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2006 SHOW REVIEW...
My, my, how the CRM world has changed in 10 years; 1996 was the year that catapulted Siebel, Vantive and Clarify into our consciences. Call centres were still places for customer conversations; and everyone told everyone else that customer retention was cheaper than acquisition, courtesy of Bain. Ten years on I went to the Customer Quality Expo & Congress in Cannes to listen to tales of CRM v2006 and to see what companies as varied as the BBC, Unisys and Nestle were making of it.
One familiar face from 1996 was Don Peppers – an icon of sustainability. The boxes and wiring may be history, but good ideas just go on. Of course, Peppers has been acquired by Carlson Marketing – nevertheless he opened the conference in evangelical form. Study Vampire Bats, he extolled. In the animal kingdom, apparently, only humans and vampire bats trust non-relatives. If Mrs V Bat baby-sits for Mrs O Bat’s and the favour is not returned – Mrs O Bat will soon find herself ostracised by the whole community. Moral; your customers trust you to help them, but if you’re bent on self-interest and shareholder returns, you’ll feel the ‘community’ backlash – balance long-term trust and short-term returns.
Peppers also related the story of the goldfish that happily swims around the same bowl all day long: with no memory it doesn’t know it has been there before. So too with businesses that always act as if meeting ‘new customers’: with no memory of meeting them before.
You might apply the goldfish principal to conferences; you go, meet a few people, and then carry on as before, events erased from memory. But chairman Doug Dvorak, also of New World fame, had a US trick up his sleeve to stop that.
His feat of personalised Welkom, Failte (an Irish welcome), Marhaban (Arabic) over; we relaxed into comfy seats, the lights were dimmed; only to be hoicked up by Dvorak and admonished to ‘talk to one another’. “Introduce yourself and a business problem to three new people,” he commanded – an activity that seemed reminiscent of speed dating.
Reticently, we networked; but the idea was pure magic. In a group of 90 people, many presenting ‘their story’ or exhibiting, we formed a community. Over the next few days, in between Dvorak’s commands to “talk”, we did just that; but we also listened, learned and got to know each other. The moral of this is if a platform can be provided for customers to talk and be encouraged to solve problems with each other – they’ll love you.
The award for top myth of the moment goes to NPS (net promoter score) hailed by Frederick Reichheld in Harvard Business Review (2003) as ‘The One Number You Need to Grow’. With NPS you ask customers one question: “How likely is it that you would recommend us to a friend or colleague?” They circle a number between 0 and 10 (0 is for those who might think 1 is better than 10). For your net score add up all customers scoring 9 and 10, and take from that all those scoring 6 or less (the ones scoring 7 and 8 are ambivalent). A world-class score is 75-80% of your customer base; the average score is 15%. The idea is intuitive and simple, making it compelling – but perhaps too much of a ‘silver bullet’ in the hands of the desperate and unwary.
GE Healthcare uses it – as a great promoter of Six Sigma it appeals to GE’s metric mentality. “Loyalty measures are often soft and cuddly,” said its customer relationship champion, Eric Shawger. “NPS gives loyalty teeth against the profit gorilla.”
Avis uses it – mixing it with staff satisfaction to get a better picture of cause and effect.
And from general conversation it seems it has percolated through to a number of European companies.
Single measures have their place, but it is stories that echo the voice of the customer, giving emotional and contextual information to get under the skin of customer experience. The presenters had some good ones:
Angie Court, director of Customer Service for Avis, effervesced on stage, to recount her ‘entente cordiale’ problems. Her French staff, it seems, just don’t understand that when an English woman says ‘it’s fine’, she means ‘it was awful and I want you to do something about it’.
Neither do her staff realise that ‘I’m sorry’ isn’t an admission of wrong doing, but rather a term of fraternity, as in ‘I’m sorry you are angry over your lousy flights, and your bags are lost’. Just say you’re sorry, she tells French staff – but it isn’t our fault, they retort – just say it, and the customer will be happy, she reassures them.
Customer psychology was a theme for Dominique Soudais, customer marketing director for France Telecom. “We must recognise that the customer is schizophrenic,” he lilted. “He knows, and expects us to know all about him, but we must only use what we know with his permission.” He cited the example of divorce as a little-known reason for telco churn. “We think we are giving great service, sending out detailed statements for cheaper ‘friend and family’ packages – but then the customer finds out the number his wife calls most often is her lover – and blames us!”
Perry Littleboy, head of Strategy for Coutts and Company said the bank positively encouraged its private bankers to spend time telling clients ‘company stories’ – it built the brand values, engendered trust and gave a fine experience as well. A compelling exponent of this philosophy, he told the tale of the Duchess who had gone to an ‘avant-garde’ play sponsored by Coutts. The play contained scenes of bestiality; the Duchess was incensed. “Fancy,” she angrily complained, “that Coutts should sponsor a play encouraging sons to answer their fathers back.” Moral: get call centre staff to tell stories.
Call centre service, or lack of it, is still hot. Stephanie Wilson VP Client Services for Convergys gave a spirited defence of attempts to operationalise customer satisfaction in organisations that have “more metrics than NASSA”, “but clients are frightened that focusing on customer satisfaction will destroy their operational KPIs”, she told us.
It is said that if you can take away one nugget of information from a presentation then you have done well. With that in mind:
- High-speed train company Thalys demonstrated how crucial it is to find out all customer needs prior to any attempt at delighting them – “for Germans good food is lots of it on a big plate,” said its marketing director. “But for the French it’s trendy food nicely presented.” You have to know these things; otherwise you won’t score 80%.
- Alistair Tempest, president of FEDMA, let us into the nightmare world of EU direct marketing regulators; he informed us of current moves to insist that companies comply with the data protection regulations in their customers’ countries – all of them – rather than those of the country of operation. Which could cause issues for Internet sales and global trade.
- Tom-Tom, the satellite navigation company, told us that it had avoided growing customer contact in line with rocketing sales by installing interactive frequently asked questions on its website, as a ‘first line of defence’. Leaving ‘real people’ to deal with difficult enquiries and sales. An attractive idea for the audience.
- Stephanie Demay from General Mills reminded us to deliver the brand promise. She told of the superb male call centre agent who received nothing but abuse and complaints. His crime – after seeing the Haagen-Dazs advertisements callers wanted to speak to a sultry-voiced female; not a chatty, male, cookery expert.
But the prize for the best story must go to poor Mike Ashton of Hilton, who walked into a conference at a Hilton Conference Venue to wax lyrical about his new, award-winning customer-focused strategy. Only to find that a large number of delegates had been refused entry to their booked rooms the night before, owing to a delayed touring party. Moral: Never go on stage with children or animals, and never extol the virtues of your customer service within 10 miles of anywhere it can be experienced.
While there was gold in all of the stories told, unfortunately it is impossible to include everyone. Here’s to the next 10 years of evolving customer centricity; whose next on Oracle’s list do you think Stuart?
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