Customer experience excellence: you find it in the most unexpected places

Ask any customer management practitioner to name the brands that are true leaders in customer experience excellence and the response generally will include a roll of honour of the usual suspects: Amazon; First Direct; a new addition: Olympic and Paralympic Games Makers. One organisation that you won’t find at the top of the ‘most admired customer experience’ league is Her Majesty’s Police. Perhaps that should change.

Not long ago I contacted the police 101 non-emergency number. Dialling 101 from anywhere in England and Wales allows citizens to make contact with their local police force, in my case the Thames Valley Police. My experience was a master class in customer experience essentials:

The first voice I heard was that of Chief Constable Sara Thornton, delivering a recorded call opening message. My first impression: that the leader of this organisation was committed to delivering a good experience to her customers, even those with very basic enquiries. I was asked to choose one of three options, each of which was clearly described: I was left in no doubt which button to press.

The second voice asked how they could help. The police representative took time to listen to my story and understand what I needed from her. Occasionally she asked for clarification but initially at least, she allowed me to feel in control of the conversation. She provided answers to my questions and took a note of information that she needed for her records. More importantly she empathised, and gave me the impression that her organisation was there to support me. Finally, she gave me a reference number and let me know I could contact them again if I needed further assistance.

What does this experience tell us?

• Find a way of demonstrating to your customers that delivering a great customer experience is important to everyone in your organisation, including the chief executive or chief constable.
• Interactive voice response (IVR) can be useful and even welcome if the list of options is short and it leads to a more relevant conversation.
• Start with your customer’s agenda: you will want to capture information about them, but let them talk first.
• Take time to listen to your customers, to find out how they feel and what they really need from you: a longer conversation may be more efficient than average handle time statistics might suggest.
• Once your customer feels comfortable talking with you, they will be more prepared to give you the information you need to drive your future relationship.
• At the end of every interaction, confirm the next steps, and what the customer can expect to happen next.

A simple, straightforward, excellent experience that reminded me of some of the customer experience fundamentals.

I guess you could call it Customer Experience 101.

Happy Birthday, Allan!

Just after 8 pm on my birthday, this email landed in my inbox:

Hi Allan,

Here's to another year of happy travels. When you're out celebrating in Newbury you may like to hint to your friends that one of our top offers below would make a great gift. Or make this the year you visit that must-see destination (check out our favourites for the coming months).

Best wishes,

The Opodo team

Those ‘top offers’ included a three night city break in New York for £526, a flight to Dubai for £312 and an attractively priced 3-star hotel room in Bangkok for £16 (leaving me only with the challenge of working out which friend would pay for my £473 flight).

Opodo gathered some information from me when I booked a flight with them. And they are determined to use it. They know three things about me: that one of my names is Allan, the date of my birthday, and that I used to live near Newbury. They have decided that, as a result, they have a relationship with me.

If Opodo did in fact have a relationship with me, they would know this:

• No-one who knows me calls me Allan 
• I live near to Oxford 
• None of my friends would buy me a flight ticket or a night in a hotel in Bangkok for a present

We have to accept that mass marketers live in a world of personalised rather than personal relationships. But rather than trying to make our communications seem relevant, we should focus on making them actually relevant, by looking beyond the obvious.

On the face of it, Opodo know very little about me. In fact they know much more. They know my age/lifestage. They know that I booked a flight to a European destination, for two adults and a child. They know that I did not book a hotel, or anything else. They know it’s more than two years since I bought anything from them, that they have sent me emails at least twice a month since then, that I open them only when they feature a competition and click through almost never. All of this tells them much more about my propensity to buy from them than my birthday. Their challenge is not to remember to wish me many happy returns, but to find a way of tempting me to come back to them. And e-marketing gives them the flexibility to tailor their proposition, not just the way it is communicated.

Accurate, updated customer and prospect data may appear to be the solution to the problem, but it’s not the whole story. Knowing your customers’ names and birthdays may help to put the finishing touches to your communication, but it won’t guarantee relevance. So when you’re planning your next targeted campaign, don’t ask ‘what personal information are we using in this communication?’ Ask ‘what information are we not using, and how can we start to exploit it effectively?’

Make your message personalised and your customers might open it. Make it relevant and there’s a good chance they will buy.