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Trust – The Embodiment of Customer Experience

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Guest Blogger

Trust – a small word that means so much. It is a word that plays an enormous part in all our lives. A word that epitomises our start in life – from the minute we enter in to the world, we immediately have complete trust in the people who care for us. As we grow up we learn to trust in a wider sphere of people – our families and friends, as well as respected figures in our communities such as doctors, teachers and religious leaders. We learn to trust in the things people tell us – in opinions and perspectives. We start to trust organisations that we interact with. The majority of us are fortunate to be brought up in way that we understand what trust means. For all these reasons, it is 100% clear to me why I believe that trust is the embodiment of customer experience. We grow to inherently believe it exists, and as such expect it to be present when we experience the things we do.

The fact that I am writing this blog post regrettably is a reflection of the fact that the very thing we instinctively have when we are brought in to the world, is continually being eroded away by the attitudes and behaviours of our modern society. When it comes to the world of customer experience, it would be fair to say that the consumer no longer knows who to trust. Let me ask you a few random questions:

Do you trust your bank to treat you fairly?
Do you trust your clothing retailer to sell you clothes that are made ethically?
Do you trust your food retailer to sell you food that is exactly as it states on the packaging?
Do you trust your mechanic to give you a fair price for repairing your car?
Do you trust your newspaper to tell you the truth?
Do you trust your online shopping to arrive at the time you expect?
Do you trust your local council to do what is best?
Do you trust your government to do what is right?
Do you trust anyone who comes to your door in order to sell you something?
Do you trust the companies you transact with to put you, the customer, first?

In times gone by, we may well have been able to answer ‘yes’ to many (if not all) of these questions. It is a sad fact that we may well now answer ‘no’ to the majority of them. The Oxford English Dictionary defines trust as:

“The firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something”

Are we able to apply this definition to the companies with which we have experiences? It is very difficult today to talk about business that we absolutely trust to do the right thing. Many are trying. One of the UK’s largest food retailers, Morrisons, is attempting to get its customers to trust it to sell good quality meat that comes from reliable British sources. Whilst we still feel the effects of the horsemeat scandal, their campaign may well help the consumer to get a little confidence back.

British banks have a lot more work to do in order to get the consumer to trust them again. Earlier this year, the leaders of one of our failed banks has offered to return his Knighthood in recognition of the banks ails. For so long the consumer has been taken for granted – it will take a very long time before we trust the financial services sector again.

Every industry is affected by trust. Just recently, four Japanese car makers have recalled 3.4 million cars over a defect in passenger airbags. The culture that created the most robust process methodologies the world has ever seen, are also now in the firing line.

Failing to deliver an experience that can be trusted can have far greater consequences today than in years gone by. The best example of this is the now world famous ‘United Breaks Guitars’ story, and Dave Carroll’s mission to expose that lack of care and respect United Airlines gave him as a customer. As of today, the video he posted on YouTube about his experience has been viewed almost 13 million times. The damage to United Airlines is probably immeasurable.

Whilst my words have focussed very much on the lack of trust, we should start to focus on how to earn it – and in a lot of cases, how to get it back. I believe that it is possible to create the ‘trust equation’ for organisations to align to.

The equation looks at four things:

Honesty
Reliability
Consistency
Care

Let us have a quick look at these in turn.

Honesty – consumers just want organisations to be honest. Just tell me the truth. Do what you say you are going to do. Do not try and hide anything. Consumers also expect that organisations will not get things right 100% of the time – so just be honest with me when you get it wrong, and address the issue. How many businesses that you deal with are honest?

Reliability – we all want the businesses we deal with to be reliable. We want to know that things will work as they should. I wanted to buy a specific clothing item from a small independent retailer the afternoon before I was due to go on holiday. I arrived at the shop to find it closed. It was 4:15pm. On the door, in big letters it stated that the shop closed at 5:00pm every day. Reliable? Not only did the retailer miss out on that purchase, they will not be given the opportunity to get another.

Consistency – this is vital in delivering an experience that the consumer will trust. If you are able to deliver a consistent experience, your consumer will be far more likely to keep coming back. The bigger the brand, the harder this is to do. Premier Inn is a hotel brand that is starting to excel in the consistency arena. Every Premier Inn is the same – it looks, feels and behaves the same. By contrast, other hotel brands deliver inconsistent experiences, meaning that you do not always get what you expect.

Care – this is the final bit of the trust equation. If you are able to achieve the first three elements, you are in great shape. But it is possible to be honest, reliable and consistent without caring. As a consumer, I want to know that the company I deal with cares about me. They recognise the importance of me as a customer. If not, it is unlikely that I will build an emotional connection with that company. If that does not happen, the likelihood of me recalling my experiences is minimal. One could argue that Ryanair are a brand that sums this up. They are very honest in what they do. They are very reliable (the most in their industry) and consistent. But do they care?

I believe that Trust is the embodiment of customer experience. I believe that if organisations do not embrace Trust, and work hard to ensure that they deliver experiences that can be trusted; they will fail to be able to attract and keep the customers they exist to serve. Companies that we can trust will be the real winners as our fast changing world powers on.

Do Happy Employees Mean Happy Customers?

Posted on January 25, 2013 by Emma Kennedy

Happy employees have been linked to satisfied customers and better service A colleague of mine recently wrote a blog on why every customer experience matters, looking particularly at the importance of employee attitudes in service delivery. These attitudes, and the commitment of the employee to providing consistent positive service interactions, is ultimately determined by how engaged the employee is with the organisation.

The link between levels of employee engagement and the quality of service provided is well documented, with recent research by Bright Horizons highlighting that 89% of employees with high levels of well-being reported high job satisfaction and nearly two thirds of those employees reported consistently putting in extra effort at work. Further to this, it has been suggested that companies who effectively appreciate employee value enjoy a return on equity and assets more than triple that experienced by firms that don’t.

One organisation that seems to recognise this point, and use it to its advantage is John Lewis. John Lewis is a unique organisation in that it is owned by its employees – or partners – who have a say in how it is run and receive a share of the profits. Every year John Lewis releases a partner survey for all their employees. The most recent results highlighted that 82% of partners said they feel respected, with 81% reporting they feel well informed about what’s going on in the business. Given that John Lewis employees stay with the company twice as long as they industry average, these figures are hardly surprising. This level of employee engagement has led to John Lewis being recognised in a number of customer satisfaction surveys and awards, for example, in 2012 it was voted Multichannel Retailer of the Year.

John Lewis has undoubtedly got their employee engagement right, and customers are benefitting from this. Other organisations must want the same positive experience for their own customers, so who will be the ‘John Lewis’ of 2013? What strategies will be adopted to replicate these successes and improve the customer experience?

Brands in Administration: Can they still Focus on Customers?

Posted on January 21, 2013 by Lindsay Morrison

Brands in financial distress and customer loyalty Towards the end of last year, we spoke about high street brands like Comet going into administration, and how this can affect customers. This week, Twitter was up in arms at HMV’s refusal to accept gift vouchers, after the firm revealed earlier in the week that they too had gone into administration. Customers appeared to be turning on the high street music store, demanding they be compensated for their now defunct gift cards and vouchers. So have the store inadvertently turned their last few remaining customers away? The refusal to accept valid gift cards is, after all, out of HMV’s hands, with the administrators now effectively running the company’s 45 UK stores.

So I ask the question – if you find yourself in HMV’s position, can you still operate as a customer centric business? Many would argue that no, your priorities change, and saving your brand is fundamental. And of course I agree with this. But shouldn’t saving your brand also mean holding onto your remaining customers in any way possible?

Earlier this month, I wrote about customer loyalty in the face of brand scandal, but perhaps this is the tipping point. Should HMV have done more to reward their loyal customers, even as they were bringing in the administrators? And will this decision backfire should they survive?

While there may be light at the end of the tunnel for HMV this week, only time will tell if their customers will rejoin them on the high street.

Misbehaving Brands: Do their Customers Run a Mile?

Posted on January 2, 2013 by Lindsay Morrison

Is customer loyalty affected when brands behave badly Starbucks have been in the news a lot recently, and not all for the right reasons. It was revealed at the start of this month that the company had paid less than £10m in corporation tax, despite sales in the billions. And the criticism that followed may have led their customers to find their coffee fix elsewhere. But is this the case for all brands that get their fingers burned?

Following their attempt to manipulate Libor rates earlier in the year, Barclays Bank were left with fewer customers than before the scandal, but not as few as many would have expected. Regardless of whether customers leave in their hundreds or their millions, this must be taken seriously. Perhaps “likelihood to stick by a brand” should be considered as important as “likelihood to recommend”.

So what is it exactly that makes a customer loyal to a brand when they encounter such problems? Is it the feeling that misbehaving brands will learn their lesson? Or does the difficulty in switching providers outweigh the dislike for a company’s conduct?
Either way, both Starbucks and Barclays must use 2013 as a platform to rebuild the trust of their customers. After all, if they find themselves in hot water again, their customers might be less forgiving!

Our Top Ten Posts of 2012

Posted on December 31, 2012 by Nupur Chatterjee

The Percepta team in Europe have spent this past year understanding, analysing and making the best out of customer service, experience and insight trends and news to deliver the best for our clients and partners. This process has led to some great blog posts and we’ve put together ten of our most popular ones in this roundup of 2012. We hope 2013 brings our clients and partners across the globe, as well as our teams working with them, heaps of success, knowledge and joy. Wishing all our readers a prosperous 2013!

Our top ten posts of 2012:

How are your Employees Representing your Company Values?

Posted on November 29, 2012 by Lindsay Morrison

Are your employees representing your company values? In business, company values are everything. They can make or break the way you operate; they can guide your strategy, and can often determine how loyal your customers are. But do you carry your company values with you at all times? And more importantly, should you?

As someone who has worked in a customer facing retail environment, I can understand the need to live and breathe company values. The front line employee, after all, is often the first thing a customer sees as they walk into a store, and possibly the last thing they see before they leave. So you dress the part, and smile, and serve the customer to the best of your ability. You are, in essence, the brand.

But when it’s harder to define who could be a potential customer, is it too much to ask employees to have this dedication to their brand values? For me, the values should be there at all times. A “customer-centric” company should mean “customer-centric” employees, regardless the nature of customer interactions.

But I’m not sure this sentiment is shared by everyone. After all, bad customer service experiences are often be attributed to employees rather than the brand itself (my colleague wrote about her own bad experiences in a previous blog). So does the blame lie with the employees themselves? Should they be trying harder to carry their employer’s values? Or should the company be trying harder to instil their values on those they employ?

E-Commerce: Have You Got What It Takes?

Posted on November 23, 2012 by Lindsay Morrison

E-Commerce, multi-channel customer service, online experience Consumers are looking for alternatives to high street shopping, and they seem to have found the perfect solution. E-commerce has contributed to more than half of UK’s retail growth since 2003, with more shoppers making purchases online than ever before. But could this online revolution see the end of in-store shopping as we know it?

Last week electrical retailer Comet went into administration after weeks of financial trouble, with the future of its UK stores in jeopardy. And an article in Talk Business earlier this month suggests that a failure to provide multi-channel shopping could have been contributed to their downfall. The author argues that in order to survive this shift in shopping behaviour, a multi-channel approach which aligns both online and offline commerce is essential.

It certainly paid dividends for John Lewis, a company well renowned for consistent high levels of service across its 30 UK department stores. Not only have they created a sustainable shopping environment offline, but have also added an online store to rival it. And when products in store sell out, advisors can simply visit the website and order from there. As a result, they were named Multi-Channel Retailer and Online Department Store of 2012 by the CCA.

But what is the secret to their success? They key, perhaps, is what you sell and where you sell it. While the majority of John Lewis products are available to buy both in store and on their website, there are many items which still require to be held, touched or tried on in person. As such, they continue to drive customers to their stores, despite the increase in online shopping (their department store sales have increased by 16% this quarter).

So perhaps the lesson to be learned here is two-fold. Yes, adapt to this change in consumer buying behaviour and create an online store which offers high quality products and excellent service. After all, with the continuing popularity of e-commerce, you can be sure that if your website doesn’t satisfy the needs of your customers, they will find another that does! But perhaps more importantly, make sure that your website acts as an extension of your store, not an alternative. In other words, give customers a reason to shop with you both online and offline. The question is, will our high street stores be able to do this in time? Or will they succumb to the same fate as Comet? Only time will tell.

Loyalty: Why Every Customer Experience Matters

Posted on November 22, 2012 by Eva Sturm

Thinking about your own experiences as a customer, I am sure you can come up with a range of different experiences. Yet, don’t you agree, that the better the experience the more likely you are to return or repurchase? What do you think are the factors that define the quality of customer service you receive? Is it employee satisfaction? Or does it depend on the training employees receive?

The other day, for instance, I ordered a pizza from a renowned pizza delivery service as I didn’t have the time to cook after working all morning, and had to leave for an important appointment shortly. Even though the company promises a maximum of 20 minutes delivery time in my neighbourhood, the delivery guy arrived after over 30 minutes. As this alone was not stressful enough, he did not have any change on him. After a few awkward phone calls he had with his boss, I myself had to go to the corner shop to get the right amount of cash. In spite of gulping down my pizza, I was still 15 minutes late for my meeting. Even though I’d only made contact with a single employee, I decided to never use this delivery service ever again because the promised customer experience was not delivered.

While every employee represents the company they work for, it is even more so for employees in customer facing roles. Such employees are paramount in the quest of creating customer loyalty through good customer service. While there are people who are naturally good with customers, it is not always possible for companies to employ such individuals. Also, even the most caring employee might, once in a while, have a bad day. Intensive training and employee engagement could therefore help companies ensure their staff, even when they are off-site, represent and uphold company values appropriately, thus reinforcing customer loyalty.

What do you think is the best solution to ensure employees create a positive customer service experience? Do you think that better training and/or engagement within the pizza delivery service would have improved the delivery guy’s performance? And is there a way in which the company could have reacted in order to obtain my loyalty despite this faux pas? Let me know your thoughts via the comments section!

In Brands We Trust

Posted on October 30, 2012 by Christian Gondek

Brand Image drives Loyalty and repurchase decisions Brand loyalty and awareness are some of the greatest drivers of purchase decision in the European automotive market and beyond. How do I know? Let me tell you that years of feedback surrounding questions like “How can you drive such a car?” or “Hey, I’d have never believed this company could produce products so well!” has made me realise this. Especially due to the large variety of products sold under one brand, the image of the brand seems to replace specific products and becomes the umbrella reflecting the reputation and strength of the brand itself.

Research and studies about brand impact and loyalty have been undertaken over several decades. Yet, little is known about the real impact of and reasons behind brand awareness. Taking the historical example of Coca-Cola and Pepsi, blind tests have shown that consumers favoured Pepsi without knowing which soft-drink they tested. After the brand of the product was revealed during the field-test, 65% of the subjects considered Coca-Cola being the superior soft-drink. Interestingly, brand awareness seems to beat human senses like natural taste. Consequently, it would be reasonable to assume that rational decisions are heavily impacted by power of brands.

So, what is it all about? Some research highlights emotional positioning of brands whereas others focus on the perceived trust-worthiness of brands and companies. In a nutshell, most studies agree with the fact that brand reputation and image are key elements of repurchase decisions. Thus, companies need to enforce their brand image through all communication channels to all stakeholders in order to achieve their desired positioning.

Consider the example of Apple. It becomes obvious why Apple works hard to train their sales team to reflect the Apple experience in after-sales and sales. Given current technologies and social networks, positive impact on word of mouth can be taken for granted by such approaches. A few weeks ago, my own iPhone fell into a bath tub. After three hours of sorrow and one post on Facebook, the direct response came out of my personal network: “Just visit the Apple Store, as long as the iPhone is still in one piece, they will offer you a brand new one for the amount of 199 Euros.” You know what, this really worked and made me wake up this morning and order a new iPad mini. Why I have ordered it given the fact that I already own an iPad – I really don’t know. But for sure, I love the brand.

What are your thoughts around brands and brand loyalty? Have you ever recognized a brand fulfilling their brand image in their operating business or the other way around? I am keen to learn your thoughts and experiences.

Innovation: But not as we know it!

Posted on October 23, 2012 by Lindsay Morrison

Innovation: But not as we know it! Innovation is the word on everyone’s lips. We all, it seems, want to be innovative, to reinvent the wheel when and wherever possible. It worked well for Apple, after all (Steve Jobs admitted that their strategy was to innovate their way out of trouble). And a few months ago a colleague of mine wrote about the importance of a culture of innovation in the workplace. But can innovation ever be considered a bad thing? Can companies do more harm than good when they innovate?

Last week’s Glasgow for Business “28 days to be a more innovative company” event opened with a brainstorming session on barriers to innovation. Responses ranged from “risk averse” to “lack of finances” and “lack of collaborative culture”. But no-one mentioned the dreaded D word – damage. Innovation has the potential to be damaging. From a customer loyalty perspective, this is understandable. After all, if my customers enjoy my product and continue to buy it, will changing the product make them change their minds about buying?

Perhaps subtle innovation is the answer here. Take Heinz Baked Beans as an example. They started in 1886, and have maintained the same recipe to the present day. No changes, no innovating. And their customers continue to buy in their millions. But the company have been innovating. The subtle innovations lie in the branding and marketing of the product, not the product itself. Big changes for the company, but small changes for the customer.

So what can we learn from this? Subtle innovation might be the way forward. Apple, after all, made very few changes to the iPhone 5 when it was released earlier this month. Once again; a small change for the customer, a large step for the company.

The question now is, how far can subtle innovation go? Can companies get by on making small, subtle changes, or will they always feel the need to reinvent the wheel?

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