Why flexibility is important in customer experience design

In his book entitled 'Moments of Truth', written in 1986, Jon Carlzon said "Anytime a customer comes into contact with any aspect of a business, however remote, is an opportunity to form an impression." I agree and would go a step farther: Everytime a customer interacts with any aspect of a business, however remote, the experience they have shapes how they feel and as a result the nature of the relationship they have with it.

The importance of customer experiences has been widely recognised for some time. Indeed, there's a thriving customer experience consulting industry focused on helping organisations to improve their customer experience. And yet, most organisations still fail to deliver experiences that deepen the relationship with their customers. Even organisations that claim to be customer focuseds are more often than not organised to maintain their existing ways of working (structures, policies, procedures), often at the expense of the customer experience. Few truly organise themselves around customers and work in a way that is best for them.

The problem is that they don't understand the experience customers are having. They don't understand how customers interact with them, or how customers feel about those interactions and they don't understand the 'moments of truth' which make or break the relationship.

Customer experience mapping can provide that understanding. It enables understanding of how customers interact, how they cross channels, how they feel as a result of their interactions and the moments of truth where a positive experience builds loyalty or where a negative one destroys it.

And understanding is the first stage of the process of change. Awareness of the detail of the current state creates the opportunity to deliberately design positive customer experiences which evoke feelings that enhance the relationship - and consequently improve the bottom line.
The benefits also extend beyond customer experience. Mapping the customer journey highlights where internal processes are unnecessary and provides an opportunity to reduce delivery costs. The clarity of designed customer experiences also provides a focal point to engage employees with and behind. And ultimately because the experiences customer have drive their perception of the organisation, it's about brand creation and delivery.

AND YET.....some organisations who have mapped their customer journeys are still not achieving great results. Why? Because in implementing the experience they've designed they manage out the ability of people involved in the delivery of the service to be flexible, to use their initiative and adapt according to the situation.

To deliver customer experiences which really add value, understand the current experience, design the framework of desired experiences and then allow people to work within it to deliver the experience in the way they see fit. Business has always and will always be primarily about people relationships....

LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/timhadfield
Twitter: @accordengage
Telephone: 0044 07906650019

Don't you just hate clumsy cross-selling!

It's Mother's Day tomorrow - so I joined lots of other fathers out shopping this morning. Cards and chocolates bought, I also decided to get some stamps and buy a newspaper.

As I was in the town centre I went to the main Post Office for stamps. I haven't been in there for quite some time so was surprised (and impressed) with how it looked. It has been refurbished and looked much, much smarter. The screens separating customers from cashiers has been removed. The queueing rails have also gone, replaced by a ticketing system and there's comfortable seating if there's a delay being served. But that wasn't really what was noteworthy for me about th experience.

Whilst passing me the stamps I'd bought, the teller asked if I was intending to travel abroad anytime soon because if I was they sold travel insurance. A bit bemused about where that had come from I said no, took my stamps and left. A few minutes later I called into Spar to buy a newspaper. At the checkout the assistant asked if I'd like some hot-cross buns.

Now I don't mind attempts to cross-sell to me PROVIDING just two conditions are met:

1. The person doing it prepares the ground properly by making their interaction with me more than a simple transaction. They at least have to make the effort to engage me in conversation and develop some rapport. For me that's table stakes, it's them earning the right to even attempt to cross-sell.
2. That I fell their intention is to help me and that it's genuinely in my best interests to know about the product they mention. It's of benefit for me, not for them and by implication their business.

And usually the product should build on or connect with the product being bought. Neither example today fitted these criteria. In Spar, packets of hot-cross buns were piled up next to the checkout and every customer was being asked the same question. I don't know whether that was also the case in the Post Office, but certainly the teller hadn't earned the right to cross-sell and the approach was motvated solely by his desire to achieve sales targets. I guess the approach is that if you ask enough customers sooner or later one will buy.

I understand that of course that in the current difficult economic conditions retailers need to work hard to maintain sales. And I've noticed that more and more are trying to cross-sell to do so. If it's done well and meets the conditions I descrive above I think it's a great strategy but unfortunately most are at best clumsy and at worst may actually be damaging the relationship with customers.

The really disappointing thing is that there's so little thought going into it. The Post Office sell greetings cards, Spar sell chocolates and flowers - and it's Mother's Day tomorrow. In both places it would have been easy and topical to ask if I'd remembered and got everything I needed. Build on the product being bought, talk about something topical, or don't bother and simply deliver the transaction effectively so that the customer comes back next time.

LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/timhadfield
Twitter: @accordengage
Telephone: 0044 07906650019

Don't be so bloody presumptious! #customer experience

I bought a new car a few months ago and received this postcard in the post yesterday from the company I bought it from. I wasn't very impressed.

It's perhaps relevant that when I bought the car I wasn't very pleased with the service I received. The garage had promised to put petrol in for me and they didn't. Also, I had a business meeting that afternoon so arranged to collect it with time to spare to drive to the meeting. When I arrived it wasn't ready and it was a further 90 minutes before I was able to drive away. I arrived 20 minutes late for the meeting! It made it even worse when they showed little remorse for inconveniencing me.

And as a result, when the car needed servicing in December of last year I'd no intention of asking them to do it. I took it somewhere else instead.

Now clearly the previous experience has coloured my judgement of Arnold Clark. I wondered yesterday whether my concern about the postcard would have been as great had the initial experience been more positive. My conclusion is that I would still have been annoyed, for two reasons:

1. They assumed that they have my business
2. Because I had to take action if I didn't want to proceed

The customer experience lessons to be learned? Firstly, NEVER PRESUME YOU HAVE MY BUSINESS! You have to earn the right to my business, again and again and again. And secondly, THINK FROM YOUR CUSTOMERS PERSPECTIVE NOT YOURS. In this case what this means is ringing the customer (they have my number) to ask if I'd like to have the car serviced, not making me ring to tell them I don't want to. Their assumptive sell does nothing to develop their customer experience.

I did ring them. I don't think they understood my perspective, it's too difficult for them to see beyond what they assume to be the most effective sales technique.

For more information on the things to do to truly engage customers see my blog posted on 9th January entitled 'A Customer Engagement Manifesto for 2012'

LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/timhadfield
Twitter: @accordengage
Telephone: (0044) 07906650019

Contrasting Public Sector Experiences - and lessons learned (Part 2)

Following on from the poor experience with the Office of the Public Guardian, on Friday of last week I had a completely different experience with another public sector organisation - NHS Blood and Transplant, who manage the voluntary donation of blood by hundreds of thousands of people across the UK.

My appointment to give blood was last Friday afternoon. I took with me the letter I'd received confirming the appointment. Actually I'd had a busy afternoon so could have done without having to finish early but when I got the letter out I couldn't not go. The strapline 'do something amazing' was on it, and it also thanked me for donating. I felt valued already and so it didn't seem right not to go.

I felt I'd made the right decision as soon as I walked into the room. A nurse took my letter and thanked me again for going. The same happened when I was called to give a small sample, and again when I was called to actually donate. The nurse who looked after me couldn't have been more pleasant and was made sure that I was comfortable. She checked I knew what was going to happen and had no concerns, and then came back to me a couple of times to make sure everything was ok.

Afterwards, they sat me down, made me a cup of coffee, offered me a biscuit and stopped to talk. And then when I left several of the staff there said "thanks" and "goodbye". I felt valued and was pleased I'd gone.

As with the previous experience, I know it wasn't personal to me. The process is designed to be the same for everyone. But it's 'outside - in', thought about from the customers perspective - and on the basis that I seem to see the same people there everytime I go, I suspect it produces the results they're looking for - loyal customers who go back time and time again.

I guess they're forced to get the process right because if it's not, they wouldn't get sufficient people going back, and whilst I suspect that's true, it's more than that. I believe that because the process is customer focused, the behaviours of the nurses follow almost automatically and then then the whole thing comes together to deliver a great experience for their customers, time and time again.

Design your processes to evoke positive emotions for your customers, make them feel good, and they'll come back....

Short Termism: The Dumbest Idea in the World

I must reference Stephen Baishya for this post. Stephen responded to my post on Monday 9th January entitled 'A Customer Engagement Manifesto for 2012' and pointed me in the direction of another blog post.

It's entitled "The Dumbest Idea in the World: Maximising Shareholder Value"

I've since read it and it contains some powerful thoughts with huge relevance for these troubled economic times. It's also full of extraordinary common sense that will appeal to anyone whose role is about the delivery of service to customers. Here's a few of the snippets I like best:

“On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world. Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy… your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products."
Jack Welch

“We must shift the focus of companies back to the customer and away from shareholder value.” The shift necessitates a fundamental change in our prevailing theory of the firm… The current theory holds that the singular goal of the corporation should be shareholder value maximization. Instead, companies should place customers at the center of the firm and focus on
delighting them, while earning an acceptable return for shareholders. If you take care of customers, shareholders will be drawn along for a very nice ride. The opposite is simply not true: if you try to take care of shareholders, customers don’t benefit and, ironically, shareholders don’t get very far either.”
Roger L. Martin

"Admonishing CEOs (and investors) to ignore the expectations market and refocus on delighting the customer isn’t going to work, says Martin. It’s as likely to be “as effective as admonishing frat boys to stop chasing girls.” For CEOs, there are massive incentives for staying attuned to it and severe punishments for ignoring it. Investors, analysts, and hedge funds continue to reward firms
that meet expectations and punish those that do not."
Roger L. Martin

"We must restore authenticity to the lives of our executives. The expectations market generates inauthenticity in executives, filling their world with encouragements to suspend moral judgment. They receive incentive compensation to which the rational response is to game the system. And since they spend most of their time trading value around rather than building it, they lose perspective on how to contribute to society through their work. Customers become marks to be exploited, employees become disposable cogs, and relationships become only a means to the end of winning a zero-sum game."
Roger L. Martin

Customers become marks to be exploited, employees become disposable cogs, and relationships become only a means to the end of winning ....WOW!

"American capitalism hangs in the balance. A large number of rent-collectors and financial middlemen making vast amounts of money are keeping the current system in place. The fact that what they are doing is destroying the economy will not sway their thinking. As Upton Sinclair noted, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends
upon his not understanding it.”"
Roger L. Martin

The blog also quotes Peter Drucker, who said, very succinctly: "There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer... The customer is the foundation of a business and keeps it in existence. He alone gives employment. And it is to supply the consumer that society entrusts wealth-producing resources to the business enterprise."

In my blog I referred to it as short termism. We're sufferering from chronic short term thinking in business. It's deeply embedded in the very structure and the way in which business is conducted. Life revolves around this week, this month, this quarter, in order to get the right results for this half year, this year. And I think it's becoming more firmly embedded directly as a result of the economic environment we're in.

The blog concluded that change will happen and that customer value will replace shareholder value. Some strong visionary leadership is required I think.....

The blog is by Steve Denning and is Roger L. Martin's book Fixing the Game: Bubbles, Crashes and What Capitalism Can Learn from the NFL and you can read it at http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/11/28/maximizing-shareholder-value-the-dumbest-idea-in-the-world/

What's the problem at Tesco?

I was reading an article by Robert Peston this morning following Tesco's results announcement. In it he questions whether their poor relatively performance is a blip or something more fundamental.

He comments:
"The big question is whether Tesco's British problems are mainly the result of pricing errors made in the past few months by the new chief executive, Philip Clarke, who took over from Sir Terry Leahy in March, or whether they represent structural flaws that Mr Clarke inherited.

To put it more crudely, is this Mr Clarke's mess or one bequeathed to him by his predecessor, who ran the company for 15 years and turned Tesco into the global giant that it is today?
And, if the problems are structural, how easily can they be sorted?"

The fall in the share price would seem to suggest that the market seems to think it could be the latter.

If that's true, what's causing it? I know of an unofficial Tesco staff website so I decided I'd have a quick look and see if it provided any clues. Here's some of the comments I found (all posted during the last six months:

"...in my experience, around 99% of tesco staff are unhappy with tesco. they pay well though and that is the only reason they do their jobs and i cant say i blame them but that does not excuse poor service. as a customer i cant really fault any of the shop staff that i have come across although there are a few grumpy ones on the back door of the odd shop. i personally do not put it down to individual shops or even regional management. tesco as a company are obsessed with image and cost cutting and it is the staff and customers who are suffering as a result of these ill thought out ideas and company policies."

"It's down to training and staff self esteem. If staff are so demotivated that they don't care how they act, in front of customers, then something is wrong. Tesco, as a company, has gradually lost the ability to identify with the customer and customer dissatisfaction is growing. The emphasis put on one in front and till speed has outweighed service. While I appreciate that some customers can be difficult and even rude, there's no reason for bad manners from staff."

"I'm a (long-time) ex-employee of Tesco and I'm seeing the same thing in stores all over the country. I travel a lot as part of my work, and every single store I go in these days has problems with customer service. I've actually come to expect distant, uninterested and visibly stressed out staff at Tesco - it's really not a lie to say I can't remember the last time I had good service in one of the stores.A few weeks ago I went into Sheffield - Infirmary Rd store (my nearest), got round with a basket of purchases and found that more than half of the checkouts were unmanned with queues an absolute mile long. The staff who were managing the checkouts were trying to herd everybody into one big queue - which was stretching along the front and half way down the wines and spirits aisle. But people coming from the other side didn't realise this and were joining single queues. It was a total disaster and I was hearing call after call going out for the management team to get to the checkouts and nobody came. There was no way on God's earth I was standing in those queues so I went to the service desk - it was mobbed with angry customers - and gave them my basket.I was advised by the staff there to submit feedback on the comments website, as this issue had been caused by budget cutting and the staff in store were as angry about it as the customers were (didn't quite explain why so many replenishment staff weren't being moved to checkouts though). I felt very sorry for the people having to take the flack over it and I did submit my comments. Roughly five weeks later, still no reply. Is this really how badly wrong Tesco is getting things these days? If it is, how long is it going to be before sales start to suffer spectacularly?"

"Sounds about right, its ok Tesco wanting more from their staff but there comes a point where you can only cut so many hours before the quality of service suffers. You see this in most stores!It is highly annoying as a shell filler to be pulled from the job you are supposed to be doing to go and support checkouts, which to be fair, should have a full bank during busy periods anyway! It’s not unheard of in our store for shelf fillers to spend half their shift covering tills and it’s just compromising availability and the presentation on the shop floor. Then this member of staff often gets complained at by management for not completing the tasks they were given on their department.This isn’t the customers fault, but unfortunately when you have a demoralised and unhappy member of staff then service is going to suffer."

"i informed customer service that customers are being overcharged at the self service 6 months ago and they still haven't fixed the issue eg: price on the shelf £1.40 ...at self service £1.89!"

The reasons why certainly start to become clear when you read comments like these. In a cost cutting environment, having employees fully engaged becomes even more important. Without that , the customer experience suffers. My own experience of Tesco's service is that it is now mediocre at best and I no longer find myself driving an extra few miles to seek out one of their stores. And the sales results speak for themselves!

I wonder a) if they'll be able to turn it around and b) how many other organisations are storing up exactly the same problem as a result of decisions they've made in recent months.

By the way, if you want to have a look at the comments, you can find the website I mentioned at http://www.verylittlehelps.com/index.php?topic=10513.0

Footnote: Robert Peston updated his article following an interview with Tesco CEO Philip Clarke. Mr Clarke indicated that:

"However he concedes there was a more fundamental weakness, which is that the group under-invested in the UK stores over the past few years, as it concentrated its expansion on Asia, Eastern Europe, the US, banking and the internet.

In the years since the 2008/9 recession, the UK managed to generate maximum profits rather than maximum sales, he implies. And in his view this means there were and are too few employees in stores. So, for example, checkout queues can be too long and shelves may not be as well stocked as they should be. He is planning to remedy all this. In the next year and a bit, there will be a big investment in what he describes as the "experience" for British shoppers, with thousands more people hired (Tesco already employs 300,000 in the UK and half a million around the world) and store layouts changed."

The number of employees in stores obviously came out in the comments above. I guess it would be surprising for him to admit there's an engagement problem but I suspect that employees would have appreciated an acknowledgement of that from him.....

New Year Sales Are Not What They Seem

The Sun Newspaper carried an article today entitled 'Bye buy to a bargain'.

It describes "a string of sneaky pricing tips aimed at luring shoppers into thinking offers are better than they really are". They include examples such as:

• retailers inflating prices of the ''bargains' for as little as a week before reducing them again for the sale
• using a pre-sale price that was last used nearly a year previously
• using a pre-sale price that was only available at a small number of stores in the chain

A report published by the Office of Fair Trading last year said "Evidence shows that a reference price is very effective at encouraging consumers to make a purchase they may not otherwise have made by increasing consumers' perceptions of the value of the product and the inferred saving. As a result, where the reference price is misleading and consumers are not able to easily identify or verify the reference price - and thereby verify the saving - there is considerable scope for consumer harm."

The article clarifies that the retailers aren't breaking any laws but are making use of loopholes - for example by printing the dates that the items were on sale at the higher price in small print.

You might think that the retailers concerned would be at the 'shadier' end of the scale or perhaps recent well publicised examples of retailers struggling tyo avoid administration. Not so - those named include Sainsbury's, Comet, Argos, Tesco, JD Sports, Boots, Curry's, PC World and Smyths Toys.

It's something I've noticed previously too, particularly at Curry's and PC World but I was surprised at just how common it is.

It's a great example of a policy developed at the expense of the customer, and extreme short term thinking. The objective is to increase the short term volume of sales - during the period of the sale. Do they assume customers won't find out? But what if they do, have they considered the damage to the long term relationship?

6 Opportunities to really engage customers in 2012

2011 was another very difficult year for UK PLC and indeed for many parts of the
Eurozone and North America. It was the year that debt built up over decades finally started to become unsustainable and in which, according to Sir Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, the liquidity crisis which developed during the credit crunch became a crisis of solvency. Governments introduced ‘austerity’ measures and the latter part of the year was characterised by almost daily speculation about whether Greece and Italy would default. Sentiment on the money markets was consistently negative, levels of confidence fell sharply and consumer behaviours were increasingly driven by fear. Many consumers reacted by reigning in their spending and focused instead on reducing debt and the result was that businesses faced very challenging conditions. The continuing decline of high streets in towns and cities illustrates well the difficulties – and as recently as last week Hawkins Bazaar and also Past Times entered administration, and La Senza announced its intention to early in 2012.

And given that many forecasters seem to think the coming year will be even more difficult, the need for every business to engage with its customers is greater now than ever. It will be a core part of the strategy for every successful business and indeed may be the difference between survival and failure.

Customers want to feel good about every element of buying a product or service. They demand a
positive experience and if they don’t get it they will simply go somewhere else. The traditional marketing mix (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) are not enough, they don’t reflect the overall customer experience. Process and People must be added.
So to ensure true customer loyalty every business must provide:
· the right product
· at the right price
· in the right place
· using the most suitable promotion
AND
· using a process which is designed around the customer
· by people with the right skills

Courageous companies will pursue changes to process and people, despite them being the
most difficult to change. Most will focus purely on product, price, place and promotion.
So what things can companies do to deepen engagement with their customers in 2012? Here’s what I see as being the main areas of opportunity:

1. Changing the recipe

Thinking about the traditional marketing mix first, the key activity will be deeper and
more regular price discounting in order to maintain revenues. The companies who do so will be forced to also reduce costs in order to protect margins.

This is a short term strategy with obvious flaws.

Other and perhaps more innovative approaches will include:

Place
Online sales will continue to grow but there will also be more experimentation with different retail formats as retailers seek cheaper, smaller and sometimes temporary ways to respond to identified opportunities. This will also include off-premises sales, despite the increased EU regulation relating to direct sales.

In addition collaboration will rapidly increase as businesses try to find opportunities to partner with complementary businesses for mutual benefit.

Promotion
In the UK in particular there will be a huge focus on the 2012 Olympics and to a lesser extent on the Euro 2012 Football Championships as a promotional opportunity for businesses. We’re likely to see some weird, wonderful and sometimes very tenuous links to these events.


Smarter organisations will look more broadly at what can be done and will consider other
opportunities:

2. Employee Engagement

John Lewis has consistently bucked the trend in retailing in recent times and I read again just this morning of it's excellent Christmas sales results. Curry’s electrical superstores has started to create a reputation for knowledgeable staff who provide excellent service. Why? The answer is that they have put their people at the heart of their strategy. John Lewis is owned by its employees, who are partners in the business. It is one of the few businesses to have a written constitution, which places the happiness and well-being of its partners at the heart of the business. Partners know the aims of the business and are committed to achieving them. Curry’s identified that its success was dependent on the help and advice customers received in-store and the way it was delivered by their people. So they invested in a training programme for their people and the results saw uplifted sales of up to 15% through Curry’s stores.

The latest research shows that truly engaging customers is dependent on first
engaging employees. It’s a pre-requisite, it’s what the great companies do, engage their employees first, knowing that they will in turn engage customers. It isn’t easy - but it is
worth the effort.

3. Customer Involvement

One of the benefits of having engaged and knowledgeable employees is that they can overcome weaknesses in processes. Executives in most organisations will say, and probably truly believe they have processes which are customer friendly but in reality, the vast majority have designed processes which are for their benefit and the customer has to comply with them as a condition of buying. It’s true that customers will forgive if the people they deal with overcome the problems inherent in the process – although there’s no substitute for truly designing processes around the customer. How best to do that? Involve customers and ask them how processes should operate in order to work most effectively for them.

4. Imperfectionships

One of the most important elements of the relationship any organisation has with its customers is trust. It’s critical to how customers feel, is difficult to win and very easily lost. Ask executives from UK banks about how difficult it’s proving to be to rebuild their tarnished reputation. The problem is that the actions required to do so are counter-intuitive. Rather than covering up problems it requires a level of honesty that’s been rare in most companies in recent years.

In the early 1990’s a mortgage lender analysed levels of customer satisfaction amongst new borrowers and found that it seemed to be slightly higher for customers who had experienced a problem which had then been resolved. To establish whether this was coincidental they then ‘invented’ problems on a small number of cases, rang the customer to tell them there had been a problem but that they’d overcome it but in the interests of openness they wanted the customer to be aware of it. What they found was that satisfaction levels of such customers was noticeably higher.

Despite the temptation to introduce this as a standard approach, the organisation decided it was unethical, the trial stopped and was soon largely forgotton.

Years later, and with customer mistrust at all time high levels, there is a real opportunity for organisations to create customer relationships built on trust - by being human, being honest and admitting mistakes. The evidence suggests that customers will forgive and providing they’re able to see a genuine commitment to put mistakes right and prevent them happening again, will be more satisfied and more loyal than they were before.

5. Community Engagement

The phenomenon of social networking continues to grow and online communities are ever more influential. At the same time though I believe we are starting to see a counter-trend caused by the economic difficulties we are facing. My view is that as the effect of austerity measures bites more deeply people will become increasingly concerned about the impact on the communities in which they live and that there will be a resurgence of local community groups seeking to safeguard and improve their locality as a result. This will present a rich opportunity for businesses to focus on community and to generate loyalty through their contribution to that community.

6. Customer Networks

Consumer networks are likely to grow in importance as customers group together to seek
maximum value and businesses pursue relationships with them. The emergence of movements like carrotmob.org illustrate the beginning of a consumer desire to collaborate to leverage their
collective buying power and it won’t be long before community groups work directly with businesses, either to benefit their community as in the example above or for other purposes.

For more information or a conversation about what 2012 will bring, contact Tim Hadfield at Accord Engagement (accordengagement@btinternet.com) or on 07906 650019