Tag: Voice of the Customer

What does it take to make an impact as the Chief Experience Officer?

Allow me to introduce you to Lonnie Mayne , Chief Experience Officer at Mindshare Technologies. As his bio says “Lonnie Mayne influences each and every interaction involving Mindshare’s valued clients—from front-desk greetings to printed marketing materials to everyday sales calls to impromptu gifts of friendship.”  Mindshare is in the business of providing companies (and their executives) valuable customer insight gleamed from tapping into the Voice of the Customer.

Just before I went on my holidays I had an interesting conversation with Lonnie and in this post I want to share some of  points/learnings I took from that conversation.

Why focus on the customer and the customer’s experience? 

Lonnie’s answer to this question is simple: at some point the customer will be faced with a choice and if you have not created value for the customer, made his/her life better, then the customer will switch to another supplier.

Yes, it is possible to be doing well financially if you have created enough value for the customer through your product/service without asking/involving/focussing on your customers and what matters to them.  However, sooner or later this situation will change and when that happens your business will pay the price.  Put differently, the price of not listening to your customers and not keeping in tune with them is often paid further down the line.  As I write these lines I cannot help but think of Tesco in the UK.

What is the central challenge facing the Chief Experience Officer?

As a result of 20+ years of business experience, Lonnie is clear that CEO’s tend to be focussed on profitable growth. And in pursuing profit it is easy for the CEO to ‘lose sight of the customer along the way’.  How exactly?  The CEO doesn’t consider the impact of decisions deeply enough when it comes to the impact on the customers.  Put differently, too much focus on profit leads to poor decision making: decision making which favours short term efficiency and cost reduction over long term effectiveness in meeting/addressing customer needs.

Therefore, the central challenge for the Chief Experience Officer, according to Lonnie, is to ensure that the customer is present at the leadership table.  How?  By asking the following question: what is the impact of this decision on the customer?  Clearly it is not enough to ask the question.  The Chief Experience Officer (or Chief Customer Officer) also has to provide an answer.  In practice this means ‘applying science to the Voice of the Customer’ to deliver a sound business case that speaks to the CEO.

What does it take to make a meaningful impact as the Chief Experience Officer?

Moving from talking about customer focus and customer experience to actually orienting a company around customers and generating the right customer experience is not easy.  Some say it requires a transformation in mindset, culture and organisational design.  What does Lonnie say and how has he gone about it?

1. Ensure you have the wholehearted support of the CEO and build a good working relationship.  Lonnie is clear that to be successful in his role he needs the wholehearted support of his CEO.  That means reporting into/working with a CEO that gets the importance of the customer and the customer experience.  It helps if the KPI’s of the Chief Experience Officer align with the CEO.  Lonnie tells me that his success metrics are identical with those of his CEO.  So what is the difference between Lonnie and his CEO?  Lonnie’s focus is first on the customer and then on profitable growth whereas the CEO’s focus is first on profitable growth and second on the customer.  You can say that they complement each other.

2. Have real clout within the organisation.  As Chief Experience Officer, Lonnie is not simply heading up a staff function with no line authority or responsibility.  He used to lead the sales and account management function.  Now, as the Chief Experience Officer, Lonnie has direct responsibility for marketing, sales and client retention.

3. Broaden the definition of customer to include internal customers.  Time and again Lonnie referred to internal customers as well as external customers when he talked about customers.  It occurs to me that Lonnie gets that to serve/make an impact on external customers he has to serve/make an impact on the internal customers: the employees of Mindshare.

4. Involve the people in the organisation in grappling with the key questions.  There is considerable value in having the right people grapple with the right questions.   When it comes to designing/generating the right customer experience, the right people are the employees.  Which questions? Lonnie mentioned two questions that he posed: “How would you ever know, if you were outside the organisation, what we stand for as an organisation?”; and “What do we want the ultimate Customer Experience to be?”  The value/beauty of taking such an approach is that you do not have to get ‘buy-in’ later, the ‘buy-in’ is built in right from the start.

5. Access and use of the Voice of the Customer. Lonnie has been able to influence decision making by tapping into and making good use of the Voice of the Customer.  He calls that ‘practicing what we preach’ given that this is the core business of Mindshare.

6. Speak the language of the business.  It is not enough to access the Voice of the Customer.  Why?  If the Voice of the Customer does not speak the language of business then it falls on deaf ears.  What is the language of business?  Finance.  Specifically and in practice this means making a sound economic case for acting on the Voice of the Customer.

7. Get the CEO in front of customers regularly.  Given that CEOs are disconnected from and tend to lose sight of customers and what matters to customers it is essential to the get the CEO in front of real flesh and blood customers. Put differently, facts and figures can never replace face to face encounters: there is nothing like being there, seeing/hearing/experiencing the customer first hand.

8.  Respectfully challenge the CEO as and when necessary.  Clearly, this is only possible if and only if you have confidence.  It is easier to be confident if you have built a good working relationship with the CEO, you have access to the Voice of the Customer and you know how to use it effectively – to make a sound business case.

I dedicate this post to Cathy Sorensen.  Cathy I thank you for your words of kindness:  it is great to know and to feel that my writing makes a contribution to you and that you missed me during August.

VoC: what’s wrong with VoC and how do you get it right? (Part III)

In the first post I shared the first part of my discussion around VoC with Erich Dietz, VP of Business Solutions at Mindshare Technologies (specialists in customer surveys and enterprise feedback).  The key point of that post was captured in Erich’s words: “No-one is really doing VoC surveys with the customer in mind!” 

The second post (of this series) surfaced the gap between what companies say and what they do which is best captured by this statement: ““Too many companies say that they are committed to improving the customer experience and yet don’t deliver on this commitment, this promise!”

In this third and last post I wish to share with you what Erich and I discussed on how to do VoC right.   Let’s start with the context that gives rise to surveying and soliciting feedback from customers.

What is the appropriate context for generating value out of VoC? “Action. This Day!”

Erich and Mindshare are clear that if companies (and customers) are to get any benefit from VoC then Tops have to be passionate, be committed and act with a sense of urgency.  Here is how Richard D. Hanks (Chairman, Mindshare Technologies) puts it in his book Delivering and Measuring Customer Service:

“I have to admit, the most frustrating part of working with hundreds of companies on customer experience measurement is when I occasionally have a client who is doing everything “right” but is still not getting positive results….  After a brief analysis of the circumstances, nine times out of ten, I discover the following situation:

The company has been conscientious in its effort to measure satisfaction.  They have been completely committed to obtaining and communicating results.  But, they have had no commitment to improving the level of service: no follow up on needed training, no inclusion of customer satisfaction results in bonus plans, and no one has been held accountable for following up with and recovering customers who complained about a service lapse.  It’s incredible.  They will collect the customer feedback.  They will listen with both ears.  They will hear positives, negatives and suggestions.  And then they will just sit there and do …..nothing…… Particularly disappointing are those companies or managers who say something like, “Well, we’re doing pretty well so far, why do we need to change?

Success requires action and commitment!  You must take action.  You can’t sit still.  Let me quote a client’s customer who says it more forcefully: “Why should I spend my time giving you feedback, when you didn’t pay attention to my comments the last time?”

Upon reading this I was reminded of this post – The Six Enemies of Greatness – which I thoroughly recommend reading, it is an easy read, humorous and informative.

How to get started with VoC?

Lets assume that you, your organisation, has the requisite passion, commitment and sense of urgency.  How should you go about it?  According to Erich, the following approach is a pragmatic one that works:

Map the entire customer experience and identify the key moments of truth.  The point to get is that the “the customer is in the details”: it is the many details that make or break the customer experience.  Richard D. Hanks in his book Delivering and Measuring Customer Service writes “All industries have moments of truth and almost all moments of truth involve people!”

Listen to your customers / set-up VoC. In order to act on what matters to customers and fix that which is broken you have to set up mechanisms that allow you, your organisation, to know what you do not know.  Who is best placed to tell you?  The customer.  Erich cautioned, that you give up the temptation to do this on your own.  Why?  Because it is a specialist task and the value you get out of using professionals, like Mindshare, will more than offset the costs.

Don’t just listen, engage your customers!  Listening as in surveying is not enough.  Engaging customers is what matters – it is the difference that makes the real difference.  What does Erich mean by ‘engaging’?  If I understood him correctly, he means entering into a genuine dialogue, a two way conversation.  At a minimum, this means that you close the loop by going back to the customer (and/or customers as a whole) to let him/her know what you done with his feedback – what changes you have made.

Pilot.  Erich recommends that you, your organisation, starts with a pilot.  Why?  Done right, pilot are a great way to try things out, learn and see what shows up.  Pilots are also low cost, low risk and allow you to demonstrate the business case for VoC.

The Mindshare VoC formula: how to do VoC right

Mindshare’s VoC formula – how to do it right – is set out in Richard D. Hanks’s (Chairman, Mindshare Technologies) book Delivering and Measuring Customer Service:

Collect and listen to the customers input

Establish the process for reviewing the feedback – focussing on under and over-performing units, teams, and people

Share and standardise best practices – communicate insights, set improvement goals, hold people accountable, team up high performers with low performers

Train and support your employees – teach and train your employees and equip them with the right tools

Reward and control – reward in public and counsel in private, reward both correct and improving behaviour

Make the needed changes – empower the local managers to take action / fix the problems, focus on what is working well and expand this

Show the customer the changes – close the loop with the customer / demonstrate that you are acting on the customer feedback

Repeat

My take on VoC and Mindshare Technologies

If you are genuinely up for competing on the basis of the ‘customer experience’ then ‘workability’ requires that you actively invite/encourage/solicit feedback from your customers, turn this into actionable insight and that you act on this insight with resoluteness and a sense of urgency.

If you are going to get value out of VoC then I say that you will get value out of expanding beyond customer surveying and include all sources of insight – social media, call centre, voice of your employees…. And it is not enough.  Knowing about driving can never create the experience of driving, for that experience to occur you have to sit in the car and drive.  Knowing about the customer experience is not the same as experiencing the customer experience; text, figure, charts are a poor substitute for video, audio, and being there, experiencing it in the first person – as lived.

It is necessary and useful to actually experience what it is like to be a customer – walk in the customer’s shoes.  And it is also useful and necessary to work, incognito, on the front lines to experience the lives and working conditions of your front line staff – aka Undercover Boss.  How else will you get to experience the absurdity of policies cooked up, by you and your colleagues, in HQ that are totally divorced from the reality on the front lines?  How else are you going to get a lived experience of ‘bad’ managers – managers who fail to get the best out of the customer facing staff, instead cultivating ‘learned helplessness’ in these staff.  Word, Excel, PowerPoint do not move-touch-inspire people to act in way that one’s own lived experience does.

It occurs to me that the folks at Mindshare Technologies have their hearts in the right place and they have lots of experience to bring to the table if you are considering undertaking, improving, getting value out of VoC.

An offer for you: get a free copy of Delivering and Measuring Customer Service

If you are embarking upon VoC and want to get a copy of Richard D. Hanks book Delivering and Measuring Customer Service ( I found it easy and useful to read) then email me at maz@thecustomerblog.co.uk – the first person to email me will get the book, free of charge. 

VoC: what’s wrong with VoC and how do you get it right? (Part II)

In the previous post I shared the first part of my discussion around VoC with Erich Dietz, VP of Business Solutions at Mindshare Technologies (specialists in customer surveys and enterprise feedback).  The key point of that post was captured in Erich’s words: “No-one is really doing VoC surveys with the customer in mind!”   In this post I wish to share/discuss with you the other big issue that came up in my conversation with Eric.  Before that lets just briefly summarise best practice in soliciting customer feedback.

Lets assume your organisation is following best practice in soliciting customer feedback

Lets assume that you:

1. Have come up with the right incentives to encourage feedback – incentives that encourage your customers to give up their time and make an effort to give you feedback on what matters to them and how you are doing in meeting those needs;

2.  Have made giving feedback a natural extension of the already occurring conversation – e.g. using the call coming into the contact centre to engage the customer in a dialogue and invite her to share her experience, to give feedback immediately after the call;

3.  Have purposefully and cleverly designed the survey process so that it is short and easy by only asking a small number of questions that really matter that can help improve the customer experience – questions that you do not have answers to already or those that you cannot get answers to by trawling through your internal systems and/or speaking with your employees who touch the customer;

4.  Are making effective use of VoC technologies to allow customers to provide feedback through their preferred channels/devices e.g. email, phone, IVR…..

5.  Major in soliciting unstructured feedback and minor in structured feedback – that is to say that you primarily set out to get unstructured feedback and reinforce this with some structured questions which enhance the value of the unstructured feedback e.g. “How many contacts did it take for you to get your issue resolved?”

6.  Have in place a team/process/platform for converting this feedback into actionable insight into what matters to your customers –  what is working well and what is not working or your customers: policies, processes, products, services, customer facing employees, technology….. 

The question is this, “Is this enough?”   Erich and I agreed that this is not enough.  For all this work  to generate value it is necessary, critical, that your organisation (Tops, Middles, Bottoms) act – act decisively to make changes that improve the customer experience, engender customer happiness and thus cultivate both customer advocacy and customer loyalty.  Is this happening?

The second major issue: too many companies talk about the Customer Experience and don’t act, don’t deliver!

Acting decisively on VoC generated customer insight to improve the customer experience by making the proper changes – policies, processes, people, technology, retail store environment etc – is the second big failing in the VoC arena.  What do I mean?  If I understood Erich correctly then he said something remarkably similar to this: “Too many companies say that they are committed to improving the customer experience and yet don’t deliver on this commitment, this promise!”

When I probed into this to ask Erich why this is happening, why companies are failing to act on their VoC insight which they are collecting and paying for, Erich said that he had heard just about every excuse there is.  Probing further, Erich stated that the top two reason/excuses offered by clients tend to be:

  1. Other priorities; and
  2. Lack of resources.

I could hear the frustration in Erich’s voice.  Clearly this is a man who cares about the Customer Experience, he exclaimed his frustration “These are companies where revenues are flat, profits are flat, the customer experience is poor and yet ‘other priorities’ are important than improving the customer experience!”

Making VoC insight pay: what’s missing the presence of which makes all the difference?

Here is what I say: can you imagine Steve Jobs saying that anything was more important than designing great products – products that would wow customer through a great end-to-end user experience? 

I was listening to Steve Jobs biography and there is passage that speaks to the situation that Erich is describing here.  The passage, the quote from Jobs, goes something like this: “At too many companies design is simply veneer, at Apple design is the essence of what we do.”  So I would say that my observation is as follows:

Look at Customer Experience masters (e.g. Apple, Starbucks, Amazon) and you will find that the Customer Experience is the essence of what the organisation is designed to do and compete on.  Look at everyone else who is speaking and touting their love of the customer and the customer experience and you will find that for the Tops in these organisation Customer Experience is simply a veneer: lipstick on a pig!

Part III coming next

In the next and last post, I will set out Erich’s recommendations on how to do VoC right so that your organisation generates value – for you and your customers.  Thanks for listening to my speaking!


Europe: what does EY’s VoC survey tell us about the needs/behaviour of non-life insurance customers? (Part I)

A week ago I summarised my take on the Global findings from Ernst & Young’s “Voice of the Customer, Time for Insurers to Rethink Their Relationships 2012″. And I promised to take a look specifically at the European customer and the European market.  This series of posts honors that promise – staring today with the first post (Part I).  Please note that I am only looking into and sharing non-life insurance and the related customer needs/behaviour.  Let’s get started.

An introduction to the survey

The basis of the European findings is survey of 8,532 consumers of life and non-life insurance products between August and October 2011.  The survey covered the following countries: France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Turkey and the UK.  As you can see that whilst these countries are relatively wealth in comparison to other countries, there are considerable differences in wealth and demographics between these countries.

What Are The Key Findings for non-life insurance?

The survey addresses the following five “key myths”:The future is online; it is only about price;good claims experience builds loyalty; customers don’t respond to cross-selling; and insurers can’t influence customer retention.

The conclusion? According to E&Y: “While there is some truth in the myths around how non-life insurance products are bought and sold, the reality is more complex.” That accords with my experience – the gold, the insight, the levers for effective action are in the details. Today, let’s dig one level deeper for each of the myths to learn what E&Y has to say.

Myth 1: The future is online

Accepted wisdom: use of the internet (online channel) is growing rapidly and in the future online will be the dominant channel for both research and transactions.

Research suggests / E&Y position: use of online channels is growing rapidly and customers want access to offline channels; insurers need to put in place an integrated channel strategy to accommodate customer needs & behaviour over the customer life-cycle (from research through to renewal).

Myth 2: It is only about price

Accepted wisdom: non-life insurance products are commoditised and therefore customers buy only on price – this one factor swamps everything.

Research suggests / E&Y position: Price is an important component of value but it’s not the only one. Many customers also consider and differentiate between provider on the basis of brand (trustworthy?), product features and previous experience. The importance of price varies both by geographical market and by the type of insurance product that is being bought.  For example, when it comes to private healthcare insurance, customers look for ‘indicators suggesting quality’.

Myth 3: Good claims experience builds loyalty

Accepted wisdom: a good claims experience generates customer delight and automatically leads to higher customer loyalty and brand value

Research suggests / E&Y position: customers expect a good claims experience and do not necessarily reward it; they do punish a bad claims experience.

Myth 4: Customers don’t respond to cross-selling

Accepted wisdom: customers resent insurers selling them more products – they don’t enjoy the sales process.

Research suggests / E&Y position: customers are willing to buy multiple products from insurers provided this is done in a certain way that creates value for customers.

Myth 5: Insurers can’t influence customer retention

Accepted wisdom: insurers feel they have little influence / control over retaining customers

Research suggests / E&Y position: customers are not keen on switching as it is inconvenient; insurers can keep more of their customers if they take the right actions at the right times – in particular during the ownership stage.

In Part II, I will be talking a deeper look at both Myth 1.  Specifically, what is the reality when it customer needs and behaviour when it comes to channels.  And spell out the issues and implications for insurers(as identified by EY).

Global: what does the Voice of the Insurance Customer tell us about customer needs and behaviour?

Ernst & Young have issued a report titled “Voice of the Customer, Time for Insurers to Rethink Their Relationships 2012”.  This report is based on a survey of 27,000 customers across 7 regions and covering 23 countries.  Here is the global summary:  EY-Global-Report-Global-Consumer-Insurance-Survey-2012.    I found this report, along with the webcast I attended, interesting and as such I wish to share with you the aspects that caught my attention.

What’s new?  Consumer behaviour and expectations are changing rapidly

This is how the EY report puts it:  “Customer behavior is changing rapidly. Technology, and in particular the growth of online and social media, is driving a fundamental shift  in customer expectations in terms of how products are marketed, priced, sold and serviced, and how companies are perceived. Pure internet businesses have set new standards for customer-centricity and engagement that raise the performance bar for players in every retail business sector.”

What is the key challenge for insurers?

There is a fundamental, structural, chasm between customers and insurance companies.  Insurers are product and/or intermediary centric models.  Buyers of insurance are looking for insurance companies to be customer-centred. The key challenge for insurers is to make the transition to a customer-centric mindset, business model and operating design.  This is a big ask because insurers in the mature economies (e.g. USA and Europe) as they have ‘extensive legacy operations’.  For example, just changing the IT platform (all the IT systems including all the associated databases) to enable a customer-centred operating mode is a huge challenge.  Another challenge is gluing up the channels so as to enable the insurance buyer/customer to interact seamlessly with the insurer using channels of his/her choice – including switching channels in the midst of doing a job e.g. researching and buying.

What does the global survey tell us about the needs of insurance buyers / customers?

Whilst the majority of customers are satisfied/highly satisfied there is a sizeable minority of buyers who are not confident the product is right for them. Why?  The information that these buyers need (and the way that they need it presented) is missing.

They want to be able to trust insurance providers and build long term relationships.  Specifically, they want to be confident that the products that insurers are selling are right for them (the buyers) and meet their needs.  In other words, they want to be certain that what they think they are buying is what they are buying – no misleading words, no hidden catches and exclusions…

Insurance buyers are looking for a transparent and simple products along with a simple, transparent and convenient buying process.  Notice that the buyer wants insurers to make it easier for them to understand the products on offer, to pick the right one and then easily buy using the channels that are most convenient including switching between channels (e.g. web and call-centre or vice versa).

Customers are looking for value to be clearly demonstrated, reflecting a balance of price, product features and service tailored to their needs.  The more competitive the market the more important it becomes for insurers to demonstrate the value that they are providing other than price.  In other words answer the question “Why should I buy from you and not your competitor who has as similar product at a similar price?”

Customers expect the insurance provider to deliver against the buyers expectations of the product and of customer service.  In other words the ownership phase and associated customer experience matters to customers even if it does not rank that high for many insurers.

How well are insurers doing against these needs and expectations?  According to EY: “The survey shows that the customers’ perceptions are that the industry is failing to deliver this in some key areas.”

Are there any big differences between life and non-life insurance from a buyer / customer perspective?

I noted two big differences, in the word of EY:

“Non-life insurance lends itself more to internet purchase than life and pensions, given the higher customer familiarity and comparability of the products. In all countries we found a growing trend to use the internet to research non-life products, although levels of actual purchase vary considerably between countries.”

“In non-life insurance, price is often the main measure of value since products are more comparable and frequency of purchase drives greater customer familiarity. But in some territories, brand and reputation are more important criteria.  In highly competitive markets characterized by price transparency, there is a tendency for prices to converge. This leads to non-price factors such as brand becoming more important selection criteria as customers search for a way to differentiate between providers.”

What does EY recommend for non-life insurance?

EY advises insurers to focus on convenience and value by:

Providing a seamless customer experience by integrating online and offline channels. Thus allowing the insurance buyer / customer to  use whichever channel works for her at a particular point in time and be able to swap channels and continue where she left off, seamlessly, in the previous channel.  Notice this means integration such that any and all customer related data is shared across channels – a single view of the customer that is in operation in real-time.

Making it easy (simple, convenient) for insurance buyers to buy and for customers to renew – across whichever channel/s they choose to use. For my part I do not believe that EY go far enough.  It is also important for insurers to demonstrate value of choosing / sticking with the insurance providers.

Making the customer feel valued after he has purchased and before the renewal comes up. This has to do with useful communications from the insurer to the customer during the ownership phase AND a service culture that ensures that the customer’s experience of interacting with the insurers matches his/her expectations.  Incidentally, the research shows that a poor claims experience drives churn but a positive one does not drive loyalty – customers expect to be treated well during the ownership phase.

Segmenting the customer base and understanding the needs, behaviours and profitability of each segment. This will allow you, the insurer, to manage the risk and improve retention in a profitable manner.

Developing and manage insurance brand(s) so that the value proposition and key messages are clear and communicated effectively in/across the digital world.

What does EY recommend for life and pensions insurance?

EY advises a focus on improving customer trust and confidence by:

Putting the customer at the centre of the business model: offering the right product, at the right time, to the right customer and following through with service that matches the customers expectations and responds to his/her needs – needs change.  Clearly this means building and exploiting a customer insight capability.

Working with intermediary channels AND building a direct relationship with buyers / customers so as to generate insight, anticipate and meet their needs. The key challenge with the intermediary is to drive the right behaviour – behaviour that creates value for customers and enables longer term relationships.

Putting together a suite of simple (to understand) and transparent products that meet the needs of customers.   The idea is to enable the customers to buy easily – with confidence.

Making it easy for buyers / customers to access relevant (and easy to understand) information and products online – supported by offline personal interactions where necessary.

Building trust by crafting and delivering a great customer experience across touchpoints, across the customer journey.

Rewarding customer loyalty with incentives that recognise the worth (LTV) of the customer’s purchasing behaviour and loyalty.

Improving customer retention by doing a better job of getting at and dealing with the underlying drivers of churn.

Final Words

I will be doing a follow up post which dives specifically into the findings for Europe.  I have a vested interest in this as I believe that would be of service to a group of people that are near and dear to me.

I wonder if all categories of non-life insurance show the same customer needs and behaviour.  Might there be a category or two that is a mix of life and non-life needs?