Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi. Um, welcome to the height of wow skill share. Of course, this is all about highlights from this book. How to why that I published I'm very proud of It shows my moment. Dads, they think I've got a proper job now. Tell you what it's all about is based on a masterclass that I've done, which is all about the highlights of the book. And it's designed to help you think about design and deliver a better customer experience for your customers, obviously. Oh, by the way, my name is Adrian. I'm an author on Advisor on service and Experience and do a lot of writing and research on this. So welcome to the course. I hope you enjoy it. It's broken down into short videos. There's about 15 of them, mostly me talking to camera sharing, some reserves and evidence and insides. Lots of stories on, then a few exercises throughout the concourse, and we'll bring it all together at the very end so that we enjoy it and welcome
2. Background On Why Customer Experience Is Important: Hi. So welcome to the first video in this series. First of all, what we wanna do. You wanna talk about the modern customer now? Have you ever noticed how many or ever thought about how many pieces of advertising or marketing you might see on a daily basis? I mean, think about it. How many emails you get? How many TV adverts you see? How many billboards the Do you see How many text message do you get? How many things on Facebook or Twitter or whatever, Elise. Different messages, How many things do actually see and also pay attention to and then maybe can alarm any. Do you actually take action on? I would wager is very, very few. I would wager that it's just all we do is we see it as noise. I mean, there's research that shows that 86% of us will skip TV ads. You know, it's gonna actually funny when you watch some TV programs. When they say now we're coming to an ad break, go away, make a cup of tea. I'm pretty sure that would make advertisers pretty angry. You're telling something to go out of the room rather than stick around and watch the ants . But I actually what's interesting is that we're living in this. You know, this this modern, competitive world, which, where the Internet is having this huge, huge impact on how we do business, What we want to do here is actually gonna think about what do we need to do that it's not necessarily going to interrupt our customers on, bombard them and try and force them to do something? But how we can actually better engaged with our customers. We can build a better service and a better experience for customers that wouldn't they will want to come and do business with us, because actually, the whole thing around service and experience. It's the major competitive battleground in the in the in this early part of the 21st century, and it's set to continue to be over the next kind of coming few years. So before we move on, there's a couple things I want to say. I want to say that through the course of these through this course, rather through these videos, I also want to focus on retention and loyalty, which I think of two hugely important areas but two areas that don't get the attention that they deserve. Because if you think about it, you know you've done all that effort trying to acquire customer, get your customer on board, you know, and researchers. Research shows that it's between five and eight times more expensive to acquire customer than it is to to keep a customer. So why would you not focus on keeping them on? Then try and building that building at their loyalty, such that they can then help you advocate for your own business. Think about it this way. Have you ever heard that kind of song? Would you remember that song for when you were a kid? There's a hole in my bucket. But if you think about that song and you'll have to ask me, I have to ask for your forgiveness because that song is gonna be in your head now for the rest of the day. But in that song, Henry has to go and find a find, a bucket to to wet the stone, to sharpen their to sharpen the ax, to cut the straw to fix the bucket. But he can't because he's got hole in his bucket so becomes this infinite loop. So I think that that sounds really instructive because it actually what it forces us to do is to think about. Why would we put water in our bucket? I your business new customers if we're gonna let them all flow at the bottom, right? So that's why I want to do I want you to think about that when you think about. It's not just about getting new customers. It's not about just service serving them well when you first get them. But it's also about how you keep them and how you build a loyalty, and then also how you build their advocacy. So next to get in the mood of this, this is what I want when I want to make it real. This is what when I want to do an exercise when I actually to doing exercise where it puts you in the mind off a customer on the excises two parts. The first part is that what what I want you to do? Is that what I want you to describe? A great service experience that you've had on what made it great and how it made you feel and while the different elements of it and then on the other side of things, I want you to describe a bad service experience on what made it bad and how you felt about it and why I actually happened to make it back. There will be an exercise sheet in the in the attachments below that below this video, but please feel free to put your best service experiences stories on your worst service experience stories in the comments sections below Thanks very much.
3. What is WOW Service: So this is where we now I start to get to towards the core of the course, you know, because I think if you actually asked a lot of people, what is wire service to them, that you get all sorts of different sort of descriptions. I mean, you know, you think about it in their hotel contacts on people talk about, you know, there's little bits of chocolate that you get on your pillow when you go to a new hotel or like somebody was telling me the other day, Somebody has made a swan towel that sits a land of your bad. That's all very well and good. But what happens if the hotel doesn't feel very clean or in its or is dirty or the reception experience with rubbish, all these different things? So I think what we've got to do is that where services actually is the whole thing, and actually, if we think about it when we think about Haasis can human beings that we value the basic stuff, that's because that stuff is not very common, but also we It's linked to how we feel about risk and uncertainty, and so and so on. and so forth. So I'm me. I'm a great advocate for wows services Bell on being brilliant at the basics and throughout this course. That's one of things I want to be talking about is what are those basics? Because if we can get the basics right, it can build. It builds the foundation to allow us to put those chocolates or the swan towels or whatever . It might be on the top of our experience to make us stand out way, way in front of everybody else. But we can't do that if we're not brilliant in the basics first.
4. The Little Things: so building on what we were talking about before we talk about high about being brilliant at the basics now, the reason why I want to The next thing I want to talk about brother, is I want to talk about the little, the little things that can have a negative impact on your service and your experience. But before we gonna go into that, what I wanna do, you wanna tell your story? Imagine you're in a situation that you are. You have to leave where you're at and you have to go to a meeting and you have to walk there. But as you start walking, you notice you got a bit of grit in your shoot night. It's no big enough or sore enough to force you to stop and take the great out. You don't actually have enough time to do that. But here's the question. What happens when you get to the get to your meeting? I would wager that the only thing that you will remember about that journey is the grit in your shoot. And so it's fascinating how all these little things he's a little annoyance sees these little irritations are have a huge impact on our perception of how good service or how good experience isn't is in reality. So let me give you an example. There was a bus company in all public transport company, an article router, and they were looking at their their whole service and the whole experience and trying to make it better. In fact, they had a whole bunch of feedback that came in on Their new CEO came out and said, We're going to stop annoying our customers. That's the first thing that the first promise he made on when they started looking into what they realize is they look at all these different. There's different things that there's all these different opportunities that they could to improve it in. One particular on which I thought was brilliant was that they noticed that their policy was urban. Buses arrived at bus stops. If they arrived early, then they wouldn't allow passengers that were waiting at the bus stop onto the bus. No, think about it this way. It's Norway, particularly the winter. It's cold, right? How frustrating or annoying or irritating would it be is if you're stood at the bus stop in Norway middle of winter. It's bloody cold. Sorry. Excuse my language and that this warm bus pulls up and then the driver says No, its policy. You have to wait two minutes in the cold before we can let you onto this warm bus. I'm pretty sure that would stay with you for, you know, for a while. And the reason that these things stay with us is because of how the brain works. Neuro scientific evidence supports this. It supports it because it it says that we are wires through our survival instinct to avoid risk and uncertainty and disappointment and failure and sadness over the. In fact, the reward payoff is that we value avoiding avoidance of those things between five and 17 times Mawr than we do. Surprise and delight. So my Anjali, the author and poet, had it done really, really well when she said, People may not remember exactly what you did, what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel. I think I just captures all these little things perfectly because it's know about, you know, we think that's this inconsequential. It's just a little thing that we've done. It's not about that. You know about what you think. It's about how somebody else feels about what you did
5. The LIttle Things Examples: so before we were talking about eliminating or identifying and eliminating the grit in your customer experience and eliminating the annoyances and irritations. But some people have actually a problem with the thing about Well, what does that actually mean? That how do we actually do that? I think there's some lessons that we can learn from things like pro cycling, particularly the team G B and Dave Brailsford approach where they have this thing where they say, Look, a lot of people talk about we want 10% improvement in their or 15% improvement in this but reality that's quite hard. But actually what they figured that is They figured out that actually, if you can identify 1% improvement in like 10 or 15 areas, which is pretty reasonable, then those 1% improvements can add up to a lot. And it becomes you get into this, this idea that you're going to this continuous improvement and you look at your whole your business holistically in terms of all the little things that you could do to improve that help you wanna be blowing in the basics but also gonna help you stand out from the crowd So what I want to do is I want to give you some examples of some businesses that have done some little things that make their experience stand out. So the first example I want is comm based on a personal story. And I was I went a number of years ago to a wedding in car A for a friend of mine on. And now I'm Scottish. I don't do hot weather particularly well. And so this was the wedding was taking place in July. And so I flew in in the evening and it was hot. It was proper heart. And so I was tired. I was sweaty. I was properly bedraggled. So I arrived at the hotel. On hotel was the Four Seasons, and what they did was was a really simple thing. But it just made ALS the difference. And so when I pulled up in the cab, I got out, The bellhop was there. He said, Take your bag and have it sent up to your mrs yet finances they. So can I take your name just so I could make sure I can write up the tag for the your bag? That's so we know which one to send it to us is. Yeah, sure, No problem. So I took my bag and then he said, Serve if you like to go up the stairs, turn right at top of stairs down the end of the quarter. Reception is just fantastic. So if I go truck up the steps down the corridor and as I'm approaching that the desk, the receptionist pushes a form towards me with a pan. It'd welcome Mr Spence Co. If you just sign, there will have you straight up to your room. Now, that's not normal, because normally you get to a receptionist asking You have to fill out all these forms and give him a card of this and everything else. But just those little things which actually what it meant was that the guy at the front door picked up the phone cold reception said Mr Swiss was on his way. Have everything ready now. That happened to me a number of years ago, but I still talk about it now because I still don't see people doing simple things like that even now. But all those little things to make a huge difference. So the next example, comes from a company whose I guess has probably got one of while they're my favorite. That my company that has the guest, the favorite name off any company I've ever come across. And they're called big ass fans. No, no guesses. No, no, but no prizes for guessing. What the what they make. They make big ass fans, right? One of the things that they do with is really interesting. It's something that is becoming increasingly common. Where is that They are. They created this thing called a customer success team. No, it wasn't called that when they first started, but what they're called calling it now. What they did is they hired somebody. The fact to CEO hired somebody to say, I want you to go and speak to all our customers to figure out all the little things that annoy or irritate them on. Come back and tell us and we'll fix them. And the distinction that the CEO made was he said, Look, I might pay your salary, but you work for our customers, and what what happened on the back of that is actually by going off and speaking to the customers, identical the identifying all the little things that they did to annoy or irritate their customers and then fix them that I live them to grow their business by a factor of, I think it's six, almost from about $35 million in 2009 to buy 100 $75 million in 14 4050 if that's no evidence enough about what it means to fix the little things letter that what it's so. The final example I wanted to share with you is from a just a small local I T services company that I've done some work with in the past, and the reason you share this example is because it's different and it's not a big firm, and it's, you know, it's not big brand name, but it shows that all these different principles apply. Teoh, both large and small, businesses on. The challenge with this business is that they've grown organically over years. Their customers loved them and they stuck around for a while for at for for ages. But one of things that they used to struggle with is that they struggled, actually attracting new customers, and they also struggle to get referrals from their existing customers. So when we looked into it, what we realized is that the folks at this a firm they were spending a lot of time doing the do, doing the work for the customers, but actually not spending a lot of time with their customer's understanding, how things were going in their business and how they were developing and what the challenges were. And is there anything else that they could they could do to one, improve their service and or, you know, do more for them. So one of the things we worked with the director of the business was to say, Well, look, you know, you've got all your guys and girls doing all the work, but you're actually know out there spending time with your customers, you know, just understanding their businesses and see what else they were up to you. So we figured out that he shoud spends or Friday afternoons either calling customers are going around and taking them out for coffee just to spend some time with them. And what was fascinating was in doing that just by this that small action off going out and proactively trying to arrange time to go and speak to them and go and hang out with them. That that one they grew their understanding of the clients, businesses, their clients. They became more front of mind for the clients as they ended up referring them more. But they also end up asking them to do more work for them. The fascinating thing is just by doing that one simple thing that grew their business by 150% in the course of over the course of nine months.
6. Identifying The Grit: so we talked about it. How to identify you. Great. Now you might be saying what? So how do I go about doing that? Well, it can be just as simple as you need to look for opportunities. Teoh. Think about where your customers might find things difficult or complicated, or they might get bit anxious. Or you can do things on the flip side, like how you can anticipate problems. They might have how you conduce things, which is going to exceed their expectations, which is going to surprise them on delight. The maybe it is a simple as putting a little bit chocolate on the pillow, you know, to try and get them to go. Wow. But that's on the assumption that you are brilliant at the basics first, like we talked about before. But here's another sort of concept that I want to talk to you back. She does This thing called this complaints iceberg, which says that it's only a few people that will formally complain to us. But most of us don't complain. We just hold him inside their silent because think about it this way. Have you ever been to a restaurant? I'm pretty sure that you have because it's a place of most people is that you've gone to a restaurant and you know what? It's never been good enough for you to rave about. It is never bean bad enough for you to formally complain about it. You know you know is not bad enough for you to gonna go on to call on social media and to call them out. But actually, it's bad enough for you to never result to resolve never to go there ever again. And if asked by your friends or family or whoever, you will probably tell them now you don't wanna go there. It's not very good. Those are the That's the start. Those of the silent complaints There's the silent killers and that those those complaints exist in three much every business. And it's our challenges onto prayers as professionals, business owners, whatever. To actually go and seek out those complaints, because when you do, that's when you start to surprise and delight your customers and actually start build that foundation to be brilliant at the basics. So here's a pretty simple example that would apply Teoh any business that is trending online or allows their customers to buffalo on them online, and it's old to do with shopping cart abandonment. Big problem because the research shows that up to about sort of, on average, 70% of shopping carts are abandoned on. One of the fascinating things is about 1/4 of that comes from the fact that cos air forcing custody the potential customers to create an account, right? I don't know about you, but if I go off and do my research and I go find this company, think Gray. I've seen all the reviews that looks finally got exactly what I want. I'm happy to buy. No, I may actually know buy from them again for, like, another year or two years or whatever. So why would I want to create an account? Why wouldn't they give me the opportunity to buy as a guest as it were or a quick check out ? Because despite the fact, what many, most these companies say that say we're not gonna add you to our marketing list, you're still forcing me to do something that I don't want to do as a customer, and I think a lot of customers feel like that on the evidence back set up. So the thing is, though, that so that's that's a little thing, but actually adds up to a really big thing where many companies are just leaving money on the table. Customers want to do business with them, but they're forcing them to do something that they don't want to do. So there's huge opportunities there by just getting out of the way of your customers are not forcing them to do something that makes sense for you but doing the things that make sense for them. So now we're now it is time for exercise is the exercise is based on this idea. But I don't you know, identifying your grit and fixing the problems that what I want to do is I want a new answer because I don't want it to be all about us and thinking about our businesses. And, you know, inside our own sort of four walls are what I want you to do is I want you to go out and talk to your customers, and this is a brave question. But I want you to ask your customers this and the question is this is there anything that we do or have ever done that has annoyed you, however slightly. Now that might take a little bit of bravery, then that's fine. But if you go and you ask your customers and you keep asking them, they will tell you a whole range of things that you've done just the little things, not enough for them to make the walk, but just little things that you think it's just not great. I wish you could get rid of that or improve that when she get all these answers. What you want to do is I want to you to think about ranking them in terms of the amount of effort it would take to change those or fix those things against the sort of impact it would have in your business. Because when you get to the you get to this list of ideas that have that are low effort rather and have high impact, that's where you start. That should list of immediate priorities that you go off and fix. All this is captured in the excise. That's it is it should sit below this this video in a excite sheet, but I also want you to. If you feel free to share that, your that you know, the best ideas that you've come up with or your customers have told you about in terms of the things that you can prove that are low effort but high impact in the comment section below. Back for the bonus question. So this is the bonus question that that I want to add and build on the one that we had before about their anything we've done that annoys you slightly. And that is this. You have this huge source of intelligence market research of knowledge that sits in your business that many businesses don't access, and that's called the people there on the front line. So one of the things I want you to do the bonus question is go and ask your front line staff, the people that are speaking to your customers day in and day out, and ask them for the list of top 10 problems that your customers have or face on a day today or week by week basis. And based on that, Taylor's top 10 and go fix him and I'll transform your business
7. Handling Complaints: Let's talk about complaints. Most people I just don't like complaints. In fact, most people, when you talk about complaints and businesses, one of things that you do. I mean, I guess it's and it's natural. They go into a defensive mode. It's a bit like some of those complaints when they put the Dukes up. But actually I want what I want to do is I want you to think about actually what complaints really are on, why they can actually be good and positive sometimes because if you think about it, we think about the what we talked about before. We think about a silent complaints that we get then actually, in reality, when is better possibly having a complaint than a silent complaint cause at least is there and we can deal with it to the actual facts. We should start trying to look at complaints when things go wrong and people complained to us as an opportunity. It's an opportunity to put things right and to make amends for are mistaken when things have gone wrong and I think it's already there's a really, really simple way that we can think about how you know how we how we deal with us and because actually, if you think about how we respond to them is like, yes, we all go defensive and somebody's criticizing us, that's natural. But actually, in many times, in many cases when people complain, all they want to do is they just want to tell you how they feel. So really, it's an emotional thing, right? So I learned a really simple way of really and very, very good way in a very effective way of had to deal with complaints and the first thing that you should do when people want to complain, t is first. You have to listen. You have to listen because you have to listen to properly understand there's no about reacting. It's about listening and about understanding on the second thing we need to do. Once somebody's fully explained what has gone on on what's happened, then we need to actually try and actually understand and empathize with them and how they feel about it. But then take responsibility for it because it's our problem, it's not theirs. Once we've done that, what, you're taking responsibility. Let me take that off your hands, then you need to ask about a potential solution proposes a potential solution because then you're taking responsibility and you're turning into action. And then the final stages that you have to lend. Deliver on that deliver on that promise, deliver on that, that thing that you've taken responsibility for to solve that problem and the way to remember that is, is an accurate. On the acronym is lead Alpher. Listen, Ephram thighs A for ASC D for deliver. So we talk about complaints, were told about handling complaints, and we talk about how we should get better at that at that because it's an opportunity right night. I know that they will still be a lot of people out there. They're watching these videos there, just going, Yeah, still not feeling the love for that. I'm still struggling with the whole handling complaints thing, but let me give you two bits of evidence that hopefully will encourage you. Teoh get great Handling complaints on the 1st 1 is based on the psychological phenomenon called a service recovery paradox, And what that shows is that when things go wrong, and then the company and or you do a great job of fixing that problem that the customers perception off the firm on the level of satisfaction is higher than it would have been before. So when you recover well, you end up boosting satisfaction on this. That doesn't mean, however, should going create opportunities where you get your customers to complain. That's just not a good strategy. I'm just saying you should recover well, not create those complaint opportunities. That's just the health warning. There's also other research shows that other research that showed that we learn we earn rather loyalty at two points on the first point is at the point of transactions will be first by from a company, and the second point is when something goes wrong and then the company has to fix something , that we have a service issue or whatever, and they're generally split sort of 40% on point of purchase and 40% on when something goes wrong. So there's evidence that says that handling complaints is a way to generate increased customer loyalty, and so hopefully I've made a pretty good case of why we should get re great already are more comfortable, rather, handling complaints
8. Why Customers Leave: in this section. I want to talk about why customers leave now before we talked about silent complaints and so on and so forth. But I wanted to drill into it, drill into some of the things that drive customers to leave our business or not stop doing business with us. That research shows is a whole range of reasons about why customers leave. And that could be anything from people moved to be poached to the by the competition. Teoh many people people die as well, but also the respect that the research also shows that most customers leave because they feel that we're indifferent to them, that we don't care about them, that we don't pay attention to them. Well, what's interesting about that is because actually, that's completely different. Teoh what most businesses think about why customers leave. They believe that we asked a lot lots of businesses that many businesses will turn around and say, Well, our customers leave because, you know, for price issues or quality and being pushed by the competition and so on and so forth. But actually, if you ask, the customers were often the note. They'll tell you that price isn't an issue quality isn't issue because I've already picked you an actual fact. They've left because of the your quality of your service again going back to that idea around. They believe that you're just indifferent to them, that you're not paying attention to them, but also that the the other thing we've got to think about is that many firms make companies. Many brands get caught up in the idea that they focused too much on how good they are at their chosen profession. And they forget a lot of the peripheral things that surround their business on how much of an impact that has on on what customers think about them. For example, I'm going to use another restaurant example because it's just easy to pick restaurant examples because we're all familiar with them. I hasten tired. I do like restaurants, and I'm not picking on them. But it's I call it the messy bathroom example. Yes, we imagine this is a story, our situation. You goto, you go to a restaurant. Andi, you've been looking forward to go in there for a long time. You walk in that you're greeted by the maitre d. Everything smells kind of lovely. The ambience is great, the music and so on and so forth. And you sit down your great table. You know, you order some food and the wine and having a great time, and the food tastes fabulous. But then in the middle of your meal, you excuse yourself to go to the bathroom on the bathroom's a mess. I mean, it's a train wreck. It's messy, It's smelly. It's all of those different sort of things. And then, you know, I have to ask yourself the question. Now what do I think about the restaurant? Because most people would respond well, despite that over there being a great food culinary experience have now gone to the bathroom, and it's a mess. Now I start to question, Well, what's the hygiene of the kitchen like? They can't take care of their bathrooms than what does that say about the closeness and the hygiene into the preparation of the food? And then all the sudden, you just get you get all these questions in your mind. And so the point is, is this is this Is that even the smallest things, even the things that sit on the periphery of your business can have a really, really big impact on a customer's perception about how good you are, because actually, we have no expertise to judge whether somebody is a good restaurant or chef or whatever. But we know what it takes to deliver a clean bathroom. We don't understand whether somebody is a good accountant or a good lawyer or a good tax advisor whatever. But we do understand when somebody is polite on the phone or when they were come into their reception area of their office or highly welcome er's or high, often to keep in touch with this. We do understand those things because there's the things that we do ourselves. So I guess my point is, is that when we think about white customers leave on what effects their perception of us, it's the whole thing. It's not just about our trade or a profession or the core part of our brand. It could be anything. It could be our delivery or logistics or reception or turn of our emails, or how we answer the phone. It could be all of these different sort of things, and there in lies, the challenge
9. Keeping your customers: So in this section I want to talk about keeping your customers because the last time we talked about the reasons why customers leave and we tried trying to emphasize the point that actually, we've got to pay attention to all sorts, different parts of our business to try and better understand how we're perceived by customers. This I want to talk about what you know about the things that we can do to keep our customers. I mean 1,000,000,000 for we told you about before you know how much we care or how much attention we pay to our customers. You know, the problems that we solved and how we sold them and all that sort of that's gonna have a huge impact. But there's this other element that I think that it zwart paying attention to. And that is this idea that customers like buying from companies that do things that matter to them. For example, it could be a simple as you go to your local supermarket or something on the supermarket, commits Teoh, sourcing as many of their products as possible from local suppliers. That could be really important to you because you think I want to support the local economy . So that's gonna one of the things that you you choose them or to go to them over any other supermarket in the local area, you know? And there's other examples like, for example, Patagonia is a brand that I love for a number of reasons and primarily because not just well. They make great stuff. They make great products. That it's also set up by a climber called Yvonne Xun are now I'm a climber, not perfectly good climber Brian the climber nevertheless, and ensuring our is like one of my one of my heroes. But one of the things that they do is they're very conscious about this whole idea about consumption. They want to make products that last forever. In fact, they're products of his lifetime in the guarantee. But they're also gonna taking that on, and they've extended it and they've got this thing called. It's like a work siro click like a repair van, which they send out. Go around all the different cities and different stores and they say to people's Don't buy that new jacket. Just bring your old jacket to us and we'll fix it for you It's all about this idea about this, but that conscious consumption being more conscious about the things that you buy on buying things toe last and that's increasingly, is it resonating increasingly with customers? And then there's another company called Hyatt Denham, which is a bit more local there of UK based Andi. They're based in Wales. They were set up in cardigan in Wales and set up by a fellow by the name of David Hyatt, Man his wife and what they notices that cardigan. Unbeknownst to me, until I learned this story used to be one of the biggest manufacturers off denim jean denims and denim jeans in the whole of Europe until a number of years ago that when most of the production go outsourced to the Far East. But what that meant is that it had a really negative impact on the cardigan economy. But he had all these kind of people that were really, really well skilled in the making of really good denim products. So what they what they said is that well, they said, it's a real shame that were that these were losing these skills, that they're going to die so they set up this denim a company called Hyatt Denham. They made jeans. In fact, I've got some of their genes on there on what they were doing is they said we're not going to make the thousands and thousands and thousands of genes. We're not gonna compete with a mass production. What we're gonna do is we're going to try and make the best genes that we possibly can is a way off trying Teoh, maintain a nurture and build and grow those sort of skills that set in cardigan and sort of regenerate the town through this this company regenerate these kind of drops so it is more they is about. It's like an art project in many ways and that it's they are trying folks and doing the right things and doing things really, really well. And so much so in that. Actually, the Master Jean makers, the people that are which isn't involved in making each a pair of jeans. They actually signed their work, which is brilliant on artist signing their work now there no huge company, but the people that buy from them and their customers, they love them. They're really fans for so many different reasons. One, because they make a great product. But they're also doing work that matters. I guess my challenge to use that to think about. What else can you do that matters to both you and your customers? And how can that help you keep your customers for longer?
10. Asking for Feedback: now when I want to talk about asking for feedback, I think that it's really important that we asked for a few back to get our to solicit our customers opinion. But the challenge I have been there is that while most companies say that they do it, most of them get it wrong. And the reason that they get it wrong is that most people designed their surveys, the questionnaires, whatever it might be with their cells in mind. So they're generally too long, too complicated, focused on that on what matters to them and not what matters to the customers. And so if you want to serve your customers and you shoot, you need to be thinking about what, making it quick, making it easy and making it makes sense for your customers now building on lands When we asked for our customers for feedback, sometimes that gets extend to particularly in this. This, you know, the online world that we live in now that could extend into, you know, rating scores, trust based schools, all these different thing reviews, all that type of stuff that you know, testimonials and so on and so forth. No, I think it's really important to ask for that and to display that almost like to display its liken earned trust badge because people want to know what other people have thought about what it's like to do business with you. But here's the thing is, and this is quite modern thing very, very new is that if you if you start feeling uncomfortable about the prospect of getting a bad review, then don't. Because yes, you should focus on minimising combat refuse. But here's the thing many customers these days, when they do their research before they go off and buy something, they will look at people's reviews there. Look at all the good ones, but then, no. Also look at the bad ones because the bad ones air there to show how you've responded when somebody's giving you about review, here's the also. The other thing is that many customers now don't trust anywhere that hasn't had any bad reviews or doesn't display bad reviews. So bad Reviews can be good because it shows, but also how you respond to them because it shows both the good and the bad side. Yes, you've got to minimize the bad ones absolutely and you focus on maximizing the really good ones. But don't be scared of bad reviews. And don't be scared of the potential opportunity and positive effect a bad review could have on how people perceiving. But here's that. Here's another thing. If you're going to ask your customers for feedback and you should here's the thing that you should do that most people don't do. And therefore it's an opportunity is that when you ask for their feedback, figure out what you're gonna do with the food bank, figure out you know what difference is you're gonna make. But then always report back on the results. Research shows that about over 90% of companies will say that they ask the customer feedback, but less than 10%. In fact, near 5% of of companies actually report back on the results. So if you actually close that feedback loop, you're going to stand out from the crowd anyway. So finally, a bit of a cautionary tale about surveying Andi interpreting data. So I heard a story once we're from this chap, that who said that he waas I had a problem with these bank fund about, had a problem. They called, he called them and then explain the problem. And then they went and fixed and they did it. The experience was great and they fix it in particularly well. Then they send them this. What? It seemed to be normal. Now, they said in this little survey said, How would you rate our service? Would you on a scale of 1 to 10 or not cleared, attend How well, how likely would you be to recommend us to a to your friend or family member? And he said, Based on kind of what? But what I've just experienced, I would rate you probably like a nine. The challenge Waas is that that bank now started to think of him as being this raving fans . And actually what he done, this is rated that experience is being a nine or a 10. But they had actually taken that experiences, meaning that become this raving family. In actual fact, he used, like a four or five, maybe a six at best for that for liberal spirits, for his bank. But it just so happened that that element that event he was a nine or a 10. So here's the point. The point is, be careful about how you interpret the data because the banks started to to treat him like he was a raving fan. And he looked at me and was like, What not just make no sense So a cautionary tale about misinterpreting data. Make sure that you understand the date that the context on the value and the meaning of the data that you collect, because if you don't you could call yourself some problems.
11. Generating More Referrals: So in this section we're going to talk about referrals and had to generate for us. I mean, earlier in the series, I talked about the importance of retention and loyalty things, and that's all great on. But it's all great to keep your customers for longer and have really loyal customers. But it's what's even better is if you can get build your loyalty to that point where your customers actually advocating for you and they're actually actively referring other businesses or other customers to you. But the challenge with that is that when you investigate about what people are doing to, generate refers, even though they might say that referrals are really important to them, More often than not, you find out that actually, they're not doing very much about it. So what I'm saying is that if you want to generate referrals, we have to do some really simple things on. This is simple things, which is and almost similar, took about, my mother told told me when I was a child, which is I think that's similar to what most moms could tell most Children when they were growing up, and that is this. If you don't ask. You don't get This is simple. Is that ladies and gentlemen, it's a simple eyes. If you want more referral, sometimes you just have to ask for them. You just have to get in front of your customers and say, Can you help us? Who do you know? Can you introduce us those sort of things? But at the same time, I think it probably needs you gonna think about as well as rather just asking. Sometimes you might need to kind of give something back to your customers in order to receive. So if you want to go and generate more referrals, if you want to build up the loyalty and advocacy that your customers have for you and your business, I don't care. You just do some simple things. The first thing I would say it's just going to ask
12. Buliding Better Relationships With Your Customers: So in this section, I want to talk about how do we build better relationships with their customers? But first off, I want to talk. I want to address there's, ah, term that's floating around the service and experience in the street. Right now, a lot of people talk about customer engagement what is custom engagement only to engage our customers more. We need to have an engagement strategy in there so that whatever andi, I think that's quite opaque as a term because actually, in reality, what does it mean? It means that customer engagement is about in reality about this sort, the sort and the type and the extent of the relationships that we have with our customers across the journey that they have with us. It's a simple is that and I think that if we think about engagement, and if we think about how we want to improve our engagement or improve the relationships with their customers, but I think that then we have to think very simply about how do we how do we build a better relationship we think about from our own personal experience. I think that if you think about relationships apart from all that, you know, the liking and the trusting can a bit. I think sustainable, strong and powerful relationships are built into different dynamics. One is interesting and interested, you know. And we need both of those elements to create a really strong, a sustainable relationship. If you only have one, then you end up becoming to the almost slightly, almost too self obsessed, and that we can see that in many brands of many companies and all they're really interested in with their customers is going just broadcast and say, Look at me, Look at me, Look at me. And yet they wonder why many people don't pay attention to them. And then there's this. This is the other side of things being interested in that and that's more about taking a really keen interest in your customers, but just focusing on them. But it couldn't get to a point that you feel that you've been super helpful and things, but actually possibly a little bit creepy and a bit intrusive. So actually, getting that balance right is fundamental to building the relationship with your customers . I would I would challenge you if you did an order of all of your activities, particularly across your marketing and service and sales and customer. So support is that most companies spend 80% of the time trying to be interesting, trying to court and trying to attract attention and no enough time trying to be interested . And actually, if you re adjusted that balance, there's a possibility that in the process, by being mawr trying to be less interesting on more interested you actually become and build. You become a better part of your customers on build better relationships with your customers. So Billy on that they're interesting and interested idea. There's a couple of things I want to point out, a couple things I want to bring to your attention around that in terms of distant dynamics that exist within relationships in the 1st 1 is this phenomenon that exists in psychology called the primacy and recency effect. What it suggests, I think, is it is very much aligned to this idea that, you know, we talk about well accepted this idea that first impressions matter and that's that's clear . But actually, what it's also suggests is that last impressions Master Justus is much because if you think about you think about from a relationship perspective. Think about any relationship that you've had, you know, whether it's Ah, boyfriend, girlfriend, wife, you know, husband, partner, whatever it might be. And think about the times that we that you really remember clearly in those relationships. Generally, I would suggest I would wager that you generally remember the bits at the beginning and also the bits at the end more clearly than anywhere else on. The reason why that happens is because that's where the intensity of the emotion is at its highest level. But we think about that in terms of our our our customers. Then we have to think about well how we start really important. But how we finish is really important to, but also within all of that. There is not just about how we finish, but also could be just how when was the last time we were in touch with their customers and how that important. So we end up with this this idea that we ended with a series of primacy and recency curves throughout the relationship. The next principal I want t o you to consider when you think about relationships is something we experience in our life generally in this based on this idea that says nature, a bores a vacuum. What that means in practice on principle is that in the absence of other information, we make stuff up. Then that's just normal. And it's based on our own anxieties and fears and so on and so forth. So I've experienced this with my family. I'm pretty sure that you've experienced it with your family. You might not have seen them for in the weeks you spoke to him on the phone, but you might have seen them for weeks and weeks. And then you go and visit your mom and your dad or whoever, and then you go there for the weekend and then you're leaving, traveling back home and they say, Call or text me a message me when you get home just so I make sure that you're in my mind that you're okay that you're you arrived home safely, which, when you think about it, is complete nonsense because but it's not nonsense in it makes sense. But it's nonsense in the context of the broader racial, because you might have spoken today. They don't know whether you're coming and going with the last few weeks, but they need that closure when you go and visit them. Now, the way this applies in business is to think about this idea that you know just because you may not have anything to tell your customer when you're actually if you're working on a project or doing something for them doesn't mean to say they don't want to hear from you. Like, for example, they may. You may not have spoken to him in two weeks, but you may and he may not have anything to tell them anything new to tell him, but actually telling them that everything is OK and everything is on track and things were going on well, could be a piece of information which stops their anxiety rising up and what it does. It just makes them feel a little bit more comfortable, and it allows you to do that little bit more. I helped you build a better relationship with your customer because just being a bit more thoughtful about some of the things that they might be going through. So the last thing I want to bring to mind on this whole relationship thing is this idea around, or is the idea around assumptions and the assumptions that we make? And I'm pretty sure that assumptions that we make about most things are probably the cause off most problems in the world that we made different assumptions about different things. I think if you know the actor Alan Elder, that guy, there's Bean American actor A tall, rangy guy was in mash back in the day, dressed in scrubs. Well, he's quite famously quoted is in From Madrid and address. He gave it his daughter's college, where he said this. He said, Your assumptions are your windows on the world scrubbed them off every once in a while or the light would come in. And I love that quote because what it does do is that it just challenges to think about the assumptions that we make, like for example, you know, there's a lot of data that floats around right now that says that in the modern world, with modern technology and smart phones and all this sort of stuff, it says the average person has an attention span of like nine seconds. No. Another piece of data shows that the average attention span of a goldfish is eight seconds . Look, there's two things that we have a attention span, which is only slightly higher than a goldfish. Well, that's plainly ridiculous, and I think why she will, you know. But the challenges is that people take that and go attention spans a really short well, despite the fact that people are spending longer times, watching longer films on or playing video games or doing other sort of things. It's no, I don't think it's about irritation spans getting shorter. It's just that we're getting much better at filtering out the rubbish that we don't want to pay attention to. So it's more of an attention filter, rather no attention span. So the point is, when it comes here, customers is You have to be very, very clear what assumptions were making about them and what they're interested in, and also their behavior and why that matters to you. So now that we've actually gone through those three principles, I also want Teoh ask you to keep those principles in mind. And also they don't think about what we talked about before. The interesting versus interested part off building, better relationships and the next thing I want is to do is to do an exercise. So under underneath this video, there's a worksheet which is gonna ask you to think about those principles and think about that interesting versus interested idea and do an audit off the activities that you conduct in your business and that sort of and also the relationships that you have with your customers and to look for where the opportunities are to build better relationships with your customers on what you need to do to address or redress the balance.
13. The Customer Journey: so over the last. A few videos we've talked about also is different things to do with service and experience and the sort of things that we should be thinking about when we think about how do we build better relationships with the customers? But now it's all about pulling all together. It's all about starting to think about how do we pull the stuff that we've learned of the last? A few videos Teoh such that we can start building a strategy that helps us drive on the improvements of our service and experiences, allows us toe build about relationships with customers and also going to grow our businesses. And to do that, we can use a tool called customer journey mapping, which is there's a template attached below this video. What allows what will allow us to do? It's actually time. Look out and think about the experience that our customers have with our businesses, which is also gonna help us identify opportunities where we think we can improve it as well . But to go with that template, I have also, there's two specific exercises that I want you to think about doing. The 1st 1 is Teoh actually take that template and apply it to two different customer groups that you have in your business. And I want you to use the template to help map the experience that they have across their journey before you deal with them to the point of the transaction and then post transaction as well across their customer journey. But I want you to be sure, be clear about let's look at it from their perspective because we gotta understand their experience. Then the second exercise, what I want you to do is I want you to think about what is service and experience me for you. How do you approach it? What do you value all those different sort of things in the first excise? We're trying taken outside in perspective the second when I wanted you to taken inside out perspective because once you have done that, and only then can we identify where the gaps exist between the two on where the opportunities for improvement are
14. You and Your Team Matter Too: So we've told by previously we talked about customer journey mapping, and we told her Bring it all together and we talked about identifying areas where we can improve. But one of things we've also got to be, uh, clear about unconscious often make sure we don't forget is that it's organizations. It's teams. It's people, teams of people, groups of people that deliver design and develop better service investor experience. And what's key to that is the role that managers and leaders play and helping there. People do the best job that they can do, and so we shouldn't forget that. And as managers and leaders in businesses we should be asking probably more often. You know, what can we do more off to help her employees do a better job? What could we do less off, which is stopping employees doing a better job and also asked their opinion about what is what exists in our business that gets in the way of you doing a better job because if we do that and we do that in a regular unconscious gonna basis, we're also going to help make our organizations better and slicker and more efficient. Just in a better place to work. It also is as leaders ourselves. We also have to think, I think more regularly around this idea off. What have I done today? What could I have done today to make the lives of my team easier? And for me, I think that's like a philosophy. You're not there to be out in front door, you puffing up your chest and being the big you know the bit. Doing the big I am is your understanding that your role is there to enable your team to help them be the best that they can be to help them produce the best outcomes for, you know, for their customers. And that's your job. Your job is there to help, and through helping and removing obstacles and helping people do a better and better job, you will produce the service on the experience that you want. By the way, all this is it contained in another exercise. Funnily enough, that comes just below this video
15. Summary: If you got you got to this point, then thank you. I think we've gone through a lot. We've covered a whole range of different things. I mean everything from you know, what is wire service and I It's not what you necessarily think it is and how being brilliant at the basics is really fundamental to being able to build upto, wowing your customers, but also underpinning all that has had a little things matter and how we've gotto work hard . Teoh identify not necessarily things that we think is wrong, but also the things that are. It's like the grit, the annoyances, that irritations they exist in our service or an experience. And also this this idea that no everybody complains and sometimes that many of us, if not most of us were silent complainers a lot of the time and actually that we should look for those silent complaints because they are opportunities for us to improve that also . But when a formal complaint comes along that it can be an opportunity and we should see it as an opportunity, rather get dukes up and get into fight mode, because if somebody's taken the time and the energy to tell us how upset that they are. Then why don't we do them a good act with good grace and do them that, given the opportunity to talk to us and explain to them to explain to us kind of what went wrong and why went wrong so we can get having up. We can embrace the opportunity to fix it. But then we thought we talked then more about why customers kind of leave and what we can do to respond to that. And, you know, to build their awareness about what matters to customers or what matters to us and how we can also gonna build on that by thinking about the feedback process and how we can get used that to get a better understanding of customers and where we want to improve. But to do it in a way that makes it easy for customers and no complicated and hard and long and time consuming and all these different sort of things, and then we can. Then we moved on, and we talked about referrals and how sometimes generation referrals could be a simple as something our mums taught us when we were kids. that we just have to ask in order to receive, because in reality were no always front of mind for our customers. And sometimes we have to remind them about some of the great work that they were doing and ask for the referrals within all of that that all conflict builds into this This whole idea about the sort of relationships that we have with our customers, that I shared some ideas around some of the additional things that we can think about that can help us further develop the relationships that we have customers. And then we started towards the end. We said it wrapped that altogether, thinking about the overall customer journey and trying to map that customer journey and trying to bring it all together looking at things from the outside in. But then also then looking at the service that we produce and thinking about things from an outside and inside out perspective, rather, and then we think about how we matched those on where they where the gaps exist, and then what we can do to try and improve our service on our experience. And then finally. But just as importantly, we also gonna then looked at Hi. The role of the leader and the manager and this whole process. But how they're there to help on enable their teams to deliver the best service and the best experience that they can to do the best job. That it kind of is of crucial importance in this whole mix. And so what? So I just want to say First of all, I want to say thank you for being coming along on the journey with me, and that's the final thing is to say that I've put some other kinda links in below this video that you might be interested in. But we've also taken all of the exercises and are worked into this one final kind of project. So if you haven't been doing the exercises as we've been going through, what we've done is we've produced a worksheet which brings puts all the worksheets together in one sort of project sheet, which can be your place where you start working on building. Designing and delivering a great service are great experience to your customers that thank you for coming along on the journey with me. This bits of it the postscript. But if you for gotten it is from a book to do by the book
Adrian Swinscoe, Adviser and author
