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2002 | Buch

Building Great Customer Experiences

verfasst von: Colin Shaw, John Ivens

Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan UK

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SUCHEN

Über dieses Buch

This book is about building and delivering great customer experiences. Many companies neglect this, but the physical execution and emotional impact of customer experiences, companies and brands may ultimately determine customer satisfaction and loyalty and commercial success. With the use of compelling examples and cases the authors show that this is key for all companies and organisations.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter
1. The customer experience tsunami
Abstract
Why do Dell Computers have signs around their Round Rock offices near Austin, Texas stating ‘Customer Experience — Own It’? Why do Starbucks talk about the ‘Third Place’ when they sell coffee? Why are we seeing the growth in positions with the words ‘Customer Experience’ in their job title? What do Harley Davidson sell? Bikes, or the ability for 40-year-old accountants to dress in leather and frighten people? Why are Hilton Hotels redefining what their hotel rooms are about? Why have we seen a rise in ‘themed’ restaurants like the Hard Rock Café, Rain Forest Café, Bubba Gumps and Planet Hollywood? Why are a number of people starting to say, ‘The customer experience is the next competitive battleground’?
Colin Shaw, John Ivens
2. The physical customer experience
Abstract
Congratulations on taking your first step to building great customer experiences. Why do 85 per cent of senior business leaders from our research 1 say that differentiating on the physical is no longer a sustainable business strategy? It has been for centuries, from the times when blacksmiths made suits of armour for King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table; to the time when bartenders sold whiskey in saloons in the Wild West; to today, buying a DVD player at your shopping mall. Why the change? The answer: innovation, speed and commoditization. Innovations of new technologies; innovations of new channels; innovations in business models; innovations within society which have freed our economies and created growth; innovations in transport that have created a global business community; innovations that have led to the dawn of the digital age. Innovation and the competition it creates are increasing the speed of change. These three things, innovation, competition and change, are endemic in organization cultures, and the momentum they generate is self-perpetuating in driving faster and faster commoditization in markets we never believed possible before. The combination of these factors means that companies find that traditional differentiators are now difficult to sustain, and the cost of keeping up with these changes is becoming prohibitive.
Colin Shaw, John Ivens
3. The emotional customer experience
Abstract
Just stop and think for a moment about your life and the emotional roller-coaster we all enjoy. Think of your experiences so far; think of your first boyfriend or girlfriend and the ‘puppy love’. How did that feel? Exciting? Were you infatuated, exhilarated? Then think of the day you broke up, and you thought the world was at an end. Think of the day you were promoted at work; how pleased and proud you were. Think how you were bursting to tell your family and friends, and the pride this generated. Think of the day when something went wrong at work — perhaps how you were reprimanded — and how that made you feel, maybe inadequate, angry or depressed.
Colin Shaw, John Ivens
4. The effect of organization, multi-channels and moments of contact on the customer experience
Abstract
From 1831 to 1836 Darwin served as a naturalist aboard the HMS Beagle, which was on a British science expedition around the world. In South America Darwin found fossils of extinct animals that were similar to modern species. In the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific Ocean he noticed many variations among plants and animals of the same general type as those in South America and other parts of the world. Upon his return to London, using his notes and specimens, Darwin developed several related theories: one, evolution did occur; two, evolutionary change was gradual, requiring thousands to millions of years; three, the primary mechanism for evolution was a process called natural selection; and four, the millions of species alive today arose from a single original life form through a branching process called ‘specialization.’ 1
Colin Shaw, John Ivens
5. The implications of processes and systems on the customer experience
Abstract
How many of the customer experience sound bites above have you personally experienced? At one point or another, we are sure you have probably heard them all. Do you remember what emotions they evoked? It was probably a combination of frustration, resentment, amazement, incredulity and infuriation. Why does this happen? Granted, some of this will be down to the culture and people issues of the organization; however, a large percentage will also be down to the processes and systems that companies choose to put in place.
Colin Shaw, John Ivens
6. People: a key differentiator
Abstract
Have you ever looked at some people and thought, ‘Gee, if only I could clone you, if only I could have an army of people like you, then my customer experience would be great all the time!’? There are some people who are just naturally good with people. These people are able to make you feel like a king. They make you feel that you could tell them all your troubles and they will make them disappear. You trust these people implicitly. You know they want to do what is best for you and they are being selfless. Just take a moment: who are these people in your life? Picture them in your mind. What makes them like that? What is it they do? Just for a moment, hold that person in your mind. Now give some thought to who was your best teacher. Again picture that person in your mind. What made that person the best? Why did you select him or her from among all the others? Finally, think about the best leader you have ever had. What was it that made him or her the best? What did he or she do? How did he or she act?
Colin Shaw, John Ivens
7. The massive impact of leadership and culture on the customer experience
Abstract
Leadership is everything. Leadership is the single most important thing in our business. Unless the general manager of the shop is leading the team and providing a well managed, secure, well organized and inspirational environment, there is no customer experience. There can be all sorts of components to leadership, but one part of leadership is having very clear values and very clear ideas about what is important. The second part is looking after your people. If you have got a clear idea of where you want to go and you look after your people, there will be a good chance of getting there. It is the most important thing in our whole business.
Colin Shaw, John Ivens
8. The customer experience is the embodiment of the brand
Abstract
I was in a garage once. I had picked up a slow puncture in my car and I was putting some air in the tyre. A guy said to me, ‘You are putting a lot of air in that tyre.’ I said, ‘Yes, I think I have got a puncture.’ Tongue in cheek he said, ‘What, with a BMW!’ In a funny sort of way that sums up the image that we portray that our cars are completely bulletproof. Of course, that means people’s expectations are always very high. It’s what brings people into the brand in the first place. So you have to do everything you can to live up to that expectation or exceed it, within reason.
Colin Shaw, John Ivens
9. Managing your customer experience: the Customer Experience Pyramid™
Abstract
There are no truer words spoken than these. Ask the great football (soccer) managers or American Football coaches if they achieved their success by leaving things to chance. Ask them if they have a style of play, a plan for each game, tactics they deployed to win a game. Of course they do. Ask any military leaders if they spend time thinking and planning a battle before engaging in it, breaking down the strategic objectives into the elements that will give them success. Of course they do. Nothing is left to chance: you make your own luck.
Colin Shaw, John Ivens
10. Measuring your customer experience
Abstract
We measure satisfaction through the JD Power Survey at Lexus. We don’t have a customer satisfaction index in the way that other car brands do. I think we are probably the only car manufacturer that doesn’t. There is a very real point of philosophy behind that which is that even researching a customer’s experience is a contact with the brand. If you have a survey where people fill it in and get nothing back from their investment, then you have actually cheated them. What the vast majority of CSI measurements do is demand something from the customer and offer nothing in return. It also makes the issues anonymous because you get a statistical measurement of how you are performing. You end up treating your customer base as a statistical set rather than as a set of individuals. When companies phone up a customer through their CSI to check up on their experience of having their car serviced, one of the questions they might ask is, ‘Was the car returned to you in a satisfactory condition’? The customer might say, ‘No, there was oil on the floor mats.’ Most, if not all, CSI index measures record that fact and don’t do anything about it. Our approach is if a customer says to us there was oil on the mats, before we do anything else that customer needs a new set of mats, because there is no point in isolating a problem if you don’t put it right.
Colin Shaw, John Ivens
11. Targeting: driving behaviours that impact your customer experience
Abstract
We had been called into a company to evaluate their customer experience. We call this process ‘the Mirror’. In this case it included calling into their call centre and posing as customers. We were listening back to the calls to conduct our evaluation. While you could not fault the agents in terms of the salutation used, you definitely could sense tension in their voices, and they appeared to be talking at an unnatural speed. As the call proceeded and the agent felt he or she had answered the customer’s question, it was common to hear the agent say ‘OK then?’ or ‘Is that all?’ The message that came across was, ‘Can I go now? I really have other things to do.’ This was despite the fact that on a number of occasions the customer clearly had another question.
Colin Shaw, John Ivens
12. Creating your customer experience strategy
Abstract
Congratulations! You are near the end of the book. This shows your genuine interest in building great customer experiences. In our view, this is probably the most important chapter in the book, because this is where the rubber hits the road. This is where we go beyond the philosophy and into action. The good news, from a competitive point of view, is that all the people that have put the book down and gone back to business as usual do not have the complete picture, and face the danger of returning to the ‘blight of the bland’ and remain part of the ‘grey world’. You therefore have an advantage, a chance to change your customer experience and gain a significant competitive edge over them:
A mind stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
You need to answer one question before you continue to read this chapter. Was our book just a good read, or are you going to do something about it? In our experience, the majority of people believe in the Seven Philosophies to Build Great Customer Experiences™. They then split into two camps: the people who believe in them and will do something about it, and those who will not. Some people understand the theory but choose not to undertake the journey.
Colin Shaw, John Ivens
13. The future of customer experience
Abstract
So that’s it. Hopefully reading this book is your first step to building great customer experiences. We hope you have now joined the growing band of people preparing for the customer experience tsunami. We hope that you now recognise that the customer experience is the next competitive battleground, as do the senior business leaders we have spoken with. We believe we have highlighted some of the problems and pitfalls, opportunities and solutions before you.
Colin Shaw, John Ivens
Backmatter
Metadaten
Titel
Building Great Customer Experiences
verfasst von
Colin Shaw
John Ivens
Copyright-Jahr
2002
Verlag
Palgrave Macmillan UK
Electronic ISBN
978-0-230-55471-9
Print ISBN
978-1-4039-3949-4
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230554719