ConsultantJoannacarr CX

Letters to our heroes 🌟🏆

There are so many of you out there, working tirelessly to make customers’ everyday lives better. Thank you for all that you do! 🌟

What an incredible day at ICXA 2024! 🎉 Huge thanks to the ICXA team for inviting me to host the Build-Up to the Awards Ceremony.

The day was packed with inspiration, from John Sills’ insights on human-centred experiences to Peter Aiken’s talk on CX as a driver for brand growth.

And panel discussions on ‘Behind the Scores’ with Anouk Vastert, Ana Iorga, and Andrew Carothers.

As well as The ‘Past, Present, and Future of CX’ panel with Abdulaziz Alshamsan, Jenny McCoy, and Carlos Espinosa.
Now, it’s time to get ready for the Awards Ceremony.

A customer wanted to exchange a dirty blouse she had just bought. She used the self-service checkout to help a busy checkout line. She served herself and paid for the blouse but immediately noticed it was dirty. She approached customer service to exchange the blouse. 🧼👚
How many managers do you think it should take to exchange a dirty blouse? 1, 2, 3, or 4? 🤷‍♀️
In this case, it took a total of 5 managers to exchange the blouse, even though the customer hadn’t even left the store. A cashier would likely have noticed the problem immediately. 😟
What Went Wrong?
* Involving five managers to exchange a blouse is excessive and inefficient. 🚫
* The customer experienced unnecessary stress and loss of time. ⌛
* The company lacked a good process for handling such simple situations. ⚙️ What Could Have Been Done Better?
* The company should have a simple and efficient process for handling easy exchanges. ✔️
* Employees should have the authority to make decisions without involving multiple managers. 💼
* Employees should be trained to handle such situations quickly and effectively. 🏃‍♂️🏃‍♀️ The company claims to put customers first, but this doesn’t seem to be reflected in their actual practices. 🏢❌ Want an Engaging Session on Brand Experience for Your Leadership Team or Employee Kick-Off Day?
Or do you want to have an open chat about Brand Experience in your business? I’m all ears. Just send me a message! 📩✨

Finally got to meet up with Adrian Swinscoe! Adrian is a man I have had great pleasure talking with digitally and as an eager fan of his podcast Punk CX this was a great moment for me 😀

Real-life Customer Experience Blunders
Marketing Communication: «First-class customer service before, during, and after purchase.» Actual Delivery: ❌. Here’s a real-life example of a customer experience blunder with a negative outcome for both the customer and the company. This story was shared with me by a very frustrated customer. 😤
Endless Waiting for Delivery 🚚⏳ The customer buys a product, schedules delivery, works from home, and then waits, and waits, and waits. After calling in, they’re told the delivery is on its way. With a sigh, they hang up, and guess what – the delivery never arrived. Sound familiar? 🤨
This is a classic case of poor customer experience. But the story doesn’t end there. The customer reached out to customer service via email and received the following response:
«Thank you for your feedback. We are sorry to hear that your order was not delivered as agreed and that the follow-up was not as expected...» 🙄 And then came the bombshell: «This doesn’t happen with us. You were very unlucky. It surely won’t happen again.» 💣🤯
What Went Wrong?
The customer didn’t receive the item on time.
The customer didn’t get honest answers.
The customer was told the problem wasn’t real, when it had just happened. 😡
The customer felt their problem wasn’t acknowledged or taken seriously. 😔
The company didn’t take responsibility for the mistake.
The Result? The customer has boycotted the company ever since. 🚫🛒
Why Share Such Stories? When companies promise «first-class customer service before, during, and after purchase,» they need to work on building organizations that deliver on those promises.
Customer experiences like this happen every day, probably even in your company. The question is, what will you do about it? 🤔
In cases like this, it’s often more than just human error leading to bad outcomes. It involves systems, processes, technology, people, and culture. This was a simple customer journey that, with a bit of focused work, can be improved to prevent customer boycotts. 🌟
Stay tuned for more real-life CX blunders 🚫

Finally, home from Italy five days after our planned return, with an unexpected cost of approximately 7000 euros to get home and undergone a rollercoaster of emotional experiences. Unfortunately, we got caught up in the SAS pilot strikes, which was unfortunate.
But our journey, which unexpectedly plunged us into interactions with various travel providers alongside their "outside of normal "operating challenges such as; bus for train and airport operating and baggage chaos problems, provides opportunities to document some positive and negative customer journey experiences 😭🥺🤪🙈😤😱

In short, this is a summary of our journey:

Our planned journey
Planned interactions: 2 airports, 2 flight providers, 2 train companies, 2 taxi providers, 1 hotel booking company + 1 hotel

Actual journey and interactions: 
6 airports, 4 flight providers, 2 train companies + 10 train station visits, 2 bus companies, 2 taxi providers (only because we walked some distances with luggage in tow to save money), and 4 hotel accommodation residences.

We have experienced the highs and lows of interacting with various search, booking, amending and usage functionalities; we have interacted with people, policies, processes, and systems, and I promise there are many learnings to be had and shared 😉

Three companies especially deserve a shout-out for outstanding customer experience. The first is who helped us to solve our problems (not caused by Widerøe); their live chat worked exceptionally well; they were quick, helpful and empathetic to our situation. 
The second company, empathised with our situation, saved us a two-hour queue at Schipol airport, and finally to our Hotel Europa, who called around to find new accommodation. 

Our journey with SAS is incomplete as these extra inconveniences have cost us somewhere in the region of 7000 euros regarding how the compensation experience will be undertaken. Only time will tell. 

Slik ser en workshop ut, når 30 advokater skal være med på en viktig og spennende reise mot å sette kunden i hjertet av bedriften.
Her handler alt om å jakte det som skal gi klientene deres trygghet, den gode følelsen og den aller beste opplevelsen hos

Tusen takk for at vi i fikk være med på denne spennende dagen. Vi elsker at dere er engasjerte og virkelig bryr dere om kundene deres, og ikke minst; tør å ta denne reisen sammen med oss for å designe en signaturopplevelse. Vi gleder oss til fortsettelsen!

It’s all in the details ✨

Be proactive look for ways to bring more value to your customers - and your business

You send a survey, and an unhappy Customer gives you a bad score.

What now? 🤔

The answer - A close-the-loop process (who does what and when).

Join me together with the European Customer Experience Organisation together with other Customer experience professionals: Marko Jovic, Federico Cesconi, Michael Brandt, CCXP to discuss this and other aspects around the close-the-loop process. 🚀

Don't miss it!

      

Det handler om mennesker. Når sist hadde du en samtale med dine kunder for å innhente innsikt om hva de ønsker å oppleve i samhandling hos din bedrift?

Do you want your business to be one of the 25% of businesses who will prevail until 2027, according to predictions by Mckinsey? 
 
If yes, my next question to you is: 
Where are you in the process of developing/working with your customer experience strategy?
 
The model pictured here is inspired by James Proschka's modell on personal change. 
 
From a personal change perspective, about 80% of people find themselves at stage 1, Pre-contemplation. 
 
This stage is often people who are not happy with the situation they find themselves in but are not considering doing anything about it.
 
I share this model and ask you to reflect on where your business finds itself in this model regarding your customer experience strategy? 
 
For example:
* are you considering improving your customer experience?
* have you worked out a customer experience strategy?
* are you acting on delivering on your strategy?
* are you actually in the maintenance stage? 

The maintenance stage can be described as: 
✅ We have a solid experience strategy communicated to everyone in our business. 
✅ Everybody has access to important customer insights. 
✅ We all know how to reward success, teach and deliver against our customer promises, discover pain points, rapport on pain points, work cross-functionally to improve pain points.


🤔 OR are you perhaps in the Pre-contemplation stage – unhappy with the situation as it is, but not actively thinking about doing anything about it?
 
 
By the way – the day that a CX strategy was for the enterprise business only is long gone. Working with CX is an all-man activity now. After all – a business without customers is no business at all!