The soundtrack to our CX lives

It was only a matter of time before someone pulled together this ridiculous notion. So I thought, why not me. I often dive into popular culture forms to find examples of the outcome or process I wish to convey. Which got me thinking, what would a customer experience programme sound like if it was set to music? Each track links to Youtube should you wish to enjoy the full surround sound blog experience. Alternatively, click here for the full playlist as one.

So with that in mind, here is the set up and launch of a Customer Experience programme soundtrack – I told you it was ridiculous. By the way, this is cast around my limited knowledge of music, so if you feel there are better tracks to convey how things evolve as the CX matures, then please comment with the stage and your suggest track.

Stage 1 – Unawareness so Nothing Ever Happens 

That surreal time when customers complained unheard,  fell away because of unattended problems and the hero was the sale. A time when models such as ‘pathway to purchase’ misinformed budget allocation. Call centres acknowledged customer frustration, but unless execs could see it directly impacted the here and now sales figure, ‘Nothing Ever Happens’. From Del Amitiri, and released in 1989, this protest song about not taking responsibility for improving things for society (or in our case customers), I feel captures that time where as a CX leader you knew there was a better way, but history kept repeating itself whilst customers defected or stayed through apathy or lack of choice.

Stage 2 – Madness (from a fresh perspective)

Perhaps the break though came when a piece of customer insight on the value of experience is shared internally either with your own, or borrowed insights. These show that the value economy had shifted from products and services to experiences. Enabled by an array of technologies, market entry and rapid growth meant super brands arrived in months with slicker smarter and more engaging experiences. Many retailers have fallen and at best those who survived have seen the standards of experience delivery expectation rise as customers no longer see as much value in the conventional differentiation points as they once did. Indeed, the economic value of a company’s worth has moved to how the customer experience is delivered before, during and after the transaction.

At this stage, with this CX idea in mind, a few brave souls embark upon a journey of enlightenment to discover ‘what matters most to our customers’. Data highlighting the performance of the experience endured by customers supported by customer verbatim feedback on why it’s important creates the conversation around investment prioritisations and ways of working. But the gathering of the right data (such as measures to identify what actually drivers customer behaviour), the understanding of what it means, and wrestling with the realisation of how far impacting across everything the company does it stretches could give you a headache. You could even say it was a time of Madness.

Path A (embracing customer experience) or Path B (resisting a customer-led approach)

We are at a junction here. Not all take path A. The evidence and the data can be overwhelming and challenging for some to understand. Especially if the excuse of regulatory change or short term sales cycles are also on the agenda. This is where, some take path B even though it feels right to start with, it will become an uncomfortable journey full of technology delays and IT contractors. This is the path of ‘digital-first’ or ‘mobile-first’ or ‘AI-first’ or ‘VoC first’ (you get the picture) where gathering the insight to find problems outweighs consideration of it’s value. With the sales pitch of chrome brushed applications, speed of light turnaround promises and ‘go-to-market’ capability, the IT priority list becomes clogged with new ‘customer’ requests. But don’t forget this in a world where often the customer isn’t seen as an asset. At the town hall, the CEO is sending his people down path B too, ‘if we don’t have an app that customers can use and buy through, we wont have any customers.’ To the preacher it feels like ‘putting customers first’, but as their soundtrack would show it’s a long, long winding road with no particular place to go. They are inevitably on the road to nowhere (another blog perhaps).

So back to the more exciting Path A

Stage 3 – The Impossible Dream

So back to the Path A followers and with a USB stick full of customer interviews, perhaps a few AS IS journey maps and evidence of how short-term sales advantages erode value in the customer relationship, a story of a better way can be sketched. A story which dares to dream to judge the company’s purpose and prioritisation against one question, ‘do we add value to the customer?’

With the right playbook, storyboard, video showreel or whatever high impact media format you choose, this should be that moment when your customer and market insight is presented in a way that the boards’ only question is, ‘why haven’t we done this before?’. You need to think big, but bring others with you to ‘dream the impossible dream’ too. As Matt Monroe told us. It’s a moment of truth for the budding CX leader so you don’t under invest in this one wrong.

 

Stage 4 – Absolute Beginners

Whilst companies been delivering products and services to customers for hundreds of years, as they have become commodities, Customer Experience is where customers place value. So those leading the CX Strategy and Transformation have to forget much of their ingrained ways of working and rebuild process, practices, people skills, platforms and propositions (to name a few) with a very different source of ‘value’ in mind. And although many of the tasks are the same, such as gathering insight, what you ask, how, when and the interpretation requirements are very different.

KPI’s are redesigned to drive value for the customer, not extract value from the customer. In fact, whilst the company has been historically been marketing itself to its customers, this is a time where the customer must be marketed to the business to get stakeholders on board.

Taking time to work through the strategy, requires diligence and rigour. Getting it right here is critical. Quite often those who start the CX strategy aren’t around to see it come to fruition. That’s not such a bad thing. It’s a very different set of skills needed to reshape ways of working and win over execs than it is to drive through innovations and creative improvements.

At Lexden, we use an award-winning academic stud underpinning a CX Capability Assessment tool which enables a company to benchmark its current CX set-up against 1,100 brands, across 40+ business activities identified as proficient among the best of which achieve 600% ROI from their CX. This enables any company to understand what value they are achieving from their Customer Experience Strategy. It also highlight where attention is needed across the CX critical dependency points and in what order – the head start you need.

Getting the right stakeholders onside is easier with a strategy and programme aligned to a successful CX blueprint. As David Bowie sings in his anthemic Absolute Beginners track, ‘if my love is your love, we are certain to succeed’.

Stage 5 – See for Miles

Getting the Customer Experience vision agreed provides clarity of the expectations of the business and more importantly adoption that creating customer value is a business model to create sustainable profits.

To achieve this, the foundation must be the customer insight which identify what matters most to customers in terms of what drives customer behaviour drivers (to secure more of their share of category). These drivers (scientifically proven drivers if you choose to use EXQ)  are fused with the brand values to create a unique set of Customer Standards. These provide the organisation with an accessible and relevant framework for all employees to review their role and actions against and ensure internally and customer facing improvements are consistent.

They are energised by an overarching Customer Experience vision; the poster boy/girl of the cultural change. This becomes the reference name (hopefully at the top) on the board agenda. When underpinned with a sound customer experience programmes covering the five pillars of CX Management; measurement, culture, challenges, process management and governance.

Now it’s all in place, we can dare to dream with a vision and a road map to take us there. The calm before the storm where you can see for miles and miles ahead of you as The Who remind us.

Stage 6 – Rush hour

With the permission to fail, underpinning governance, budget to upgrade data sources, dedicated personnel and a vision to create value for the customer, we are off! But there is so much still unknown so the first 6-12 months are frantic. It’s like a corporate rush hour. As each ‘AS IS’ customer journey is mapped, more data gaps and embarrassing breaks in the journey are unearthed. Individuals dash-off to repair their mistakes, the digital team can run very fast and new ideas become reality and are launched.

It’s a time where discipline is needed. You need appointed ambassadors to help manage the pace. The CX activities such as Customer Journey Mapping and Improvement Ideation need stewardship by the CX team in collaboration with areas of the business, a measurement of progress is set* and prioritisation is aligned to what matters most to customers and gives the greatest advantage gain.

* Beware of sinking most of the CX budget into a customer feedback systems at this stage. Systems which gives a performance number linked to something which doesn’t correlate to profit. At this stage setting a CSAT or Recommendation figure to acheive will become a road to ruin. Verbatim doesn’t need to come in torrents through every data touch point. And don’t forget, any feedback platform you add becomes part of the experience, not just a measurement of it. If customers feedback and you can’t keep up with the pace of improvement, your customers will think less of you.

You will also need a prioritisation model for improvements. We use EXQ (Experience Quality Measurement) which is 25 customer behaviour drivers which have been proven (1,100 case studies) to account for 90% of customer’s decision-making. If introduced as the foundation layer of customer insight, at this stage it’s well established as the ‘customer truth’ and priorities can be aligned to the incremental gain they will achieve. 

Put ‘customer value’ at the wheel (to paraphrase Jane Wiedlin), enjoy the rush hour because it becomes clearer with the customer’s value as your goal.

Stage 7 – Don’t stop me now

So now all in the business involved, the right customer insights driving decision-making and priority improvement calls are being rewarded with greater customer share of category commitment as a result.

If at this stage customer experience is set up as a growth strategy, then progress will be made. The Vanguards of CX enjoy 600% ROI, but only 3% of organisations are classed like this (according to studies by Dr Prof Phil Klaus).

With successes behind you, growth opportunities to build improves experiences, a road map pointing to sustainable competitive advantage and colleagues who feel good and are rewarded for adding customer value, nothing will stop you now. There is the momentum an purpose felt in Queen’s high energy, ‘Don’t stop me now’ track. And who dare to!

Stage 8 – Perfect Day

Everything is aligned around adding value to the customer. At a strategic level the continued success and growth mean business planning and customer management processes are now revised to focus on adding value to the customer.

Listening systems are in place so feedback informs what needs further improvement and why. And with commercial and data analysts on board, any improvement can be measured against new agreed customer performance measures.

In this world of CX, new recruits, both employees and customer mention CX as a reason for joining. The experience as a consideration on their decision-making. The CEO asks whose idea it was to become customer-centric and the response is, ‘all of us’. And you find your transformation story is wanted by the HBR or similar for a CX Case study – What a perfect day, Lou Reed.

Stage 8 – Happy ever after – Lovely Day

As long as the CX team are focused on helping the business driving value for customer, CX is a long and sustainable strategy. It becomes a new way of working.

Keep CX positioned as a growth opportunity. Keep listening to customers. Keep understanding what matter most to them. Keep ensuring the business knows it’s purpose is to fulfill these. Keep highlighting where the organisation can work harder to meet and exceed customers expectations in a more motivating (on brand) way than the competitors.

From here on every day should be a lovely day. Everyday is a Lovely day thereafter.

So there we go, from start to a continuous non-end, my soundtrack to our CX lives. I hope you’ve enjoyed the journey and maybe listened to a track or two as well? Do you agree? If you’ve got a better soundtrack thought for any of the stages, I’d love to hear your thoughts. It’s only a bit of fun. But that’s important in CX too.

Posted by Christopher Brooks, Customer Consultant, Lexden (London)

If you’d like to receive more articles on driving more profitable Customer Experience, please sign up to our free monthly ‘Customer Experience Update’.

Lexden helps deliver effective customer experience insight, strategy, content and creative activation clients seeking sustainable profit from customer experience.

 

 

 

 

 

Why we need to rethink how we measure Customer Experience

There’s a rage of words between Ryanair and anyone measuring their Customer Satisfaction which presents a different score to what they believe it is.

Which! have a 52% rating for Ryanair. PA Consulting have them pegged even lower. Whereas Rate My Trip has a 92% customer satisfaction rating. Ryanair understandably support Rate My Trips’ poll.

But forget the squabbling, the real enemy here is the lack of understanding of how customer satisfaction is calculated and inconsistency in collating and measuring customer satisfaction across sectors.

We all love Which! I was a subscriber for years, often checking the best product options (sadly often after I made the purchase). Which! has more proportion of their measure accounted for by price related criteria than other studies such as award winning behavioural based EXQ which has found it to be much lower in studies.

Often a suite of criteria are presented with equal importance (again EXQ has identified that is never the case). These measures are then wrapped up and badged as overall Customer Satisfaction. So it seems what Customer Satisfaction is often whatever the organisation using it wants it to be.

This isn’t unique to Ryanair. I’ve met numerous insight managers who do not agree with the criteria used by others to measure their performance.

If you asked a customer what the criteria should be and how much weighting to apply to their situation, I am sure you would receive back as many combinations as customers asked.

But many consumers place high value on these satisfaction measures in their choice criteria, assuming they are all the same. But the are usually unaware of the wide and varied ways companies collate and grade customer satisfaction.

‘Satisfaction’ as a measure of performance also provides an unreliable indicator for companies to track, according to studies completed by Prof. Dr Phil Klaus, world leading academic on customer experience. No one said it was an indication of profit, but many companies do share CSAT at board level assuming if it goes up, so the company will be more profitable.

Ryanair could be the most profitable short haul carrier around but have the lowest satisfaction rating. If they operate a budget airline then something has got to give. In their case it’s the experience of the customer. Is it sustainable? Perhaps yes. This year’s poor Customer Service has delivered a 20% increase in share price YoY for Ryanair. No one states you have to be nice to your customers.

So Customer Experience practitioners should be cautious about  presenting Customer Satisfaction increases as a sign of business profitability improvement. In the Wealth Management and Private Banking sector studies show those topping the customer satisfaction polls are way off the pace when it comes to corporate profitability rankings.

Affected behavioural change is a very reliable measurement approach because it’s an ‘actual’. Whereas satisfaction is a measure of a customer’s sentiment at a moment in time. Similarly, NPS measures an intention to be actioned. They do not reflect what customer’s are or will actually do. Measuring the impact of a behaviour change is an actual.

We can measure CX impact on behavioural change, so why do companies prioritise satisfaction?

It’s an easy one to put to customers. They get it. However, if you discuss the concept of ‘context’  capturing customer satisfaction, most admit they struggle to associate satisfaction with anything more than the here and now they are asked about.

So if a purchase went well the customer might feedback a high score. However, if part of that transaction was the reassuring returns policy which then turns out to be useless, they cant go back and correct transaction moment score even though it was influenced by the perception of the returns policy.

VoC platform providers like satisfaction as well. It’s a one question solution. It’s easy. It’s relatively unchallenged. It can be asked across channels and compared between journeys, segments and other variables. It’s a commercially viable currency for them.

Is there a more accountable measure available?

There is a much more reliable customer experience measure. One which presents 90% accountability of what CX drives customer’s decisions. One which has been proven to be 90 times more reliable than CSAT and NPS in identifying what drives customer’s decisions. One which would enable both Which! to reflect more accurately the complex set of criteria customers use to inform decisions and is based on ‘actual’ contribution to the company rather than a sentiment score such as satisfaction.

This measure is known as Experience Quality Measure (EXQ). It’s not widely known about because it’s an academics measure for customer experience. We found it a few years ago and now find it fascinating. Academics are interested in discovering the truth rather than headline scores so it’s a more ‘spikey’ data set to work with, but so much more informative. !0 years or so a group of academics agreed CSAT and NPS weren’t reflective of the truth, with a less than 1% reliability of customer’s actual decision making being attributed back to scores provided on these measures, so the pursuit of a more accountable measure led to the creation of the award winning EXQ.

It was identified there are 300 drivers which influence 100% of our decision making. It’s complex. But further studies discovered over 90% of decisions can be identified through just 25 of these drivers. At this level it becomes a study to be put to customers, as we have now done several times. 

What does EXQ deliver?

• Identifies which customer experiences matter most to customers decision making
• Highlights the importance of each of these drivers (typically 8-9 drivers account for 66% of decision making)
• Identify the customer experiences companies deliver which have almost no impact on customer’s decision making – creating immediate opportunities for saving
• Because we collate ‘share of category’ decision making we can highlight how your score benchmarks to your competitors and what drivers that is based on. This provides an indication of true differentiation, as perceived by your customers. As well as expected experiences for the sector
• Provide cross-border comparisons to enable groups to make truly global customer  comparisons
• We use an award winning academic research designed to get the truth of customer experience
• It’s a one off study which is not reliant on tech platforms so can be delivered in 6 weeks
• It’s a study and not a tech solution, so the cost is comparable to a few focus groups

In EXQ studies we have run with clients, we highlight the 25 most important customer experience behavioural drivers. What is often surprising to clients is that what really matters most to customers is very different to the areas the company has invested it’s marketing budget on. The decision is then whether to accept the new insight and rethink the strategic choices they make or to bury it and pretend it never happened and hope it doesn’t come back to haunt them. We’ve run studies where both outcomes have played out!

EXQ is not for the faint hearted, but it is for those driving for successful in CX. Studies have been run with over 1,100 companies around the globe which highlight the best performing EXQ companies achieve a 600% ROI from CX. Although only 3% achieve this.

For more on EXQ click the link below. Or contact Christopher Brooks at Lexden to find out how with just 6 weeks (and a fraction of the cost of CSAT) you can have a CX which will refocus your CX efforts around ‘what matters most’ to your customers and what drives your bottom line.

If you are considering this option, it might be worth undertaking a ‘comparison’ study using EXQ to identify what really drives profitability. EXQ can also informs what customer behavioural drivers deliver CSAT and NPS scores – which can be most revealing. This time in two months you can have the answer for the equivalent of a months VoC running costs.

But it EXQ isn’t for you, when it comes to measuring CX be sure that 1) it reflects what’s important to your customers decision making and 2) you are certain of the impact on profit of chasing CX targets.

Posted by Christopher Brooks, Customer Consultant, Lexden (London)

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Lexden helps deliver effective customer experience insight, strategy, content and creative activation clients seeking sustainable profit from customer experience.

 

How small Customer Experience steps make a big difference

Most of the time I spend on Customer Experience is focused on helping clients design effective  customer experience programmes to drive profit through adding customer value. However, I never cease to be amazed at how much of a lasting impression small experience gestures have on me.

Why does small count so much?

When I look back at these scenarios, there is a common thread. They typically occur when I’m least expecting it and have the ability to change my emotional state. The direction of which is from neutral or negative to positive.

They come about when there is an unexpected block to fulfilling my intention or things work unreasonably against me. These aren’t points of pain, but moments of truth because each company has managed to create an experience between me and the brand which has stuck with me.

Also, these are quite unremarkable and low interest moments of a customer’s journey, but they’ve been turned into more than that.

Is small cheap too?

Whilst I don’t think either of these examples featured cost that much to install, I’d like to think the way in which it’s delivered is coded, guided by strong Customer Standards. I have found this the most successful method for rapid, widespread and welcomed adoption of Customer Experience in an organisation. Importantly, it helps remove inconsistency because a badly delivered small experience can back fire and trivialise the customer’s primary requirement

#1 Halfords make good from a bad situation

I collected my bike from the station one evening after work to discover the back light had been taken (I normally remove it but forgot on this occasion). It was dark so I wheeled it through our high street to Halfords. I took my bike in and explained what happened. The shop assistant pointed me to the ‘lights section’ empathising with my story and reminding me to remove my lights in future. I paid for the light and was about to leave. He then stopped me, looked at my front tyre and put on a missing valve cover saying that will help keep my tyres inflated. By taking that extra concern for me, he lifted my spirits too.

#2 Abellio take control and save the day

I often find the train company I use has plenty friction points, largely due to the hugely complex nature of running a train company. I get that, and often accept it. When you travel a standard route in a standard way, things normally work out okay. But on this occasion I’d had a call from a contact who was flying in to Stansted airport and wanted to meet me. I was at  Liverpool Street Station at the time but only had a return ticket home which was two few stops before Stansted.

I tried to figure out what to do on the ticket machine to buy an extension to my journey. But with only a couple of minutes until the next train, I was failing. I then noticed a ‘call me’ button. I called out of desperation because I thought I’d miss my train.  A voice came from beyond the machine and I explained what I needed and how short the time I had. The operator then took control of my screen and navigated through a complicated series of steps to get to the ticket I needed.

It worked out as £4 rather than than £15 I’d arrived at, and within a few seconds, so I caught my train and made my meeting. All the time thinking, wow, thank Abellio, you made this happen.

Never let the small moments pass by. Make them count in a brand differentiated way.

Posted by Chistopher Brooks, Customer Consultant, Lexden (London)

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Lexden helps deliver effective customer experience insight, strategy, content and creative activation clients seeking sustainable profit from customer experience.

 

How bottled water, fresh fruit and Ipads build a more emotive Customer Experience

I was judging at the FS CX awards last week. Each year the standard and the activation ideas improve. With some significant developments such as retail banks shifting from business discipline silos to customer journey org structures and others ditching CSAT and other measures in exchange for measuring their ability to fulfil ‘what matters to customers’.

It was a day of inspiration. And being a day time judging and dinner event, I returned home by Greater Anglia train at a reasonable time, stopping at Tesco to pick up some provisions on my way home. At the event, the passion, the performance and the future potential of the finalists impressed me. But so did Greater Anglia and Tesco in their own small way too.

Reflecting on what I’d heard at the event I realised that for all the strategically sound structure and progressive programming, it was the emotionally engaging stories of how customer-led thinking had resulted in a betterment for customers which were staying with me. Especially because the organisations believed it would mean they would retain the heart and the purse of the customer.

It’s the same when I think about the ever increasing number of ‘professional’ speakers on the CX circuit, for all their philosophy without practice experience, it is their emotionally connecting self stories of CX that stick.

With the right framework to ensure ‘what matters most and when’ is prioritised, and is designed consistent to amplify the strength of the brand across all experience activity, any organisation can create it’s own set of low cost, emotionally engaging experiences which customers value, and motivate colleagues.

Here are three which I encountered on the aforementioned day of judgement:

1. Greater Anglia offering bottles of water, for free, to help passengers with the sustained spell of warm weather. It might not have been their idea and it might be an investment to minimise the impact of not being able to deal with dehydrated customers, but leaving cynicism at the ticket gate if I may, this is a lovely gesture.

Whilst not own-able I accept, it doesn’t need to be. It just fulfils a need for a customer, whose route to work is ingrained, they probably only think about refreshment on a hot day when they are half way there.

2. Tesco offering free fruit to children of shoppers. I recall a few years ago working with the Tesco group, before CX really took hold. They were attempting to reaffirm their difference through hundreds of small improvements to the customers experience. Some we see, such as this, others are more operational but help customers in the long run.

So whilst this could be Every Little Helps #147, it stands out because of the benefit to parents, who often need a pacifier for children in store and feel guilty about serving up sweet treats and the children (and from what i can see in our store it’s working) who still seek a distracting pacifier to keep them occupied, but now have one which is good for them. Which in turn is good for the parents soul too.

3. GI provider discovers speaking to the grand kids on Facebook comes before rebuilding the house. I am sure this is becoming common place practice with Home insurance providers, but it’s great when you hear it being delivered all the same. When treated as a standard insurance claim, customers are taken care of through a logical but generic risk management process with steps to put people who encounter a flood or a fire, back to the position they were in before it occurred. That’s what insurance does after all.

Typically the big things like temporary accommodation and assessing what’s damaged are the first steps to be undertaken. But that’s often not what is on the customer’s mind. If you ask them, ‘what do you want done first?’ it’s a more personal and human request pertinent to the life and behaviours they’ve established. For instance, the example I heard was a couple whose house had been impacted had wanted a replacement Ipad because the highlight of their week is a Sunday catch up with their grandchildren in Australia.

I’ve gathered quite a catalogue of these small improvements on my travels. If you have your own, please comment below, I’d be delighted to hear from you.

Posted by Christopher Brooks, Director of Lexden, Customer Experience Consultants.

Lexden helps deliver effective customer experience strategy and solutions for clients seeking sustainable profit from customer experience.

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Copyright: <a href=’https://www.123rf.com/profile_stockbroker’>stockbroker / 123RF Stock Photo</a>

3½ Customer Experience Lessons from Copenhagen Airport

Airports are busy places with many different stakeholders and very different objectives. In that environment, the end customer can often be marginalised or even forgotten. With frustrations such as being taken on a meandering detour through a retail jungle when you are in search of a departure gate, struggling to understand why it feels like there is only one loo for every 1,000 passengers or having to sprint to meet the person picking you up so they avoid a £50 fine for waiting to greet you for more than 5 minutes.

That said, despite pressures from retailers and regulators, some airports can be places of inspirations with a wealth of Customer Experience ideas for any practitioners to learn from.

#1 Managing your customer’s expectations

Too often brands miss the opportunity to reduce their customer’s anxiety. Explaining what will happen next and when it will happen helps customers. As well as creating an extra engagement point. It also demonstrates a company know how to help customers by improving their emotional state. Which in turn connects the company to it’s customers at a deeper emotional level.

It’s played out brilliantly here. The time it will take to get to the departure gate is blasted to the ground (picture above). The anxious passenger can now assess their situation. With markings updating distance to the gate in time every 30 seconds, they can track their progress. If enough time, the passenger can relax more. If the passenger is short of time, they can speed up. Either way the signpost is helpful and increases appreciation of the airport facilities.

#2 Personalising the experience

I’ll never forget being invited to speak at an Airline conference when a customer aviation expert claimed the future of airline travel was about ‘personalisation’. He then presented several airline ticket, insurance and hotel bundles labelled as propositions such as ‘the weekender’ and ‘family fun’. He boasted that when bought together by passengers they were actually more expensive than the individual parts. But it would be made so complicated that customers wouldn’t be able to work it out! Even worse than this, the audience applauded! I felt very alone sitting on that ‘customer’ panel. It showed how outdated some thinking is in this space.

Customer Experience works when it’s ‘personal’ to a customer’s needs rather than personalised. I feel this example explains it well. At Copenhagen, like many airports, passengers need to pass through the baggage collection section to get to the exit. Those with only hand luggage don’t want to get caught up in there they want to find a way through.

For these passengers they want to get on with their trip sooner. That’s partly why they’ve crammed everything in to their hand luggage. This ‘fast exit’ message decal shouts out to this audience. Personal doesn’t need to be 1 to 1, it’s about being relevant to specific needs.

#3 Keep customers before you lose them

Some sectors are guilty of this more than others. Here’s the scenario; Retail company ‘A’ knows it has a problem with its returns because they receive social media noise reports and get angry calls to the call centre from disgruntled customers. But it’s not tracked in VoC because the VoC vendor hasn’t scoped that journey in their requirements. So, first the additional work is scoped and paid for. Feedback is then collected.  The CX team can then get to work on the issue (maybe after some more mapping). Eventually the team identify it’s down to the poor service contract in place with the outsourced collection courier. But procurement tell the CX team the contract with the courier was a keen one and is locked down for 12 more months. Following which a change can be looked at. 6 months on and the CX team start to work out what’s needed (a new collection courier company) and put together the Requirements Specification for a new vendor selection process. Which they initiate 6 months later. Which is also the first time customers find out about it.

However, in the meantime all the customers have left!

Why not share progress with customers throughout? If you know something’s wrong, flag it earlier. As you start to get an inclination of what’s gone wrong, get on with it. Keep customers updated throughout – tell them you know it’s not working, why it’s not working and that you are doing something about it. Share your plans with on how you will get it right and by when. Offer customers the chance to put in their views to help get to a better place. This involvement demonstrates you care and you are progressive. Customers value this sometimes as much as the fix!

At Copenhagen Airport there is major disruption, but it doesn’t feel like it becuase passengers are brought into the story and shown what’s coming and why. Even if the passenger passing through isn’t around to benefit from the final change they know it’s happening and accepting of the move from ‘AS IS’ to ‘TO BE’.

So that just leave the extra 1/2

For me this is about observation. It’s only half a lesson because it’s an approach rather than an outcome. Customer Experience is all around us. We interact with it daily and are a part of a company’s well worked plans too every time we enquire, purchase, use, enquire, visit or transact. There are lessons to learn from these experiences too.

I didn’t make a b-line for Copenhagen Airport to write a blog on my customer experience observations, I was there to help a client structure a business case for CX investment against return. But whether it’s walking through Copenhagen Airport on the return leg of a work trip, purchasing corner flags online from Sports Direct for a team development workshop (which turn up after they were needed) and getting radio silence when trying to return them or noting how many companies didn’t follow-up having given my details to them at the Grand Designs Show and how well those few that did have done from their attention, opportunities for CX ideas are everywhere.

So, put a Moleskin pocket-book on your birthday list, set you iPhone to camera mode and build your own insight bank of CX ideas and inspiration as you go about your daily business.

In the meantime, feel free to review our blogs, or contact me to raid examples from my much always growing collection of good, bad and ugly examples.

To finish, when it comes to finding new ideas for CX, as Ferris Bueller, the most eligible bachelor of them all, put it…

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Happy CX hunting.

Posted by Christopher Brooks.  Director, Lexden Limited, Customer Experience Consultancy.

If you’d like to receive more articles on driving more profitable Customer Experience, please sign up to our free monthly ‘Customer Experience Update’.

Lexden helps deliver effective customer experience insight, strategy, content and creative activation clients seeking sustainable profit from customer experience.

Achieve World Class Customer Experience in 3 Steps

Most organisations have invested in a customer experience programme. Some are making a real success of theirs. We’ve had the pleasure of supporting some of these with their endeavours, interviewed CX leaders about their progress, judged winning CX award entries and experienced award success with our own clients.

However, we’ve also seen the evidence of programmes which fail to make the grade. There are a number of reasons for this. Sadly, it often boils down to investment in technology choices, neglecting to bring key stakeholders on the journey and chasing the wrong KPI’s.

But, any company can be transformed into delivering an award winning, world class customer experience which they are recognised for and their customers choose them over other choices for, in three steps. Furthermore, all three steps can be complete with 4 months.

Step 1 CX Programmes Profitability Alignment

Make sure the CX Programme activities are aligned to those which are known to drive success

Only 10% of CX programmes achieve their profit potential. It’s not surprising, research conducted in this area has identified there are 47 critical activities, which managed effectively, increase programme profitability by 600%. Now available as an evaluation tool (CXPPA) developed from CX Typology research(1), any organisation can benchmark how they are set up and managing CX against the world’s most successful performing programmes.

This evaluation not only benchmarks, but identifies how programmes compare to the best CX performers, as well as recommends what needs to be improved in which order to increase profitability. This step is achievable in 3 to 4 weeks.

Step 2 Prioritising What Matters Most 

Know what experiences matters most to customer’s decisions to choose one brand over others

Attention should always identify ‘what matters most to customers’ early.

By which we don’t mean, how to ‘make it easy’ or how to ‘personalise the experience’, we mean understanding what drives customer’s behavioural change. This is the most reliable indicator of customer’s decision to choose one organisation over another. In addition, it is a very effective way to understand how to improve both Customer Satisfaction and Net Promoter Scores.

Research conducted(2) into what drivers customer experience behaviour has identified that 25 customer drivers account for over 80% of everything any CX leader needs to know about what customers want fulfilled.

However, many of these 25 drivers have little to no influence on customer decision-making so are surplus to requirements. Which means if you reduce investment in them, performance scores stay the same, but costs can be taken out. Meaning the company is more profitable overall.

In addition, those drivers which are the most influential, are highlighted. This is where a company should focus CX investment to increase NPS, CSAT, profitability and success.

These drivers are known as Experience Quality Measures (EXQ) and are the work of Dr Professor Phil Klaus, world-renowned Customer Experience Academic.

Through Lexden, all companies can now identify their own EXQ set and with it know what to prioritise to improve their NPS and CSAT performance. This step is achievable in 4-6 weeks.

Step 3 Competitor Advantage with Customer Experience

Make sure the brand difference is amplified through the experiences 

The third step, enables a company to achieve competitive advantage through customer experience. Why is this worth noting? Much customer experience efforts are operationally or technologically efficient improvements. These are typically delivered with little consideration of how to build brand distinction. This means competitors can copy the ides and therefore neutralise any brand advantage which could have been achieved. In fairness, brand doesn’t help as the brand architecture is not seen as accessible working tool to apply

However, by designing a Brand Experience Platform, this is overcome and the brand becomes an asset to the customer experience. It is made up of two principal elements:

• Brand Experience Idea – which acts as a rallying cry for all colleagues to connect the advantage of the brand to the importance of customer experience, in a way which all can understand.
• Branded Customer Standards – these are the set of drivers (as mentioned in step 2) which matters most to customers, translated into standards the company must deliver to in a way only they can. This is most powerful when standards relate to profitability. These ‘standards’ can then be used universally by the company to design internal practices and ways of working and external delivery and experiences. All employees can then confidently work to deliver consistent experiences, which will further reinforce brand distinction.

Step 3 is about putting a framework in place to ensure consistency and making the most of the brand. Achievable in 6-8 weeks.

So there you have it. Three steps to take any programme from where it is to world-class.

All three programmes are available from Lexden should assistance getting there be needed. We’d be happy to share more with you and see if we can add real value to your endeavours. However, ownership of what you do and why, must stay within the organisation, not leave with the consultancy or customer feedback platform provider (the fourth reason for failure!).

 

 

 

Lexden delivers effective customer experience solutions for clients serious about sustainable customer relationships.

If you like what you’ve read please sign-up to Lexden’s ‘Customer Experience’ Update for monthly ideas, inspiration and insights to improve your customer strategy endeavours.

(1) CX Typology is the copyright of Prof Dr Phil Klaus.

(2) Experience Quality Measurement (EXQ) focuses on the behavioural change achieved by a brand through customer experience. EXQ is the copyright of Prof Dr Phil Klaus.

Can you really coach Customer Experience?

Because I’m totally sure you can.

A recent visit to Bluewater involved buying some new shoes for my wife. On inspecting two different colourways of the said shoes, we inadvertently swapped their designated positions on the wall display. Having worked as Floor Manager between College and University (a good few years ago) in the Nike store in Brighton, I understand that visual merchandising does have a purpose, but what happened next led me to ask the above question.

As we stepped back to review the range again, an employee of the shop then walked over (without asking us if we needed any help may I add) to stand in front of the shoes, and moved the two shoes back to their original positions, while being so far in to our personal space that we had to take a couple of steps back.

No big deal really, but I can think of at least six very simple things that were wrong from a CX perspective within this ten second (non) interaction.

How did it impact our behaviour? We went and got the shoes at a direct competitor.

The thing is though, if I had gone through this with the assistant, I really don’t think he would have for one second understood why any of those six points were a poor experience, and I think his response would have been something like ‘well the shoes have to be in that order…’.

Saving the conversation about customers’ having poor experiences because internal rules and processes for another time, can you really coach Customer Experience to someone this oblivious to what’s best for the customer at any given time?

Satisfied at having a new customer experience to talk about, I began to think back to my time in the Nike sto
re – did my customers have poor experiences under my watch when I was young and single-minded? Well, yes, they did.

I can remember two instances. Firstly, obsessed with my sales figures vs. the 1^st floor of the shop, I would routinely send customers upstairs for refunds so my figures weren’t affected. Secondly, I remember closing the changing room to customers once, just so I could get in and out to access mannequins/shelves/fittings etc. to work on merchandising. The area Manager turned up that day, and at the time I scoffed at his disgust that I was making people go upstairs to try on their clothes – of course now practising customer experience I acknowledge how right he was!

So, here I am now able to recognise and improve poor customer journeys – what happened? Was I coached, or did I just learn through osmosis, working in organisations who care about the customer? A mixture, is the answer. Formal coaching has had a place, customer focussed programmes and developing a Customer Experience Centres of Excellence have too, as have particular managers, whom I had great respect for.

The true answer though, if there is one, lies for me in recruitment (and the resulting culture). While my conclusion means that I slipped through the net as someone who didn’t really understand the value of every interaction with the customer at the time.

If your recruitment programme has genuine focus on recruiting staff (consistently and at all levels) who understand that everything they do has a positive or negative emotional impact on the customer at each touchpoint, the organisation itself will begin to take the shape of one that customers want to join, stay with, and talk about positively.

If you run or are involved in a customer experience programme consider how central are Recruitment to that? do they look for people with suitable customer experience tags, or individuals who can talk about emotive and commercial impact in the same sentence? I’d argue the former gives you shoes laid out in the right order, the later a deep understanding of why customer experience matters.

With 89% of companies prioritising customer experience in 2017, attention to all impacting areas on CX success come in to play if you want to drive success. If you’d like to know how to recruit the right customer experience types, contact us and we will let you in on the secret.

Posted by James Edmonds, Senior Consultant, Lexden.

Lexden helps deliver effective customer experience strategy and solutions for clients seeking sustainable profit from customer experience.

If you like what you’ve read please sign-up to Lexden’s ‘Customer Experience’ Update for monthly ideas, inspiration and insights to improve your customer strategy endeavours.  

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What will the 2017 Voice of the Customer priorities be?

Voice of the Customer (VoC) has emerged as one of the most invaluable tools for companies to prioritise investment, remove inefficiency and create a differentiating experience for their customers.

Commissions from clients, have meant we at Lexden have had the opportunity to review the most worthy customer feedback platforms and support set-ups available. We often find from the dozens available on a few truly meet the clients spec, and then when you add in key ‘soft’ criteria such as working style and sector understanding one or emerge.

It has helped us advise clients on which platform will give them the results they need to drive CX forward in the business. A poor VoC set up can suffocate CX potential in an organisation

It has also led us to creating Client Only VoC discussion groups, where VoC and CX managers meet and discuss their challenges, their vendors and drive out solutions amongst themselves. The non-compete, free gathering has proven useful to those with established programmes to understand the value of new techniques and technology as well as to those starting out to understanding how to avoid the pitfalls.

We have are not aligned to any tech vendor, so can objectively facilitate the group to ensure all benefit. One of the discussion areas is the future of VoC, so we have pulled together a questionnaire to get a view on what VoC practitioners believe 2017 priorities will be.

If you manage or play an active role in customer feedback in your organisation (clients only), please can you contribute your opinions to the 4 question survey below.

Results will be published as an anonymous representation of VoC practitioners in an article The Customer Experience Magazine in January 2017. Once you’ve completed the survey, if you would like results sooner, please email on christopherbrooks@lexdengroup.com.

Posted by Christopher Brooks, Customer Experience Consultant, Lexden

Lexden helps deliver effective customer experience strategy and solutions for clients seeking sustainable profit from customer experience.

If you like what you’ve read please sign-up to Lexden’s ‘Customer Experience’ Update for monthly ideas, inspiration and insights to improve your customer strategy endeavours. 

The free-range customer. Using the element of surprise in research

Andy Haldane doesn’t understand pensions. As chief economist at the Bank of England, we might expect him to understand better than most.

But the point he made in his recent speech ‘The Great Divide’ is that we – consumers – find it difficult to engage because of the way financial businesses communicate.

He’s right. But in all the (many) pensions research focus groups I have observed, consumers rarely admitted to not knowing the detail .

The problem is, much of the qualitative research we rely on in business assumes people are self-aware.

We construct our research around what’s important to the business, build a survey or focus group and ask the questions.  People answer to the best of their ability.  Then go and do the opposite of what they said they would do…

Unlike Mr Haldane, most of us find it incredibly hard to say “I don’t understand” or “I don’t know”. We really don’t like to appear anything other than considered and rational, and generally clued up.

Let’s try it on you.

Why did you choose your pension provider? The honest answer might be “I didn’t”.   But your answer mentions tangibles like pricing, and convenience – and possibly the less tangible ethics and reputation.  If you have ever contacted your provider, you will be able to give me chapter and verse on whether they answered quickly, and were helpful.

How does the plan work – indexation for example?  You might know, but you will probably preface your answer with the words “I think” or “I imagine” or the old chestnut “It’s pretty standard”.

What do you need from it in the future?  Apart from the obvious thing –  money – you will struggle.  Right now you are not sure what you will need, when or how.  You don’t have a crystal ball.  But you will give me an answer anyway and talk about what “most people” want.

It’s not that you’re being untruthful.  But you are – like all of us – extremely good at rationalising.  We think we should know the answers.  We filter out anything which looks like flaky or half-baked thinking.  Even to the point of fooling ourselves.  We constantly take shortcuts to make sense of the vast amounts of data we’re bombarded with at every waking moment. Often we are not making active choices, or even noticing the detail.

So people like me come away from qualitative research with lots of answers.  But those answers turn out to be a poor predictor of what people do.  This is because our research only gets to part of the story.  We expose the sanitised version.  But the instinctive, gut responses can’t find their voice.

And the longer the time lag between event and research, and the larger the size of the focus group, the greater the effect.

So how can we catch our research subjects unawares, before they have had a chance to rationalise?

1. State a broad research objective – to better understand the context.  This means admitting that we don’t know everything yet.  Take a deep breath, channel Andy Haldane and ditch the script (for now).

2. Design a programme which intercepts research subjects in real time. Observe them before, during and after interacting with us.  Do it in the moment.

3. Conduct research in the most realistic and unobtrusive way possible. In the wild, or in conditions which simulate all the stresses and competing priorities of real life as closely as possible.  Do people usually buy the weekly online shopping in laboratory conditions?  No, they do it while watching TV, sitting on a train, chatting to the family, musing about cholesterol/weight/fridge space.  That’s where the research needs to happen.  Context is everything.

This means bringing ethnography and diary techniques into research plans.

Look over their shoulder and see how much time they spend researching and reading about pensions.  Or their definition of getting advice.

Use the focus groups and surveys to zone in on the detail, but let’s wait until we know which details are most important to customers before we drill down.

Grab a notebook and camera first, and just watch customers doing what they do – free range.  This helps us develop a true understanding and respect for their point of view.

Posted by Beth Richardson, Customer Experience Consultant, Lexden

Lexden helps deliver Customer Experience Strategy and Programme Management for clients seeking sustainable profit from customer experience.

If you like what you’ve read please sign-up to Lexden’s ‘Customer’s World’ Update for ideas, inspiration and insights to improve your customer strategy endeavours. 

For further information on how we can help with your customer challenges contact christopherbrooks@lexdengroup.com or call M: +44 (0) 7968 316548 orT: +44 (0)1279 902205.  You can also follow us on LinkedIn, Facebookor Twitter or read client testimonials and case studies at www.lexdengroup.com.

 

With customer experience design, functional is good. But don’t stop there.

“Focus on the whole journey, not just the transaction”.  In the world of Customer Experience (CX) you will hear this phrase frequently.  But what does it mean?

It’s the difference between a task and a purpose.  The difference between a user story like the one above, and meeting a customer’s overall goal.  It is important to understand the difference between the two, because how you frame the interaction determines how your customer will experience it.

This is perhaps best illustrated with an example:

The background.  You are a lifelong customer of Locality Bank.  Your parents took you in to the bank open your first account when you were a child, and you remember how you felt when a moneybox was presented to you as a thank you.

Your dealings with the bank over the years have always been consistent, efficient and straightforward.  You don’t usually give banking too much thought, often using online services.  It just happens in the background.

But recently you decided to strike out on your own and start a business.  This is new and uncharted territory, and you are looking for help to get started.  Locality Bank are the first people that spring to mind.  You phone them to make an appointment – you don’t want to leave anything to chance.

Scenario 1.  The person who answered was fantastic.  She knew exactly what you were looking for, apparently quite a few customers are in the same boat, so they have put a package together just for people like you.  She invited you to come in , walk through how everything works, then decide which elements will work best for you.  She knew you had been with them for years, so they know you pretty well.  There will be very little form filling, and lots of talking about your business and what excites / worries you most about starting up.

Scenario 2. The person who answered was polite and efficient.  She asked if you would like an appointment to see a new business adviser.  You  asked whether that was the best thing, but she didn’t have any other options, so you booked an appointment anyway.  She promised to send a pack in the post which you can fill in and bring along.  It will help the Bank assess your suitability for a business account.  You felt a little unsettled by this.   What if they can’t help?  If you can get through this stage, it’s another step towards your little business getting up and running, but you will look at other options just in case.

Scenario 1 leaves you reassured, and looking forward. Scenario 2 leaves you anxious and looking for a plan B . 

We’ve all encountered these scenarios, where we’re left feeling a certain way by one supermarket/airline/store/bank and completely different by another.  It’s something you can’t put your finger on, but it makes you feel…something.

So why the difference?

In scenario 1, the business understood this customer’s whole journey.  The history of the relationship, their context right now (nervous excitement), and their goal (I want to start my own business, I need help to understand how it works).  It was efficient and easy, but it went beyond the transaction and delivered the total experience – which was reassuring, empathetic and human.  Almost as if they were standing beside this customer when she made the call.

In scenario 2, the business focused purely on delivering an efficient, easy transaction for their customer.  The customer’s goal is likely to have been framed as “I want to make an appointment to speak to a new business adviser”.  Nothing wrong with this – efficient and easy is the foundation of a good customer experience – but they were looking at the wrong goal…

It was all about the bank, not the customer.  The experience was functional, and process-driven, and left this customer feeling unsettled.

 Customers are human.  We all have complex brains.   When I set out for the supermarket I can be very task focused and impatient; I want to get in and out quickly (rational).

But I also equate food with home, and making people happy (not so rational).

Perhaps what I am really looking for is kudos from the family – a hugely effective distraction from price labels, and the reason why I often come out of the supermarket without the items I went in for (completely irrational).

So how do we avoid falling into the trap of designing purely functional journeys which miss the point for customers?

Map the journey.  From the customer’s point of view.  Journey mapping is a brilliant method of stepping back from the minutiae and seeing the whole picture:

Map the journey.  From the customer’s point of view.  Journey mapping is a brilliant method of stepping back from the minutiae and seeing the whole picture:

• Get close to customers, in the moment.  This helps you to understand how customers think (and ex-customers, and near-miss customers)
• Decide how you want your customers to feel, and what you want them to say about you.  What does your brand stand for?
• Use journey mapping to show where you are hitting the mark, or not.

Journey mapping helps to clear the mist, so you can design interactions with purpose, which meet their true goals and deliver the total experience.

Reproduced with kind permission by Beth Richardson, Lexden Consultant – helping business get closer to customers.