THE CUSTOMER 5th Edition by Chartered Institute of Customer Management

www.cicmaglobal.com

FIFTH EDITION

THE FUTURE OF CONTACT CENTRES pg18.GUIDELINES FOR CELLULAR PROVIDERS IN SOUTH AFRICA TO ENHANCE CUSTOMER DELIGHT

pg40.ZIM 2018 CUSTOMER SATISFACTION AT 64PC AS CICM LOOKS TO CARRY OUT AFRICA WIDE CSI

pg29.KENYA'S MPESA COULD DRIVE FINANCIAL INCLUSION IN ETHIOPIA

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

EDITORS NOTE

Rinos Mautsa | ASSISTANT EDITOR

Editorial PUBLISHER

Chartered Institute for Customer Management Global (CICM)

Adre Schreuder | CHIEF EDITOR

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

Ricky Harris ricky@cicmaglobal.com

CICM CHAIRPERSON

Professor Estelle VanTonder CHIEF EDITOR

Adre Schreuder editor@cicmaglobal.com

SALES TEAM

Liseli Nare Hilja Katshuna Tinashe Karimanzira Pauline Warui Elvis Daswa Nicole Jofrey Graciano S Bwanali Patrice Habinshuti

DESIGN AND LAYOUT

Email: info@cicmaglobal.com We strive to promote customer service excellence in the twin fields of customer experience and call centre management in Africa by bringing readers the best and latest business thinking as well as touch points. It is our firm commitment that everyone, whether advertiser or reader will gain by investing in The Customer magazine.

Copyright © The Customer Magazine CICM Global (pvt) Ltd All information is supplied without liability. Although the publisher has taken all precautions to ensure that the information is correct at the time of publication, the publisher and agents do not accept any liability, direct or indirect, for material contained in this publication. No part of this publication may be reduced in any form or by any means without prior written permission of means without prior written permission of the copyright owners. For more information: Email/ Write : Editor, The Customer Magazine: editor@cicmaglobal.com, info@cicmaglobal.com

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

Eldon Phukuile | ASSISTANT EDITOR

“UNLOCKING BRAND CONSISTENCY, RELIABILITY AND PREDICTABILITY PROMOTING SERVICE EXCELLENCE CULTURE IN 21ST CENTURY AFRICA.”

ustomers can engage with brands in more ways and places than ever before. As a result, customer expectations are higher than ever. Clients expect consistent and continuous products and services with instant access, always, on any device. If the 1990’s and 2000’s were about building strong brands; the 2010’s have been about delivering exceptional customer experiences. Working with clients, as customer experience professional I consistently find branding and customer exper ience t wo conflicting organizational silos. Branding, or the marketing department, is often focused on delivering messages about the brand proposition and employing marketing and communication strategies to build consumer expectations of the brand; whereas customer experience is focused on delivering the customer experience, primarily through service. CICM is usually brought in to help with customer (experience) strategy and people are surprised when we begin to talk to brand and marketing. Isn’t marketing about what the brand ‘is’ and customer experience about what the brand ‘does’? If the customer experience is where the brand comes alive physically, emotionally and virtually in its interactions with the customer, shouldn’t the two be intimately intwined? Brands need to tell a coherent and authentic story; and customer experience needs to adhere to that brand story, consistently across all touch points. Customer experience activities without brand alignment represent a lack of strategy. Branding without customer experience cannot truly exist as the brand comes alive through customer

interaction. This edition’s theme is focused on “Unlocking the Paradox: How Customers’ Experience now defines the Brand in 21st Century Africa?”It is puzzling that only it is puzzling that only 18% of companies’ world over use their brand as the base for their customer experience strategy, according to a recent report from Forrester. African brands are no exception. Henceforth there is opportunity for organizations to more closely align brand and customer experience. Experts in the CRM industry are always highlighting the merging of marketing and customer experience within one department. This alignment should help alleviate any issues that arise from a total disconnect between the expectations set by the brand and the experience that it delivers. All imminent differences simply need to be dealt with, with a focused attitude.It is expected of every brand to have the client benefit vision explanation or mantra. The mantra must demonstrate how everybody in the organization impacts that vision. It must be inclusive, I mean everybody! Begin with your essential client service travel map; demonstrate how the majority of the normal collaborations – or touchpoints – that the client has while working with you are well galvanized. Conclusively, you may require more than one guide. The actions a client has on your organization’s social network site will be not quite the same as via telephone or face to face. I hope you enjoy this edition of The Customer magazine

Editor

THE CUSTOMER

CONTENTS

in this

issue FRONT 3

EDITOR’S NOTE

INSIDE 6

CEO WELCOME NOTE

THE FUTURE OF SKILLS IS ONLINE

BRAND OR BRANDED EXPERIENCE

ZIM 2018 CUSTOMER SATISFACTION AT 64%

ALIGNING BRAND AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

75 BILLION DOLLARS IS LOST DUE TO POOR CUSTOMER SERVICE

ARE YOU GUESSING ON YOUR QUALITY OF CUSTOMER SERVICE?

WANT TO BE SUCCESSFULL SOLVE YOUR CUSTOMERS’ PROBLEMS

KEEP A CLEAR HEAD

THE ANATOMY OF A GREAT EXPERIENCE

MTN ZAMBIA GOES CUSTOMER-CENTRIC IN 2018

THE FUTURE OF CONTACT CENTRES

5 WAYS TO FUTURE-PROOF YOUR CONTACT CENTRE

CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT IS THE FUTURE OF CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

BREAK CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE SILOS OR FAIL

TACKLING THE SILOS 30

GOLDEN RULES TO CREATING MEMORABLE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES

DELIVERING AN UNMATCHED CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE IN THE DIGITAL AGE

UGANDA GOES DIGITAL ON MEASURING CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

06 10

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

28 54

40 45 58

PERFORMANCE PROPER PERSPECTIVES PREVENTS POOR PERSPECTIVE IN DELIVERING EXCELLENT SERVICE.

TIGER BRANDS, THE LISTERIOSIS CRISIS IN SOUTH AFRICA AND THE PRINCIPLE OF TRUST – A CONSUMER VIEWPOINT

DO YOU KNOW HOW TO DELIGHT YOUR CUSTOMERS ????? SOME GUIDE LINES TO CONSIDER

LOVE LETTER

YOUR OPPORTUNITY TO NETWORK WITH INFLUENCERS

THE COST OF FOCUSING ON PRODUCT OVER PEOPLE

KENYA’S M-PESA COULD DRIVE FINANCIAL INCLUSION IN ETHIOPIA

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

concepts for customer satisfaction, employee engagement, customer retention and loyalty—and demonstrate how all are linked to increasing revenues and profits. Skill-building sessions will promote excellence in developing world-class CEM strategies that will drive your company’s bottom-line. Publications made by Omega Management Group’s Customer Advocacy and Retention (CARE) Reward Program early this year 2018, elaborate that CARE is designed for companies that want to motivate and reward employees to perform at the highest level by linking a portion of compensation to measurable increases in customer satisfaction and loyalty. From this research in huge economies like the US an increase of 5% in employee retention can yield profit increases of 25% or more, so it’s critical to preserve your business’s largest asset— your employees. One of the most dynamic customer contact areas is the call center, where decisive customer service and support activities take place.

CEO WELCOME NOTE Welcome to this edition of The Customer Magazine!

Welcome! Customers—not products or services—are the source of all revenue and profits. For great customer experiences, customers want to be able to connect with employees in real-time and resolve concerns without any hassles. So what can contact centre operators do to improve customer experiences, reduce churn and increase revenues in Africa? Read this edition of The Customer Magazine. CICM Conferences, seminars and publications (especially in this journal ) ;are mediums for information exchange from across the globe since 2017 are focused exclusively on how companies can make a Customer Experience Management (CEM) strategy part of their corporate DNA to lock in profitable, long-term customer loyalty. CICM seminars are a platform to Learn from the CRM industry pioneers how to develop a CEM strategy that will leverage your CRM investments. Best-in-class industry leaders always present new and transformative

The CARE Reward Program varies from awarding points to individuals and groups for achieving service excellence, and then allowing employees to redeem their points for various rewards. In determining reward metrics, CARE gets in contact with the actual customers with whom each employee has recently serviced. Group incentive programs are intended to determine service and support excellence for teams of employees performing the same or comparable tasks. In this case, the surveys determine overall satisfaction levels for each team. As with individual rewards, points are tracked on a monthly basis and tallied over time for Team of the Year recognition. CICM global continues to work alongside prominent African and international players in the customer service sector to build an online ecosystem to facilitate the development of customer service & call centre industry in Africa. Lastly I am forever grateful for the unfailing support that CICM has received from all key stakeholders; thus includes our advertisers, contributors; corporate investors; the editorial team and my fellow Executive Committee members. It is indeed a great privilege for me to serve the institute and the customer service /call centre industry.

Ceo FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

SKILL S ONLINE

The Future of

Skills is Online Dr Wynand Goosen Board Member

ith the ever-increasing demand on time, cost and “just in time” skills, the future of learning and development is reshaping significantly. Skills will be more important than education – the effective employee will have to know what to do, how to do it and also have the base knowledge to perform the required tasks. Skills will be acquired in a “fragmented” way and as such will lead to an increased demand for systems to collect, store and make sense of a portfolio of skills, acquired over time. Add to that, invaluable workplace learning. How will it be documented? How will it be used to ensure adequate recognition, and what benchmarks will it be compared to? Skills, learning, workplace performance and education all point to competency, but without ways to benchmark, how do we articulate such competency from one workplace to the next?

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

SKILL S ONLINE SkillsBook is a powerful tool for a corporate that is serious about driving talent development, performance management and business growth. As a skills repository, SkillsBook can onboard your entire staff compliment and provide them with a place to accumulate and store all evidence of competency. For the professional body, this opens the door to creating meaning, quantifiable opportunities to measure “Continuous Professional Development” and therefore manage points towards the attainment / maintenance of a designation. SkillsBook provide you with a library that boasts more than 70 Business Courses, that can be done as CPD programs, pure e-learning programs, or as facilitated programs. Take the hassle out of having to find great material – SkillsBook content is professionally developed and meets the internationally renowned scorm standard. SkillsBook covers all known business training requirements. This means you have access to a wide range of professional training programs at the press of a button. However, if you have in-house training that you prefer to use, SkillsBook can customize your programs and load them onto SkillsBook for easy delivery in-house. Corporate Training has never been so easy. SkillsBook is a full-service e-based Learning department. The offering includes: Development of Normative Job descriptions, aligned to corporate strategy. Develop a Performance System that measures actual performance and identifies GAPS. Provide solutions to GAPS via continuous analysis and access to the Corporate Training Library. SkillsBook also has a powerful Learner Management System, called Sigma7. With Sigma7, a company can now match qualifications to jobs, and identify required skills and KPI’s to build Job descriptions that can be used to drive performance. On SkillsBook, performance records can also be used for recognition of prior learning and so enable talent development, personal growth and further qualifications. The online Learning component is also available to all Training Providers. The Sigma7 system operates as a dashboard that enables the corporate user to project manage education and training in a five-step process, each with distinct quality control features.

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

SkillsBook can track learners with a lifelong skills accounts, and report over time, on effectiveness of skills. Employment levels versus skills can be tracked. To the individual user the benefits are really great: SkillsBook provides a lifelong skills account. A place to record and store learning. A way

to build a skills base, step by step. SkillsBook provides an online CV. The user simply needs to populate a profile and click on a CV generator button. In addition, SkillsBook, will facilitate a Personal Development Plan as well as a Vision Board. SkillsBookCollege, a separate, mobile application, can also provide the individual with access to specific skills to refine a profile for specific job opportunities. Some of the first group of learners to onboard on SkillsBook, completing the Critical Thinking Module.

BRAND EXPERIENCE

BRAND OR BRANDED

experience

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

BRAND EXPERIENCE

Editorial 60 Seconds Snippets by CICM

Should the experience be a Brand Customer Experience or a Branded Customer Experience? Is there a difference?

brand customer experience is where the brand’s essence, promise, values, and all that it stands for, come alive through its Customer Experience. The Brand sets customer expectations for experience. Customer Experience then delivers on those expectations through an intentional and guided design framework so that the experience that customers encounter is clearly true to the brand. An example here might be John Lewis where its Customer Experience is in tune with its brand values of ‘Quality Service and Value’.

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

BRAND EXPERIENCE

Brand Customer Experience is where the brand’s essence, promise, values, and all that it stands for, come alive through its Customer Experience.

A Branded Customer Experience goes one step further where the experience itself becomes unique and is recognizable. The Customer Experience becomes a source of competitive differentiation. An example here might be Lush where the core brand value of ‘handmade’ is elevated through its immersive and sensory experience. Lush’s stores are ‘home made’ themselves and are reminiscent of a homespun deli or unrefined grocery in feel. Customers are encouraged to pick up, smell, and touch products as they explore. Staff show how products work and what they can do by way of demonstration. This all builds on their natural and simple positioning. For some organizations, a brand Customer Experience will be appropriate; for others, it will need to deliver a brand Customer Experience. It depends very much on the context, market and strength of the brand itself. Whatever the ambition or level of synergy between brand and Customer Experience, the experience is the reality of the brand.

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FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

Find us on:

Zim 2018 Customer Satisfaction At

Zimbabwe’s customer satisfaction index ranking for 2018 has declined by 11,8 percentage points to 63,7 percent. This is according to the latest the National Customer Satisfaction Index (NCSI), which is carried out by the Chartered Institute of Customer Management (CICM) in collaboration with Select Research (Pvt) Limited. The inaugural NCSI, which was launched last year, indicated a ranking of 75,5 percent.

he index is a national indicator on how companies are performing in terms of customer satisfaction at sectorial level. The NCSI essentially measures the quality of economic output as a complement to traditional measures of the quantity of economic output. It is the country’s scientific standard of customer satisfaction. Zimbabwe’s top-rated companies in 16 key economic sectors in terms of customer satisfaction in the following

sectors were showcased and honored at a classy event earlier this month. The sectors included: airlines, banks, courier services, electronic payment, energy, food outlets, funeral policy, and government parastatals. Other sectors included hospitality, internet service providers, long term insurance, medical aids, retail, retail clothing, short-term insurance and telecommunications. The top performing sector, according to the 2018 NCSI, was food outlet sector with a ranking of 68,6 percent,

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

…AS CICM LOOKS TO CARRY OUT AFRICA-WIDE CSI BY CICM

which was above the average ranking. The courier services sector came in second at 67,6 percent, just below the average ranking, followed by the hospitality and the longterm insurance sectors at 67, 3 percent and 65,7 percent, respectively. The energy sector rounded off the top 5 sectors with a ranking of 65,5 percent. The retail sector came in sixth position with a ranking of 65,2 percent, followed by the internet service provider sector with a ranking of 65,1 percent. The short-term insurance and medical aid sectors came in eighth and ninth positions, with rankings of 64,8 percent and 64,3 percent, respectively. The funeral policy sector closed off the top 10 performing sectors in terms of customer satisfaction with a ranking of 64,3 percent. CICM Chief FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

Executive Officer, Ricky Harris said customer satisfaction is now recognised as the single most important factor affecting a company’s profitability is customers’ satisfaction with its products and service, hence the significance of the NCSI. She said the NCSI - an independent national benchmark of customer satisfaction of the quality of products and services – is therefore critical insofar as benefits players in both the public and private sectors within the local economy, as well as foreign investors eyeing the country’s markets. “Local firms can use the NCSI as a tool to optimize customer satisfaction, which in turn drives customer loyalty and thereby corporate profitability. The Index also is used for competitive and cross-industry benchmarking. “It’s also critical for foreign

investors who need to understand the relationship between a company’s current condition and its future capacity to produce wealth. In capitalistic free markets, sellers that do well by their customers are rewarded by more business from buyers and more capital from investors,” said Harris. NCSI is the only cross-industry benchmark measure of customer satisfaction in Zimbabwe, and CICM has indicated plans to carry out an Africa-wide customer satisfaction index survey. “We are currently working to set up CSI for Africa,” said the CEO.

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

ALIGNING BRAND AND

customer experience BY CICM

ome marketers appear not yet engaged in delivering the brand through its customer experience. There is a continued sense that consumers are to be ‘influenced’ through marketing communications, rather than customers’ brand perceptions being an outcome

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE of the customer experience.The degree to which this last point is true begs several probing questions. • Is your brand delivering on its brand promise to customers through your customer experience? • How and where do customers interact with your brand? • What do they say about it? • How do they feel about the brand and the experience that it delivers? • Is the experience the same at any point in time, at any touch point? • How would customers describe the customer experience themselves? • How would customers articulate the promises that a brand is making to them? • How does this fit with the brand essence? • Is the brand consistently represented through the behaviours of people? To align brand and customer through the experience, companies should look to align three areas of what we called an ‘Aligned Experience’. CUSTOMER INTIMACY: • In depth understanding of the brand and its influence on the overall customer experience • Intimate understanding of the emotional and rational customer journey • Integration of and access to all sources of proprietary customer data (structured, unstructured, formal, informal, requested, unrequested) • Articulation of the brand story and establishment of the brand narrative to be told through the customer experience AGILE EXECUTION: • Translation of the brand promise into experience principles/rules • Optimisation and improvement FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

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of the experience based on customer value, that follows these rules: • Consistent delivery at each touch point • Collaboration of marketing, brand, insight/research and customer experience CONNECTED ORGANISATION: • Employees are motivated, they embody the customer and brand promise in their interactions with customers • A sense that everyone is equally responsible for ‘living the brand inside and outside of the organisation • A high degree of coherence between brand, products, services, sales, marketing, IT and operationsAt the end of the day, two of the greatest assets an organisation has are 1) their brand and 2)

their relationships with customers. The brand must inform the customer experience and motivate employees and customers. “Your brand is a story unfolding across all customer touch points” (Jonah Sachs storyteller, author, designer and entrepreneur). In an increasingly digital world, customer experience leaders have understood this. They align a distinctive and engaging brand promise with a coherent and fulfilling customer experience wherever, whenever brand meets customer.

75 BILL ION DOLL ARS LOST

$75 BILLION DOLLARS IS LOST DUE TO POOR CUSTOMER SERVICE

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

75 BILL ION DOLL ARS LOST

Two years ago I reported on NewVoiceMedia’s “serial switchers” report that indicated that $62 billion was lost due to poor customer service. That number, in their new reportnow has that number pegged at $75 billion! That’s a lot of lost business!

ere’s my take on this. Cu stomers wa nt a nd expect more than ever before because that’s what we have taught them. The customer service rockstars tout the accolades and awards that they have received. When our customers visit these businesses, they experience what great service feels like. Then they come to us. We promise our customers that we will deliver amazing service, and we may. But, whether or not we do, it is for the customer to judge. Here is where that judging gets interesting. They are no longer comparing us to our competitors. They are comparing us to the best service they ever received from anyone. What happens when a customer doesn’t receive the customer service they expect? They switch! The NewVoiceMedia reports that “Brands are failing to create the positive, emotional experiences that drive customer loyalty.” That failure results in 67% of customers becoming what they call “serial switchers.” Simply put, these customers are willing to switch brands because of poor customer service. That’s a 37% increase since their last report. Customers are grading the companies and brands they choose to do business with, and it’s simply a pass/ fail grade, where failure means the customer moves on. The main reasons customers switch are obvious. They feel underappreciated. They are not able to speak to a person who can provide answers. They experience rude employees. They are put on hold for unreasonable lengths of time. Personally, I hate holding for a long time while the company’s recorded message states, “Your call is very important to us.” However, it’s not all “gloom and doom.” There is some good news in the report. 86% of surveyed customers said that if there was an emotional connection with a customer support agent and the customer felt they were cared for and valued, they would be willing to

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

continue to do business with the company again. If the company provides good service, 66% of customers would be more loyal and 65% would be willing to recommend the company, and my favorite stat, 48% would spend more. While the NewVoiceMedia survey focused on customer support centers and B2C, don’t think that the B2B customer won’t switch. The numbers are different in the B2B world, as the customer may have fewer options. Yet, when the B2B customer is ready to renew a contract or reorder supplies, don’t think they aren’t comparing you to other companies outside of your industry. Some of those companies have created higher expectations that you, at a minimum must meet, but even better, exceed. Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, award-winning keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling business author. For information, contact 314-692-2200 or www.hyken.com. For information on The Customer Focus™ customer service training programs, go to www.thecustomerfocus.com. Follow on Twitter: @Hyken

GUESSING ON YOUR QUALIT Y

Qua Are You Guessing on Your

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

GUESSING ON YOUR QUALIT Y

ality of Customer Service?

by John Tschohl

Providing outstanding customer service at the right price is the “Golden Rule” of most companies. It’s worth remembering that we all experience customer service every day. Customer service is a critical piece of your business, and you should fine-tune it as much as you can. Here are some well-known facts on customer service ….Fact: 90% of companies say they deliver superior customer service and only 8% of people think these same companies deliver superior customer service. Which goes to show, you shouldn’t be guessing when it comes to evaluating your customer service. Think you don’t have to worry? Guess again! Take your mobile phone and your service contract. If you’re like me, it’s hard to tell. The contract has been deliberately written so complex that most people don’t read it. This, by the way, is why just about everyone hates mobile service providers—and why wireless carriers have some of the lowest customer service ratings of any industry.

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

GUESSING ON YOUR QUALIT Y

Customer service is a critical piece of your business, and you should finetune it as much as you can

E…FAST AND ACCURATE People want answers and to move on with their busy lives. One simple and straightforward way to solve problems faster is simply to be available at all times, 24/7 with a ‘live’ person that answers the call within 3 rings. That way no one is ever having to check your hours to get in touch the next day. It’s easier to resolve issues and you will stand out from the competition as a company that deals with their customers right away. BE…RESPECTFUL AND FRIENDLY Customer service should be filled with positivity. Greet your customers, use their names, and always express appreciation for their business. Inject positivity into your day, the results will be eye-opening. BE…A LISTENER Lead with your ear rather than your mouth so you can connect and problem-solve. How can you meet your customer’s needs, if you don’t know them? To understand their needs, just listen to the “voice of the customer” and take action accordingly.

FACT: The average American spends13 hours per year and 43 days per lifetime on hold for customer service. When it comes to customer service, your customers care far more about competent and helpful service. FACT: 73% of dissatisfied customers cited incompetent, rude, and “rushed” service as the #1 reason why they abandoned a brand. FACT: 86% of consumers will immediately quit doing business with a company because of a bad customer experience FACT: Bad customer service is more than just a potential liability, it’s a huge cost to your business. Consumers are far more likely to share bad customer experiences due to their frustration. FACT: It is 6-7 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to keep a current one FACT: The average business hears from only 4% of its dissatisfied customers. Ver y few people have time for your mistakes. Even fewer people are going to take the time to let you know about them, and why should they? You’re the one that screwed up. FACT: your customers can do quite a few things much better than you can, and if your business isn’t embracing this fact by viewing customer service as a branch of your marketing department with tremendous ROI, you’re doing yourself a disservice, as well as your customers. FACT: 9 out of 10 U.S. consumers say they would pay more to ensure a superior customer experience. Customers expect consistent quality of customer service; with a similar, familiar look and feel whenever and however they contact your company. American firms spend all their Customer Service Training dollars on surveys. That’s total overkill. Few spend any money training employees on Customer Service. Customer Service training will tip the scales toward making your business more successful for your employees and your bottom line. Take responsibility!

BE…A SOLUTION PROVIDER Ask your customer what they think would be a good outcome. They probably have something in mind that they feel would make sense given the circumstances. Even if that final answer is not exactly what you want, the customer may also feel that they are not getting exactly what they’d hoped. BE…AMAZING Bear in mind that the customer will feel incredible if they feel that you are taking extra steps to help them. I tell everyone that they have the right to a good experience, a quality product, and top of the line customer service. I also tell everyone that it’s their responsibility to let the appropriate channels know when there is an issue. You deserve quality and top notch performance. There are a couple of things that work when trying to motivate a business to give you better customer service: Ask for good service: “I really need your help.”Act as if you expect good service.Treat salespeople as friends—a friendly attitude toward salespeople is so rare that clerks treated respectfully jump to attention to serve you as if you were a celebrity. Change your attitude toward good service. Your chances of receiving good service improve immensely. Speak up.State clearly your expectations and ask for a speedy resolution to problems. Don’t feel sorry for business, government, or non-profit groups when you complain about bad service. You’re doing them a favor by complaining. Complaints are good for business, so don’t shut up, speak up. About the Author: John Tschohl John Tschohl is an author and president of Service Quality Institute. He is an American business consultant and Customer Service Strategist.

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

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WANT TO BE

successful? SOLVE YOUR CUSTOMERS’ PROBLEMS

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

SUCCESS

So, the customer’s problem becomes an opportunity for smart people in the food industry. Grocery stores are seeing an increase in numbers of their ready-to-eat meals prepared with fresh ingredients. Companies like Blue Apronand Hello Fresh, who deliver ready-to-prepare fresh meals, are seeing increases in sales. Then, of course, there are restaurants that make it easy. When the kids ask mom or dad, “What are you going to make for dinner?”, the most convenient answer when they don’t know just might be, “Reservations.”The point is that these businesses aren’t just selling food. They are selling the solution to the problem of not knowing what’s for dinner. A grocer may sell food, but what the customer may want is the family dinner. A family taking dozens of pictures every day while on vacation isn’t looking to have a bunch of photographs. What they are after are memories. Once you understand the “why” behind what you sell, you’ll start to be able to solve your customers’ problems. Questioning the “why” behind the “what,” you get a better understanding of what’s driving decisions, and as a result, can create a better customer experience. Why does a person want a fancy red sports car? What’s driving that desire? Is all they want transportation? No. There is more to it than that. It might be congruent with the customer’s lively personality. You may or may not know I’m hired to do keynote speeches at conferences around the world. Why do my clients want a speaker? Is it just the information? Absolutely not. If all they wanted was information, they would buy everyone a book. One of the first questions I like to ask my client when they are interested in having me speak is, “Why do you want to hire a professional speaker for your conference?” Another question is, “Why is the topic of customer service or customer experience important for this audience to hear?” The answers give me great insight into solving my client’s problems and

SHEP HYKEN

t’s morning and you’ve just had breakfast. What are you going to have for dinner? 49% of people in the U.S. do not know what they are going to have for dinner. That stat comes from David Portalatin’s address at the Art of Beef Summit, sponsored by Cargill. As he was addressing foodservice executives and salespeople, he emphasized that not knowing what’s for dinner, just hours before consumers are supposed to eat it, is a problem. Not for the foodservice people, but for consumers. They don’t know what they want, and whether they know it or not, they are looking for help. Not necessarily in the form of a plea for help, but in the form of wanting an easy and convenient way for them to decide what they are having for dinner.

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

needs for a program that will meet (ideally exceed) their expectations. So, next time you are engaging in a conversation with your customers, think not just about what you’re talking about, but why you are talking about it. Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, award-winning keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling business author. For information, contact 314-692-2200 or www. hyken.com. For information on The Customer Focus™ customer service training programs, go to www.thecustomerfocus.com. Follow on Twitter: @Hyken

KEEP A CLEAR HEAD

or call centres or contact centre to be able to provide high quality customer service, depends on many critical and interrelated factors. Not the least of these is the quality of the voice communication between caller and agent. Poor voice quality results in frustration, misunderstanding, increased stress levels, (both agent and caller) significantly increased average handling time and in many cases, a total waste of costly resources. High quality headsets, designed specifically for call centre or contact centre use, and appropriately configured to the call centre telephony platform, alleviate poor voice quality issues, whilst enhancing the overall customer experience. Utilising modern noise-cancelling headset microphones, typical high levels of call centre background chit-chat and ambient noise are all but totally eliminated. Similarly, lightweight, comfortable earpieces provide crystal-clear sound quality; agents can hear every word during their conversations with customers. Quality conversations go a long, long way to creating optimised customer service.

ARE HEADSETS EXPENSIVE CONSUMABLES or VALUABLE ASSETS If your operation buys the cheapest headsets that you can find, then it is probable that your company views headsets as expensive consumables. Over even two to three years, this policy will cost your organisation a fortune. Cheap headsets don’t give the sound quality that’s conducive to quality customer engagement. Longer calls and confused callers and agents adds up to significant costs. Poor physical quality means that they break easily. And, agents are notoriously rough on headsets. Often, cheap headsets can’t be repaired. They are simply thrown away. More costs! But high value headsets, with noise-cancelling technology to eliminate background noise, superb audio quality, and high 26

KEEP A CLEAR HEAD ABOUT

head sets by Rod Jones

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

KEEP A CLEAR HEAD

contagious or infectious diseases should Ozone Sterilise their headset daily until their symptoms have passed After being Sick: Any employee who has been booked off work with flu, a cold, coughing, throat infections, ear infections, or any other contagious or infectious diseases should Ozone Sterilise their headset daily for 3 to 5 days after returning to work in order to avoid re-infection Re-Issue of used headsets: Any used headsets that are re-issued to new employees should be Ozone Sterilised prior to being re-issued. Sharing of headsets: Headsets should not be shared under any circumstances. This is very unhygienic. If headsets are shared, they must definitely be Ozone Sterilized between users. Ozone Sterilising Cabinets The Crystel Ozone Sterilising cabinet looks something like an oversized microwave oven and can sterilise 30 to 40 headsets in a single cycle lasting between 15 and 20 minutes. Any call centre or contact centre or office environment using telephone headsets should have their own ozone cabinet on their premises. Several headset supply companies are now providing regular on-site headset sterilisation as a service. Cushion Replacement: General Cushion Swops: Depending on wear & tear, all headsets should have their cushions and microphone foam pads replaced every 6 or 12 months (this can be established by a visual inspection) Re-Issue of used headsets: Any used headsets that are re-issued to new users should have their cushions replaced and be ozone sterilized before being re-issued. durability, presents a totally different value proposition. Particularly when quality headsets can be easily serviced with low-cost, on-site spares such as ear cushions, microphone foam and quick-release lower cables, then headsets start becoming valuable assets. Then, when you add on-line asset tracking, fast, fixed cost repairs, full refurbishment and sanitization services and extended warranties, the Returnon-Investment starts to make the Financial Director smile from ear to ear. Yes. Headsets can be valuable assets and not expensive consumables.

HEADSET HEALTH AND HYGIENE Headsets can be a leading source of infection in the workplace if proper hygiene measures are not in place. Best practice recommends

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

that call centre and contact centre operators draw up a Headset Health & Hygiene Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) in association with the organisation’s Health & Safety officer or team, to ensure good hygiene practices. These SOP’s would differ from one call centre to another but generally they will be built around two basic principles: Ozone Sterilizing and Scheduled Cushion Replacement. Ozone Sterilization General Hygiene & Sanitation: All headsets should be Ozone Sterilised on a regular basis; at least once a month and even better, once a week. Onset of Infection: Any employee exhibiting symptoms of flu, a cold, coughing, throat infections, ear infections, or any other

What is Ozone Ozone is the most powerful disinfectant available to man and reduces bacterial, viral and parasitic contamination by up to 99%. Ozone is a naturally occurring inert gas that is found in the earth’s atmosphere. Ozone is made up of 3 atoms of Oxygen (O3) as opposed to the Oxygen that we breathe which is made up of 2 atoms (O2). Ozone the strongest natural disinfectant available on the market and works more than 3,000 times faster than Chlorine. Ozone has a pale blue colour in its natural state but is colourless at room temperature. Ozone has the same smell as you would experience after a thunder storm For more information about call centre or contact centre or back office headsets see www. crystel.co.za

G R E AT E X E P E R I E N C E

great experience THE ANATOMY OF A

By Chantel Botha

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

G R E AT E X E P R I E N C E

SOMETIMES I long for great experiences because most of our experiences today are bland or fraught with problems. The conversation around the dinner table is often a competition for who has had the poorest service or the worst experience.

• Experiences today are what they are for the following reasons:

quality assurance, which makes it hard

• Experiences are not designed. They just

and can drive the wrong approach. Often

happen by default. As companies grow,

the measures tend to introduce more fear

experiences are not usually designed to

and workarounds than actually improving

scale.

quality.

• People who deliver the experiences are disconnected from their purpose and see what they do, just as a job. • Because people are just doing a job, they are not bursting with pride for the brand they dedicate their lives to. • People are on emotional autopilot: In work environments, not all emotions are welcome. It is easier to disconnect, go on autopilot and not bring one’s heart to work. This prevents authentic, connected experiences from happening. • Companies have introduced a lot of

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

processes, procedures, compliance, and

All people want across the world irrespective of what industry they are engaged with is: • Respect – my time, my attention • Value – my choices, my money • Problem solving – solve MY problem, not yours • Simplicity – life is hard enough and we have finite time, don’t waste my time and energy on your processes. As an experience strategist and designer for the last 10 years, I am a hard grader. It takes a lot to impress me. But I would like to share a case

G R E AT E X E P E R I E N C E

Create experiences that are worth sharing, experiences that enrich people’s lives through saving them time and making them feel good.

study with you of a brand that impressed me. I was doing a keynote address at a Customer Experience conference in Rwanda and needed to book flight tickets. I went through a travel agent but found the tickets to be very expensive. I checked online with Kenya Airways and found well-priced tickets, actually half of the price given by the travel agent. I decided to book the flights to stay over in Nairobi and the price remained very good. The reason why this was such great experience? Well: • It was so easy, even the multi-city flight • The price was excellent • There were no hidden costs and complicated add-ons • I had such certainty at the end of the process that all my seats were pre-selected • The communication I received was clear and friendly • The payment part of the process felt secure and just easy I was really delighted and felt I got such a good deal. When I received an email a few days later to tell me about the upgrades to business class, I was blown away…I get to bid an amount on a business class seat for every leg of my flights. The interface was really innovative with a slider and a speed gauge that tells me what my chances are to actually get assigned the bid. There is a picture of the lounge and a list of the benefits I will have. It is really important for me to say that the Kenya Airways website is not the prettiest site I have ever used. They will most likely not be winning awards anytime soon since it lacks sophistication in design, but many

brands are obsessed about winning awards at the expense of the client’s experience. I would choose function over looks any day. The Kenya Airways web channel for booking flights is effortless, highly functional and it combines with a great product at a great price! There are so many articles out there about things going wrong.I want to invite you, let’s take our negative bias and redirect them to catching brands doing something right! Well done Kenya Airways! I cannot wait to fly with you after my great experience. Shall we say, case study episode 2 to follow. I want to leave you with a few pointers: Decide what you want your experience to be Design the experience to be true to your brand Weave your DNA of your experience into every interaction Excite and inspire your people to deliver and live the DNA of your experience Focus and be clear about what you offer and what you don’t offer My invitation to you is to create experiences that are worth sharing, experiences that enrich people’s lives through saving them time and making them feel good. Solve problems for your customers so that they don’t want anyone else to solve it. Create love for your brand!

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

CUSTOMER CENTRIC

MTN Zambia

goes customer-centric in 2018

By CICM

CROSS business industries, and world-over mobile telecommunication companies typically beat the path towards best customer service. It’s perhaps due to the fact that the telecommunications industry in general is very competitive within itself. But then again, a truism is that customer normally do not make industry-specific differentiations when it comes to appreciating good customer service, they compare best-in-class regardless of industry. This probably explains why MTN Zambia is going full-throttle on becoming more customer-centric this year.The giant telecommunications company announced in December that it is targeting growth in 2018 through the delivery of services and products that are relevant and affordable for its customers. To achieve this, MTN Zambia said it will invest in its operations to ensure customer satisfaction for its range of services that include mobile money and data services. According to MTN Chief Executive Officer Mr Charles Molapisi the company will focus on delivering superior customer experiences and in line with this, has committed 2018 to being the ‘Year of the Customer.’“As the year comes to a close, MTN is looking ahead to 2018 and building on the momentum of this year to continue with the delivery of industry leading services and products to our customers. 2018 is our ‘Year of the Customer’ and ahead of this exciting journey next year, we are announcing a significant data price slash because we believe in increasing access to affordable data and enhance connectivity for customers,” said Mr Molapisi. “During the course of the year, we have significantly brought down the cost of access to our different products and services. MTN has taken FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

a deliberate step towards dedicating 2018 to our customers and we have undertaken this decision to reduce our data rates as a reward to our customers, giving them affordable data and savings as the year comes to a close. The CEO added that MTN is committed to delivering affordable data services and will continue delivering industry-leading, affordable data across Zambia, making it easy for customers to choose bundles or price plans that are relevant to customer needs and affordability. “This is an end of year offer, rewarding our customers with discounts and we’re giving them massive savings on data while offering value-added services such as MTN TV Plus and MTN Music Plus,” he said. The price slash comes ahead of MTN’s commitment to make 2018 the ‘Year of the Customer’ with its customer-facing solutions to financial inclusion, connectivity and access to information.“We are really focusing on our customers next year and this is our launch pad for solutions and services that place our customers first, giving them real value to being on Zambia’s number one network and internet leader,” he added.MTN is not only taking the lead with data solutions in Zambia but investing in ensuring nationwide connectivity including rural areas. The company has invested in fibre network that runs from Lusaka to Nakonde, Kalumbila in North-Western province and in Ndola.“When we talk about reducing prices on data, we’re backing this up with real, industry leading services. We are working to deliver internet access closer to the people and we will continue to review our price points to ensure that our customers benefit from our investment in data,” he said.

F U T U R E O F C O N TA C T C E N T R E S

THE FUTURE OF CONTACT CENTRES by Rod Jones 32

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

F U T U R E O F C O N TA C T C E N T R E S

In just a few years, the global call centre or contact centre industry will be 50 years old. It will be half a century since the first true Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) was deployed in the Continental Airlines call centre in Houston, Texas, giving birth to a vast, global industry employing millions, and handling many billions of customer interactions every year; and still growing.

here are many highly sophisticated contact centres in operation throughout the world, utilising a raft of leading-edge technologies to enable rapidly maturing customer experience strategies. In many of these organisations, the tactics, techniques and operational disciplines are now well matured. They have embraced many of the Cx enablers such as analytical tools, artificial intelligence, machine learning, knowledge management and ‘The Cloud’. They have the experience, the skills and the budgets to do so. At the other end of the scale, in many developing regions, call centres and contact centres are only now becoming an integral part of the business landscape. Sadly, in many of these regions there is a critical shortage of real contact centre skills and experience, both at an operational level, and even more concerning, in the boardroom. In the absence of real knowledge, many organisations continue to make irrational and misinformed decisions relating to the establishment and operation of new call centres or contact centres. In some cases, these costly mistakes are the consequence of naivety or pure ignorance. In other cases, the procurement of inappropriate technologies put into the hands

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

of inexperienced and untrained managers and call centre staff, is often due to pressure and ‘over-sell and overf-promise’ by equally overzealous vendors. How can organisations ensure that their contact centres are effective, efficient, and ‘future proof’? First, it is wise to look backwards, to learn from the past; to leverage the learnings, the accumulated knowledge and the experience of others; the skills that can be harnessed to provide Cx planners and decision-makers with the massive advantage and benefits of hindsight. This knowledge is today freely available from the likes of a myriad of websites, newsletters, blogs, books, consultancies and professional associations. Once equipped with the applicable knowledge relating to customer experience, call centres and contact centres, executives will need both vision and foresight to ensure that their respective organisations adopt sound, welldocumented customer-centric strategies, and that these are inculcated and adopted throughout the organisation. Only then will the organisation be in a position to consider and make far-reaching decisions about the most appropriate technologies and operational practices for the contact centre or customer interaction. It is also of vital importance to take into consideration the realities of the rapidly-changing business and customer service environment.

C O N TA C T C E N T R E

5 Ways to Future-Proof your Contact Centre 1.Understand your Customers & their Behaviours Customers are demanding more, expecting more and are becoming more intolerant of service failures. They are often better informed, aware of their provider options, of their rights and of their ability to easily move from one provider to another. To win and retain loyalty in today’s environment requires focussed investments in customer-centric business processes, systems and welltrained staff.

2.Understand the Realities of Omnichannel Technologies

interaction), regardless of his or her preferred communication channel. And customers will definitely ‘channel hop’, often within minutes, and more often than not, about the same query or issue. In planning and deploying a contact centre that will serve the organisation’s needs well into the future, decisionmakers need to plan for a true, integrated omnichannel technology platform. They will need to avoid the pitfalls of a last-generation solutions, typically requiring ‘bolt-on’ functionality or enhancements. Integration of disparate contact centre components or options is time-consuming, costly and a hinderance to operational efficiency and effectiveness in terms of customer experience.

In the past, the telephone, fax, eMail and in some instances, SMS messaging were generally treated as clearly divided or ‘siloed’ communication channels. These interactions were largely routed and processed by specifically skilled teams or agents, or worse still, into totally separate business units, with little regard for providing standardised levels of service to customers across all of these channels. Today’s customer expects ‘all-in-one-call’ (or all-in-one

3.Pay Close Attention to Employee Experience The contact centre is the shop-window and the front door to the organisation. It’s rapidly becoming the primary ’touch point’ between the organisations’ product or service offerings and the new well-informed, fickle and demanding customer. Contact centre agents are no longer merely low-earning ‘calltakers’; they are your true brand ambassadors and they should be treated as such. Their job is often monotonous. They tend to be micro-managed. It can be an incredibly stressful working environment. Consider what needs to be done to ensure that your contact centre staff are comfortable, motivated, empathetic and passionate about their role in supporting and delivering the organisation’s customer experience vision.

4.Ensure that Business Processes Support the Cx Vision The hall-mark of a truly wellrun, efficient and effective customer interaction centre or contact centre, is that its business processes have been designed and documented from a truly customer-centric and empathetic view-point. They didn’t ‘just happen’. And they are definitely not ‘anecdotal’; in other words, processes that people ‘just know about’. Good Cx processes are processes by design, not by happenstance.

5.Plan for the Modern Interaction Centre Today, large numbers of customers already channel-hop, engaging with organisations from multiple angles around a single issue. The astute organisation will embrace this reality within the framework of the fully integrated, omnichannel customer engagement model. To be effective, a customer engagement center must provide a seamless, consistent customer experience across every touchpoint. This necessarily means the experience within the enterprise must be as seamless and consistent. It has become a strategic imperative for most organizations to deploy true CRM: a real-time single view of the customer, including all historical transaction and interaction data across all channels and devices. Going forward, intelligent skills and resource-based routing systems that remember their customers will be critical to delivering the ultimate experience. Understanding the customer’s intent and steering them to the most appropriate resource will be fundamental. Interaction analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence are the keys to getting this all right. “Men, horses and cannon are useful in battle, but strategy and planning win wars” Napoleon Bonaparte

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

F U T U R E O F C O N TA C T C E N T R E S

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

Customer Engagement is the future of

Customer Experience

By: Professor Adré Schreuder – CEO & Eldon Phukuile Head of Customer Experience Consulta Consulta (Pty) Ltd July 2018

Asking the big questions The most common questions that we get asked these days, are “How do you get started in with Customer Experience?” and second question is “What is the future of Customer Experience?” This article will share the perspective from our research and Consulting on where Customer Experience is going.

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Being in the experience business We are all in the Experience business. This may be an interesting phenomenon. Quite often, in the business-toconsumer business market, this could easily be understood. For some of organisations, or for some of us, we are in the business-to-business market. Should you wish to define it differently, we are in the business-to-businessto-consumer business, where we either facilitate, or help others to serve their customers. A story was once shared with us – the bearer is unknown, else we would pay homage. This can help us understand this fundamental concept. A company appointed a new leader. During one of his first days, he asked everyone to leave the building and go outside. Once outside, he addressed the crowd and asked everyone who directly works with and interfaces with customers to go back inside. Let’s say roughly about a third did so. Next, the leader asked that anyone who directly assists those who were inside, to go in. Roughly, the next third or so went back inside. Then the leader turn to those remaining and asked “So, what do you do here?” The point here, is that we are all in the business of Customer Experience. I often listen to old episodes of podcasts by Lynne Hunsaker where she mentions in the epilogue her mission is “making it easier and nicer for customers go get new solutions.” Jeanne Bliss wrote in Chief Customer Officer 2.0 that as Customer Experience practitioners, it is our responsibility to build this understanding in business, and to unite the organisation around a common vision for the Customer Experience.

Human emotions Human emotions, and by extension, human behaviour is all learned. We perceive things not because they are real, but because everything is learned behaviour. We have begun looking at Customer Experience through the lens of neuroscience, looking to understand how the brain and physiology react to experience. It has been found that the exact same neurons and neural network pathway fire up in the body during the memory of an experience, as during the actual experience. It is as if there is a replay or recording of the event taking place. As humans, we would apply a set of emotions and decisions to any situation that loosely reminds us of a similar event. This is driven by learned behaviour, which quickly and powerfully feeds into perceptions, and therefore decisions and behaviours that make sense to us – given past experience.

All experiences are actually perception Work by psychologists such as Ambady and Rosenthal (1992) found the tendency of thin-slicing of experience. We capture very quick references about different situations at various intervals, and stich these up together to form longer term memory patterns. We make judgements and change our behaviour, based on these patterns in different areas of life. These thin-slices are driving our perceptions and our experiences, including impacting on unrelated experiences.

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

For Customer Experience, this knowledge is new and impactful – it is like conquering new frontiers of space! Work by Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist who won the 2002 Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences showed that nations that are happier outperform nations that are generally unhappy. His theories describe a “system 1” intuitive / in-the-moment person who is fast, automatic, frequent and automatic. This is the individual that instinctively buys an ice-cream on a hot day, though less rational processing. “System 2” is more rational and slow. This system is logical and calculating, calculating and conscious. However, system 2 is arrived at through thin-slicing all of the system 1 experience together. As humans, we use our learned behaviour to build the system 2 frame and use combinations of system 1 and system 2 in decision-making. What makes the difference is context – learned behaviour from our values and belief systems, as well as our past experience. Using this knowledge in Customer Experience, it is clear than CX now vastly different to 10 and 20 years ago. Evolution of Customer Experience discipline

Roots of Customer Experience The discipline has evolved from its roots in Service Quality improvement and management in the 1980s, to Customer Service (CSAT) in the 1990s to Customer Experience from 1999 onwards (Phukuile, 2015). Customer Service is still a business function that a company provides in support of its core products (Drotskie, 2009). Customer Experience is about the Customer and their emotions and behaviour in their interactions with an organisation across respective channels and touchpoints. Management of Customer Experience seeks to generate an emotional connection by the Customer with the providers brand. One of the questions we are often asked, is “what is next for Customer Experience?” This question is both profound and problematic at the same time. It is problematic in the sense that many organizations are not getting the basics of Customer Experience right in the way they do business and how they customers need to interact with them. The Customer Experience concept is not understood, nor the strategic competitive advantage that is gained by being truly customer-focused in all aspects of operations and employee behaviour. Customer Value and Customer Experience interplay It is simply the case that Customers tend towards going business with organisations who provide what they value – primarily in the tangible product, and certainly in the Customer Experience that is delivered by design. It is a belief that we have, that every business is in the “Experience business” – like Starbucks that does not sell coffee, but a personalised consumptions experience that is meaningful to the Customer. As organisations move from an internal focus or product focus, the core product may not be the most important element any longer, but the expectation and fulfilment of the Customers’ inner sensation is. p44

BREAK CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Break Customer Experience Silos or Fail BY THE FOCUS GROUP

he Silo Mentality as defined by the Business Dictionary is a mind-set when certain departments or sectors do not wish to share information with others in the same company. This type of mentality will reduce efficiency, reduce morale, and may contribute to the death of a productive company culture.Many typical customer experience and services silo-related problems are going through changes and companies are finding it difficult to adapt. Instead, they rely too heavily on data-driven analytics and the mistake of assuming their company is doing things right, when in fact, they are not. Throw in daily disruptive challenges, and any attempt to help these silos improve, is downright difficult.Silo problems and lack of collaboration meaning basic communication across companies, originated in many separated sectors (silos) due to a lack of bridging among departments. Some of the problems can be connected with R&D, Logistics, Customer Services,

Product, Marketing, IT, Sales, Corporate C-suite level. No matter what the level, their failure to effectively communicate can be pinpointed on one area. It often can start with the leadership on the C-Suite level, or with non-collaboration or basic communication across different silos/departments in the organization. This is exactly what happened in the Samsung S7 case, where I described what really happens with the burning S7 smartphone. For example, if you hire the wrong C-Suite executives to lead do not expect to develop and obtain the right culture for your company and get the results you want. Starting around 10-15 years ago, silo adaptation for new realities became, and still is, more and more a necessity for remaining competitive. Having the wrong people on your executive staff can generate or prevent a lot of issues with silos. Having a strong visionary and change agent as CEO, CCO, or customer experience programs leadership and team, can help break down these silos walls. If you add in a touch of communication and open collaboration, you can achieve a brilliant outcome, much like a completely “synchronized factory”. Back then as example, Toyota’s factories got it right, utilizing great collaboration and communication across all functional silos, via their old JIT (Just in Time) operational and logistical strategic model. Their 38

success was based on great collaboration, communication and execution across silos, as well as outsourcing suppliers. In other words, if they could manage outside supply chain suppliers, then they could easily translate it into working within their own company.

JIT Philosophy Your company should work similarly to Toyota’s model. It will help your organization run effortlessly and efficiently. - Telefonica O2 could learn a lot from Toyota’s model, they desperately need simple synchronizations as stated in my previous article.Don’t be complacent and don’t accept any status quo! Culture, quality of hiring, bringing the right collaborative-minded executives on board can make a great difference for your organization between mediocrity and success. My case about Telefonica O2 is written proof, or even my Samsung S7 case. Unfortunately, even with this mind-set, , there are still companies, mid-size and larger, where leadership is only focused on satisfying the board and simply maximizing revenue, without honestly and efficiently focusing on the employees experience, talent development and customers and partners value, first. In the Telefonica O2 case, their store teams were trying to deliver a good experience for customers, but falling short of delivering great service. Their team was aware of the problems within their company, but lacked the flexibility and rigid processes which prevented delivering good experiences. Not because of good and empathetic people or lack of empathy, but really, due to the company core culture, and lack of understanding of customer experience and basic customer services. With this in mind, ask yourself: Can I really afford to miss out on attending CEW2018? Time is running out and tickets are limited. Book now on: http://www.focusgroupevents. com/store

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

BREAK CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

In a company separated by Silos, it’s hard to Achieve Customer Success

develop a great company mind-set for all members of his orchestra delivering the best possible experience, focusing on delivering a great concert all the time. Your customers need to perceive you as a company, led by an inspiring and authentic unique culture of excellence.

Avoid Churn Empower Employees Many companies try hard to deliver good customer experiences, but in a company separated by silos, it’s hard to achieve customer success. In the case of Telefonica O2, it’s easy to understand why this company is dysfunctional, between their stores, contact centres, omni channels team, marketing and engagement, and how damaging a rigid organization can affect their customers and employees experiences. Also, their IT team doesn’t have all systems well integrated, and is preventing fast responses for customers’ basic needs. Yes, they are trying to fix it, but their clear entrenched silos are deliberately damaging their trials to become more successful. Telefonica O2 also has strict control coming from the top leadership, instead of empowering employees to deliver best offers, services and frictionless customer experience. In their case they are simply doing the opposite, as you can read here. For instance, in order to handle my complaints, a good solution for them would have been to allocate one person to deliver VIP services, since I told them they were delivering a bad customer experience. The issue is, this VIP, basic services needs to be automated and extended to all their customers since is standard in other companies, but – for them, this is something too great and beyond their expectations… CX is about customer experiences and perception. It’s not about my own expectations of myself, as Telefonica O2 does. The services they provided me, solved my issues, but all other customers deserve at least the same level of services. The great thing in the Telefonica O2 case is they showed empathy because we complained, but they need take preventive actions more than being reactive to my discontent and dissatisfaction. Don’t wait until customers leave you….ACT! Don’t think locking in with contracts will help you as a company. If you are confident in your deliverables, you would not need to lock customers into strict contracts.

Always, make sure to be ONE entity in your customer’s eyes with digital or physical interactions! Customers are very smart! When your orchestra does not work well together and is full of inconsistences, (churn) will grow, unsatisfied customers will leave you and turn to competitors, which often have a better maestro for their orchestras. A good maestro would take preventive action to avoid bad customer experience and customer services. The waste of opportunities in this case is huge; instead of using each interaction to engage and retain customers Telefonica O2 is doing the exact opposite - turning customers away. It’s obvious - a lack of internal basic communications and talent preparation across departments. When you need their services, unfortunately they made customers pass through a real nightmare experience. A great experience is always connected with consistency and to be able to be perceived as ONE company, ONE entity. They are having a hard time integrating their acquired company E-plus, and becoming a cohesive O2 Telefonica.

Company’s basic needs

Revenue is the result of great work Much like an accomplished orchestra with a great maestro, a strong and well synchronized customer experience team should be able to effortlessly enchant your customer with amazing customer service and experience, while doing business with you. Or, in the case of an orchestra–music, such as The Johann Strauss Orchestra, of the maestro André Riau, which always delivers a great well-orchestrated experience, and does that around the world in a consistent and beautifully synchronized way. We could learn something from how Rieu leads his orchestra. The manner in which we need to lead companies that connects the leadership, and FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

Think about having all departments or silos as centres of excellence, first and add to that a great customer experience and customer services excellence culture from your CEO toward all company corners, humans I mean. Learn your customer’s journey in all its fine details and show your teams, how they are positively and negatively impacting the company outcomes. Using your company interaction or touch points, as micro business cases, a make sure to improve it yesterday if possible, as a sense of urgency. Several companies do not expend time and resources to ensure their teams understand the basics of human interactions, both positive and negative. Time to have your teams learn what they are supposed to do. Often, companies that are unable to understand their own frustrating journey from the customer’s perspective, have a hard time to tune into and put in place a great customer, employee and partner experience.

30 TACKLING THE SILOS

BASICS WITH DEEP AND EFFICIENT ACTIONS

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

TA C K L I N G T H E S I L O S

01.

Hire the right C-suite and executive teams, don’t hire penny savers, but do hire penny makers with their focus on serving customers. Hiring the right staff will deliver excellence to your customers in a proactive manner.

06.

Prepare, prevent, and plan. Well-planned customer and employee journeys will help you tremendously by showcasing the impact of each interaction and using those successful and failure cases to learn and engage your employees in successful stories and to learn from mistakes made, that is the power of a story telling. Also you can use journey maps to illustrate and pinpoint the issues. As you fix your company culture.

07.

Always share good and bad stories, shared by customers and learn from them in order to have a positive impact.

02.

Allow employees across the organization to get the most updated information all the time, both successes and failures stories.

04.

Make sure all employees have a clear understanding of how their actions can affect the customer perceptions in the end-to-end journey experience.

05.

Ensure all your organization processes and technology are well integrated, your systems, processes, capabilities, data, customer channels, and social media apps. Make sure all information is available both for your employees and customers, to ensure you look like one transparent entity.

The experiences are not limited to your services, products, interactions in the Omni channel, store or simply digital and physical interactions, it is beyond this and is more about your culture of excellence, spread throughout your company. In a nutshell, have the right strategy and tactics.

12.

Make sure to always be transparent with employees and customers– authenticity and honesty wins customers in our social world. Don’t hide issues, solve them and explain how you are doing that (transparency wins).

03.

11.

Customers are smart and see exactly what and how you are doing and developing your customer experience and which organization culture you have.

15.

Remember, it’s not about your mistakes; it’s more about your company’s ability to learn fast and reverse any wrong cycle of service and customer experience fast and efficient.

16.

ALWAYS treat your employees as you would want to be treated, and how you would want them to take care of your customers.

13.

08.

If you are in Europe, Americas and APAC, and some parts of Africa, you probably live in a multicultural society. Bottom line–prepare your company for multiculturalism. Adapt to the new realities of the global economy and stop preaching that in your country, you only speak your language. Your outward facing consumer contact should be offered in at least 2 languages if not more. Here in Europe where we have even more languages and cultures.

09.

Truly understand what customer experience is and its points of interaction across your organization by developing department teams to work with the Chief of Customer Officer in order to get things done.

10.

Internally, go into details, analyse your results, do not rely on self-satisfactory metrics and measures that are not delivering the end result. Often, this simply gives some sense of relief or satisfaction to your C-suite, and mistakenly makes them assume they are on the right track. Better to ask yourself, if my metrics and measures are so good, why do I still have high churn and customers sharing their frustrating stories across the globe?

14.

Bear in mind what you think is not important, your customers will tell you how are you doing in delivering your services and experience by sticking with you or not or complaining… Their perception of you is what you are in several cases.

17.

Analyse interactions throughout journeys between humans and digital and humans again… it can be a good way to prove your organization’s ability to interact in a more efficient way.

Remember, customer experience is not only how your company interacts with customers or potential buyers, it’s much more. From the production, purchase, distribution, R&D, and product marketing, all are impacting the CX and are also impacted by the constantly dynamic challenges, which we have every day in all our organizations. Remember, we are changing and evolving everyday faster than ever, and if your organization can not follow this fast pace of transformation, well act fast and adapt.

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

TA C K L I N G T H E S I L O S

27.

Focus on retaining your customers. It’s never too late to adapt and learn

18.

Connect your metrics, measurements of customer experience with your executives and leadership teams KPI’s and reward them for accomplishments. Always recognize talent that goes above and beyond their job description.

19.

Treat your company like an orchestra. It will depend on your leadership and ability as maestro to achieve great culture of excellence or not. Simple!

20.

Make sure in some cultures, as in the DACH region, you help your people develop better empathy with customers. If this doesn’t come naturally to them, think about investing in empathy training or transfer them to more suitable positions that better match their personalities… Often, people who naturally don’t serve others well, will probably not be a good match for customer interactions.

21.

Remember, you are dealing with customers’ emotions, connect with their hearts AND brains. Customers are people like you reading this article.

23.

Encourage collaboration, co-creation and open communication within your organization to help your company grow, and apply this same rule of honesty with your customers. If you care for them often, they will care for you as a company.

24.

Ensure you listen to your customers’ feedback, and that your company stops treating every silo as a separate entity. Break silos separation vicious and damaging syndrome.

25.

Reward customers that help you, create a legion of promoters in your employees and customers - start to care about them now.

26.

Reward customer and employees feedbacks, and pay attention to what your customers are telling you

22.

Value customers that criticize your company! They are the best source of feedback, loyalty, and referrals that you can possibly dream of. Value your customers or lose them.

28.

Demonstrate throughout your company, how to get things done. Don’t use “fluff services customers perceive you.”

29.

Ensure the information obtained from your customers (feedbacks via different sources (VOC, VOE, VOP) and human interactions is used for better planning and execution. Make sure they know you are hearing them, and actively make improvements that align their wishes with your deliverables.

30.

Think about how the right culture of service and customer experience could prevent basic problems in your organization. It’s never too late! Even though this was supposed to happen a few years ago, always focus on making yourself and your company better. How you will act from this point forward will define the longevity and success of your company. Some questions for you: 1. How is your company breaking the silos walls among divisions or departments? 2. What are you doing to instigate as leader, change and collaboration? 3. Which actions are you applying to overcome silos limitations, and what so far are key frictions that you encountered? 4. What have I failed to mention here?

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

GOLDEN RULES to creating memorable customer experiences

By Nathalie Schooling rands that fail to think about and act on customer service and customer experience in today’s competitive market will lose out to someone who is. That said, there’s a difference between the two: while customer service relates to an action and is more transactional, customer experience is about the emotion created every time a consumer interacts with a brand; which makes customer service just one element of the entire customer experience. Like any other part of the business strategy, great customer experiences are not incidental, they are planned for and executed. Designing customer experiences requires a thorough understanding of customers and what is important to them. This is where Big Data, if mined correctly, proves hugely valuable by predicting and personalising customer experiences with creative and innovative execution on insights. There are three crucial factors to consider when designing compelling customer experiences – golden rules, if FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

you will. The first is consistency. Great experiences must be seamless, from start to finish. Remember, it only works if it works every time. Second, eat your own lunch. Make sure that you know what it’s like to do business with your own organisation. Without real first-person insight, you cannot create meaningful customer experiences. And finally, never be happy with the status quo. There is always a better way, find it! While every organisation’s Golden Rules may differ, there are certain essential common elements to creating memorable customer experiences. For example, the business’ vision and purpose must be clearly articulated to the team, and where customer experience fits into this must be defined. Once the big picture is clear, develop an end-to-end Customer Journey Map with relevant enablers such as customer relationship management (CRM) interfaces and loyalty programmes. Metrics and measures should be clarified, as well as how ongoing client research will be conducted, closing the loop to individual performance measures. Finally, ensure that staff recruitment and development initiatives line up with the client experiences you hope to deliver.

Consideration needs to be given to the people employed, new staff inductions, how staff engagement is sustained and how performance is managed. Everything - both internal and external - must align with the planned client experiences. Ultimately, the best way to ensure success is to assign accountability for the outcome of measures and metrics to specific individuals or departments. It’s not necessary to have a big budget and specialist teams to ensure great customer experiences. It has very little to do with money spent and everything to do with mindset and organisational culture. It’s about putting the customer first and hiring the right staff, as well as creating a hundred small ongoing initiatives that ensure the customer is at the centre of all decisions, and not just one big thing. Looking ahead, neglecting to meaningfully engage with customers will have a direct long-term impact on your bottom line. Nathalie Schooling is the CEO of nlighten. The big take-out: Customer experience is the one thing that will create an emotional connection between brand and consumer, which is why putting customers at the forefront of every decision is so vital.

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE p 37

Customer Engagement is the future of Customer Experience Customer Engagement Our perspective, towards the next wave in Customer Experience will be characterised by the statement, “Ask not what you can do for your customer, but what your customer can do for you.” In our view, the future of Customer Experience is in the area of Customer Engagement. This is not defined by brands screaming from the hilltops. Rather, it is a customer response to their Customer Experience, leading to a reaction in terms of behaviour. This behaviour is Engagement. When customers buy again, respond, recommend – through action, not intent – and show commitment, this is Engagement. We used to believe that a satisfied Customer is a loyal Customer. This is not true anymore. A satisfied customer is more likely to show the right engaged behaviour, but only when touched in the right way through personalisation that comes from truly understanding who they are, or by delivering wildly theatrical and memorable experiences. This has been achieved through a concept of mass customisation and co-creation. Mass customisation to a target market of one We’ve seen this concept of mass customisation and co-creation play out at Bears R Us or Build-ABear. The entire operation is set up to make the customer build their own, customised product. The customer does ALL the work (for you), walks away with a truly individualised and customised product, has just spend hours in your store picking colours and materials and finished, and LOVES IT! They are proud of, and show their product to everyone, talking about the experience with passion and enjoyment. This is it! This is Customer Engagement.

Summary Customer Experience is influenced by all of our human past experiences. We create learned behaviour that influence our decision-making, through a combination of rational and emotional cognitive processes, as seen through the filters of our learned behaviour at a neuro-scientific level. Shaw & Dobrev (2012) stated that positive emotions are a differentiator because Customers will never forget how you make them feel. Organisations can adopt a “fix the basics” approach to eliminate negative emotions, and an “ideal experience” approach to identify the intended positive emotions and design the Customer Experience to deliver that. The aim of a good Customer Experience is to bring loyalty and increase profitability. Customer Engagement is shows the actual behaviour of Customers, not just the intent. You should be spending your effort strategically designing and delivering for this in your business. References Ambady, N; Rosenthal, R (1992). “Thin slices of expressive behavior as predictors of interpersonal consequences: A meta-analysis”. Drotskie, A (2009). “Customer Experience as the strategic differentiator in Retail Banking”. Doctoral Thesis. Phukuile, Eldon (2015). “Customer value creation in the South African mobile telecommunications industry“. Masters Dissertation. Schreuder, Adré (2018). “Customer Engagement – the next wave of Customer Experience”. Interview. Shaw, C; Dobrev, Z (2012). “The 7 key ingredients of a successful Customer Experience program in telecoms”.

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

C U S T O M E R E X P E R I E N C E I N T H E D I G I TA L A G E

Delivering

an Unmatched Customer Experience in the Digital Age by John Tschohl

Creating highly engaged customers is forcing companies to provide their customers with a consistent experience whenever and wherever they need it…. digitally. Did you know that highly engaged customers buy 90% more frequently, spend 60% more per purchase, and have 3x the annual value (compared to the average customer).That’s a huge revenue opportunity you could be taking advantage of by digitally transforming your business! But, in order to deliver on a better customer experience, you first need to understand who this new kind of digital customer is and what they want. It’s clear that the customer is firmly in the driver’s seat.

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

C U S T O M E R E X P E R I E N C E I N T H E D I G I TA L A G E

Personalized customer experiences Today’s consumer wants organizations to treat them as unique individuals, and know their personal preferences and purchase history. According to Accenture, 75% of customers admit being more likely to buy from a company that: Recognizes them by their name, Knows their purchase history, and Recommends products based on their past purchases.This sounds like Amazon, one of the best retailers in the world and the best part is customers are happy for Amazon to use their data. Technology has empowered customers to get what they want, whenever they want, and how they want it. Again, Amazon is a “Master” at providing this service to every single customer.

Consumers now expect immediate response (speed) to customer service requests on social media and they would rather engage digitally as opposed to pick up the phone. They also expect the same response times on weekends as on weekdays. This need for instant gratification has forced organizations to remain accessible and on-demand, 24/7 with live people, no IVR and answer in one to two rings. Customers expect responses to be tailored to their needs and issues. They do not want to re-explain the issue Everything is now happening in real time, which is why those companies that can offer speed, personalization and accessibility to their customers will win out in the long-run. Today’s consumers are not loyal to a single mode. They browse in-store, shop online, share feedback through mobile apps and ask questions foryour support team on social media networks In today’s fast-moving, always connected and always on society, companies are forced to seriously consider implementing a digital transformation strategy, if they haven’t already. Digital transformation offers organizations an opportunity to engage modern buyers, and deliver on their expectations of a seamless customer experience regardless of channel or place.

3.) Make Your Website Customer Service Friendly Whatever you think about your website: it’s one of the main channels your customers will use to figure out how to solve a problem they have. Do you see your website as a sales tool? Do you see it as an interactive version of your brand? Maybe you feel as though it’s one of those things that “you just have to have nowadays”. I promise you that your customers will search your site for information, even if it’s only to find a phone number to call you. What are you waiting for? The digital disruption has revealed fantastic opportunities for higher levels of customer engagement. The time is now for customer service teams to take advantage of this and step up to the plate. Think like your customer and give them what they are looking for. “Deliver first-rate digital experiences and watch your customer knock it out of the park for you.” John Tschohl John Tschohl is a professional speaker, trainer, and consultant. He is the President and founder of Service Quality Institute (the global leader in customer service) with operations in over 40 countries. John is a self-made millionaire traveling and speaking more than 50 times each year. He is considered to be one of the foremost authorities on service strategy, success, empowerment and customer service in the world. John’s monthly strategic newsletter is available online at no charge. He can also be reached on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

1.) Customers Expect Immediate ResponseSpeed matters. How fast you get your product to a customer, how quickly you can accomplish a service task for a client. A three day turnaround on an email, or a long list of menu options on an automated phone system drives customers crazy.

2.) Customers Will Figure It Out With or Without YouIt’s always better that they figure it out with you. Cutting-edge technology devised by Apple and Google has led consumers to expect a digital service experience that is clean, simple and user-friendly. No second chances to make a first impression in today’s world. And, if you want to know how to do-it-yourself, just look it up on Youtube and 9 times out of ten, it’s there with instructions. So much easier than reading manufacturer’s instructions.

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

M E A S U R I N G C U S T O M E R S AT I S FA C T I O N

UGANDA goes digital on measuring customer satisfaction

HE telecommunications s e c tor g lo b a l l y i s arguably the one of the largest ser vices industries, and as with all service industries customer satisfaction is no doubt a critical element. There are seven telecommunications companies serving over 21 million subscribers in a population of over 34 million. And more than 95 percent of internet connections are made using mobile phones. But how exactly can one effectively measure the satisfaction of around 21 million individuals? So, even if the particular service provider has is listening to its customers’ complaints or issues on, say, social media it might still be missing the real issues if it’s not paying attention to the numbers. And that’s where a quality of experience (QoE) monitoring tool comes in. QoE is a measure of the delight or annoyance of a customer’s experiences with a service (for example, web browsing, phone call, television broadcast). It’s a holistic concept, similar to the area of user experience, but with its roots in telecommunications. W WMore broadly, QoE is an emerging multidisciplinary field based on social psychology, cognitive science, economics, and engineering science, focused on understanding overall human quality requirements. To this extent, earlier this year the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) initiated a process to purchase equipment to measure customer satisfaction with regards to communication package provided by Uganda’s service providers. The UCC issued a notice of invitation for sealed

bids for supply, delivery, and installation of a QoE monitoring tool. “UCC has allocated funds to be used for monitoring quality of experience for voice and broadband services delivered to the end users,” said the commission in a notice. The QoE asks the question: Is the customer (who is ‘always right’) always a satisfied one? Perhaps not necessarily! The magic of the QoE measurement QoE appears to provide a more rounded method of measuring customer satisfaction, especially in sectors that deal with digital content. As a measure of the end-to-end performance at the service level from the user’s perspective, QoE is an important metric for the design of systems and engineering processes. This is particularly relevant for video services, for example, because due to their high traffic demands, bad network performance may highly affect the user’s experience. QoE metrics are typically measured at the end devices and can conceptually be seen as the remaining quality after the distortion introduced during the preparation of the content and the delivery through the network, until it reaches the decoder at the end device. Every business enterprise would like all of its customers to be 100% satisfied all of the time, but that is yet unrealistic. What QoE does is to help ensure that the particular company’s customer satisfaction key performance indicators are going in the right direction. And the UCC is in the right direction!

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

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www.cbagroup.com CBA is regulated by the Central Bank of Kenya. FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

time for more.

PROPER PERSPECT I VES

Proper Perspectives Prevents Poor

Performance in Delivering Excellent Service.

“Even if a defect is not your fault, your customer will associate the issue with doing business with you.” John DiJulius By Benson Mukandiwa – CMgr MCMI- Chartered Manager

going or empathetic. Customer Service is the cheapest approach with the biggest and farthest reaching impact in business growth.

Power of Shared Vision – Entrepreneurial thinking

Confidence propels proper personal Image – Treat the customer the way you would like to be treated. Self-confidence leads to positive interactions because if a person feels good about himself or herself, it is more likely he or she will be more comfortable communicating with people and working in teams. Customers want to know that the employee they are dealing with is confident and is capable of giving them the necessary support they need to meet their needs. They need the assurance that the advice, recommendations or products they are receiving are coming from someone is who confident and knows what he/she is doing. In customer service, it is always best to test for personality and attitude, then train for knowledge and skills. Be more concerned about how much the candidate cares about people than about how much they know. It is easier to teach a person how to use a computer, or make a calculation than it is to train the same person to be patient, friendly, out50

has to permeate every part of the business and not just for the business owner. Everyone needs to be working in the same direction. Employees must think in terms of how they create value for the business. Customer Service will make a company. NO customer service will kill it from the top down or the bottom up. Everyone should read how to Win Friends and Influence People - twice - one person company or a mega organization from forklift operator to the CEO - arrogance will drive people away never to return. The most likable people generate their own energy. Their attitude does not depend on everything going well and everyone being so grateful for their good work. They are just positive because they are positive. I know all the reasons this is hard. I’ve had years in which nothing in my career seemed to be working. Was I positive the whole time? No. And that was probably a big part of the problem. FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

PROPER PERSPECT I VES

Kim Cameron, Associate Dean of Executive Education at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, cites the power of the heliotrope effect. He writes: “This effect is defined as the tendency in all living systems toward that which gives life and away from that which depletes life—toward positive energy and away from negative energy. All living systems have an inclination toward the positive—for example, plants lean toward the light, people learn and remember positive information faster and better than negative information, positive words predominate over negative words in all languages, all life forms from bacteria to mammals possess an inclination toward positive energy—so strategies that capitalize on the positive similarly tend to produce life-giving, flourishing outcomes in individuals and organizations.” BUSINESS HINT: don’t fight a natural law.

Bad habits from traditions in some cultures not good for customer service. – Sometimes, some owners and employees treat some customer as an equal and reciprocate!!!With the business shifting online, unfortunately less attention is given to the quality of customer service when it comes to face to face interaction. Customer service all over is shocking at the moment, I mean from across many African cultures that clients deal with especially in restaurants, retail shops and banks. Monopoly is what ruined customer service. Bad habits from traditions in some cultures that get integrated in corporate cultures. Products that come from places in our planet with these old ways reflect at their point of sale. And in addition, it’s NEVER about how much someone makes, it’s about how much they value what that experience and product is bringing for them... many people without deep pockets will “find budget” for a few high end items because it makes them feel a certain way.... high end stores need to teach this to their people! There’s an old sales adage which says, “People buy from people they like.” Based on this, one would assume many ‘high end customers’ have arrogant, high end attitudes and like to buy from salespeople who are more like them. Recently, I spoke with a guy who left a job selling ‘high end cars’ because he got reprimanded by his sales manager for smiling and saying ‘hello’ to a walk-in customer.

The attitude of management is reflected on Frontline Staff. – When one walks into a store and observe that just one person has an unpleasant attitude, just leave I’ve come to realize that if just one person has that attitude, then that is the attitude of management. Once in a store at checkout, there was the attitude. Well she got an “excuse me?” Then a few “can you repeat that please?” This was after I had purchased quite a few pieces of clothing. Guess they were accustomed to someone purchasing more than two items. It seems apathy towards customer service is prevalent everywhere. It is suspected there are many reasons for this. Many employees have never had exceptional service mirrored back to them. Customer service is a skill not an innate trait so more training needs to be done in this area. The idea of serving others (business, organizations and some political systems) is lost. Customer service, like life, requires acknowledging our interdependence. This is opposite of the trend in all areas of independence. The last to me is the most frightening of all. Every role in every organization and business is a service role. People forget that sometimes. The answer is always “Yes” (I hear you) “and” (What if we try x; Let me suggest x; that could work really well if we did x; FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

I can advise x; Sounds perfect...let’s do it - and give the person, customer, client the public credit they deserve.). It helps to have served in a customer service setting as a teenager, when we got paid minimum wage but people responded with an extra smile or thank you, or simply relief when you provided great service, especially when they needed just to have the kindness shown. Having been in the retail sector for many years at different levels, I don’t understand this mentality. I have experienced this sort of behaviour many times and actually call the salespeople out every time! How else will they get it unless they hear about their behaviour? What are the trainers training these people?

Arrogance belongs in the dictionary not in customer service. – It amazes that everyone wants to bash customer service without realizing that they are directly responsible for its poor state. Front line customer service people are the lowest paid, the company does not invest time and money to train them properly even though they are the first point of customer contact and represent the brand and the store. The excuse given is that they leave and hence it’s not worth investing in them. What a flawed thought process. The other excuse given is that it would cost the company too much and they would be forced to raise prices which customers would be unwilling to pay and hence the business would not do well, another flawed thought process. I am sure some of you are retail and business owners. Start treating your front line customer service people with a lot more respect, pay them a lot more than the minimum wage, train them well and make them your brand ambassadors. Invest in them and watch how they take your sales and customer experience to a new level. Always look to owners to set the tone on customer service. The in store help is just a reflection of their training and management choices. This lack of good customer service seems to be very pervasive when the economy is good - watch those same places when the economy slows: almost 360 degrees phony attention to “good customer service”. Benson Mukandiwa CMgr, F.CICRM, F.ZIM, M.IAF, M.CMI, M.MAZ is a renowned Customer Service Strategist, Business Analyst, Internationally published Author, Research Fellow in Customer Management. He has published industry journals, articles in refereed journals, and delivered conference papers at both local and international conferences. He is He is an Associate writer and the Editor In Chief for The Customer Magazine the premier publication on Customer Service and Call Centre management the CICM Global’ s official magazine which is distributed across Africa. Email: benmuk@gmail.com

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

GUIDELINES TO CONSIDER

t is general knowledge that customer satisfaction is a key differentiator in today’s highly competitive business market environment. But the new generation of customers are becoming more selective and educated and do not just want to be satisfied. These customers want to be delighted, experiencing feelings of surprise and joy during their engagement with the brand. To secure this, business in Africa needs to provide customers with greater value by meeting or exceeding their expectations. For example, enhanced service levels can add value by enabling businesses to exceed customer expectations. Higher service levels also strengthen the customer’s commitment towards the business, ultimately leading to retention and loyalty. Below are a few guidelines on creating customer delight to assist businesses in Africa to secure a competitive advantage in the customer relationship domain:

DO YOUKNOW HOW TO DELIGHT YOUR CUSTOMERS ? ? ? ? ?

SOME GUIDE LINES TO CONSIDER Foster a service culture that supports a customer delight environment Business in Africa should develop a focus on creating experiences that will ensure customer delight. Such an approach will positively stimulate customers’ attitude, making them more willing to return to the business and to share positive word-of-mouth experiences with peers, family and friends. Customers should also experience high levels of service delivery by engaging with employees who are skilled, proficient, communicative and knowledgeable. This highlights the importance of employee training, especially for frontline employees who engage directly with customers where they gain their first impression and experience of the business brand. To this end, the post-purchase experience of the customer should also be favourable and include the provision of high-quality service deliverables to secure a memorable experience.

Secure customer delight through providing an individualised service offering An individualised customer service approach should be developed that meets each customer’s service requirements and is based on personal engagement with them that ensures their satisfaction and ultimate delight. To achieve such delightful service interactions, business in Africa must strive to make each service engagement with customers completely positive for them, so that the business brand is associated with a favourable customer experience before, during and after the engagement. This requires that service employees deliver a one-on-one service that is customised to the needs and wants of the individual and is supported by professional, empathetic communication through which customers can feel a genuine desire to understand and fulfil their service expectations.

Secure customer delight by enhancing the service delivery skills of employees The ability to deliver a delightful experience to customers depends on the level of service skill training provided for employees. The training and development of employees should encompass aspects such as communication and listening skills; how having a professional body posture and understanding personal space limits can aid in engaging with customers; linguistic writing and speaking skills; enhanced product knowledge; personal grooming tips; the use of non-verbal cues; and conflict

resolution. In addition, business in Africa should conduct active research, with intervals of no more than three months, on what customers perceive as value in the delivery process. Customer value perception can be shaped by aspects such as costs, accessibility of the service or product offering, the time it takes to deliver the physical product or service, the product variety available, and after-sales service support.

Obtain an understanding of the needs and wants of the customer base Customers want to feel special and appreciated. As human beings, customers have the desire to be noticed, heard and respected. That is why a compassionate approach towards customers is fundamental to a positive customer experience. Businesses in Africa can increase their customers’ experiences of satisfaction and delight by having true, passionate commitment to customers and maintaining high service levels during all business hours, irrespective of the day of the week. Customer enquiries and complaints should be addressed quickly and professionally, illustrating the business supplier’s positive intention to assist the customer as a key priority. Finally, be open to the ideas, recommendations and criticisms of customers, as their contribution can help to improve the service experience. It should be remembered that engaging truthfully with customers will assist businesses in Africa, whether old or new, to nurture strong relationships with them. Author: Prof. Mornay Roberts-Lombard Department of Marketing Management School of Consumer Intelligence and Information Systems University of Johannesburg Republic of South Africa Contact: +27 (0)11 559 3031 E-mail: mornayrl@uj.ac.za ……………………………..

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

FOCUS ON PRODUCT OVER PEOPLE

THE COST OF

FOCUSING ON PRODUCT OVER PEOPLE By Nathalie Schooling

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

“P In the case of a restaurant the customer experience is not only the dining experience. It is the booking, how you were greeted at the door and seated, the service you received through to how a complaint or query was handled.

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

ack your bags and get ready for a n adventure.” Words posted just a week ago on Mel issa’s Instagram page (as part of an advert for one of t hei r Peppertree Bags) seems strangely appropriate, given the events that unfolded this week. Melissa’s the muchloved cafe, restaurant and retail franchise business is to be liquidated, cashing assets to pay unsecured creditors. That’s a big blow. Not only to those of us who’ve come to depend on the lift offered by a quick shot of robust Melissa’s coffee on the way to work, the wholesome comfort of a gourmet soup or the indulgence of a sticky sweet chocolate brownie. It is especially a big blow for the more than 400 people employed by Melissa’s nation-wide. So, what went wrong? To date there has been no formal communication or response by Melissa’s regarding the businesses’ impending liquidation, and there are sure to be many factors that’ve played a part in what has unfolded. However, from a customer experience perspective, we can make some observations. Customer experience is the sum of all the interactions a customer has with a business and its products or services. In the case of a restaurant the customer experience is not only the dining experience. It is the booking, how you were greeted at the door and seated, the service you received through to how a complaint or query was handled. An effective customer experience must therefore ensure that each point of interaction with the customer is planned for and executed to perfection. Focusing on just one or two aspects of the customer journey, to the detriment of others, will in the long run erode customer loyalty. In a world where customers have more power than ever, multi-level access to brands and the means to voice their opinions through numerous social media channels, not giving heed to the importance of your entire customer experience comes at a very high cost. The customer experience you offer is just as important as your product. Melissa’s has always been known for providing exceptionally high-quality products made with only the best ingredients served in a pleasant homely environment. For this, Melissa’s was able to charge a premium and their clientele happy to pay for it. The consumption of a product is however just one part of the customer experience and, in most cases, a relatively small part of the experience. Even a cursory look at Melissa’s interactions with customers on their social media channels reveals a disconnect. On the one hand exceptional quality products on the other unhappy customers. Rated below a 3 on average by its customers, Melissa’s responses to complaints on social media were often delayed, indecisive or just not forthcoming. Taken in isolation one may be able to reason away the veracity

FOCUS ON PRODUCT OVER PEOPLE

of an unhappy customer, but when there is a consistent trend you need to sit up and take notice. Melissa’s didn’t and are paying the highest price for it. Customer expectations are higher than ever and if your customer experience is not constantly given attention to and nurtured it will negatively impact on customer loyalty, retention and ultimately revenue. So, what do customers want? In a word, empathy. We all want to be understood and cared for. In the case of Melissa’s. Could it be that those very same exacting standards of quality, the quest to increase the company’s footprint and the drive to offer a wider range of products to an increasingly diverse market all eventually served to undermine the very spirit with which Melissa’s was founded? When the business started, more than 21 years ago, it was about Melissa (van Hoogstraten) shar ing her passions, love for food and the good things in life. Intuitively the market responded. It was fresh, authentic and relatable because the brand was the embodiment of a real person, made even more real by sharing her name. You had empathy. As the brand matures, menus grow, product ranges expand, and the temptation grows stronger to focus on the things you feel you can control. The focus shifts from customer experience to product, from authenticity, humility and empathy to sales, projections and growth. The consequence? Your business grows quicker than you can cope with, you need to employ more people than you can adequately train and educate to be your authentic brand voice to the customer and you become less adaptable to meet the needs of a changing market, leaving your customers feeling increasingly disillusioned. As Melissa’s braces for the inevitably messy process of dealing with insolvency, the market will look back with nostalgia at a business that, when it started, truly offered something new and unique, but now as it closes has shown the very real consequence of focusing on product rather than customer experiences. *Nathalie Schooling is the CEO of nlighten, one of South Africa’s foremost customer experience companies.

M-PEAS IN ETHOPIA

“N

one of you believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.” This is one of the translations of the Sahih al-Buk har i or whose English version is known as the Meanings of Sahih Al-Bukhari. It encapsulates the recent move by Kenya’s world famous mobile money M-Pesa to spread its wings into Ethiopia. Kenyans have benefitted immensely in respect of financial inclusion through the role played by M-Pesa. And now Ethiopians could experience the same. A major problem being experienced by most communities in Sub Saharan Africa relates to limited access to financial services (banking and investment products). One of the main reasons for the large unbanked population in Africa is geographical inaccessibility and poor infrastructure, with many of the unbanked living in remote rural areas. This, combined with the high cost of banking services and a lack of financial education and understanding, creates very high barriers to banking for poor rural populations. With over 102 million inhabitants, Kenya’s southern-most neighbor – Ethiopia - is the most populous landlocked country in the world and the second-most populous nation in Sub Saharan Africa. So it’s easy to see how financial inclusion could benefit such a populous country as traditional banks typically lack the capacity to effectively service such an expanse market.Earlier this July, Kenya’s largest telecommunications firm, Safaricom confirmed that it is in discussions with the Ethiopian government over negotiations to launch M-PESA in the country. The company’s mobile money service in the neighboring nation in order to capitalize from the huge market of approximately 100 million people. In being benevolent, there’s nothing wrong with having a bit of self-interest too. It is clear that the deal could see Safaricom grow its revenue and deposits in a market that is more than twice as large as the Kenyan market. Indications are that Safaricom’s parent company, the UK-based Vodafone, is looking to license the trade name ‘M-Pesa’ to a local Ethiopian bank. The M-Pesa service currently features more than 152,000 agents and has over 53 million subscribers – of which 23 million are in Kenya and 30 million are spread across 10 other countries. But the possible expansion into Ethiopia is a potential game-changer, for both Kenya’s Safaricom and Ethiopian market itself. The former is tapping into the biggest market for mobile money services. And for Ethiopia, the benefits should be immense.“Financial inclusion is one of Africa’s great success stories

Kenya’s M-Pesa could drive financial inclusion in Ethiopia By CICM

of this decade. Mobile money solutions and agent banking now offer affordable, instant, and reliable transactions, savings, credit, and even insurance opportunities in rural villages and urban neighborhoods where no bank had ever established a branch,” wrote IFC’s CEO Philippe Le Houerou and Mastercard Foundation President and CEO Reeta Roy in a recent report entitled Partnership for Financial Inclusion program, done by the IFC and the Mastercard Foundation, Proponents of the mobile money market see it as the future solution to the unbanked worldwide, especially in Africa, where 66 percent of its inhabitants do not have access to a formal bank account. The need for a solution now is ever greater and presents a huge opportunity for growth and investment. “Mobile money is available in 85 percent of countries globally where the vast majority of the population lacks access to a formal financial institution and sub-Saharan Africa continues to account for the majority of live mobile money services. The entire African mobile money market is set to grow from $2.73 billion in 2015 to $14.27 billion by 2020 – and it is certainly true that mobile operators and telecom networks have taken the lead in capturing this market and therefore promoting financial inclusion. More than 100 mobile operators in Africa have launched mobile money services according to The Advanced Payments Report 2016. “However, is the current mobile money services the solution that it is deemed to be? The mobile money market is already in the process of changing the landscape of financial inclusion in Africa. There are over 800 million mobile subscribers that are active P-2-P mobile money users. But to get the economies developing faster, this market still needs to evolve. It needs to find answers to demands not fulfilled by the incumbent mobile money providers,” writes Joy Braun, founder of the London-based e-money provider AinFin. According to the recently published World Bank Findex survey, financial inclusion in Sub-Saharan Africa has “increased dramatically” from 23% in 2011 to 43% in 2017. With these figures in mind, Kenya’s M-Pesa’s expansion into neighboring Ethiopia has significant potential to drive financial inclusion in that country.

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

TIGER BRANDS, THE LISTERIOSIS CRISIS IN SOUTH AFRICA AND THE PRINCIPLE OF TRUST – A CONSUMER VIEWPOINT

onsumer behaviour today is increasingly built on the principle of trust. Trust in a brand, in both product quality and service delivery, is founded on the principles of honesty, integrity and reliability. If any one of these elements has been removed in a relationship between a customer and a seller, the customer is in doubt about their own relationship with the brand or the company that represents the brand. When the company experiences a crisis, open communication about its causes and effects are expected, ensuring that the consumer feels empowered and informed. This is especially important today when consumers can share their thoughts and experiences immediately through social media platforms, with positive or deadly effects. Should customers not feel confident in their relationship with a company, brand or product, they will communicate this to friends, colleagues and family members, with a negative effect on the brand image. In terms of the Tiger Brands and listeriosis saga in South Africa, the question to be asked is whether Tiger Brands (part of the Enterprise Food brand) responded fast enough to listeriosis claims after the outbreak at its Polokwane factory. Taking responsibility, reacting immediately

and responding to feedback is critical in securing trustworthy communications with the South African public. The local public have asked questions about the level of quality control at the Limpopo plant where the meat processing happened and what measures are in place to ensure that similar problems do not occur at other meat processing plants of Tiger Brands in South Africa. At this point customers will trust a brand such as Tiger Brands if they perceive the company to be honest. Tiger Brands chief executive Lawrence MacDougall stated: “We are doing everything we can to get to the root cause of LST6 being found in our Polokwane plant. We have appointed a team of local and international scientific experts. Our Polokwane and Germiston factories remain closed whilst we conduct a deep cleaning process” (African News Agency, 2018). Despite this promise made by Tiger Brands, the Sunday Times of 11 March 2018 reported that the head of the Centre for Enteric Diseases at the South African Institution of Communicable Diseases, Dr Juno Thomas, confirmed in the week of 6–10 March that an individual who worked at the Polokwane factory of Tiger Brands had become infected with the LST6 strain back in January 2017. She said there was a high probability that the person in question had eaten food from the factory, illustrating potential shortcomings

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

TIGER BRANDS THE LISTERIOSIS

of its meat products among the South African public and other stakeholders concerned.

in the Enterprise food safety management at the factory. This raises the question why Tiger Brands is only now taking the LST6 scenario seriously with corrective action when it would seem that listeriosis was present at the Polokwane factory more than a year ago. The fact of the matter is that the South African public is angry and sceptical about Tiger Brands meat products, and they believe that simply recalling products from retail outlets will not address the emotional damage caused by the loss of a loved one. So, should Tiger Brands be reminded of how to be human when dealing with the South African public in a crisis such as this? Should the public relations division of Tiger Brands be guided on how to engage with communities that have lost loved ones, possibly breadwinners, in an unexpected manner, owing to listeriosis that could have been prevented? Where is the human face of a corporate brand such as Tiger Brands, where families are now mourning the dead, without any clarity on how this could have been prevented? Why has there been no communication with affected communities on how Tiger Brands can assist families in a time of need such as this? Does corporate South Africa still understand what it means to manage a customer base, not only from a purely financial perspective but also from a social engagement perspective? Where is the requirement to see customer segments also as people, humans with emotions, families and people with a life to live? Tiger Brands has provided no answers to these questions up to now. To strengthen consumer trust, Tiger Brands did retrieve the majority of its meat products from retail outlets. However, the speed of response by Tiger Brands to recall its processed meat products from retail shelves in South Africa can be debated. Communication by MacDougall that the removal of ready-to-eat products had been secured through the use of trucks that were confined to quarantined warehouses to ensure discarding and incineration was welcomed. This illustrates the commitment of Tiger Brands to address the problem hands-on and secure no further contamination. However, up to the date of writing, the South African public had been provided with no clarity on how Tiger Brands was planning to address internal safety regulations to ensure that a similar outbreak would not happen in future at any of its plants in South Africa. How will the company secure the endless process improvements to recognise potential food safety risks? Both the public and the government surely want to know how Tiger Brands is planning to develop collaborative relationships with retailers and contractors to secure a knowledge base for food safety. In addition, communications about how Tiger Brands will better align its internal health safety policies with government regulations should be communicated to all relevant parties (e.g. the South African public and the South African Department of Health). Such communication would assist Tiger Brands to strengthen future trust levels in respect FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

In conclusion, it would seem that Tiger Brands did not expect the public outcry to the listeriosis scandal and that the company was caught by surprise. This explains why their request for the removal of processed meat from retail outlets took longer than required and raises the question whether that request would have been made if they had not been pressured by the South African Department of Health. The delay in response just caused greater doubt (and lower levels of trust) among the South African public concerning whether Tiger Brands understands the societal impact of the problem and whether their response to the issue is sincere. Serious reputational damage has been caused to Tiger Brands by the listeriosis crisis. The manner in which they managed the crisis can be questioned and their speed of response to the crisis can be adjudged too slow, and this has angered both the South African government and consumers. Although companies in Canada and Australia were similarly challenged to manage listeriosis crises in those countries, the outbreaks there did not cause the deaths of 183 people. This shocking figure evoked an outcry from both South African and international health experts, indicating that the country faces a food security timebomb. Therefore it is imperative for Tiger Brands to establish internal protocols to handle future crises, engage with the families who have lost a loved one to establish recourse, and liaise with all stakeholders through public forums on how internal processes will be improved to enhance overall quality production. By doing so the company can start the long process of restoring trust in its products and eventually in its overall brand image. Sources African News Agency. 2018. “Tiger Brands vows to get to the bottom of listeriosis outbreak”. March 9. https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/ development/tiger-brands-vows-to-get-to-the-bottom-of-listeriosisoutbreak-13676454. Business Report. 2018. “Listeriosis outbreak – what customers should do now!” March 5. https://www.iol.co.za/business-report/economy/watchlisteriosis-outbreak-what-customers-should-do-now-13598574. Davis, R. 2018. “Listeriosis outbreak: the blame games begin”. Daily Maverick, March 5. https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2018-0305-listeriosis-outbreak-the-blame-games-begin/#.WqOvRk0UnIU. Dovetail. No date. “Listeriosis crisis – how reverse logistics is the answer to a retailers’ biggest nightmare”. http://www.dovetail.co.za/listeriosis-crisismanagement-reverse-logistics-answer-retailers-biggest-nightmare/. Forbes Agency Council. 2017. “13 golden rules of PR crisis management”. June 20. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2017/06/20/13golden-rules-of-pr-crisis-management/#1e3ddc571bcf. Naidoo, S., Child, K., Hosken, G., Ndabeni, K., Macanda, S. and Knowler, W. 2018. “Inside the killer polony scandal”. Sunday Times, March 11, p. 1. Author: Prof Mornay Roberts-Lombard Department of Marketing Management School of Consumer Intelligence and Information Systems University of Johannesburg Republic of South Africa

Tel: (011) 559 3031 E-mail: mornayrl@uj.ac.za

LOVE LETTER 4

Love Letter 4

This becomes the 5th of the ‘Love Letters’ to ‘Dear Corporate’. A series of artistic pieces meant to convey customer concerns over customer service in a generally unique manner. In this unique feature, Mazoyo’s fictitious character fights for workers concerns, yet in the larger picture fights for excellent customer service. ‘The Customer’ is highlighting Corporate’s bad practices towards his employees and the eventual implications on quality of service that is then rendered. The worker is the first customer they say. By Rodrick Simba Mazoyo

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

LOVE LETTER 4

Dear Corporate I really hope this letter finds you well. I am quite sure you were wondering why I did not write to you in the previous edition. The reason is simple, I just wanted to be missed and I am dramatic like that.At this level of our relationship, flattery is no longer necessary. You know I love you and unfortunately you have no option, but to reciprocate. One thing that can never be doubted is our love dear. The flow of my money to your wallet is just, but enough evidence. On that note, let me delve into the gist of this piece; Dear lover, by now you must know that I have accepted your polygamous ways. The first customer is your employee they say. You should also know that your own staff are part of the lot you need to impress. The way you treat them has direct implication on the service I get. Each time they frown, in my heart I say, ‘He is failing them at something’. Give your staff sufficient and necessary tools of trade. Working up every day and enjoying the ‘I am boss’ status is not enough. It can only sustain your business for a while, but not forever. “Shandai nezviripo, work with what’s there,” I have heard you say to them. My lover, in 2018, that does not work. Any lack in proper tools sees your staff being stresses and strained further than normal. When I get a compromised service, I consider the next person offering the same thing. Remember, I am sovereign. When your worker frown at me or dodge work, sometimes it’s only because they are tired. Why not invest in proper efficient computer systems? Why not avail sufficient resources to ensure a smooth flow of work? All this is for me after all and remember, I am your all. Overwhelming job demands, simply known as ‘overload’. This is one phenomenon that sees your staffers taking short-cuts in service delivery. At the end I get mal-functioning goods, prolonged problem resolution and even no service at all. My lover, in as much as you want the most of your employees, asking for too much sees you getting nothing at the end of the day. The human body can only take certain levels of strain. The sole cure of fatigue is rest. I do not want to be mistreated in your shops, banking halls or any service centre only because you are not allowing the person serving me enough to rest. A proper human resources manager will help you to this effect. Talk of a poor compensation structure. You of all the people understand that money makes the world go round. Your workers wake up every day to render a service and thus are expectant of a befitting reward. Each time you short change them, they offer themselves less on their work. When they offer themselves less, the service becomes poor. At the end my experience is compromised and that is not acceptable. Reward the workers appropriately. Weekly, monthly or annual awards have an equally good effect. Rewards and recognition have a positive effect to people contributing in a group. Your workers’ happiness and lack of it has a direct bearing on what they give to me. I do not need to over- emphasise this. I want nothing, but the best. That you know.

FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

Did you know repetitive and monotonous work drains energy out of your staff? The end result is quite obvious if you are following my narrative. There is great need to rejuvenate task’s and exchange roles. Monotony reduces the amount of mental stimulation, creativity, autonomy and decision-making discretion. Why should one man fry chips for years in the same restaurant? Why should one person answer the same inbound calls in the same callcenter for more than a year? The human being is a psychological being. Once the brain is tired, errors are imminent. Rotation in a work place is pivotal. Elevation and growth are key. Once you correct this error, happiness is imminent and guess who benefits,… me of course. Poor ergonomics has quite a negative effect on the eventual service I receive dear. As blogger Shauna Geraghty puts it across; “In a report by the workplace technology foundation (2003), poor ergonomics such as poor posture, the use of excessive force when hitting keys and inappropriate computer monitor distances all contributed to workplace stress within a call-centre.” This valid point is not limited to callcenter my love. Sometimes the person who serves me over the counter looks uninterested in me and I out rightly label it poor service. Did you know that the unpleasant facial expressions and unwelcoming body language of the persons serving me might just be a result of their sitting posture, the poorly designed chair they are sitting on or even inappropriate height of the counter table? One Chinese literary piece starts with the sentence, “I write you this very long letter because I didn’t have enough time to write a short one.” Its geniuses like me who can drive the message home in a few words, just as above. Gosh! I am so wise. Even our village head says wisdom will kill me one day. I could write further, but as I have indicated, I am smarter than that. From the points I have given you, as usual, I don’t expect a reply in writing, I want change through action. Treat them well so that they serve me well. Yours with unquestionable love,

The Customer …….................................................................Rodrick Simba Mazoyo has more than nine years’ corporate experience, playing customer service related roles. Currently he works as a supervisor in one of the largest contact centres in Zimbabwe. He is a published author with one fiction novel to his name. For business collaborations and partnerships he is reachable by email on: rodysimba@gmail.com

NET WORK WITH INFLUENCERS

YOUR OPPORTUNITY TO NETWORK WITH INFLUENCERS

THE FOCUS GROUP CEW2018 brings together people and companies from all over the world, who are leaders in cutting edge customer success programmes.Part of coming to a top event like CEW2018, is the opportunity to network with influencers who are trailblazers in customer success strategies. Venues are carefully chosen for delegates to interact during the breaks when synergies and connections can lead to lasting business relationships.CEW2018 will bring together thought leaders, industry experts and the most successful customer service organisations, with the aim of sharing knowledge and insights, and guide companies to successfully design, develop and put into action their Customer Success Programmes. Customer Experience World is recognised as the leading conference event for global business leaders and executives. CEW2018 is strategically placed to focus on leading-edge customer success strategies and best practices. It offers an exclusive and practical environment for like-minded executives to share knowledge and learn from one another’s experiences. The mission of customer success is to build proven value faster, 62

for both customers and companies alike. In a world of tight margins and extreme competition, customer success is one of the key factors in driving profitability and growth. CEW2018 will provide the answers, insights and knowledge to enable businesses to turn customer experience into customer success. Guaranteed, CEW 2018 is going to deliver an outstanding experience, where delegates will have an opportunity to learn from industry best practice leaders, while also having the chance to network with like-minded innovators. Additional Value: The Master Class A bonus for those delegates who wish to dive even more deeply into the Customer Success story, a Master Class will discuss and detail various components of an effective Customer Success Management programme. Attendees will take home a far deeper understanding of a customer’s desired outcome and how to provide an awesome experience with every interaction and touch point within their business. FIFTH EDITION | The Customer

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