Introduction

If you are reading this introduction you are one of the growing numbers of individuals engaging with the customer experience, and recognising that customer experience is one of the fastest-growing components of business strategy.

In this book we will look at the cultural, functional and emotional aspects of the customer experience and learn how to deploy some of the growing array of tools and techniques that will improve experiences. It is aimed at the CEO and senior executives who intuitively know that their customer experience is important but have struggled to drive change; it is aimed at the more junior leaders who so often have the passion and inspiration but are frustrated by their organisation’s inability or unwillingness to embrace the truth; it is also aimed at the true converts who have and still are driving the customer experience agenda in their businesses and want some further guidance on how to get even better at delivering.

The title for this book reflects the need at this point to provide help and practical guidance on the ‘how to’ in customer experience terms. As the market and the discipline mature over the next few years the next edition of this book may better reflect the true importance and commercial advantage by being re-titled Experience – the difference! The Customer Experience Book.

Today there are few formal programmes and educational guides to turn to as you seek to understand how best to develop and manage the customer experience that your company delivers. In the early 2000s, businesses were

recognising that the customer experience would be the ‘next business tsunami’. Intuitively most employees from the front line to the boardroom accept that focusing on what your customer needs and delivering against those needs is a ‘good thing’ to do – yet today all over the world companies are consistently delivering substandard experiences.

In an age where the power of the customer has never been stronger and our experience set against our expectations is increasingly driving the choices we make, why are we not seeing huge improvements?

Why, for example, when a company has spent billions developing a car would they not invest in an experience that complements that investment? Yet the car sales experience has barely changed in 50 years. It would take a fraction of the percentage of the investment in the car to revolutionise the way that we as car buyers experience the brand.

• Why after investing many millions in the creation of a brand and identity would companies leave the experience that customers have largely to chance?
• Why would a company outsource its contact with customers to a third-party call centre and not ensure that the experience at an emotional level is being delivered in a way that meets the expectations created by the brand message.
• Why do most call centre key performance indicators still focus on quantitative measures like call duration, calls abandoned, wait time, etc.?
• Why do boardroom agendas not have customer at the top?
• Why do company executives sitting in the boardroom not know the top five complaints about their experience and operation?
• Why do companies still believe that buying research and investing in customer relationship management (CRM) technology will be the answer to improving their customer experience?

The answers to these and many more questions are covered in this book – but in summary there are some simple answers to the main questions.

Much of the problem is in the stilted thinking that exists, with many experiences not really changing for years – for example, the car buying experience on the forecourt is unchanged from the 1970s. The view that we have always done it this way prevails and companies find it very difficult to ‘think differently’ – that makes it easy for new entrants like Zappos to star in terms of experience as the existing players are locked into their existing experience.

Equally, where companies do innovate, others see the answer as replication rather than further innovation, and so are constantly playing catch up. Apple changed the game by creating open-plan stores, removing the need for checkouts and overloading the store with staff. None of these changes is that huge, but the biggest decision was to put more people than they may need into the stores – in the scale of Apple the investment is small but remains significant. It does not make perfect financial sense, but it is spot on for the brand and the expectations that it creates. When it was announced in 2012 that staffing would be reduced, the social

media firestorm created was enough to influence and create a U-turn: ‘Making these changes was a mistake and the changes are being reversed,’ an Apple spokesperson said. If we look at Samsung stores today they are seemingly replicating the look of Apple, but not the investment in the staffing.

Customer experience as a discipline is still in its infancy, those charged with improving experience are having to ‘make it up as they go along’ – few company training activities focus directly on the customer experience, preferring to address the much narrower customer service instead. So what is the difference? Put simply, customer experience embraces the way that a company operates across all functions – it recognises the contribution required from across the company. It addresses the need for companies to accept that their culture needs to evolve to embrace the customer experience agenda and to integrate it into the business strategy.

In the past, customer experience was badged in the marketing and brand category and fell foul of the old marketing adage of being fluffy: ‘50 per cent of marketing works and 50 per cent doesn’t – the problem is we don’t know which 50 per cent works.’ It was not clear that you could draw a straight line between an investment in experience improvement and the bottom line of the company. Today that is not the case and there are clearly demonstrable lines of sight.

The customer experience world still suffers from the legacy of failed CRM investments, and there were some very large investments in infrastructure that companies later called into question. Some consulting and technology vendors have simply rebadged their old CRM practice as customer experience, but the fundamentals of their thinking and operation have not changed.

People fear the unknown and the consequences of engaging in the customer experience world – how as a senior executive or an employee do I fit this ‘additional work’ into my already full calendar? What would I actually need to do?

So whether you are the CEO, senior director, customer experience director, customer experience programme lead or a frontline employee, there is content for you – from simple ‘how to’ explanations to advice on how to engage your organisation.

For more insights into the world of customer experience visit my blog at www.thecustomerexperiencebook.com

I hope you enjoy the experience of this book