Customer Champions “Annual Review”
Customer Champions review of 2014 – 6 snapshots
As Customer Champions celebrated its fifteenth year the importance to our clients of providing an outstanding customer experience has grown throughout that period with 2014 proving no exception. Although the UK appears to be out of recession, the tough market conditions and a challenging global market means that we can only see this customer focus for our clients increasing.
The combination of Colin’s client side experience and Juliet’s market research expertise gathered over the last 30+ years, has continued to allow Customer Champions to deliver a series of practical solutions to our clients’ customer experience challenges throughout 2014. To help illustrate this we have selected 6 snapshots of clients’ programmes.
1. Understanding the views of senior key decision makers
One of the most popular services we offer is our specialised approach to executive interviews. Over the year we have conducted series’ of face to face interviews with senior executives both in the private and public sector. The resulting individual customer approved reports supported both the development of action plans at an account specific level and, alongside the findings from a quantitative telephone survey, the development of corporate wide actions.
2. Mapping out the customers’ journey
A number of clients benefited from Customer Champions’ facilitation skills in developing Customer Journey Maps. One of the key lessons is not to see customer journey maps as an end point, but to understand how to go beyond the journey map and integrate it into the business to ensure change is driven by the customer experience at the key touchpoints.
3. Understanding your internal customer
Sometimes understanding your internal customers’ needs is just as important as the external audience. This online multi-language global survey, now in its fourth year, is focused on measuring customer perception of the delivery of IT services, some of which have been outsourced. The successful implementation of plans against previous year’s feedback has resulted in significant improvement in scores. It has been very rewarding working with a client that is seeing these year on year improvements in their customers’ experience.
4. Benchmarking an airports B2B service
Although the common objective of the airport and the airlines using it is an excellent passenger experience, understanding the airlines and other B2B relationships at an airport is crucial. Working on two different projects with two international airports we have this year delivered through a combination of executive interviews conducted face to face, online and via telephone, an in-depth analysis of where the B2B relationship is working well, and what actions need to be put in place, particularly within the context of the joint objective of improved passenger experience.
5. Communicating actions to customers
We are ending the year by working closely with a client on helping them close the loop between asking their customers for their feedback and communicating what actions have been implemented because of it. A vital element to any successful customer focus programme, the work is using a digital based communication channel to provide detailed findings, activities executed and planned, and will in the future link customer case studies and testimonials to it.
6. Setting expectations around customer complaints
Amongst the many articles and presentations given throughout the year, one of the most interesting was to present at a conference for the public sector the impact of setting clear expectations around how a customer complaint was handled. Comparison was made between the approach of Premier Inn and more traditional organisations such as the Post Office and financial services organisations.
After a successful 2014 we look forward to 2015 and the customer experience challenges that both our current and future clients look for our support on. Perhaps some of them will be reflected in our 2015 predictions!