chair’s report: customer engagement summit 2019 · 2019-11-20 · chair’s report: customer...
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Chair’s Report:
Customer Engagement Summit 2019
VIEW FROM THE
CHAIRManuela Pifani
CXellence Consulting
Published by
11-12 NOV I WESTMINSTER PARK PLAZA I LONDON
Chair’s Report:
Customer Engagement Summit 2019
VIEW FORM THE CHAIR1
CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT SUMMIT 2019
This event never lets you down. I have been attending them for a few years now and they
always prove to be an immense source of inspiring speakers and insightful case studies. Also,
this year’s topic of Trust and Transparency brought a different angle to traditional CX stories
and put the focus on areas which are often overlooked as ‘given’, despite representing key
‘make or break’ elements of the experience we deliver to customers on a daily basis.
On both days, the plenary sessions wereexcellent, but it is not my role to comment onthose here. After the coffee break, I took upmy chairperson role in jam-packed Hall 3. First up on stage was charismatic JoeRice from Twitter, who put the spotlight onone of the biggest challenges currentlyfacing CX practitioners: the increasinginefficiency of traditional customer surveys,which is hampering the ability to getactionable customer feedback. Growingsurvey fatigue, decreasing response rates,risk of interference with customer journeys,rising costs… you name it. And yet, Joe’sanswer was simple: listen to what customersare saying online, for free! Nowadays people are communicatingmore than ever, especially on social sites likeTwitter, offering on a silver plate a largeamount of valuable and unique insight,because it is unprompted and in-the-moment, authentic and deeply emotional.Customers blend their work and personallives while searching, reading, watching,playing, listening and connecting to shareexperiences, opinions and information –giving us the possibility to measure eachstep of their journey, identify unmet needsand even the next big thing. But Joe’sconclusion is that, shockingly, mostorganisations miss it all and stick only totraditional customer surveys. A fairchallenge! Next on the agenda was the Live Poll onTrust and Transparency. Despite theinarguably small sample of participants inthe room and therefore the statisticallyunreliable results, a couple of clear messagesemerged. Firstly, that recommendations andreviews play a key role in people’spurchasing decisions and very few wouldtrust buying something with bad write-ups.
Secondly, that most organisations areimproving their ability to understandcustomer needs and set clear brandpromises and CX strategies in line with that,but most are still behind the curve in theirability to deliver the experience thatcustomers expect. This is totally in line with one of my mainobservations when working with my clients:most organisations focus on the functionalelements they need to deliver to customers,like product features and service quality, butfail to take the next step towardsunderstanding and designing how they canachieve the more emotional outcomescustomer actually expect from thoseproducts and services. Organisations focuson what they have to do, instead of thinkingabout why the customer needs that and whatthey want the ultimate outcome to be, likebeing treated fairly, being in control, andfeeling confident. I honestly believe that theorganisations that make this shift willstrengthen their customer relationships andput clear blue water between them and theircompetitors. Matt Jenner then took the stage to sharea perfect example of the importance of trulyunderstanding who your customers are andwhat they need. Their strategy atFutureLearn started with the ambition tobring the US-born MOOC (Massive OpenOnline Course) approach to Europe and themission ‘to pioneer the best social learningexperience for everyone, anywhere’. But theysoon discovered that this focus ondemocratising education through a ‘one sizefits all’ approach was taking them down thewrong path. Deeper research on theircustomers led to creating a series of targetarchetypes based on learner motivations,which enabled the development of content
Manuela PifaniCXellence Consulting
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more tailored to the specific needs ofindividual customer groups. The 2,000courses they can now offer to over 10million learners are a testimony to thesuccess of this more targeted approach! The charming Alan Whitaker, CEO ofBillion Child Foundation, moved theconversation to the power of listeningskills and shared a masterclass onunderstanding decision making styles.His two-by-two matrix built around theaxes of degrees of ‘domination’ and‘formality’ defined four personality typeswith very different leadership attitudesand information needs. Crack these, andyou‘ll be able to influence them to a tee. By 2044, the Foundation wants toenable one billion children around theworld to attend schools which are centresof excellence. They believe thattransforming education in low scoringdistrict areas will radically change thelives of those children and communities.This is why winning hearts and minds ofinvestors is of critical importance toattract the right level of funding – andAlan identified his most receptiveaudience in the ‘promotors’ quadrant, i.e.people with high degrees of charisma andinformal passion. I believe that by the endof his presentation, he found quite a fewmore promotors in the audience willing tosupport his excellence cause! Sunny Singh reinforced the role of trustas a key driver of customer experience.Based on a careful balance of tangibleelements (linked to specific features anddelivering on expectations consistently)and intangible elements, it remains thekey to engage customers more deeply withthe brand and differentiate it from others.He also pointed out that trust doesn’t ‘justhappen’, but is the result of focusedexperience design and innovation andinvestment in the right technology. Charming Keith Gait, Customer ServiceDirector at Stagecoach and a passionatecustomer advocate and friend of mine, ledthe audience towards the lunch breakwith an honest and personal look at whatit takes to be a successful board member.He shared a number of tips based on hispersonal experience and learnings – fartoo many to do them justice here, so I willstick to the three that resonated the mostwith me. Firstly, ‘beware of single-issueevangelists’, as they will drag you downtheir pet complaint, potentially taking thefocus away from more important issues.Then, CX leadership is ‘about conductingthe orchestra’, as every instrument is
critical to the final harmony it deliversand only one off-key note can ruin itsimpact. And finally, ‘work on your EQ’, asindeed too many leaders leverage theirintellectual capacities in their decisionmaking, without applying enough of theiremotional intelligence. After lunch, Eliška Dočkalová was firstback on stage in Hall 3 to share howcustomer experience transformation wasat the core of Kiwi.com’s mission to ‘maketravel better’. In particular, I loved thefocus on defining a clear customerstrategy and creating a ‘CX tribe’ at theheart of the business to be its guardianand defender. Clear focus and peoplepower – the two key ingredients of any CXeffort! Jozef Brodala reinforced theimportance of understanding the needs ofdifferent customer groups. At ForzaFootball, they identified three differenttypes of fan profiles, around which theybuild their business model strategy andtransformation. The ‘commoner’, ‘true fan’and ‘connoisseur’ have different contentand data needs, which cannot be met by aone-size-fits-all solution, but require theability to manage different layers ofcontent in the platform in terms of itsbreadth and depth. Their strategy nowuses a balance of crowdsourcing (contentsubmitted by users) and clubsourcing (bythe clubs themselves) to enable ForzaFootball to meet those differentiatedcustomer needs at scale, taking themcloser to their mission ‘to cover everysingle match in the world’. Next up was David Caton with apowerful case study on how a clear focuson customers can disrupt a sector liketelcoms. From day one, giffgaff’s strategyclearly aimed to cut out redundantbusiness complexity like call centres,shops or selling phones, to ‘make mobilebetter’ by building on the simple conceptof ‘mutuality’. Indeed, ‘giffgaff’ is an oldScottish saying that means ‘mutual giving’– and it is the core of their businessmodel. They have members, notcustomers. Members help others, notcontact centres, because they believe in amutual and collaborative way to run theirbusiness. And every decision is made withmembers, which builds mutual trust, inturn creating value. Transparency is another key factor ingiffgaff’s mantra. Not only they offer totalflexibility and transparency, withoutcontracts or small print, but also theyadopt an honest and proactive approach to
the relationship with their members. Forexample, they clearly communicate anyprice increase, explaining the reasonsbehind it, and proactively contact theirmembers with remedial action andcompensation should they experience anynetwork issues, independently onwhether they were caused by giffgaff ortheir partners. Needless to say, this levelof transparency further reinforces trust –which explains why giffgaff are the fastestgrowing UK mobile operator! Then Antony Antoni shared a movingexample of purpose-driven marketing.The multibillion-dollar dolphinentertainment industry uses over 3,000captive animals around the world andgenerates up to $5bn dollars revenue perannum. Tourist operators’ campaignsmasquerade this cruelty as innocentfamily fun, fooling the public intobelieving this is acceptable or even betterfor the animals. World Animal Protection’slatest campaign is now trying to dispelthese industry lies, working with thetravel industry to call for an end of captivebreeding of dolphins for entertainment.Companies like Virgin Holidays andBritish Airways have already stoppedselling tickets and are leading the waytowards higher industry responsibility. Rafael Espesani from MondelēzInternational moved the discussion to themore traditional role of marketing toincrease brand awareness. The new ‘giveme strength’ social campaign for Treboruses humorous customer centric contentto create an appealing brand personality.The underlying insight was generatedthrough social listening and resulted in aseries of short social films designed to bemobile-first, to better reach the targetaudience. Loyalty can mean different things todifferent people: this was the key take-away from Richard Spencer’spresentation. He explained that loyalty isthe combination of emotions that driveswhat we do, so organisations need tounderstand their customers’ feelings andemotional drivers. About Loyalty hasidentified 12 key driver dimensions andevaluated each with a number of charities.This showed that trust, commitment andsatisfaction are the strongest drivers forthis sector – and charities can use thisinsight to predict customer behaviour,including propensity and intention to buymore. Couldn’t agree more! Do you know whatyour customers’ emotional drivers are?
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CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT SUMMIT 2019
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Next up after the break, Daisy Donald startedwith a challenge most CX practitioners willempathise with: “It’s great that we are listening toour customers, but the disparate sources ofinformation make it hard to know what toprioritise”. Daisy shared how the FT devised a QX(quality experience) Score to create a singlesource of the truth and prioritise the areas whichmatter the most. Neil Gregory closed an insightful day byreminding the audience about the importance ofbuilding cultural awareness and engaging allcolleagues behind the customer mission. Acompany like Naked Wines, with already strongcustomer and employee metrics performance,could take their service to the next level only bytotally aligning the customer and colleagueagenda. They now work on the principle thatcolleagues deserve, and benefit from, the sameapproach they give to customers. Built around the4 key pillars of Empathy, Action, Honesty andConsistency, this parallel focus on External andInternal Customers has strengthenedcommunication between teams and promoted aservice-led culture throughout the business. I admit I was particularly jealous of NakedWines’ ability to engage customers and people inresearch activities… by taking them on blindwine tasting tours! Certainly beats any freevouchers and stale sandwiches most of us canoffer at focus groups… The second day of the Summit was opened byanother battery of powerful keynotes, after whichthe audience resumed their pilgrimage in thequest of insight and inspiration across threedifferent parallel streams. Susan Stockwell was first one up with me inHall 2, reiterating a key point we had alreadyheard a few times the day before: the importanceof research to understand customers and whatthey truly need. I couldn’t agree more with Susanthat often organisations take for granted thatpeople know their customers, especially whenthey have been there a long time ... but do theyreally know them? The Hyde Group, operating in the socialhousing and utilities sector, didn’t want to fallinto that trap, especially at a time when, in thewake of events like Grenfell, they had tostrengthen customer trust. Indeed, the mainlesson they learn from that was that customersfelt they were not listened to. Therefore, throughresearch, they created behavioural personas toenhance their data and demographic insight, andthey defined their customer strategy and targetcustomer experience around them. But theirfocus now is on delivering the proof points to turn
the strategy into reality, to achieve the desiredhigh levels of satisfaction and strengthencustomer trust. Herbert Verschuren took the stage next toshare how Air France KLM transformed their callcentres from operational, cost-driven units intocustomer-focused contact centres, which deliverdifferentiated services based on customer needsand value. They started with answering the keyquestions as to ‘why do we exist’, which enablethem to define their key focus to ‘create effortlessand memorable customer interactions’, as well asthe customer proposition on how to deliver them,differentiated for different customer value groups. But having 30 contact centres around theworld working in 30 languages, with over 3,000staff covering 200 markets with different culturesand over 20 million customer interactionsannually, consistency of delivery was anunquestionable challenge. And an additional onewas posed by the fact that they were serving twobrands with very different personalities (AirFrance and KLM). The answer was engagement –working with the contact centre people totranslate the CX vision into reality by designingthe touchpoints and the overall culture requiredto implement them at scale, worldwide. This alsoled to the creation of a new ‘we care for ourcustomers’ programme, which achievedsymmetry between the customer and the peopleproposition, embedding customer-centricityacross the organisation. Aimee Symonds then turned the ‘trust’spotlight from customers to the core or theorganisation, outlining the added value generatedwhen people feel trusted. The IntellectualProperty Office started a new project called‘adaptive’ to build a high trust culture, whichlistened to its people to progressively drivechanges to the overall ways of working andenvironment. Rosie Bailey’s presentation was perfect to endthe day in Hall 2, as she reminded the audiencethat the right strategy is important, but evenmore important is the organisation’s ability todeliver it in a fast and agile way. Rosie sharedsome of the lessons they learnt at CitySprint,from not choosing partners who are not in linewith your culture, to not singing success too soonbefore results emerge – and concluded with thewise words that, very often, passionate peopleand elbow grease are the key to success. And to conclude, I would like to personallythank all those people who are passionate aboutthe customer and attended these super-insightfultwo days – and may that elbow grease be withyou!
VIEW FORM THE CHAIR
CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT SUMMIT 2019
Chair’s Report: Customer Engagement Summit 2019VIEW FROM THE CHAIR
Manuela Pifani, CXellence Consulting
11-12 NOV I WESTMINSTER PARK PLAZA I LONDON
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