Yesterday it was a particularly hot day in Copenhagen, and I met an older woman while standing in the supermarket queue. She casually mentioned, "Remember to put out the fires and water the flowers." I found this brilliant as it perfectly captures how businesses should manage their relationships with customers. If you only engage with customers when they complain, you train them to speak up only when they have something negative to say.
When a company focuses solely on addressing problems, “putting out fires”, it risks creating an environment where customer interaction is driven by issues alone. Over time, customers begin to associate the brand with complaints. However, by also celebrating positive moments and rewarding loyalty, “watering the flowers”, the company will foster more positive relationships. By recognising and appreciating customers when they’re happy, the business encourages them to share their positive experiences, creating a more balanced and open connection.
Strong customer relationships
The voice of the customer is crucial in today's business landscape, as it offers invaluable insights into their needs, preferences, and pain points. I think by actively listening to customers, businesses can foster trust, loyalty, and differentiation, particularly in industries where products or services are commoditised. Moreover, when incorporating customer feedback into innovation processes this enables companies to develop offerings that better align with market demands. And by addressing customer concerns promptly this will reduce churn rates, allowing businesses to stay agile and adapt their strategies to changing market conditions.
Visual signalling
When people make purchasing decisions, it's not solely about the product itself; trustworthiness and the reputation of the brand plays a significant role. The presentation of the business, for example, website, packaging, shop fronts, etc., as well as the emotional aspects of branding also influence consumer decisions. These are all signals that the business is trustworthy and is counting on repeat business. I think humans rely on both verbal and visual communication. And logic may not always be the primary driver of human decision-making emotions and perceptions can be equally or more important factors.
Adding value
In order to increase the likelihood of customers buying from you, it is crucial to shift your focus from your own world to theirs. Unfortunately, most salespersons tend to view the world solely through their own perspective, but there is a small percentage, around 1%, who understand the importance of seeing things from the customer's point of view. As a salesperson, it is essential to demonstrate that you perceive the world in the same way as your customers do. This can be achieved by adopting their language and phraseology, and by repeating the specific words they use, thus showing that you have truly listened. Additionally, mirroring their tone of voice, volume, and pace can also help establish a sense of comfort and connection. I think by being relatable to customers, they will feel more at ease with you, which in turn increases the likelihood of them making a purchase.
A chain of steps
Utopia is often referred to as a good place that doesn’t exist. There are two things that trigger the buying decision process:
a) Moving away from pain, or
b) Moving towards pleasure
I think everything that we do, everything that we buy, every decision that we make in buying anything is driven entirely by how we feel now and how the purchase will make us feel. The buying side decision process goes through five stages:
1. Realisation that we have a problem (recognition)
2. Look for alternatives (search)
3. Quantify what it may do for us (evaluation)
4. And then start to engage (purchase)
5. After sale (post-purchase)
“If you cannot explain something in simple terms, you don’t understand it. The best way to learn is to teach. ”
Game changers
Please explain how you make companies survive and thrive?
When I go to your website, subconsciously my brain is looking for ways for your product or service will help me survive and thrive, for example, save time, simplify my life, make money, purchase, reduce risk, organise information, connect with a tribe, etc. I think that when you attach a survival trigger to your product or service the perceived value will go through the roof. And if you can do it in a way that your customer does not have to burn too many calories when trying to understand how you can make them survive, it works even better.
Giving back
Before the pandemic, I was what one would call a frequent flyer, traveling across the globe and meeting people. Nowadays, these meetings are taking place via believe that businesses around the globe are suffering from the common phenomenon of a LACK of clarity of purpose. My belief seems to be echoed by a number of Customer Experience specialists and commentators. If you look at the dictionary definition of ‘purpose’, it is quite simple: “the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists”
Developing a very clear and well understood organisational purpose is critical if the business is likely to succeed in its attempts to sustainably achieve its strategic goals. If employees have differing senses of the ‘reason for being’ of an organisation, then this will and can only translate into the delivery of random customer experiences. If you want your customers to have a consistent customer experience, all employees need to know what that consistent customer experience should be.
Align your company focus
The North Star has been used for the purposes of navigation for centuries, acting as a guiding light, people have used its brightness and prominence in the sky to ensure they are travelling in the right direction. The principle of the North Star works as a fantastic analogy in the world of business. Are you and your colleagues clear about whether your business is travelling in the ‘right direction’?
I have been involved in the world of business improvement and customer experience for over twenty years. For the past six years, I have had the opportunity to see and experience organisations across a variety of industries all over the world. Whilst I observe a number of similar issues and opportunities to improve and become more customer centric, one of the most common observations I make is on the subject of ‘clarity of purpose’. Contact me via e-mail if you interested in me facilitating a ‘North Star’ workshop for your organisation.
Cultivating the field
I’m just shining a light, I’m not telling people what to do, and if you knew what I know, you would want to do this. I have a story which holds up to scrutiny that often people want to hear – and you cannot make anything that everybody wants.
Breaking down the art of customer experience with a farming analogy. I come from a farming family and farmers have a choice of which field they plant things; they water them and patiently wait for them to grow. Farmers don’t use words like targeting, they use words like fertile territory as this is where they can add actual value. Do you understand?
Be of service
It’s only through understanding people’s holistic experiences that we can ever hope to design something that works within the parameters of what matters to them and the best way to understand what really matters to people is to speak to them. Speaking with your clients is the principal way to understand the rich, messy nuances of their multi-layered experiences. It is through a deep engagement with customers’ experiences that we can begin the process of designing meaningful solutions, for example, a digital e-commerce platform. With this in mind, anthropological expertise becomes especially helpful, because it brings together academic rigour and cultural understanding in order to build a detailed picture of customers’ experiences. This is achieved through discussions with customers that strike a balance between natural and honest, while still remaining focused and insightful. In practice, this usually means asking people about their lives, listening carefully to how they make sense of the situations they experience, and then seamlessly steering conversation topics toward your key areas of focus.
This idea may initially feel obscure and vague, and it may seem more foundational than actionable. I am just trying to serve with what I have been given and I am coming from the place of good intentions. I think it’s essential to build a coherent understanding around the different ways customers experience your organisation. Interested? Contact me via e-mail and let’s schedule a meeting about your customer experience.
We ask to get to know
The quality of your life is directly influenced by your ability to communicate with confidence and clarity. Part of being a good communicator requires that you become an active listener, and active listening requires you ask questions. Questions have benefits for both the questioner and the people responding. I think one of those benefits is proving the other person the opportunity to show more of their authentic selves. I have found that good questions really help in the discovery phase and when you ask better questions your clients will open.
Asking questions is only half the process, the other half of it is being mindful about how you respond to people. Questioning helps us do more than gathering information, like data, facts, and details. It can also help us to learn about what people are thinking, feeling and in some cases what they want. I define a better question as one that demonstrates genuine curiosity but without being too intrusive, and when we can strike that balance that’s when we can shatter the perceptions that we have of other people and what people have of us.
Opportunity identification
Customer experience (CX) is the overarching feeling or opinion that customers have about your business based on their history of interactions with your company throughout their customer journey. Customer experience is not made up of a single interaction, but rather a series of interactions that include researching your business, buying and using your products or services, getting support, and providing feedback. CX design is the process design teams follow to optimise customer experiences at all touchpoints before, during and after conversion. They leverage customer-centred strategies to delight customers at each step of the conversion journey and nurture strong customer-brand relationships.
“You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology, not the other way around”
One customer’s CX can be influenced by multiple communication channels, several different departments and agents, separate brick-and-mortar locations, and their experience with multiple products or services your business offers. Every interaction is an opportunity to delight your customer and grow your business, together with you, I’ll design, build and deliver valuable and meaningful end-to-end experiences for your organisation.
Focal point
I am focused on working with entrepreneurs, leaders, and team's - helping them to focus on their company’s performance and culture by integrating commercial excellence into the heart of their business. So that they can become more strategic, productive, agile, and commercially successful. In most areas of life, I think it’s more hard work and dedication than natural ability and talent that leads to excellence and great success. You begin your journey to excellence by asking the question: “What additional skills, knowledge and information will I need to lead my field in the months and years ahead?”
What one skill if you developed and did it in an excellent fashion would have the greatest positive impact on your career? The answer to this question is essential if you are to achieve excellence in your field. When you find out the answer, then focus all of your energy on improving performance in this one particular area. In my experience, if your principles are right and aligned with your purpose, and your leadership has a clear vision, focus and authenticity then your business will be in profit in so many ways.
“Everybody has talent, but ability takes hard work.”
Going against the grain
The idea that we are trying to optimise something is fundamentally mistaken, we are using the wrong maths and the wrong mindset in making marketing decisions if we assume only that our job is to be the best at something. If we define ourselves by our competitors, we’ll be even worse because we are trying to be better at something that a lot of people are already very good at. What’s the point of doing that?
My purpose is not to be a great competitor, my purpose is to create a mental monopoly in the space. Essentially, so that I have a monopoly (price and power) and can operate like a business - innovate and take long term decisions. The second I try to be competitive; the future health of my business is already in doubt because I’ll be driven by short-term thinking and the whims of the market. What about your organisation?
Accessible and pleasant
It’s a no-brainer, all organisations would like to increase revenues, reduce costs and improve culture. Customer Experience (CX) is an investment, an ongoing improvement project as organisations have a moral obligation to create value. The pandemic has hopefully taught us that we don’t need more stuff and what we want are meaningful experiences with our colleagues, friends, and family.
First, you must get customers to trust you. Once they trust you, then you need to communicate that you care about them and value them. Then, after all of this, when you make them happy, it is the kind of happiness that drives customer loyalty and, perhaps more importantly, customer-driven growth. Take 60 seconds and watch Steve Jobs explain why Apple always put the CX first.
Strategic insights into audiences
Many organisations are awash with data but do not know what to do with it. I hear from many business leaders that leading consultancies are guilty of not giving clear, concise advice for some reason. The business leaders bring in consultants and they will give a really good blueprint, but what they need is clear actionable advice that they can use immediately.
I take a more holistic view of research, after studying the Law of Large Numbers, I know the algorithms work. The ability to take huge amounts of data from people who think that they are acting independently but actually you can start to predict what they want by using the Law of Large Numbers, for example, Spotify predicts quite accurately your music and Amazon are excellent at predicting products that you also need. The more information you give to AI the better it will get.
A good example of a company who looks outside of the data for their competitive advantage is Patagonia. Patagonia have a genuine interest in their customers and what their customers want, what inspires them and what's affecting their lives. These things are becoming more and more of a competitive advantage, and I love Patagonia’s value-based business model and the fact they say “No!” to Black Friday.
Think like your customers
The key to success is to make your customers happy. And then make them happier than your competitors and then every single day wake up and think, how can I make my customers happier? In my experience the very best companies think like their customers. They are obsessed with their customers, they think and talk about their customers the whole time, they personally responded to their customer complaints, they are just obsessed with their customers.
- What do customers want?
- What do customers need?
Sales and marketing are different functions! Marketing is to attract people who are interested in the benefits of your products or services. And selling is the conversation, that is to buy from you rather than from your competitors. You can’t sell if you can’t attract interesting prospects. I think 90% will be the quality of your product or service. How can you tell whether you have a great product or service? This is the test that will predict your future above any other test for the rest of your business career. How many people after they have used your product or service turn to another person and say, “wow, that was great product or service?”
Empathy can drive a lot of value
Customer retention is so important if you want repeat business and growth. Every successful company, without exception is obsessed with taking good care of their customer experience once they get them. Very few methodologies sell better than offering excelling professional services, but just as importantly you’ll need to provide a great customer service experience. Making your customers so happy at the beginning and end of their interaction with your product or service will ensure that customers keep coming back.
I recently had a terrible experience with British Gas, who sent a letter to my deceased mother, asking her to renew an insurance policy for the boiler in my parents’ house. I spent almost 45 minutes waiting to speak to a human, listening to awful music and even though the recorded voice had prepared me to wait for 35 minutes, the worst was still to come. The young lady (who was human) declared that I could not cancel the direct debit as I was not the person named on the letter - my mother died in June. “You have to speak to the Probate Department., please hang on a minute and I will transfer you.” Another 8 minutes of waiting and more of that awful music, the first question the young man asked me was the date of my mother’s death… This young man solved my problem and was extremely apologetic.
I just wanted to cancel the direct debit and it took almost one hour with awful music and only 3 minutes of human conversation. This customer service was not good enough if British Gas are to survive in these turbulent times.
Make promises that you can keep
I think that not promising things you can’t deliver is smart, it makes more sense to be realistic and modest. In my experience, I have found that delivering what you say you are going to deliver impacts your personal credibility. In general, people respect people that do what they say they are going to do, so setting reasonable expectations is a great skill to develop. If you are consistently late on deadlines and not achieving what you have promised, customers will become suspicious. What systems and processes do your organisation have in place to manage expectations?
I think that keeping your word, should be on top of your list! The post pandemic world is really uncertain, so if you can under promise and over deliver, you will not only keep your customers satisfied; you will keep your customers from taking their business elsewhere. One way to know how to overdeliver to your customers and gain valuable insights is to simply ask your customers what they want. Contact me via via e-mail for customer experience training and workshops.
Think like your customers
Sales and marketing are different functions, marketing is to attract people who are interested in the benefits of your products or services. And selling is the conversion to buy from you rather than from your competitors. You can’t sell if you can’t attract interesting prospects. In my experience the very best companies think like their customers, they are obsessed with their customers. They think and talk about customers all the time, they call and visit their customers, and they personally responded to customer complaints. They are just obsessed with their customers.
I think the key to success is to make your customers happy, then make them happier than your competitors. You must wake up every single day and think - How can I make my customers happier? The foundation is having a great product or service and just as importantly is the need to provide a great customer experience. Making your customers happy from the beginning to the end is so important and it’s the key to repeat business, customer retention and rapid growth. Every successful company, without exception is obsessed with taking good care of their customer experience once they get them. What do your customers want? What do your customers need? Contact me via e-mail for a deeper dive into your customer experience strategy.