I’m in the throes of moving house and as usual when you’re renting, there are a multitude of household services that require changing to a new address. Within a few hours’ I’d received two very different experiences that left me reflecting on the type of businesses they were, but importantly how each had embraced the understanding of the customer experience or, in one case, not.
A little disclaimer before we start, I’ve been involved with a fantastic thought leadership project with SAP that has sought, through 7,000 consumer digital interactions, to understand what makes a great consumer digital experience. I’m a little close to this whole experience thing right now! But digital or not, the same principles of the customer experience apply and I’ll provide some insights into the report as we progress.
The study is a fantastic body of work that truly has the ability to analyse digital experiences to the brand level, providing excellent insight and opportunities to deliver a better digital experience. If you’re interested in finding out more, or how the work was done, drop me a line or visit the SAP website.
My first experience was in my bank. Commonwealth Bank for those that wish to know. I was having all sorts of issues getting a money order arranged for the new property. Having been backwards and forwards between the bank and the Post Office, the clerk behind the counter could see I was getting increasingly frustrated with the whole saga. “Normally we charge $10 for a bank cheque, but I can see you’ve had a few issues here, so I’ll waivered that for you – make life easier.”
Nice work – tick! But what struck me here was not that I was saving $10 – that’s frankly neither here nor there. It was that those running the branch, along with those higher up the chain had created a culture whereby frontline staff could make those decisions on the fly – their call. It turned what was a frustrating experience (no fault of the bank I’ll add) into a happy one.
Contrast this with my ISP. I called them to make a simple change of address request i.e. take my broadband out of one socket and plug into another one. I was left hanging on the phone for 30 minutes while the call centre staff tried to figure out how to do this. I was then told it would take up to 20 working days and I would be charged $79.99 for the honour to do so. This despite me being a customer of that ISP for over four years and doing a vast majority of my work from home.
I’ve been a customer of CBA for under a year.
Spot the difference? I can… and the word you’re looking for is ‘permission’.
Even in this highly advanced digital age, many of our leading corporations are struggling to understand what a great consumer experience actually entails. Those in charge of the customer experience are playing to the corporate rule book, instead of thinking like a human would. Design thinking anyone?
One of the biggest bugbears I have with customer service in general within organisations is that some of the lowest paid workers are given probably the most important jobs in the organisation, that of dealing with their customers. The issue also lies in the ‘lack of permission’ managers give to frontline workers to ‘think like a human’.
The great news is that this stuff isn’t hard. Through the work SAP has done, identifying how to be ‘human’ and understand the values that make a great experience are readily available for those in charge of the customer experience to understand and apply.
Make it easy and simple
It starts with simplicity. Get the basics right and make sure it works for me. Don’t tell me it will take 20 working days to flip a switch when I do a huge amount of work from home and I’m now left with no Internet – Where does that leave me? If you’re unable to get the basics of a job right, I will go to someone who can.
Most consumers are not demanding – the SAP study has proven that. All we want is for the simple things to delight us. That was the overriding message from 3,000 of them. Make it simple and I will be delighted. If I’m delighted I’m far more likely to remain loyal to your brand – in fact, four times more likely. Waiting 20 days to flip a switch on my Internet is quite unreasonable is it not? Especially when I will be charged for those 20 days I can’t actually use.
Bring out the emotion
Make me feel something. Once you’ve got the basics right, excite me. Engage me with things that interest me and make me feel an emotional connection to your brand. CBA did that the other day. They made me feel great about the fact that I bank with them – they cared about the fact that I was having a crap day. I don’t hand out loyalty points readily, I’m a harsh critic. But because they did the simple things well that day, I had a nice warm, fuzzy feeling about them. I felt some emotion for my bank – what is going on?!?!?!
Be tribal
Finally, if you’ve managed to nail those two – think about creating a tribal sense of loyalty. This is very hard – it’s reserved only for a few select brands. The only example I can think of here is Apple and their legion of ‘Fan Boys and Girls’. That company can do no wrong in their eyes. Sure, they have their detractors, but they could start World War 3, yet some of their ‘Fans’ will never leave their side. True brand tribal following is obtained through the alignment of the brand to the personalities of those that love them best. Become your consumer.
The Australian story
So where are we in Australia? According to SAP’s study, a long way off. In fact, the average digital experience score across those 7,000 digital interactions sits at minus 25%. This was calculated by understanding how many dissatisfied customers there were (those that ranked the digital experience of a brand between 0-6) and subtracting it from the amount of ‘delighted’ ones (those that ranked the digital experience between 8-10) – a similar measurement and methodology to NPS.
Overall, it’s not the most ‘positive’ of pictures and there’s a lot of room for improvement. However, just because consumers are quite easily pleased, doesn’t mean that good is good enough. We need to be great and delight in the digital experience. We’re seeing industries ripped apart by disruption whereby non-traditional competitors are taking the learnings from their industries and applying them in others. The threat of competition is not from your traditional competitors – there’s a new wave of company out there seeking to steal your part of the customer pie.
Digital or face to face, the customer experience is huge. So much so that SAP’s report very cleverly linked how good the digital customer experience was to loyalty (i.e. top line revenue) and NPS scores. The message is pretty clear, get the digital experience right and you’ll delight and keep your customers.
Maintain complacency and you’ll likely see your customer base wither away to another brand that does care.