My Technology One post

Posted on May 3, 2013 by

Following my post about Customer Experience at Technology One, I received a call from one of the Executive Officers reminding me of my legal obligations under the terms of my Deed Of Release from the company.

By way of response, I sent him the following reply and have removed my post from this site with an apology if any offense was caused by my post!!!!

Thanks for your message.
Whilst I would argue that my article is not “detrimental” to Technology One, indeed I had hoped it might help, I agree with you that it is not in my financial interest or Technology One’s reputational interest to debate it legally in the light of the conditions of my Deed Of Release.
I will therefore remove the post from my blog today and wish you well,

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A Banking dichotomy

Posted on May 1, 2013 by

I first want to say that I am not expressing a view in this post, merely an observation. This is in the light of a very good recent experience with UBank who are an Australian Internet bank (part of NAB- National Australia Bank) and an incident with them that may cause me to churn. Hence the dichotomy.

The Internet site is supported by an excellent 24/7 Contact Centre which appears to be very customer centric and well organised. I recently set up my Internet Banking from home using my home broadband connection which uses the only phone line coming into the house. We live in a rural location so have no mobile phone signal at home. When I went to update my personal details online, UBank sent a SMS code for me to enter onto the website to verify the change. Of course, I could not receive the SMS as I had no mobile signal. The SMS was only valid for 10 minutes.

I soon realised that UBank had set up this “security measure” for every single transaction that I would make online. Payments, Transfers, Changes in details all receive SMS verification. With most of the Australian population living in areas with decent mobile coverage, I’m sure this isn’t a common issue to the banking giants but it is to me.

I rang UBank to ask whether there was another option. I was told it is the banks policy to provide this “more secure” method to protect their customers. This is very noble but why couldn’t I receive an email notification instead? Apparently UBank and NAB do not believe this option is as secure so they have adopted the SMS as the standard verification method.

This renders the site useless to me for “home” banking and I am now about to churn. It raises an interesting point though. This initiative has been taken to attempt to protect the customer. It is done with the customer in mind. However, because I have no other options of validation, the approach means that anyone in remote areas of the country will struggle with this issue.

I therefore wonder whether this is an example of good or bad customer centricity? It is good in wanting to make my banking experience safer but bad in that it does not give me the choice in how I want to receive that experience.

I would be interested to know what others think?

Posted in Customer Experience, Customer Service, Loyalty | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Technology 1 Customer Experience 0

Posted on January 23, 2013 by

When visiting a restaurant, what are your priorities as a paying customer?
I guess it depends upon the purpose of your visit but quality of food, price, ambience and service are usually near the top of most people’s priorities.
As I am working in Melbourne, VIC at the moment, I found myself in Chinatown and was enticed inside one of seemingly hundreds of competing Chinese restaurants.
The restaurant was cozy, quite busy and I was pleased with my choice.
I was shown to my table and was presented with a tablet pc.
I am fortunate enough to eat out on a fairly regular basis but I thought that giving me a PC was over stretching the hospitality somewhat until I realised that it was not a gift but rather a menu!
The waiter promptly disappeared after giving me a brief and impromptu training session showing me how to navigate the menu and place my order.
On each page of the menu, a list of meals appeared with a picture and price alongside them. I looked around and found that each table was using a tablet and the only members of staff were those delivering food.
The items I ordered arrived quickly and with a minimum amount of fuss. The food was good and my bill arrived along with my coffee. I left the restaurant and it was only when I was outside that I realised that something was missing. It was efficient and modern but had no personality. The customer experience had been diminished by removing a key part of the dining experience, the customer interaction. There had been no recommendations, no small chat, no checking to see everything was ok. There had not even been a good bye.
I sometimes find that organisations become obsessed with technology in driving transformation but overlook the important detail of the customer experience. By removing the waiters, I’m sure the restaurant increased its profitability but I also imagine its revenue may be adversely affected.
If I was the owner of that restaurant, I would employ waiters to provide the personal touch and keep the technology to help customers browse the menu and to improve the ordering process.
It does, however, beg the question of whether technology is a friend or foe of good customer experience. To me, it depends upon how the technology is used. Is it an enabler or a driver?
Excuse the pun but this provides some food for thought!

Posted in Customer Experience, Customer Management, Loyalty | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The Top 20 CRM Blogs of 2012

Posted on January 15, 2013 by

Reblogged from CRMOutsiders:

You want to learn about CRM, or you want to refine and expand your understanding, but you don’t know where to start? Well, the blogosphere’s one good place to start learning, but it’s become a crowded, confusing place, clogged with blogs of disparate quality and written by people with motives that are less than mostly pure. How do you navigate that?

Read more… 3,842 more words

A very useful list that covers many aspects of a broad topic. Highly recommended.
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Why I have changed my view on CRM technology

Posted on October 26, 2012 by

For years, I have been preaching to anyone that will listen that the strategy must come before the software. People + Processes + Technology. I have used examples such as buying a car to explain my argument.

Most people would not go out and buy the car that looks best. They would first of all decide what they need a car for. They might then decide on a few criteria to narrow the search depending upon their own needs. safety, Speed, Economy, Luggage capacity, Auto, Price etc. Once this “strategy” had been reached, the search for a car could begin.

I have always believed that CRM software should underpin the business strategy and facilitate providing benefits to the organisation and its clients. However, maybe I was wrong?

Technology is now at a stage where it is providing features and capabilities that can INFORM a Strategy. In other words, a business strategy could be built around a CRM tool. Having seen some of the latest tools and capabilities from the likes of Salesforce, Sugar, Oracle, Kana etc, I am increasingly convinced that for many organisations thinking about CRM, the software could give them market leading strategies and game changing capability. There are capabilities that many companies would not have thought of which might create huge value. In the past, industry processes led the design for software. Now it seems that software design is opening new doors for business processes. Just look at how Social Media has “forced” organisations to change its internal and external processes. Does your organisation have a Social Media strategy? If so, I bet it has only been developed in the last two years.

I can imagine young or smaller enterprises could benefit from this wave of new capability. App Exchanges and Open Source platforms are driving a wealth of rich, new CRM capability that is beyond the imagination of most companies.

With immature processes and potentially tight budgets, a software led strategy can help enforce new processes (that could be leading practice for that industry) and can help cement in customer centric processes.

However, I still believe that larger organisations will need to develop strategies first and then find software that can support and extend those strategies. It will be interesting to see how the SaaS model affects uniformity and adherence to standardised processes and whether we do start to see software led customer centric transformations.

I would be very keen to hear any thoughts or experiences on this topic.

Posted in CRM Consulting, CRM tools, Customer Management | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

The real “X Factor”

Posted on October 25, 2012 by

Forget your TV. The real X Factor will allow you to perform better than your competitors and achieve long term results to delight your shareholders and stakeholders.

The X Factor is on most CEO’s agenda’s yet it often alludes many organisations.

The X factor is widely known, yet rarely understood.

So what is this corporate X Factor?

The X factor is eXperience. The Customer Experience or Cx as it is often abbreviated to.

It includes the User eXperience (or Ux), whoever the “user” might be, as a user could be a customer, a partner, an employee, a Supplier. It all adds up to a perception gained by an individual or collectively by an organisation which will affect the relationship between both parties.

Every interaction between an organisation and its Stakeholders is a “moment of truth” where these perceptions, either positive or negative, are gained. The sum of these “moments of truth” lead to an overall “customer experience” that can affect the economic relationship. Let me use an example of how this might apply to Financial Services.

It used to be that upon getting your first job, you set up a Bank account (often with your parents bank) and you banked with this organisation for life. When you came to buy your first house, you might visit your local Manager who would interview you and then arrange a loan. How times have changed. These days, Banking is highly competitive and has moved to touch every point of our lives. It is easy to change banks, or have many banks. Some specialise in certain types of products but they all want our hard earned cash. The transactional cost of changing banks has lowered so that customer loyalty is far less than it was in previous generations. Therefore the retention of customers has become more important than acquiring customers to most banking organisations. So how does a bank retain your business? It can make its products more attractive and tailored, but this comes at a high price to the bank and has not always been a unique differentiator. Therefore banks have gradually come to realise that by improving every touchpoint with their customer, it not only makes the bank easier and convenient to do business with but also improves our perception of their brand.

The Customer Experience must be considered across every single touchpoint, across every single channel and needs to be consistent for every single customer. Therefore if a Bank has great, customer centric staff in every branch, this is clearly advantageous but a Telephone Banking service which uses a poorly designed Interactive Voice Recognition (IVR) menu, long wait times or is not 24/7 might negate all the good work done in the branches. Similarly, a great Mobile App which allows you to do your general banking might be negated by a difficult to use Online Banking web site.

It is true that different customer segments are likely to use different channels, depending upon their needs but few Banking customers will stick to one channel. Therefore every single touchpoint must be looked at and tested from a customers perspective to ensure that they receive a positive and consistent experience. The loyalty generated will drive longer term financial reward, especially in a Social world where good and bad experiences can be shared and communicated globally in seconds.

I have used Banking as an example but the laws of Customer Experience are universal. Create great and lasting Customer Experiences and the rewards will repay the effort over and over.

Posted in Brand, Customer Experience, Customer Management, Customer Service, Loyalty, Marketing | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Cost of Forgetting the Customer Experience

Posted on October 16, 2012 by

Reblogged from CRMOutsiders:

By Chris Bucholtz

Last week, I wrote an article for CRM Buyer that said, essentially, this: you can’t control what your customer does, what he says, where he says it or who he says it to, but you can control the experiences he has with your company. If you do that right, everything else ought to take care of itself.

Read more… 846 more words

One for the CRM Hall Of Shame....
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Becoming Customer Centric…5 Top Tips

Posted on October 11, 2012 by

The difference between experience and wisdom is a subtle one. To learn from an experience, one will make a mistake and learn not to do that again. That is learning by experience.

To learn from wisdom is to learn from the experience of others so not to have to make that mistake in the first place. That is learning by wisdom.

Therefore I find it puzzling that many organisations still prefer to learn by experience when attempting to fulfil their promise to become a truly customer centric organisation. Therefore, here are five quick tips that uses the wisdom gained from other organisations (who shall remain nameless but all of whom I have worked with) that can help on that journey towards customer centricity.

Tip #1: To change behaviour, change the comp and hire appropriately.

If you want your Managers accountable for delighting the customer and improving retention, then change the comp plan to focus them on that objective. If it is important, make it something that becomes an economic necessity! In a similar vein, ensure that your hiring policy is aligned to ensure that only applicants who can demonstrate a passion for customer centricity are hired. Gradually, the culture of the company will change.

Tip #2: Give the Customer a voice in the Boardroom

Invite the voice of the customer into the boardroom by appointing a Chief Customer Officer. If you cannot afford one, get a cardboard lifesize cut-out and sit it on a chair in the boardroom. At all relevant moments during a board meeting, turn to the cardboard cutout and ask “What does the customer think about this?”. Believe me…it works!!!!

Welcoming the CCO to the Boardroom

I had been preparing a blog post on this subject but I would rather defer to someone who has the experience of being a Chief Customer Officer. You can learn more from her excellent blog here.

Tip#3: Interview your churning, loyal and indifferent customers

Do you provide Employee Satisfaction surveys, exit interviews and other such HR charm offensives? Well, why not extend similar concepts to former customers, current customers (noth advocates and the silent majority). Hold focus groups, use Social Media, surveys, bribes whatever it takes to gain the insight you need to gain a true customer perspective on what you do well, what you do not do well and what they would like to see you do. It is very powerful. I heard a stat recently that said in a survey of clients, 95% said their customers “loved them”, a perception that was only supported by 6% of their customers.

Tip#4: Educate, Empower and Enable everyone

Everybody within your organisation must feel empowered and able to provide an outstanding customer experience. To do this, everyone needs educating. Who are THEIR customers? What benefits will this approach bring? What behaviours and values need to be developed? This education should not be a Webex or DVD to watch. It must be participative, ongoing and cross functional, involving every staff member from Chairman to Janitor. One organisation invited all of its directors to spend a day answering phones to “real” customers. Only half took their turn. Those who did found the experience “career changing”. Those who didn’t turn up, in my opinion, should have been given an ultimatum to do their stint or leave. Customer Centricity needs to be fully inclusive.

Tip#5: Consistency across customer touchpoints

Finally, the great experience being delivered by Sam in Sales could be completely undermined by a poor after sales experience by Paul in Service. Not only is it important for everyone interacting with the customer to behave in a customer centric fashion, but it is also vital to offer a consistent LEVEL of Customer Service. I believe it is better for everyone to be very good than have one excellent and another mediocre. That alignment can be measured by surveying each different department at each customer touchpoint. The internal initiative should then focus upon improving the “lagging” departments to provide greater overall consistency.

Oh, there is a sixth tip: “Do not let I.T drive the initiative”, but that deserves a blog post of its own!

Of course, this list is not inclusive or exhaustive. Success could be achieved without these tips but I believe that they will increase your chances of success.

Posted in Customer Experience, Customer Management, Customer Service, Loyalty | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Bermuda Triangle of CRM

Posted on October 3, 2012 by

Are you brave enough to enter The Bermuda Triangle?

The journey towards Customer Centricity can be like a Roller Coaster ride. Sure there are ups and downs but consider the dilemma most of us go through before getting on the ride:

It is scary, I’m afraid.

Look at that queue. I just haven’t got the time to wait.

It is expensive and surely not worth it.

It is unsafe. I have heard of accidents.

However, all of the while there is this niggling urge to do it despite these concerns and fears. You just know that your esteem will rise for having overcome your fears….and excuses!

Facing up to any transformation, whether it is a Customer Experience Transformation or a change to your working life, it can be just as daunting and the same fears can rise to the surface. However, these fears are very real and to increase your chances of success, I believe it is necessary to plot a course through these concerns, which I refer to as the Bermuda Triangle, where many Projects and Programs disappear never to be seen again.

The Bermuda Triangle is located between three waypoints that each have a major bearing on any type of project. The interesting thing is that you can only be in one place at any one time and you will therefore compromise on the other two. Therefore determining which waypoint is of primary consideration on your initiative will help plot a course and set expectations appropriately.

Lets consider each in turn.

Time

You are in a hurry and need the transformation to be completed within this Financial Year. To achieve that outcome, Cost and Quality are likely to suffer. You will probably need more people in order to complete tasks earlier and to take shortcuts that probably compromise quality. Conversely, if time is in plentiful supply then you could compromise on cost (spend more) to give you high quality or compromise on quality to help lower costs and obtain quicker results.

A great example is the building of the Segrada Familia.

Clearly Cost and Quality were impacted hugely because it was determined to take as long as it takes. It is a very costly and high quality building. Hopefully your project will not take as long!

Cost

How much is your budget and are you willing to compromise either time or quality to get the outcome you are seeking within your budget? If cost is the biggest consideration, you may have to consider lower quality (ever heard the “pay peanuts, get monkeys” expression?) and/or take longer. The GFC has left us with many examples of unfinished projects that simply ran out of cash. Perhaps it is better to compromise on cost by setting an affordable budget which will deliver something, albeit at a lesser quality than one might have hoped.

Quality

If you want High Quality, it will typically come at a price (cost) and take longer (time) but as at the Segrada Familia, that may not be an issue. I am amazed at how often I have met business leaders who say Quality is THE most important aspect yet they are unprepared to find extra money or time to enable quality outcomes. By compromising on Quality, you might be able to get a quicker or less expensive outcome.

That is why this conundrum is the Bermuda Triangle of Projects. Without a clear understanding and agreed direction amongst Business Owners and Project Sponsors within the Cost, Time and Quality dilemma, the project will struggle from the first point at which a decision needs to be made regarding a variation of any nature.

Talk about each of these considerations and agree where your project sits within the triangle. This then determines the SCOPE of your initiative which delivers against these three considerations. Be wary of “scope creep” where additional requirements get added in to the scope. Once more, this variation will cause on impact on Time and Cost if the additional scope is agreed to, Quality if the additional scope is rejected.

This dilemma is not specific to CRM but I thought I’d share it as it is pure “common sense” and as my Dad always told me “common sense ain’t too common”. I hope this helps in some small way.

Posted in CRM Consulting, CRM tools, Customer Experience, Customer Management, Customer Service | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

The Hall Of Fame No1: Youi Insurance

Posted on September 29, 2012 by

In the interests of trying to improve the customer experience, I regard it as my civil duty to name and shame organisations who “say” one thing but “do another” to their customers, resulting in a poor customer experience. Similarly, I will credit where credit is due to organisations who are delivering a great customer experience. Step up and take a bow Youi Insurance.

I was about to nominate Youi simply from the experience I received when taking out insurance with them. They promise to answer the call in 5 rings and did. They were friendly, personable (not robotic) and empowered to help you in any way they could rather then push you on to another agent. They explained the quotation process very clearly and offered to call me back at a time to suit me. This was great but it is all to easy to deliver a great sales experience only to be let down by delivery. Fortunately for this blog post but unfortunately for me and an unsuspecting Wallaby, I experienced the delivery aspect of Youi after my wife ploughed into a Wallaby late one evening. The poor Wallaby was killed instantly but my car suffered non terminal damage which would need extensive surgery.

Enter Youi.

I rang to report the incident and the first thing the agent said was “OMG- Is your wife alright?” I instantly connected with this agent. We chatted about how shocking it is to hit an animal and she gently uncovered the set of facts. She spoke to my wife and very quickly she explained what would happen next. Sure enough, we then got a text from Youi (having said that was our preferred channel) confirming that a pick up truck would tow the car to the repair shop. After collecting the car, we got another text confirming that it would be assessed within 24 hours. Next day, another text confirming that they had approved the repairs and the time it would take. Youi have clearly built this process around the customer, removing the pain of the organising of each aspect away from the customer. I found it clear, non invasive and very pleasant. A very good customer experience.

Now here is the acid test. Next year, my premium may well rise due to the altercation with Australian wildlife. Will I shop around for a cheaper quote? Probably NOT because Youi have proved their value to me and for that, I may well be willing to accept that little bit of extra cost. Youi have therefore quickly turned me into a loyal customer through providing a great experience based on process, people and technology. One final thing, after posting this, I received an email survey from Youi. However, it was not your normal bland survey. It was a transparent and simple survey which shared your views with other customers. Take. Look at this!

http://www.youi.com.au/youiwall

A great lesson for many organisations.

Posted in Brand, Customer Experience, Customer Management, Customer Service, Loyalty | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment