Engage Customer Magazine Feb 2015 by Engage Business Media

engage magazine ISSUE EIGHTEEN I FEBRUARY 2015

ANDREW STEPHENSON: THE DFS JOURNEY TOWARDS WORLD CLASS EMPLOYEE AND CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT

ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS BEING SERVED? FOCUS ON THE SUPERMARKETS

TAPPING INTO THE CUSTOMER AT SEVERN TRENT WATER

BRITISH AIRWAYS ARE FLYING HIGH WITH VOC www.engagecustomer.com www.engageemployee.com @engagecustomer

26 MARCH 2015, LONDON

Customer Engagement in the Retail Sector The Forum will spotlight the developing dynamic in relationships between retailers and their employees and their customers and how these fundamental and ongoing changes in consumer behaviour are impacting on retailers as they strive for sustainable success

SPECIAL END USER DELEGATE RATE UNTIL 6TH MARCH £195

Speakers include:

Yossi Erdman, Head of Brand & Social Media, ao.com

Mathis Wagner, Head of Customer Services, Charles Tyrwhitt

Jon Copestake, Chief Retail & Consumer Goods analyst, Economist Intelligence Unit

Andrew Stephenson, HR Director, DFS

Matthew Hopkinson, Director, Local Data Company

Marc McNeill, Director of Customer Experience, Auto Trader

Peter Ballard, Partner, Foolproof

Delegates from last year included: Aimia • Atos Worldline • AXA Insurance • Barclays • BBDO • lurGroup • Bosch • Brakes • Burberry • Camelot UK Lotteries Ltd • Capita • Cavendish Corporate Finance • Charles Tyrwhitt LLP • CitySprint • Connect2Go Limited • Crabtree & Evelyn • DBF • Dinosaur • Domino’s Pizza Group • ebuyer.com • Enterprise Ireland • Fieldworks Marketing • First Great Western • Forrester Research • French Connection • Fujitsu • Hiscox • Ingenious Growth • Interflora • Keuco UK Ltd. • Kinetic GB Ltd • Leapfrogg Ltd • Lexden Group • Maplin Electronics • Nectar • Next • Post Office • Rank Group Plc • Red Letter Days For Business • RSPB • Serco • Social Shopping Online Ltd • Somo • Talkabout Group • TSB • Vision One Research • WellKom International • Yorkshire Building Society

Date: Venue:

Thursday 26th March 09:00 - 17:00 Blue Fin Conference Venue, Blue Fin Building 110 Southwark Street, London, SE1 0SU

For more information contact: Speaking - Steve Hurst: steve.hurst@ebm.media and +44 (0) 1932 506 304

www.engagecustomer.com @engagecustomer #EngageForums

Sponsorship - Nick Rust: nick.rust@ebm.media and +44 (0) 1932 506 301

SPONSORS

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contents

contents ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS BEING SERVED? Is Engage Business Media’s ground-breaking new project designed to fully assess the experience delivered by leading organisations across business sectors from the customer viewpoint however they interact with that organisation. Here we kick off this ambitious new initiative by examining the hugely competitive retail supermarket sector Cover Story HOW DFS GOT OFF THE SOFA TO DELIVER WORLD CLASS EMPLOYEE AND CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT At our Customer Engagement Summit late last year the highest rated of all the presentations came from Andrew Stephenson the HR director for furniture retailer DFS. In this exclusive Cover Story Andrew talks Engage Business Media editorial director Steve Hurst about their journey towards excellence

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WHY CUSTOMER SERVICE IS THE LAST TRUE FORM OF COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE Dave Paulding highlights the growing recognition at board level that customer service really is a key differentiator that can give organisations that competitive edge in a world of winners and losers

13-15

VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER: WHICH BRANDS ACHIEVE BEST PRACTICE? Tim Knight looks at the evolution of VOC programmes and how the most advanced organisations such as British Airways are using customer experience analytics to develop winning strategies across the entire customer experience

16-17

TAPPING INTO THE NEEDS OF THE CUSTOMER AT SEVERN TRENT WATER In a demonstration of its commitment to excellence Severn Trent Water has a new post of Chief Customer Officer in the shape of Sarah Bentley – and here she tells Engage about her plans for an organisation in a sector she says is on the brink of a customer service revolution

18-20

WHY 2015 COULD BE THE YEAR OF DIGITAL CUSTOMER FRUSTRATION Steven Van Belleghem believes 2014 will be remembered as a year when there were huge steps forward for digital. He also predicts that this year those steps forward could be followed by a step backwards – unless organisation grasp the digital mettle with both hands

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WHY THE VOICE OF THE EMPLOYEE AND THE CUSTOMER MUST CONVERGE Businesses must take a more sophisticated, automated and holistic approach to listening to their customers if they want to simplify and streamline the entire customer experience management process says Claire Sporton

24-25

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT SUMMIT The complete resource for leading edge thinking on the issues, challenges and opportunities relating to employee engagement and its impact on customer engagement, performance and profitability

26-27

THE FINAL WORD Colin Shaw says that Employee Experience and Customer Experience are like an old married couple - when it works it is beautiful and inspiring; when it doesn’t, it is ugly and bewildering

To join Engage Customer (free membership) and receive weekly Alerts, Digital Magazines and Invitations to the Directors Forums and other Engage events go to: www.engagecustomer.com www.engageemployee.com @engagecustomer Mainline:

T: 01932 506 300

Steve Hurst

steve.hurst@ebm.media

T: 01932 506 304

Nick Rust

nick.rust@ebm.media

T: 01932 506 301

Chris Wood

chris.wood@ebm.media

T: 01932 506 303

Rachel Blake rachel.blake@ebm.media

T: 01932 506 302

Dan Keene

T: 01932 506 306

dan.keene@ebm.media

Editorial Advisory Board Mike Havard I David Jackson I Marcus Hickman I Colin Shaw I Peter Ryan I Ben Stockman I Peter Sinden I Sean Risebrow I Laura Lee I Andrew Stephenson Published by: Engage Business Media Ltd, Nicholson House, 41 Thames Street, Weybridge, Surrey, KT13 8JG ©Engage Business Media ISSUE EIGHTEEN • FEBRUARY 2015

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Are Your Customers Being Served? Is Engage Business Media’s ground-breaking new project designed to fully assess the experience delivered by leading organisations across business sectors from the customer viewpoint however they interact with that organisation. Here we kick off this ambitious new initiative by examining the hugely competitive retail supermarket sector Through 2015 Engage Business Media will look at every element of the customer experience from some of the leading organisations across business sectors including Automotive, Telco, Financial Services, Utilities and more. We will investigate their delivery of customer experience through online and ofﬂine channels including all customer touch-points such as voice and social.

Engage Business Media has investigated what each of the supermarkets is saying about themselves, their prices, their service and how they stack up against their competitors

We will assess whether a brand's message meets the reality of the customer experience. What do their customers really think of them? What are the stories about them in the news? What are people saying about them on social media? This month, the supermarkets are in our customer service crosshairs. Supermarket price wars are nothing new - but with ‘budget’ supermarkets Aldi and Lidl having gained market share at a rapid rate over the past few years how are the others coping? Has customer service suffered as a result of an increasingly aggressive pricing strategy? Which of the supermarkets comes top for customer service both online and in store? Who are the winners and losers when it comes to delivering on the customer experience?

Supermarkets, the price war and service Trying to be the cheapest in the market is nothing new for supermarkets. Now however, with two discount supermarkets making a huge land-grab for their market share, a drop

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in proﬁts for the big four supermarkets, in addition to consumers looking for a greater convenience online, this strategy has increased to a great degree. There is a major on-going price war. A report from last year suggests that offering an online delivery service is actually costing supermarkets money, implying that they are effectively ‘paying people to shop with them’ According to the British Retail Consortium, and partly as a result of the falling price of oil, January this year saw food prices fall at the steepest rate in at least eight years. Such a drop is bound to have an impact on a number of elements of the supermarket industry - a recent article suggests that more than 100 supermarket suppliers risk going out of business as a result on the everincreasing pressure on supermarket’s need for low prices. Could it also be having an effect on service? Engage Business Media has investigated what each of the supermarkets is saying about themselves, their prices, their service and how they stack up against their competitors. We look at how they present themselves and their customer service online, along with getting a view of sentiment analysis from social media. In addition to looking at customer testimonials, we test their in-store service with a tricky question, and their ability to handle customer complaints. And we use the experience of real-life customers in addition to the data available online to test exactly if their customers really are being served!

News Feature

How we rated them In this report we cover seven of the market leading supermarkets with a physical location. They are Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, Morrisons, Aldi, Lidl and ASDA. Pure play online retailers such as Ocado and ao.com are not included in this report. • For each element of service - social media, online and in-store we give them a score out of five. • Websites are rated on their ease of use, the number of customer service points available, and how easy it is to find them. • Social media is rated on their content, their attentiveness and effectiveness of their replies. • In each store, we have asked one of their floor staff if a product from their bakery is safe for someone with a nut allergy. In-store staff are rated on attentiveness, friendliness, helpfulness and knowledge once on the shop floor and again at the checkout, giving them a combined score out of ten. We then combine the scores at the end to give them an overall total out of a possible maximum of 20 Where we have interacted with a brand on social media, we have done so using a series of different personal accounts in order to retain our image as customers and to ensure that the brands in question don’t see a series of questions to other brands, giving the game away! For the results of our first Are Your Customers Being Served? Research go to http://bit.ly/1EnQB7T

OUR RESEARCHERS David Angell David has worked within digital marketing and communications since 2004, holding positions across the disciplines of online advertising, SEO, social media and marketing strategy. Notably he worked for three years at Google’s EMEA Headquarters as an award winning optimiser in their early AdWords team. He also launched and managed the Google Earth Outreach and YouTube Non-profit programmes, gaining experience in the world of CSR as well as of the organisations his work benefited. He subsequently ran Digital Communications for UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg from 2009 until his election to the position following the 2010 election, he also co-authored the Liberal Democrat’s Online General Election strategy and advised on technology and digital policy. He has since worked in business development for a key London Creative agency, a mobile photography stock agency and helped found two social media startups. He is Associate Director of Brand Response, co-founder of Social Placement and Director of Wordsmith Digital. He also consults in SEO, analytics and digital communications for the British Medical Association.

Ben Stockman Ben Stockman Engage Customer social media blogger, is the founder of London's grassroots social media festival SXSELondon, a charity event covering all things digital that tries to answer the question "How is technology changing us?" Ben also created the biggest political Facebook campaign in UK history, with membership of nearly 200,000 people, surpassing the number of Facebook fans of all the political parties combined at the time and gaining national media coverage. Formerly from a B2B marketing background, in the last few years he has project-managed for the multiple awardwinning Rabbit agency, where he ran several campaigns and events for national and global clients, winning PRCA's "Best Campaign" award for AVG's Digital Diaries series. He also trained their team in community management - they went on to win Agency of the Year in 2012. More recently he was in charge of growing global online communities of nearly 2 million for AVG Antivirus, winning Useful Social Media's "most social business" award in the process. In addition to running social media events & campaigns, Ben has recently co-founded Wordsmith Digital Ltd, a TechHaus that consults on social media & SEO for pharmaceutical, civic & government bodies.

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How DFS got off the sofa to deliver world class employee and customer engagement At our Customer Engagement Summit late last year the highest rated of all the presentations came from Andrew Stephenson the HR director for furniture retailer DFS. In this exclusive Cover Story Andrew talks with Engage Business Media editorial director Steve Hurst about their journey towards excellence

It’s fair to say that retail is in my blood having started as a salesperson at Dixons in 1995. I worked there (over two separate periods) for nearly 10 years across sales, store management and eventually Head Ofﬁce. However, it was while I was working at B&Q that I became interested in HR and decided to pursue it as a career. I was very grateful to that organisation for supporting me in my HR studies and for giving me my ﬁrst opportunity to look at reward, recognition and many elements of how we recruited people. In early 2009 while working for Vodafone as

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Learning and Development Manager for their Retail Teams, I got the opportunity to join DFS, initially as Head of Training and Development. I jumped at the chance – it was of course a retail environment but in my opinion it was, and still is, one of the most interesting retailers in Britain. This is because there’s much more to the organisation than retail. We own the end to end process - we design, manufacture, sell, deliver and care for upholstered furniture, which makes DFS an expert in the ﬁeld and this means we have a diverse but equally talented group of employees across the business here in the UK. And, that was what inspired me to join. It was clear from my very ﬁrst meeting with DFS that the team were outstanding and it is a pleasure to work with them every day.

First off Andrew tell us about your background and how you came to the role of HR Director at DFS?

Cover Story

Andrew Stephenson, HR director for furniture retailer DFS www.dfs.co.uk

“Many companies use NPS but I’ve not come across anyone that has it as integrated into their operations as we do. It’s part of the language internally and it means we need to constantly strive to exceed expectations in order for our customers to become promoters”

After two years I was promoted to be the company’s ﬁrst HR Director. This was, and continues to be, a fantastic opportunity that allows me to ensure our people, who are undoubtedly one of our strongest assets, can receive the beneﬁts of working for a company with a mission to be a world-class organisation.

DFS's objective is to take the Company from being a great British business to a world class business. To achieve this objective, the Group has a number of proven and developing levers of growth. A key component of our overall strategy is to deliver “outstanding customer care and expertise”.

I understand that the DFS strategy is underpinned by your employee and customer centric policies could you tell us about these please?

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The expertise comes from the fact we design and manufacture. We create and then hand make sofas to order, many by our craftspeople in our three factories and two wood mills in Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and South Yorkshire. This means the manufacturing knowledge is within the business rather than just outsourced so the expertise filters down to the shop floor. In order to be the best in outstanding customer care we have invested heavily in our employee proposition and increased training and benefits across the organisation. To ensure our customers are receiving great service first of all we needed to be able to track and measure it so that we can identify areas for improvement. We worked hard to develop a system that proactively seeks feedback from our customers at regular points during the order and delivery process. The results of these customer satisfaction surveys are closely monitored and then directly feed into the reward of our teams meaning they are greatly motivated to ensure the customer gets exactly what they need. The approach is paying off because I’m delighted to say that in 2014 we were awarded the status of “Top Employer”.

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You have a close ongoing relationship with Grass Roots – how is this helping DFS in delivering on its business strategy? Grass Roots manage our feedback system on a day to day basis and bring independence to the customer survey process. It means the customer gets the opportunity to say what they want with complete transparency. In all cases the feedback gets to the person who needs to see it. Having a specialist agency like Grass Roots means we can speak to high volumes of customers as they can manage the process and highlight to us exactly where we can focus our efforts to get the best result for those customers. We are able to rely on our contacts at Grass Roots as an extension of our own Customer Experience team and by working together we are able to generate results more quickly than we might alone. I like to think it’s beneﬁcial for them as well because we are always willing to try something new if we feel it will help customers get an even better experience. NPS is one of your key drivers in striving to achieve your employee and customer engagement goals – how is

“We focus heavily on training and our people have gained over 800 nationally recognised qualiﬁcations in the last two years. We are conﬁdent that our investments in our team is driving great service in our stores and that this is helping us move forwards as a business”

the big interview Cover Story

The Net Promoter System (NPS) is the way we have chosen to express the loyalty and satisfaction of our customers. It is a simple metric that can be applied to any part of the organisation and gives complete clarity of what needs to be addressed, or in most cases celebrated. Because of the volume of customer satisfaction surveys we receive we can measure the NPS of individual salespeople or, if the focus is product related, look all the way back to which team produced it within our factories. Because of the scope we’ve been able to introduce a NPS element to the majority of peoples’ remuneration within the business meaning the whole DFS team and culture is focussed on providing great service, every step of the way. Many companies use NPS but I’ve not come across anyone that has it as integrated into their operations as we do. It’s part of the language internally and it means we need to constantly strive to exceed expectations in order for our customers to become “promoters”. Whatever your position within DFS you will likely come across NPS daily

and it’s a great way of ensuring consistency. We then use it to reward our people who constantly achieve high ratings by always going the extra mile. Tell us about your DFS Partnership Scheme and how it works - it would appear schemes such as this are highly unusual in a privately owned company such as DFS? The partnership scheme is about us demonstrating to our employees that we value their contribution. We know the way to becoming a world class company is by having a world class team. To do this everyone throughout the organisation has to be focussed on the same goals and then share in any success that may generate. Therefore, when our business was acquired by its current owners in 2010 we introduced our employee partnership scheme. This means when or if the business is eventually sold a proportion of any proﬁt would be shared amongst employees. This is based purely on length of service rather than grade or salary. It will be our way of sharing the beneﬁts of hard work and giving great customer service with the whole team.

this impacting on the way DFS operates and your culture?

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engage

Are you able to prove the business benefits that accrue from your commitment to the links between employee engagement, customer engagement, performance and profitability?

this is helping us move forwards as a business.

We have strong momentum in our sales and consistently good performance in our customer service scores as measured by NPS. Our team is very stable with a staff turnover that is lower than you would normally find in retailers and that means our people have the required amount of specialist knowledge to really look after customers. In order to keep this going forwards we focus heavily on training and our people have gained over 800 nationally recognised qualifications in the last two years. We are confident that our investments in our team is driving great service in our stores and that

You’re right, we’ll continue to work hard to deliver great products at affordable value to ever more people. We are continuing to open stores which is generating jobs and internal opportunities - we have recently opened in the Netherlands and continue to do well in the Republic of Ireland. We continue to be focused on giving back to the communities in which we live and work – we’ve just clocked up £5m through our partnership with the British Heart Foundation where every penny raised goes to ﬁght heart decease. And we continue to raise money for BBC Children in Need and Duke of Edinburgh Award.

“The partnership scheme is about us demonstrating to our employees that we value their contribution. We know the way to becoming a world class company is by having a world class team. To do this everyone throughout the organisation has to be focussed on the same goals and then share in any success that may generate”

We’re also very excited to have announced that we are an Ofﬁcial Partner of Team GB which will include the period of next year’s Olympic Games in Rio. We’re extremely proud to be able to give these extraordinary athletes the sit down they deserve at the end of the day.

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Finally Andrew it is clear that DFS is not going to rest on its laurels – tell us about some of your plans for the future.

I think it’s a great time to be at DFS and we’re very proud of what our business stands for.

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Why customer service is the last true form of competitive advantage Dave Paulding highlights the growing recognition at board level that customer service really is a key differentiator that can give organisations that competitive edge in a world of winners and losers

point along their journey to guarantee return business and maintaining a positive image of the business. The customer experience is perhaps the one discerning factor that is separating the good organisations from the great ones. With price and product

The aim of acquiring new customers, retaining existing customers and keeping them happy forms the basis of any good service strategy. A crucial part of this plan is paying constant attention to the customer experience and ensuring that their needs are being met at each

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“Companies must shift from concentrating on internal processes such as marketing, sales, and customer service to how customers feel during and after an interaction at any touch point. They must focus on the actions a customer takes as a result of those feelings”

In today’s economy, retaining customers is vital to the success of any organisation, particularly those in the service and retail sectors. However, that becomes a challenge when one considers the number of ways in which a customer can interact with an organisation, and the number of steps that can be included in a journey with that same business. Whether it is a one-off transactional relationship, for example a purchase of an expensive item such as a television or car, or an ongoing one with a gas provider, the aim for the business is to ensure long-term revenue streams, which is ultimately achieved through providing the best, most convenient customer experience. As a result, it is the contact centre that often provides the foundation on which this strong customer servicer strategy is built – especially considering the way in which it is able to shape, form and change customer perceptions and attitudes. With that in mind, the challenge for organisations is to create this all-encompassing strategy ensuring that it meets its business objectives as well as customer requirements and expectations. The key drivers of this type of strategy are communications methods – that is the multi-channel interaction model – consistency of the message, and levels of engagement. However, organisations need to understand just what constitutes a ‘good customer experience’ before they can plan their strategies around it.

What is a good customer experience? A good customer experience can take multiple forms – from having a question or query answered to their satisfaction, to speaking to a contact centre agent who is pleasant and helpful. Ultimately, a great customer experience delivers value by not only solving a customer’s issue, but in doing so in a way that they perceive to be simple and enjoyable.

The importance of a multi-channel platform In the multi-channel environment this can pose a challenge and consumer use of the Internet, smart mobile devices, touch-screen devices, and social media all encourage customers to expect it to be easy to engage with you. They want to engage when they choose to, and be able to use their preferred channel of communication. Customers want to be recognised. They want their issue to be resolved without having to use more than one channel or deal with it multiple times. They want to enjoy the experience whether they engage with a person or with technology. Companies

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therefore must shift from concentrating on internal processes such as marketing, sales, and customer service to how customers feel during and after an interaction at any touch point. They must focus on the actions a customer takes as a result of those feelings. To make all this work first means supporting as many communication channels as necessary: the corporate website, email, mobile apps, social media, text messaging, telephone (fixed and mobile), video, web-based instant messaging, and postal mail. Doing so enables customers to choose the channel of their choice, at the time of their choice. Customers can then carry out different tasks such as requesting information, complaining about problems or purchasing new products or services. But that’s only the beginning. Responses must be personalised so customers feel they are recognised as individuals and responses are not just general-purpose answers, which many people find annoying. Responses must be in context, so if for example the customer tried but failed to complete a task in one channel, the company recognises this when it engages through another channel. From the customer’s perspective, great customer experiences are easy to complete, personalised, in context and consistent. In order to accomplish this, it is essential for the organisation to provide the channels customers expect, and to provide rapid, effective service across all touch points. While phone and email remain the most used channels, use of web chat, SMS, social media, and smartphone applications are expanding rapidly. The growth of smartphone usage is increasingly causing customers to use self-services, while also expecting a seamless transfer of information to a live service channel.

Consistency of the message and interactions Just as customers expect the same service and quality when visiting a burger chain, for example, so too do they expect consistency when it comes to dealing with an organisation through different channels. Delivering consistent good service can be a challenge due to staff or product changes, technology and customer demand. It is crucial for agents to deliver the same message or feedback regardless of the method of interaction. If a customer requests information such as the balance of their account through one channel, then the customer should receive the same answer if they use an alternative channel. If it isn’t consistent, customer satisfaction levels drop and the company’s costs increase because customers have to keep engaging until they are certain they have the correct answer.

differentiation becoming less sustainable, it is good old fashioned service that can give an organisation competitive advantage.

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Furthermore, customers should receive the same levels of attentiveness, helpfulness and functionality across all communications methods – from email and web chat, to telephone and self-service options.

How to deliver great customer experiences Companies engage with customers in a number of ways – through assisted service, self-service and connected service. Assisted service includes channels where customers engage with a person. Self-service includes channels where customers engage with technology, such as IVR or the corporate website. And connected service begins with customers trying to resolve their issues in a self-service channel such as a mobile app. If they are unable to complete the interaction using self-service, they are seamlessly transferred to assisted service, such as an agent in a contact centre. The vast majority of transactions are still handled by a person (agent, frontline staff, etc.) and as such the outcomes of these transactions depend on the skills and attitude of those staff. In addition to getting the technology right across channels, it’s crucial that these agents receive the right coaching for dealing with customers. It is also vital for all agents or frontline staff to make use of the same information, in the same way, which links back to the importance of consistency.

The impact of new technologies Changes in technology and communication methods are changing and evolving almost daily. As a result, it is crucial that companies continually prepare for the impact of the newest wave of technology innovations — mobile devices, social media, big data, and cloud computing. These technologies are converging to place increased inﬂuence in the hands of the average consumer. Customers now have powerful computing power in their pocket, and expect to resolve service issues in their spare moments via smartphone applications. In turn, the results of these interactions - be they

positive or negative - can be broadcast over social media channels. These technologies are raising customer expectations signiﬁcantly. The good news is that these technologies also provide a new set of tools for companies to differentiate themselves through great customer experiences. By implementing a cloud model, you can deploy an integrated suite of advanced customer service applications in a very short timeframe while paying only for those applications that add business value in your environment. Social media provides powerful tools for understanding your customers’ perceptions of your brand. By monitoring and reacting to customer conversations about your brand, you are able to shift perceptions in a positive direction. By leveraging unstructured data from both within and outside the contact centre, you can receive the feedback necessary to guidance process improvements.

Shifting from good to great Moving from delivering good customer experiences to providing great ones can be accomplished. It involves building a company’s brand from the inside out – cultivating engaged employees and empowering them with the technologies and supporting processes to deliver effective, easy and enjoyable experiences. A brand is not merely the sum of advertising campaigns and promotions; rather it is what people say about it. Crucially, this includes employees and, as a result, employee behaviour must reﬂect those values and perceptions when interacting with customers.

Dave Paulding is regional sales director UK, Middle East at Interactive Intelligence www.inin.com

And finally A great customer experience hinges on the right mix of technology, agent skills and capabilities, consistency and the ability of the organisation to understand and meet customer needs. Having a strong strategy that supports this, is key to success and importantly it is one that evolves and adapts in response to the state of the market, company changes and the demands of customers themselves.

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Voice of the Customer: which brands achieve best practice? Tim Knight looks at the evolution of VOC programmes and how the most advanced organisations such as British Airways are using customer experience analytics to develop winning strategies across the entire customer experience While it has never been more crucial for brands to invest in Voice of the Customer (VoC) programmes, the plethora of meanings for the term 'Voice of the Customer' has created a lack of clarity amongst many organisations.

www.nunwood.com

More than just ‘dumb data’

Technology also underpins the ever-reducing timescales between experience, feedback and action. This is driven by an increasing expectation from customers that companies will react speedily to the feedback they offer. Customers are no longer satisﬁed with surveys alone, they expect the business to hear their voices and act upon them, often at an individual, rapid level.

For Nunwood, a VoC programme is characterised by a number of key elements. Firstly, it utilises technology to disseminate the

Another key element to an effective VoC programme is the capability to show both

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Tim Knight, is a senior partner at Nunwood

Traditionally, it has been used to describe the wide array of technological and feedback-led customer experience management solutions. But the most advanced Voice of the Customer programmes are much wider reaching, utilising customer experience analytics to frame, model and prioritise across the entire customer experience.

voice of the customer across the business, from front line staff to senior executives. Delivered in real time, these results are more than just ‘dumb data’, but are linked to recovery activities, employee training, business planning and best practice resources.

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where to focus and how to create a positive change. Nunwood uses a combination of structured multivariate analysis and unstructured root cause tools. The beneﬁt for the brand is an unprecedented ﬂexibility to 'listen more intensely' to the highlighted areas.

Flexible approach key to success However, even the most comprehensive Voice of the Customer programmes won’t be able to cover every process to the level of

detail required to derive actionable recommendations. It’s therefore key for any programme to maintain a flexible approach to analyse identified areas of under-performance. This can be through verbatim deep dives, ad hoc quantitative studies or clear links to downstream re-design activities. The customer experience analytics can then be used to prioritise areas of further investigation, using financial and behavioural outcomes to ensure everything hangs together.

Best practice Voice of the Customer programmes:

British Airways is a brand which has enjoyed considerable success with its Voice of the Customer programme - made possible by Nunwood's Fizz: Experience Management technology. The Fizz interface has enabled British Airways to coordinate its customer experience, consolidating multiple data sources into a dashboard system which is accessible to 1,100 multi-lingual colleagues worldwide. This dashboard boasts everything from concise infographics to touch-point analysis of customer journey touch-points, affording British Airways ﬂexible access to Voice of the Customer data.

This strategy has helped to underpin the strength of the brand. Last year British Airways received an array of customer experience awards, including Consumer Superbrand, Airline of the Year and Best Long-Haul Business Carrier. This was accompanied by a 4% increase in passenger numbers.

Furthermore, British Airways has also developed its own 'power user' analytics system, as well as a knowledge-management platform called Spark. The former enables the Research and Insight Team to provide live decision-making support to critical stakeholders, whilst the latter can condense thousands of documents and news feeds into a single interface.

And with the continued integration of social media into the everyday lives of customers, there’s a greater pressure for brands to stay in tune with their needs and expectations. Nunwood's customer experience technology can make this possible.

Most importantly, Voice of the Customer programmes put customers at the heart of a brand's decision-making – guiding the business by customer priorities, rather than operational factors.

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“This is a new role for Severn Trent and it will give the customer another strong voice at the top of our organisation. We have a clear ambition to put the customer at the heart of what we do. My role is to ensure that, as a business, we are organised around the customer”

Tapping into the needs of the customer turns on new CCO at Severn Trent water In a demonstration of its commitment to excellence Severn Trent Water has a new post of Chief Customer Ofﬁcer in the shape of Sarah Bentley – and here she tells Engage about her plans for an organisation in a sector she says is on the brink of a customer service revolution

I have spent my career in various guises: private equity, venture capital, the entrepreneurial hubs of Silicon Valley, New York, Texas and London, working with start-ups, turnarounds and large corporates and more recently consulting across

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a range of industries. The consistent theme throughout my career is a desire to understand how people interact with each other and how we can improve our lives and experiences, by simplifying process, empowering teams and using technology to make things easier. For me, it is all about customers! I have been inspired, curious and committed to improving the lives of customers since the early days of

First off Sarah tell us a bit about your background and how you came to the new role of Chief Customer Officer at Severn Trent Water

Big Interview Sarah Bentley: Chief Customer Ofﬁcer, Severn Trent Water www.stwater.co.uk

at the top of our organisation. We have a clear ambition to put the customer at the heart of what we do. My role is to ensure that, as a business, we are organised around the customer. Our regulatory world is also changing - we now have a number of ﬁnancial incentives to outperform our customer service targets. So customer focus is no longer a discretionary activity for water companies, it’s a key driver of growth.

Severn Trent Water has all the right ingredients to take a step change in both customer and digital – fabulous people, an essential resource, substantial industry transformation, an inspiring CEO driving change and a compelling social agenda – so an incredibly compelling opportunity and one that matches my passions and values.

The growth in digital has been a key factor. In a digital world, expectations of how we run our business internally and externally have changed. Responding quickly to changing customer expectations and the rapid adoption of digital technologies like apps and social media requires companies to re-think their traditional operating models, including their approach to technology. This can’t be done in a piecemeal way – customer care, technology and transformation are now inextricably linked.

You have one clear remit in this role – the customer. How is that going to manifest itself working in a sector not best known for putting the customer ﬁrst? Water utilities are on the brink of a customer service revolution, driven by the growth in competition in our sector. Customers are driving the agenda, armed with more information, a stronger voice and many more ways of contacting us increasingly through digital channels. IT has traditionally served the needs of a manufacturing, asset centric business, rather than the customer. While it remains important for us to focus on our products – brilliant drinking water and really efﬁcient waste water recycling – there is now another lens on our business. Seen through this customer lens, we need to change our technology to keep pace with customer behaviour and expectations, and build systems and applications that make our business more proactive, simple and relevant. This is a new role for Severn Trent and it will give the customer another strong voice

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As new CCO you have responsibility for three key departments (customer care, group technology, business transformation –how they are being linked?

So ﬁrstly, it is about a constant and challenging focus on the customer – looking at our business every day and in all that we do from the eyes of our customer. This is not just about how we answer the phone or manage incidents as they occur – it extends to all parts of our business – how we work with suppliers, the assets we build, the investment in our people, our daily frame of reference. So the link between ‘obvious’ customer activities (billing, customer service, operational management) and transformation become readily apparent as we start all our business activities from the viewpoint of the customer. Secondly, from a technology perspective, this underpins the world we live in today. Each day all of us interact with a myriad of technology – so again ensuring that the data, analytics, systems and architecture we develop is centered on our desire to serve our customers is critical. We need

an enterprise-wide approach to serving our customer, sharing information and insight, and becoming more transparent. Bringing these three areas together is an inspired move and already our teams are seeing and taking advantages of being together. Bringing your digital strategy to life is a key part of the new role Sarah – could you give us a flavour of how that will work going forward? Digital strategy is a big topic as I well know from my time leading Accenture’s Digital Practice. For me there are three core aspects to digital: • how we use technology to simplify and improve the experience for our customers, • how we use technology to inspire, excite, and delight our employees and • how we use technology to dramatically shift the paradigm of our business processes through the industrial internet. My focus is to ensure that across all three areas we will tangibly deliver a step change in the business by rapidly deploying digital technology. The key part about digital, and it means so many different things to different people, is about pace. In a digital world things are moving quicker by the minute, the amount of information, the breadth of channels, the plethora of emerging technologies are coming at us all faster and faster. So at the heart of our digital strategy are two things – optionality and agility. Social is an increasingly important part of the way customers interact with organisations - we understand you have some interesting social customer engagement initiatives including twitter? We have some brilliant capabilities in place – our super Twitter team and our web-chat team that are available 24 x 7 x 365 to interact with customers on any topic from blocked toilets, to water leaks; from billing questions to trafﬁc updates. Our social agenda also focuses on helping customers

my career. From the call centres of the early 90’s, to the internet boom of the millennium, to the ‘Appy’ and Analytical world we now live in, companies around the world have talked much about Customer Experience. With rapidly increasing customer expectations and an explosion of technology, regulation and other macro-economic constraints, it often feels to the consumer that life has become harder not easier. I have spent the past ﬁve years at Accenture helping companies across a range of sectors, including Financial Services, Retail and Mobile Communications leading Accenture’s digital business in the UK and Ireland which I loved.

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engage

Big Interview

“In a digital world, expectations of how we run our business internally and externally have changed. Responding quickly to changing customer expectations and the rapid adoption of digital technologies like apps and social media requires companies to re-think their traditional operating models, including their approach to technology”

who are struggling financially and we have some excellent programs in place to help people manage their finances and support them through difficult times. We also provide wonderful services from our educational updates on managing such a precious resource as water, recreational activities at our many reservoirs, including water sports, fishing and nature watching, to our environmental activities including water management, energy production and sustainability. So we have our foothold well established in the social space. For me this is a key focus area as we have one of the very few essential resources – water that it is impossible to live without. It is also one that many of us, as I did before I joined, take for granted – turn the tap on its there, doesn’t it just fall out of the sky … and let’s face it, flush the toilet and job done! I am keen to significantly ramp up our activities in the social space, expanding our channels and increasing our engagement so that together with the communities we serve we can deliver for customers today and for future generations. What your take on the links between employee engagement, customer engagement, performance and profitability also we understand there is a need for engaged new talent at Severn Trent Water? As I mentioned earlier we have some incredible talent in our business. Since I started two months ago, I’ve spent much of my time out in the field with our front line teams seeing our fabulous people in action. A couple of weeks ago I was out with one of our teams in a snowy field repairing a water pipe that had been accidentally damaged by contractors laying an electricity cable, and understanding the complex process that they carefully manage to make sure that clean fresh water is always available to the customers we serve.

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In addition, we have teams of people managing our sewage network to keep the sewers running and then we turn our waste into electricity and gas. We have amazing people at Severn Trent Water and have been long respected as a pioneer in our industry. My goal is to blend that talent with people from other sectors that have led in the customer and digital areas to enable us to make a significant step change, so I am always open to meeting new people. With regards to employee engagement, in all the many advances in customer experience over the last 25 years, one truth rings true – we can’t really deliver brilliant customer experiences unless we genuinely care about our customers. And we can’t expect anyone to truly care about customers if we don’t passionately care about each other. Deeply care about the big things and the small things. We have all heard stories of the people who ‘go the extra mile’ for their customers and their colleagues, but there are few large companies – Nordstrom, Southwest Airlines spring to mind – where this is simply the normal course of business. In these cases, their employees both deeply care and are empowered to act. I am passionate about this point. We have all had those days at work where it just feels as if we stepped out on the wrong side of the bed. The traffic is awful, the rain is lashing down, the computer says ‘no’, phones are ringing off the hook, email is piling up and the whole context for doing your job is just in the ‘too hard’ bucket. That is not a place from which to love customers! So my ambition is to make sure that every day is an amazing day, for our colleagues and our customers. Finally what are your ambitions for the future and how will you measure your success in focusing on customers? I have mentioned already the set of tangible financial incentives that we are measured on now by our regulator, OFWAT, and the impact that this has directly on our shareholders. Clearly these focus the minds of everyone in the business from the Board through to our front line. For me there is a very simple measure of success – how many customers say ‘thank you’ for making their lives easier and improving the world they live in – and I am delighted to say that those ‘thank yous’ are already coming in…

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Why 2015 could be the year of digital customer frustration Steven Van Belleghem believes 2014 will be remembered as a year when there were huge steps forward for digital. He also predicts that this year those steps forward could be followed by a step backwards – unless organisation grasp the digital mettle with both hands

Last year some organisations began to harness the true potential of the technology, and perhaps more importantly, 2014 was a year when everyday consumers began to embrace and experience for themselves what opportunities and benefits mobile technology could really offer. Drones, robots and the ‘Internet of Things’ started making a real difference to their daily lives, and businesses began to realise that Artificial Intelligence was no longer just something out of science fiction.

As is the case with so many things in life, signiﬁcant steps forward raise our expectations and therefore what follows can very easily become a disappointment or anti-climax. Once you have experienced success and had a glimpse of what is possible, anything less becomes unacceptable. This is why I believe that unless businesses focus on the right areas, there is a good chance that 2015 will be remembered as a year of digital frustration for customers.

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Prof. Steven Van Belleghem is author of The Conversation Company and The Conversation Manager, and his new book, When Digital Becomes Human, will be published by Kogan Page in April 2015. Follow him on twitter @StevenVBe, subscribe to his videos at www.youtube.com/stevenvanbelleghem or visit www.stevenvanbelleghem.com

2. Fast technology

Fortunately, this does not have to be the case. Disappointment for customers does not have to be inevitable, and I have outlined ﬁve key points that businesses can focus on to ensure you avoid making 2015 a year of digital frustration for your customers:

Not content with continuous improvements, today’s increasingly demanding consumers even expect digital solutions to think ahead and preempt their next move. Faster-than-real-time solutions are here, and these digital solutions that make our lives easier are quickly becoming the norm.

Simplicity and intuitive design are great, but we are all increasingly impatient consumers and if technology is slow then it will frustrate customers, quickly! Research shows that consumers get much less frustrated with several quick niche applications or devices that are continually being modiﬁed and improved, but a single one that tries to do everything less effectively will quickly lose favour.

1. Intuitive technology Consumers increasingly expect intuitive technology. When was the last time you looked at the manual or used the “help” function on your iPhone or iPad? The answer is never because they simply don’t have one. Users’ manuals written in 20 different languages are thankfully becoming a thing of the past, and ever since gadgets like the iPhone got us all used to the power of intuitive technology we almost expect to be able to unpack our new purchases, plug them in and for them to simply work. Consumers now want self-guiding applications, so if your business has to choose between investing resources into developing a new feature or working on improving the user experience, the decision should really be a nobrainer – intuitive design and a user-friendly interface is increasingly invaluable.

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3. Listen AND act on feedback One of the big advantages digital technology offers is a constant ﬂow of information that makes it easier than ever to listen to what consumers have to say. While most businesses have now adopted some form of social listening techniques, many are failing to take on board this information to actually use it to improve products and services. This will be what sets smart businesses apart from the competition. One thing I would urge all businesses to do this year is to test new ideas. Every time someone comes up with a new idea, feature, application or solution, rather than have the usual meeting where you all guess and argue about what consumers will like, simply go ahead and execute the idea using limited resources. In a controlled environment you can live A/B test the

“My family and I are all big fans of Disney, and I loved the customer experience their new MyMagic+ system gave me at Disneyworld USA. However, this has signiﬁcantly raised my expectations of the whole Disney experience, so when I visit Disneyland Paris a little closer to home, the customer experience almost feels like a step back into the Middle Ages”

To put this digital frustration into context I like to use the example of my recent trip to Disneyland Paris. My family and I are all big fans of Disney, and I loved the customer experience their new MyMagic+ system gave me at Disneyworld USA. However, this has signiﬁcantly raised my expectations of the whole Disney experience, so when I visit Disneyland Paris a little closer to home, the customer experience almost feels like a step back into the Middle Ages.

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idea to allow you to see how people respond to the new developments. You then have real-time feedback and invaluable information to make much better decisions about future applications and solutions that customers will actually want.

4. Fun technology So we know that today’s demanding consumers now expect their products and services to be intuitive and fast, but increasingly, the technologies that really set themselves apart and engage customers also have an element of fun. This might sound strange for technologies that we use every day, but in this context “fun” can mean a whole range of things. Making the product beautiful to look at, making it funny, giving it a little bit of personality or just making it surprising in some way all add to the enjoyment the consumer will get from it. Google is a fantastic example of how a company can lead the market and provide great service while embracing an element of fun. I don’t think many people would argue that it isn’t intuitive to use, it is certainly very quick with a whole team of experts continually optimising the performance every day, but they also have an eye for fun that leads them to change their logo every day to create a little amusement or topical surprise for users. You might use Google every day, but this little daily change makes you stop and appreciate something new or maybe learn a fact, and for a moment it stops becoming just part of the background. Don’t overlook the fun aspect in

the digital world, it can really add to the relationship with the user.

5. Transparent businesses Of course all of us strive for perfection in our businesses, but it is important to accept that even the biggest and slickest organisations in the world have their occasional problems and issues to deal with. I would urge businesses that communicating transparently about your company’s plans, progress and even mistakes, can help build a relationship with customers as people will naturally buy into the human element of a company – after all, people buy from people. At the opposite end of the spectrum, those companies that put on a false front and claim that their product or service is perfect are only setting themselves up for a huge burst of digital frustration when reality strikes and customer learn that it really is a front. Your approach to customer experience is now a crucial part of your marketing plans so adopting a policy of being open and transparent about your digital plans is crucial.

“Consumers now want selfguiding applications, so if your business has to choose between investing resources into developing a new feature or working on improving the user experience, the decision should really be a no-brainer – intuitive design and a userfriendly interface is increasingly invaluable”

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engage

Why the voice of the employee and the customer must converge Businesses must take a more sophisticated, automated and holistic approach to listening to their customers if they want to simplify and streamline the entire customer experience management process says Claire Sporton Listening to the customer and responding to both positive and negative feedback has never been so important. And it’s going to get harder as the amount of data that can be collected across multiple platforms, channels, countries, languages and devices expands to new levels. Sifting through large volumes of diverse data will become an increasingly complex and labour-intensive task that will be virtually impossible to achieve manually. But the real problem is that we could get lost in the analysis. There are some incredibly interesting insights hidden away in there but businesses are already ﬁnding it hard to get the balance right between data, insight and actually driving action and change. All too often, key insights are discovered too late to drive strategic change. Automation plays an invaluable role in providing meaningful priorities for action to key stakeholders across the business. It can ease the process of mining large volumes of both solicited and unsolicited free-form content, addressing the need for categorisation and sentiment analysis for free-form text, verbatim and other unstructured data. It can also help companies to keep pace with the continuing rapid innovation in social networking, enabling them to listen to the Voice of the Customer via social media feeds, online media feeds, forum comments and blogs.

Social networking not just for customer

However, social networking is not just a channel for the customer voice: it is increasingly used as a forum for employees to discuss their challenges and concerns, whether businesses like it or not. It’s therefore an increasingly important contributor to the employee engagement process, which in turn has a major impact on customer engagement. It is imperative, then, that companies are able to truly take on board the direct link between customer

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Claire Sporton is VP Customer Experience Management at Conﬁrmit www.conﬁrmit.com

experience and employee engagement if they want to gather insight that will make a real impact on the bottom line. Conﬁrmit considers convergence between VoC and VoE to be the way forward for good reason: frontline employees have much greater insight as to what’s happening at the customer frontline and can provide a different perspective on the issues impacting their customers and clients.

Listening and acting drives change By listening and acting on feedback from employees as well as customers not only can companies drive more impactful change, but they can also drive employee engagement by demonstrating to team members that their opinions are valued and that they are empowered to improve the business. How do we capture these insights? As with Voice of the Customer, we are seeing the evolution of VoE to include ‘in the moment’ capture, speciﬁcally via mobile devices and social forums. Even just sharing ideas and feedback internally using social channels can have an immediate impact on sentiment across a business. Clearly driving positive engagement among employees is critical to achieving customer engagement since: • Employees are able to engage customers on the ‘frontline’, deliver better customer experience, and drive greater proﬁtability. • Employees are able to provide valuable insight into customer experience and offer a view that an

organisation may not derive from customer feedback alone.

Evolution of VoCE coming this year 2015 will undoubtedly mark the evolution of VoC and VoE into the Voice of the Customer through the Employee (VoCE). Customers and employees really are two sides of the same coin so we expect to see more and more leadingedge companies building and deploying actionable employee engagement programmes that also drive customer engagement. The key to setting up a successful VoCE programme is not only to adhere to established VoC best practices. It will also lie on the ability to implement the programme across the entire company and to select the best channels to reach and maximise responses from employees.

Do NOT silo employee and customer feedback Companies must also ensure that employee engagement and customer feedback are not siloed, but analysed alongside other insights in a single reporting hub. This will create a holistic view that will uncover the drivers of employee engagement and customer satisfaction in one place. It will be essential to close the loop and to prove to employees that what they do makes a difference to customers, their experiences and the success of the company overall. I’m in no doubt that harnessing the Voice of the Employee and the Voice of the Customer as one combined, holistic programme is the best way to boost the bottom line By incorporating factors such as revenue performance and churn rate, it’s possible to see just how signiﬁcant the relationship between employee engagement and customer satisfaction is to ﬁnancial and operational performance as a whole and to drive real change across the entire business. That’s got to be the ultimate goal.

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Employee Engagement Summit THURSDAY APRIL 16 2015 VICTORIA PARK PLAZA HOTEL, LONDON The complete resource for leading edge thinking on the issues, challenges and opportunities relating to employee engagement and its impact on customer engagement, performance and profitability

SPECIAL DELEGATE RATE UNTIL 20 MARCH

ÂŁ195

Inspiring change to drive employee engagement performance and profitability TOPICS AND STREAMS TO INCLUDE:

Our first Employee Engagement Summit will be held at the Park Plaza Victoria on April 16, London. Mirroring our already hugely successful Customer Engagement Summit held in the autumn and now in its fourth year. The links between employee engagement, customer engagement, performance and profitability are clear and will be examined in detail. Human capital and customer relationships are the leading concerns of CEOs and taking an holistic approach to our employee and customer engagement strategies is of paramount importance.

• Employee and Customer Engagement, links to performance and profitability • Internal communications • HR and cloud technology • Shared services and payroll • Evolution of Voice of the Employee, including technology/BYOD issues • Leadership and success planning • Talent Management, choosing the right managers • Learning and development • Wellbeing and engagement • Employee wellness and benefits (including reward and recognition) • Recruitment • Social Engagement • Future of Work

WHO WILL ATTEND: • • • • • • • • • •

CIO/CEO/MD/Director HR Director/Head/Senior Management IT Director/Head/Senior Management Finance Director/Head/Senior Management Employee Communications Director/Head/Senior Management Operations Director/Head/Senior Management Marketing & Customer Director/Head/Senior Management HR Advisor/Consultant Director/Head/Senior Management Organisational Development Director/Head/Senior Management Training Director/Head/Senior Management

Speakers include:

Peter Flade, Managing Partner, Gallup

David MacCleod, CoChair Engage for Success

Nigel Spencer, Global Director of Learning & Development, Reed Smith LLP

Richard Brimble, Director of Organisation Development, Affinity Water

Nupur Mallick, Director HR, Tata Consultancy Service (TCS)

Richard Spencer, Head of Supporter Development, RSPB

Laura Lee, Customer Experience Director, Molson Coors

Steve Clark, CEO, Calyx Managed Services

Tim Morgan, CEO, Mint Digital

Linda Rolf, Director of Internal Communications and Employee Engagement, Specsavers

Nick Brice, AMEX learning and development Case Study

Paul Devoy, Global Head, Investors in People

Lucy Crowther, Head of Retail HR, Argos

The Employee Engagement Summit is organised by Engage Business Media Ltd www.engageemployee.com @EngageEmployee #EngagementSummit Leadership Partner

Partners

Sponsor

engage

EMBER SERVICES

COMPANY PROFILES CLICKTOOLS

Clicktools is the leading provider of premium, Cloudbased survey software for businesses. The company lives by its brand promise to help customers better understand and serve their customers. Since 2001, the Clicktools solution has enabled organizations to improve customer experience by collecting, centralizing, and acting on customer feedback, leveraging the power of CRM. Notably, Clicktools was the ﬁrst survey provider to

integrate with Salesforce™ and was an original member of the AppExchange®. The company is privately held with headquarters on the South Coast of England and a USbased ofﬁce in Phoenix, Arizona. More info at www.clicktools.com.

Contact details: sales@clicktools.com communications@clickt ools.com www.clicktools.com

Clicktools Ltd. 7 Branksome Park House Bourne Valley Road Poole BH12 1ED. UK.

Clicktools Inc. 1661 East Camelback Road Suite 235, Phoenix Arizona 85016, USA.

Main: 01202 761822 Sales: 0800 0432587 Fax: 0800 471 5273

Main: 1-800-774-4065 Sales: 1-800-774-4065 Fax: 1-800-767-2070

CONFIRMIT

Confirmit enables organisations to develop and implement Voice of the Customer, Employee Engagement and Market Research programmes that deliver insight and drive business change. Confirmit’s clients create multi-channel, multi-lingual feedback and research programmes that engage customers, empower employees, deliver a compelling respondent experience, and provide high Return on Investment. Confirmit’s customer

engagement model provides the power to listen to the Voice of the Customer, integrate it with financial and operational data to generate powerful insight, and take action that will deliver effective business change and create competitive advantage. Confirmit has 350 employees and is headquartered in Oslo, with offices around the world. Contact details: Joe Lenny Joe.lenny@confirmit.com +44 (0)20 3053 9376 www.confirmit.com

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Ember is a customer management consultancy focused on helping clients maximise the commercial value of their customer engagement activities by identifying and exploiting opportunities for cost reduction, revenue enhancement and improved customer worth. Our approach is unashamedly ﬁnancial. In every consulting project, we will identify not

only how to make your business better, but how much you stand to gain by doing so. Our services span customer management strategy, operations consulting, outsourcing procurement, contracting and mediation, innovative deployment of analytics services and increasingly the strategy and deployment of digital channels into the mix. We would be pleased to understand your challenges and explain how we can help. Contact details: Alastair Murphy info@emberservices.com 0207 871 9797 www.emberservices.com

INTERACTIVE INTELLIGENCE

Interactive Intelligence is a global provider of contact centre, uniﬁed communications, and business process automation software and services designed to improve the customer experience. The company’s solutions, which can be deployed via the cloud or on-premises, are ideal for industries such as ﬁnancial services, insurance, outsourcers, collections and utilities. The company’s standardsbased all-in-one communications software suite was designed to eliminate the cost and complexity of multi-point

systems. Founded in 1994 and backed by more than 5,000 customers worldwide, Interactive Intelligence is an experienced leader in delivering customer value through its on-premise or cloud-based Communications as a Service (CaaS) solutions, both of which include software, hardware, consulting, support, education and implementation. At Interactive Intelligence, it’s what we do. Contact details: Jamie Salmon Jamie.salmon@inin.com 01753 418852 www.inin.com

QUESTBACK

QuestBack online surveys and managed feedback solutions empower companies to make smarter decisions, transform customer and employee experience and get ahead of

the market. Contact details: Tel.: 0207 403 3900 post.uk@questback.com www.questback.com/uk

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MEDALLIA UK

LIVEOPS

LiveOps is the global leader in cloud contact centre and customer service solutions. More than 350 companies around the world, including Salesforce.com, Symantec, Royal Mail Group and Neopost, trust LiveOps’ technology to enable effective multichannel, social and mobile interactions with their customers. LiveOps' awardwinning platform has processed more than 1 Billion minutes of customer interactions and managed operations for the largest USbased cloud contact centre of

20,000 home-based, independent agents. Headquartered in Redwood City, California with European regional headquarters in London, LiveOps has more than 10 years of cloud experience LiveOps is the partner of choice for companies wanting to migrate to the cloud. Contact details: Ann Ruckstuhl, Chief Marketing Ofﬁcer info@liveops.com +44 (0)20 3006 8280 www.liveops.com

Medallia is a leading customer experience management (CEM) SaaS company. Founded in 2001, the company is trusted by some of the world’s top brands — including Verizon, Macy’s, Sephora, Honeywell, Wells Fargo, Sony, Four Seasons, Sodexo, and Best Western — to create experiences that customers love. Medallia enables companies to capture customer feedback across a

multitude of channels and touchpoints (such as online, social media, mobile, and contact centers), understand it in real-time, and drive action everywhere — from the C-suite to the frontline. Contact details: Medallia UK 1 Pemberton Row, London EC4A 3BG, UK 44 203 1310 200 Sales: 1 844 238 37 67 www.medallia.com

NUNWOOD MINDPEARL

Mindpearl is a BPO specialist focusing on international, high quality contact centre operations. Mindpearl was recognised as the ‘Outsourcing Contact Centre Provider of the Year 2013’ at the National Outsourcing Association (NOA) Awards in the UK. With an emphasis on inbound, multichannel customer support, Mindpearl supports global brands in the aviation, leisure, telecommunications, retail and weight management industries in English and 20+ languages. With our highly skilled, motivated multilingual workforce and our strategically located ‘Follow

the Sun’ locations, in Brisbane, Barcelona, Cape Town and Suva, Fiji, we have the know-how, experience and resources to maximise business performance and proﬁtability. Contact details: South Africa Candace Laubscher Candace.laubscher@ mindpearl.com T: +27 (0) 21 440 6707 T: +27 (0)79 514 7006

means. Our Customer Experience Excellence Centre is the world’s largest customer experience research centre. Its work ensures every Nunwood client is connected to the cutting-edge of international experience design and best practice. Contact details: Tim Knight timknight@nunwood.com 0845 3720101 www.nunwood.com

PITNEY BOWES UK Alan Graham alan.graham@mindpearl.com T: +44(0)7780 115 042 www. mindpearl.com

SABIO

Sabio is a leading contact centre technology specialist focused on delivering exceptional customer service strategies and solutions, partnering with leading vendors such as AVAYA, Verint and Nuance. With over

Nunwood helps businesses create consistently brilliant customer experiences. Our approach is uniquely ‘fullservice’. This means we join up customer strategy, experience measurement, feedback technology and frontline training. By connecting the dots, our clients delight their customers more frequently and achieve their commercial goals more easily. To create brilliant results, we work hard to understand what ‘brilliant’

15 years’ experience Sabio works with many major companies throughout the globe including The AA, DHL, Eurostar, Unibet, Lebara Mobile and Ofﬁce Depot. Contact details: E: info@sabio.co.uk T: 0844 412 3000 www.sabio.co.uk

Pitney Bowes, a global technology company, powers billions of physical and digital transactions in the connected and borderless world of commerce. We enable data-driven marketing, parcel shipping & logistics, and statements, invoices & payments through our data management & engagement software, location intelligence offerings, and shipping & mailing solutions .

Helping clients achieve their greatest commerce potential are more than 16,000 passionate employees around the world, our relentless pursuit of innovation with over 2,300 active patents, and our focus on clients, who are at the centre of all that we do – from small businesses to 90% of the Fortune 500. Contact details: Mr. Raj Madabushi E: Raj.Madabushi@pb.com T: +44(0) 1491 416835 www.pitneybowes.com/us

ISSUE EIGHTEEN • FEBRUARY 2015

engage

the final word

Voice of the Employee and Voice of the Customer: the inextricable link Colin Shaw says that Employee Experience and Customer Experience are like an old married couple - when it works it is beautiful and inspiring; when it doesn’t, it is ugly and bewildering Both Customers and Employees have a voice. The Voice of the Customer (VOC) refers to the feedback you get regarding a Customer’s expectations and their experience with your organisation. The Voice of the Employee (VOE) refers to how employees participate in the decisions at your organization. If you employ an effective listening programme to each, the voices will tell you exactly how one affects the other. In the past couple of years, more organisations have been listening to their Customers. More have realised that the best way to decide what to do to make a Customer’s Experience better is to figure out what your Customers expect, what they appreciate, and what they want to avoid. These same organisations would be wise to listen to their employees as well. Too many ignore their own employees’ opinions. The VOE is just as pertinent as the VOC, and for organisations wishing to improve their Customer Experience, an invaluable asset for specific action to take. Who better to tell you ways to improve the various moments of your current Experience then the people who have those moments with Customers every day? You may not like what they say but invariably they know the problems you are causing Customers and also know how to fix it. Who better to see the problems and pitfalls in your process creating negative emotions for the Customers than the people who walk that process day in and day out? And guess what? By listening to them and acting, you improve employee engagement and what the VOE is saying.

Engaged employees believe and deliver Engaged employees believe they contribute to the company’s success. They also believe in the company’s brand promise and will see to it that they go above and beyond in their efforts to ensure this promise is fulﬁlled. Engagement at an employee level is critical to creating a good Customer Experience.

Customer Experience. When we undertake our Journey Mapping, we always involve front-line employees. They know what is happening and the issues that result as they speak with Customers every day. Making their voice part of your strategic planning encourages them to take ownership of their work. During what can be a painful Customer Experience implementation process, it encourages them to meet the challenges change can present, however difﬁcult, because they helped design it.

Wal-Mart no shining example We can see what happens when employees’ voices are ignored. Last summer, Wal-Mart employees were striking all across the nation demanding better pay and beneﬁts, more full-time employment opportunities, and a safe environment in which to voice their complaints to management. I’m sure many of you would agree that the experience in Wal-Mart as a Customer isn’t a shining example of what’s possible in Customer Experience today, either. We can also see what happens when employee's voices are valued, rewarded, and empowered. Consider the employee environment at Google. Google is routinely on the top of “Best Places to Work” lists. In fact just look at the organizations in these surveys and you’ll see they all provide a good employee experience and Customer Experience. They connect it there for all to see. It’s great that more companies are listening to the VOC. Be sure to also listen to the VOE. As you can see, they two are inextricably linked--and equally important to creating an excellent Customer Experience.

Employees are uniquely qualified to tell you ways to improve the Colin Shaw is the founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy, one of the world's first organizations devoted to customer experience. Colin is an international author of four best-selling books and an engaging keynote speaker & also recognized as one of the original top 150 Business Influencers by LinkedIn. Beyond Philosophy provide consulting, specialized research & training from their headquarters in Tampa, Florida, USA. Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter: @ColinShaw_CX ISSUE EIGHTEEN • FEBRUARY 2015

THURSDAY 16 JULY 2015 I LONDON

16 JULY 2015, LONDON

Outsourcing Customer Services Summit The Summit will offer a mix of world class local and international case studies, expert advice from leading independent industry experts, panel sessions and high level networking opportunities. The aim of the Summit is for delegates to come away armed with all they need to know in terms of setting out on an outsourcing partnership relationship or making the most of their current outsourcing arrangements.

SPECIAL DELEGATE RATE UNTIL 29 MAY

£195 Speakers at 2014 Summit included:

Peter Ryan, Lead Analyst - BPO, Ovum

Luke Mills, MD, UK Communications, Media & Technology, Accenture

Ian Hamerton, Head of Donor Services, NHS Blood & Transplant Authority

Stephen West, Director, International Service Delivery Transformation Specialist, K2H

Alan Graham, Director and Chief Commercial Ofﬁcer, Mindpearl

Tim Sunley, Outsource Services Director, Shop Direct

Martin Leahy, CTO, ABTRAN

Brian O’Brien, Business Development Lead, ABTRAN

Jennifer Kosmalski, Head of Customer Service, Rank Interactive

Vit Horky, Founder, Future Care Initiative

Mark Hillary, Outsourcing specialist, globalisation, author and blogger

James Milner, former Head of Contracts & Programmes BBC, Director, Ember PS

Rebeca Hassan, Executive Director, Nearshore Executive Alliance

www.engagecustomer.com @engagecustomer #EngageForums

Delegates from last year included: AJM Robertson Consulting Ltdl • Belgacom • BlueLink • BlueLink International CZ • Boohoo.com • Bosch • BPeSA • British Gas • BroadGroup • Capita • Cisco Systems • Concentrix • Convergys • CSM Consultants Ltd • DBF • Dell • Eishtec • Ember Services • Euromaster • First Data • First Rate Exchange Services • Genesis Housing Association • G-Era • Global Freight Solutions • Infovinity Systems • Intelecom • Joules • LEGO Group • M&G Real Estate • Marie Curie Cancer Care • Merchants Limited • NHS • Ovum • Pactus • Pinchpoint Coaching • Pitney Bowes Limited • Precium Ltd • Premier Business Audio • ProtoCall One • Qifasolutions • RSPB • Scott Galbraith Ltd • Serco • Service Initiatives • Sitel • Sodexo • South Afrcia dti • Talktalk Business • Thames Water • Thames Water Utilities • Three • T-Impact • TURN2US • Vizolution • Webhelp

For more information contact: Speaking - Steve Hurst: steve.hurst@ebm.media and +44 (0) 1932 506 304 Sponsorship - Nick Rust: nick.rust@ebm.media and +44 (0) 1932 506 301

2015 Directors Forums

2015 Summits

Evolution of Voice of the Customer - 24th February

Employee Engagement Summit - 16 April Victoria Park Plaza Hotel, London

Customer Engagement in the Retail Sector - 26th March Customer Engagement in Financial Services - 21st May Social Customer Engagement - 24th June - BT Tower Customer Engagement Transformation - 24th September Future of Contact Centres - 22nd October

Mainline:

T: 01932 506 300

Steve Hurst

steve.hurst@ebm.media

T: 01932 506 304

Nick Rust

nick.rust@ebm.media

T: 01932 506 301

Chris Wood

chris.wood@ebm.media

T: 01932 506 303

Rachel Blake rachel.blake@ebm.media

T: 01932 506 302

Dan Keene

T: 01932 506 306

dan.keene@ebm.media

Outsourcing Customer Services Summit - 16 July Blue Fin Venue, London Customer Engagement Summit - 26 November Victoria Park Plaza, London

Engage Business Media Nicholson House, 41 Thames Street, Weybridge, Surrey KT13 8JG