People who wear those bluetooth headsets need a clip round the ear

Earlier this month I had the pleasure of meeting over 100 customer experience executives at the 9th Annual Customer Contact Executive MindXchange in Copenhagen. On the first day I saw the tweet in the headline above (by my favourite tweeter @MooseAllain) which made me chuckle – but is customer contact all about call centres and headsets, or has the game changed? It sure has. 

One delegate I spoke with made a challenging assertion, “I believe enhanced customer experience could be the death knell for marketing. The days when you made a pin for a client, then marketed pins to people who didn’t know that you made pins is over. People will find your products when they need them. You need an excellent customer journey to direct, nudge and influence people into regularly buying from you”.

As a marketer this sent a bit of a shudder down my spine. Conversely, in a recent survey by the Economist this claim is backed up but vice versa, as marketers state that they will own the customer journey – controversial - a topic for next year’s event perhaps! 

Figure 1: The Rise of the Marketer, source the EIU

So what were some of the key takeaways from the  9th Annual Customer Contact 2015, Europe: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange?

Professor Phil Klaus kicked off proceedings with a fantastic keynote, “Damned if you do, damned if you don't - how to design and execute the most profitable customer experience (cx) strategies.”

Here he discussed mega trends (video on mega trends from the Frost team below) such as changing demographics, increasing complexity, new distribution/channel landscape and the new (ever-so-demanding) customer! Controversially he said that net promoter scores are not the right measure for predicting future purchasing behaviour, which is outlined in greater detail in his book Measuring Customer Experience. One of the more sobering findings from his research was that only 2 out of 10 customer experience initiatives are profitable. 

Next up was Tory Flash at E.ON who is clearly in the 20% of companies that are making a success of the customer journey. Two years ago Tory moved into the energy industry to join the group wide NPS Centre of Excellence at EON. EON is one of the largest energy companies in the world with 60,000 employees and c.30 million customers. In the last 3 years NPS has increased in all regional units in absolute terms and in relation to competitors, so NPS is clearly working for E.ON.

After this I helped run the world famous Solutions Wheel – a business speed dating session - and facilitated a mini brainstorming session for a rotating holding group of 6 people. Here I asked the participants, “what are the big questions for customer experience today?”

The question that got the most responses was: “If money was no object, what could most improve your customer experience?” (the most common answer was people). However, this question quickly morphed into “If money was no object, who would be your ideal customer experience employee?” The answers ranged from the famous (socially aware and charitable such as George Clooney or Angelina Jolie) to the surreal (Superman, Spiderman, etc., as you need multiple skills and special senses to anticipate potential disasters) to the controversial (nurses, social workers, people who have high levels of empathy) which is already starting to happen in some customer service departments today.

Many interactive panels, think tanks and workshop sessions were delivered with some of the key customer experience takeaways being:

1. Customer experience strategies need Board level approval, buy in and they should be a part of the experience – Richard Branson does it! 
2. Empower employees to enhance the experience – throw away the script – people buy people first
3. Choose and monitor the right KPIs – is NPS right for you?
4. Make the customer journey as easy as possible – have you tried it yourself?
5. Monitor your employees’ NPS – if they are unhappy, it is likely that your customers will be too!

I will close this article with the last round table that I attended which was focused on enhancing B2B employee engagement. The session was hosted by the inspirational Michael Lumsden, Chief Executive Officer from Stellar, and the following question got some interesting responses from the group:

“What was the one thing that gave you the greatest employee engagement?”

Michael answered with the excellent stat that 60% of people would rather have a new boss than a pay rise! His boss used to be 12,500 miles away so autonomy was a huge motivator for him. Colby Parrott from SurveyMonkey was the first woman in her role and this recognition was rewarded with her loyalty to the business. Then someone threw the question at me. Mine was getting a promotion that I did not expect, but also being paid to learn about science & technology and then tell people about it. Geeky but true :-)   

To close, I throw a similar question over to you – what is the number one thing that motivates you, and why?

Answers on a postcard please.

Have fun!

Noel