bed and left at 10.30, leaving one satisfied customer looking forward to a good night’s sleep.

When it goes right, it really is that simple.

Don’t get shirty

Contrast this with a clothing retailer with whom I recently placed an order for collection at one of their stores. Two days after the email informing me that the order could be collected I turn up, but the order’s not there. I was told to give it a couple of days as it may have been delayed. A couple of days later I return, but still no shirt. A call was promised to let me know what had happened. Four days later and no call, so I call back: customer services was not available (it was Saturday) according to the assistant I spoke to, but I received a promise to call me back on Monday. This time – a mere 8 days after the alleged delivery of the shirt – I get a call from the assistant who informed me that the shirt had arrived, along with some other stock that had been promised. He had raised this issue with head office for investigation and to be fair, it sounds like a blip in their supply chain, but the number of unfulfilled promises does not make for a happy customer. In the light of my happy fulfilment experience with the more involved transactions with HMPO and Warren Evans, particularly annoying.

In the next part of this article, I’ll go on to consider other elementary aspects of service that my recent experiences threw up. These should always be got right – but very often aren’t:

3) Don’t hassle the customer

4) Pay attention to unspoken needs

5) Deal brilliantly with complaints

6) Don’t be content with average

to be continued…