Our Customer Experience Services fall into six different categories. Click on the boxes below to find out more:
SHORTCUTS
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE SERVICES:
Defining Customers and Segments
A business that has more than one 'type' of customer must have more than one customer journey. Before customer experiences can be understood and transformed, the business must first define what customers are, both individually and at group level:
- Profiling
- Clustering
- Segmentation
- Personae Building
CUSTOMER PROFILING
…involves gathering as much relevant data as possible to create a consistent ‘single view’ of the individual customer, used by all areas of the business. The profiles include data both from within and outside of the organisation. With so many different potential data sources, the business needs to prioritise what needs to be included in the profile. An important consideration is the requirement to clean and maintain customer databases from a GDPR perspective.
CONSIDERATIONS
We work with organisations to decide the data sources to include in Customer Profiles, considering:
- Purpose – what will the customer profiles be used for?
- Profile access, sharing & distribution
- Data access (regularity & automation)
- Aggregation & systems integration
- Data cleansing & maintenance
CLUSTERING
We utilise machine learning techniques, such as unsupervised & supervised clustering, to generate naturally occurring ‘customer groupings’. We then work with the organisation to interpret and convert these into customer segments and personae.
Depending on the required segmentation approach (e.g. behavioural, socio-economic, psychographic, socio-cultural, etc.), it may be necessary to ‘prioritise’ and potentially exclude certain data variables from the clustering exercise. For example, behavioural segmentation identifies the reason why a customer is using your product and service. This helps the organisation understand the customer’s future intentions, e.g. repurchase, up-sell and cross-sell opportunities.
EXAMPLE:
A prime example of this comes from the airline sector. If you can identify whether a customer is a business or leisure traveller, you will have a better understanding of the customer’s likelihood to purchase additional ancillaries, such as seating upgrades, food, travel insurance. And, of course, different types of leisure traveller will have different needs and motivations from one another, e.g. holiday makers vs. weekend breakers.
STEPS:
We take the following steps when running a clustering exercise:
- Theoretical Segmentation Workshop – we run a workshop to identify the potential and likely (behavioural) customer segments that the organisation believes it has. Once we’ve formed each theoretical segment, we describe the behaviours of each one. We then identify the data variables from the customer profiles that help us to describe these behaviours. We work with the business to prioritise the data variables from the clustering exercise, excluding any data variables that do not help describe behaviour. These could also potentially negatively bias the clustering analysis.
- Clustering Exercise – we run a machine learning technique, such as ‘k-means unsupervised clustering’, against the selected data variables. This helps us to identify naturally occurring customer groupings.
The next of our Customer Experience Services is the interpretation of these clusters as customer segments.
CUSTOMER SEGMENTATION
Data is taken from the clustering exercise to interpret specific customer segments. We use the theorised segments from the clustering activity to help with this identification process.
However, there are often segments identified that were not originally theorised, and which need to be interpreted without the benefit of a starting theory. There are also sometimes theorised segments that cannot be identified within the data. These may be subsumed within different segments. They would require further sub-segmentation to be identified, potentially including additional data variables.
The next of our Customer Experience Services is the creation of personae…
PERSONAE BUILDING
Segmentation is a great way of identifying common customer groupings but they don’t always explain ‘why’ customers behave in a particular way. Segments lack a layer of emotional information that’s essential for a business to understand and execute effective customer treatment strategies.
We carry out a workshop that converts the identified customer segments into personae, adding emotional ‘think, feel, say, do’ narrative to each.
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE SERVICES:
Understanding Customer Experiences
There are a number of different approaches an organisation can employ to understand their customers' experiences. The selection process depends upon circumstances, preferences and required/ desired outcomes:
- Voice of the Customer - Focus Groups & Interviews
- Voice of the Customer - Programme
- Customer Journey Mapping
- Business Diagnostics
- Mystery Shopping
FOCUS GROUPS & INTERVIEWS
…are used to understand the detail and softer elements of customers’ experiences. This can include establishing the needs, motivations and expectations of consumers. The data from these qualitative approaches is carried forward into quantitative research, such as VoC surveys. This helps substantiate and prioritise the needs, motivations and expectations in the context of the end-to-end customer experience.
When undertaken at segment level, the data derived from focus groups and interviews provides a greater level of detail for the personae building activity mentioned above.
And sometimes we flip it on its head! Often focus groups and interviews can be conducted after VoC surveys have been carried out in order to ‘deep dive’ on specific areas of research that come to the surface.
VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER PROGRAMME
…brings the customer’s views right into the heart of the organisation. This helps the business to remodel their strategy and business operations around the customer. Voice of the Customer can be implemented as a research programme or as a closed-loop feedback system. We cover the latter under Customer Experience Measurement below. This enables the business to provide resolutions to customer issues in the right place and at the right time, and helps the business to identify the root cause of recurring issues.
STEPS
A Voice of the Customer research programme is typically a one-off exercise, that takes the business through a five-step process:
- Journey Framework – establishing a chronological framework for the VoC and Journey Mapping exercises
- Focus Groups – asking customers to describe their expectations of a world class provider (as above)
- Qual to Quant – prioritisation of customer expectations using techniques such as conjoint analysis
- Surveys – understanding importance and performance scores for the prioritised expectations
- Analytics -analysis of results using techniques such as multiple regression and key driver analysis
USES & BENEFITS
This helps the business to:
- Identify customers’ expectations of a world-class provider and the relative importance of these expectations
- Understand the business’ current performance against the expectations
- The mapping of importance and performance scores of the expectations to the customer journey to understand current customer experience performance, ideal customer experience performance, moments of truth, pain points and performance gaps across the customer journey
- Other key insights such as brand differentiators, satisfaction drivers, retention drivers, repurchase intentions and recommendation intentions
CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAPPING
Probably the best known of all Customer Experience Services is Customer Journey Mapping, plotting the customer’s sequential experience over time.
APPROACHES
There are two key ways of conducting Customer Journey Mapping, namely VoC-driven Customer Journey Mapping and Personae-driven Customer Journey Mapping:
VoC-driven Customer Journey Mapping – using the data from the VoC programme, we take the importance and performance scores across the VoC journey to plot ‘current’ and ‘ideal’ customer experience ‘curves’ that will identify the existing and preferred performance levels of the organisation (in the opinion of the customer) at every touch-point across the customer journey.
In doing so, the organisation identifies the gaps between the two (how far performance needs to improve in order to meet customer expectations), the ‘moments of truth’ (the points at which your customers have the highest levels of expectation) and pain points (the places at which your performance is at its lowest). As long as the VoC exercise has been undertaken at segment level, customer journey curves can be plotted for each identified segment/ personae.
Personae-driven Customer Journey Mapping – Where an organisation has built detailed data-driven personae (via Clustering, Segmentation & Personae Building exercises), they then have sufficient information to undertake a workshop-based Customer Journey Mapping exercise.
It is essential, however, that it is mainly customer-facing staff from across different functions of the business (i.e. customer service, operations, sales, billing, etc.) who attend the workshop. These people are best able to ‘recognise’ the described personae groupings as a result interacting with these people on a daily basis. They can, therefore, more easily identify their motivations, requirements, moments of truth and pain points across the various touch-points of the journey.
BUSINESS DIAGNOSTIC
…is a consultant-led exercise that involves ‘walking’ the end-to-end internal processes of the business as the organisation sees them, however considering how the customer might experience them externally. It ‘mirrors’ the Voice of the Customer, Journey Mapping & Mystery Shopping exercises. These other exercises take an outside-in view of the organisation from the perspective of the customer. The Business Diagnostic, however, takes an inside-out view, specifically considering the impact of the processes on the experience of the customer.
The Business Diagnostic not only looks at the processes themselves, but also at the ‘handover’ points between teams and functions during and between these processes. It is at these places where errors are most likely to occur. The consultant uses their industry and business knowledge to identify Value & Failure Demand. Value Demand is time spent by the organisation creating value for both the customer and the business. Failure Demand is time spent by the fixing customer issues that shouldn’t exist. Deep diving throughout the exercise enables the consultant to identify route causes for recurring problems.
MYSTERY SHOPPING
…is where consultants follow the ‘end-to-end’ journey of the customers to experience it for themselves. Unbeknown to the employees they are interacting with, they are experiencing the products and/ or service as a customer, but making an assessment of their experiences as a professional.
This can also be undertaken by the management team. Facilitated with expert assistance, senior executives of the organisation get to experience their products and/ or services first hand as a customer would do.
When undertaking this activity, consideration is given to all of the customer (personae), product and channel variants that exist for the business, as this will impact the Mystery Shopping approaches chosen.
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE SERVICES:
Transforming Customer Experiences
Once current experiences have been understood, the organisation needs to identify how they need to change before making that change happen. The degree of change, as well as the levels of innovation & personalisation the organisation wishes to employ, must also be defined:
- Ideation
- Transformation
- Personalisation
- Business Process Reengineering
IDEATION WORKSHOP
…considers the ‘issues’ identified (i.e. pain points, moments of truth, failure demand, etc.) during the ‘understanding’ exercises (i.e. VoC, Journey Mapping, Business Diagnostic & Mystery Shopping). It then looks to brainstorm innovative ideas and potential solutions to resolve these issues. The activity can look at very specific issues & touch-points, or can look to model the ‘ideal’ future customer journey as a whole.
These workshops are high energy, fast paced and fun. No idea is a bad idea, yet all generated ideas are screened and prioritised for effectiveness, value and speed to market. Ideas created might relate to any element of the customer ‘space’, namely products propositions, sales & marketing channels, people, process, brand and physical factors impacting the 5 senses. These ideas are then carried forward into transformation activities and programmes.
The most fun and frantic of all of the Customer Experience Services. Get ready for a roller coaster ride…
TRANSFORMATION
…involves project managing activity streams that can cover various functional, cross-functional and process-focused areas within the organisation. We use our expertise and experience to work alongside and guide the organisation with the successful development and implementation of these streams.
EXAMPLES
…of programmes we have been involved with include:
- Contact Centre transformation – e.g. PBX, IVR, CTI, ACD & Dialler configuration, hunt group & duty management optimisation, multi-channel configuration (voice, bot, chat & social), BPO set-up and management, file management, workflow planning, agent scripting
- Retention management
- Complaints management
- Retail & merchandising transformation
- Digital transformation – we look at UX, CMS, CRM, CDB & VoC functionality & capability
- Sales via Service – up-sell & cross selling capability
- Operations management
- Proposition management – products, services & pricing
PERSONALISATION
…is, as the name suggests, about personalising the experience for the individual based on specific information within the customer profile data.
For most organisations, complete personalisation at a global level can be difficult to achieve. The ability to deliver a unique experience to every customer through every channel can often prove to be extremely inefficient. Until organisations are able to do this more efficiently, potentially through the use of future digital technologies, many organisations focus on the personalisation of a customer’s segmented experience.
BUSINESS PROCESS RE-ENGINEERING
Part of the transformation process involves the re-engineering of an organisation’s business processes. This is done to reflect the newly designed future/ ideal customer journeys, and any resultant new initiatives that the organisation has developed.
ELEMENTS
We work alongside businesses to:
- Understand & map current business processes
- Design, communicate and achieve buy-in for new business processes
- Implement & embed new business processes
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE SERVICES:
Strategic Direction
Before a Customer Experience transformation takes place, many organisations want to understand where they currently sit in the mind of the customer and versus the competition. Some may even want to set out the strategic direction, develop a plan for change and set themselves objectives for the programme and business:
- Market & Competitor Analysis
- Strategic Mapping, Positioning & Direction
- Strategic Planning & Objective Setting
- Maturity & Readiness Assessment
MARKET & COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
…allows an organisation to understand how it is positioned relative to the competition and in the mind of its customers. There are four key elements in this exercise:
EXTERNAL ANALYSIS
- Macro-environmental audit – an assessment looking at different aspects of the wider competitive environment: socio-cultural, legislative, economic, political, technological, environmental, ethical & demographic
- Micro-environmental audit – an assessment looking at different aspects of the sector-specific competitive environment: direct competitors, new entrants, substitutes, customers & suppliers
INTERNAL ANALYSIS
- Seven S analysis – an assessment of how well the organisation is positioned to achieve its intended objective, covering strategy, staff, skills, systems, style, structure and shared vision
- Seven P analysis – an assessment of the organisation’s overall product and service proposition, covering products, pricing, placement/ distribution, promotion & branding, people, processes & physical evidence
STRATEGIC MAPPING, POSITIONING & DIRECTION
A series of two-dimensional mapping exercises that position the organisation against its competitors. It uses the key choice and decision-making criteria (key drivers) for the sector. If a VoC survey has been conducted for both of the organisation and its competitors, this data can be used to empirically map the relative positions of each organisation. It utilises the key driver criteria that have been derived from the multiple-regression analysis of the survey data.
The mapping exercise can also be used to plot the intended / ideal future position of the organisation, assisting the organisation to define its strategic direction.
STRATEGIC PLANNING & OBJECTIVE SETTING
Using the SOSTAC® model (Situation, Objectives, Strategy, Tactics, Actions & Controls), we work alongside organisations to define and build their strategic plans.
Objective setting can be undertaken at different levels of the organisation (corporate, business, functional, operational) with lower levels feeding into higher level objectives. All objectives follow the same SMART design format. We work alongside organisations to set these objectives, ensuring that they relate to and compliment (and do not contradict) the stated Corporate Vision and Customer Promise statements.
MATURITY & READINESS ASSESSMENT
We’re not suggesting for one second that organisations are immature!…
As the name suggests, this assessment looks at how ready an organisation might be to conduct a Customer Experience transformation exercise. Some organisations are already primed for change. Where a business has underdeveloped skills, no clearly communicated shared vision or inconsistent leadership style, it would more than likely fail to successfully deliver a Customer Experience programme.
We work alongside organisations to conduct these assessments. Some organisations are ready to go, but many are still looking for the starting line…
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE SERVICES:
Culture, Employee Experience and Training & Development
How you go about implementing change is as important as the change itself. Establishing appropriate cultural norms, developing brand promises and embedding best practice is essential when aiming for 'best in class' or 'world class':
- Mission, Vision & Values
- Customer Promise Development
- Leadership Immersion
- Employee Led Change
-
Training - Communication Skills, Customer Service
& Customer Experience
MISSION, VISION & VALUES
Setting a Vision, a Mission & Values for an organisation provides its people with a clear understanding as to its intended strategic direction & imperatives. We work alongside organisations to workshop and develop these statements:
- Vision Statement: is a statement of an organisation’s overarching aspirations of what it hopes to achieve or to become. This is “what it will be like when we get there”
- Mission Statement: is a statement that describes what the organisation needs to do now to achieve the vision. This is “what we need to do in order to get there”
- Values Statement (or code of ethics): defines what the organisation believes in and how people in the organisation are expected to behave. This is with each other, with customers, with suppliers and with other stakeholders. This is “how we will go about getting there”
CUSTOMER PROMISE DEVELOPMENT
A Customer Promise Statement works alongside the Mission, Vision & Values Statements. It provides customers with a commitment as to how the organisation will operate and behave relative to their wants and needs. The Customer Promise statement not only keeps the customer at the heart of day-to-day operations, but it also underpins the organisation’s brand. Often Customer Promises are developed directly into the external messaging of the organisation in the form of a Brand Promise.
Customer Promises should ideally be developed on the back of VoC research data, which tells the organisation exactly what the expectations of its customers are.
LEADERSHIP IMMERSION
For a Customer Experience Transformation Programme to get traction, it is essential that the leaders of the organisation get completely behind it. In some instances, leaders may appear to back the programme. However if some have strong personal agendas, they may just be paying it lip service. A Customer Experience Transformation Programme only really works if there is genuine buy-in to the principle across all business functions and at all levels. This buy-in begins at the top, so the senior management team all need to be on the same page.
The senior team may only really understand the importance of the programme if they get to experience, first hand, the positive and negative experiences of customers. To achieve this, it is possible to take the senior team on a journey in the shoes of the customer. We refer to this process as Leadership Immersion.
APPROACHES
This can consist of a number of different activities, such as:
- CX Safari
- Frontline Boss
- Undercover Boss/ Mystery Shopping
- Customer VoxPops
- Gamification
- Bring Customers to the Heart
- Visit Customer-Orientated Businesses
- Customer Conferences
EMPLOYEE LED CHANGE
The people operating on the front-line of the organisation are really the only people who know about the detail of customers’ day-to-day experiences. They understand what annoys customers and which policies, processes and procedures need to be fixed. It is for this reason why we insist that front-line teams attend Customer Journey Mapping workshops.
They also understand what will work. They intuitively know, because of their understanding of the customers, whether proposed changes will be effective. If changes are imposed upon the front-line teams that they know will not work, they may adopt them at first. However they will eventually go back to doing things the same way they always have.
LEADING THE WAY…
By having front-line teams leading the transformation stage of any programme, not only will the changes happen, but they will also stick.
For this to work, the leadership team need to buy-in to the idea of front-line change. They can be confident in the knowledge that they still providing the overall steering for the ship…
TRAINING – COMMUNICATION SKILLS, CUSTOMER SERVICE & CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
It isn’t practical for every person in the business to be directly involved in the transformation activity. It is, however, important to communicate to the front-line that the change has been driven by their colleagues.
COURSES
As part of embedding the change within the organisation, we provide a series of different customer-orientated training programmes. These have the same core message at heart, namely “you (your colleagues) made this change happen”.
- Customer Service training
- Communication Skills training
- Customer Retention training
- Complaints Management training
- Customer Experience training
The first four programmes operate around three simple communications principles, making it easy for the front-line teams to utilise, practice and retain what they learn during the sessions.
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE TRAINING
…is a little different, as it focuses more widely on the principles and importance of Customer Experience Management, it’s impact upon the customers and the business, and role of the people in the room in making it successful.
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE SERVICES:
Customer Experience Measurement
Prior to embarking on a Customer Experience transformation exercise, many organisations don't have a completely clear view on current performance. As well as establishing a baseline, ongoing measurement & assessment of Customer Experience performance is an essential part of making sure the organisation continues to hit its objectives:
- CX Dashboard
- Voice of the Customer - Platform or Ongoing Survey
CX DASHBOARD
…provides the organisation with a single source of information relating to its ongoing Customer Experience Management performance. It takes data feeds from across the different functions of the business and consolidates them in a single place.
The dashboard takes into consideration more obvious external measurements of performance such as CSAT, NPS, NetEasy and CES. It also consolidates internal operational performance measures that provide the organisation with a good indication of likely customer satisfaction. These can include complaints, escalations, call waiting times/ ASA, repeat call rates, customer retention/ loyalty rates, return rates, etc.
VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER – PLATFORM OR ONGOING SURVEY
As well as one-off Voice of the Customer as part of a Customer Experience transformation exercise, it can also be run on an ongoing basis. This helps the organisation maintain their understanding of customer satisfaction across the customer journey at timed intervals. By being able to benchmark performance against previous time periods, e.g. quarters, it can provide the company with an indication as to where and when performance may be dropping, giving it an opportunity to quickly remedy issues.
REAL TIME
In addition to conducting periodical surveys, VoC platforms give the organisation the ability to collect real-time customer satisfaction feedback. These automated systems allow the business to request immediate performance feedback from the customer. These are electronically triggered by interactions with customers across various different touch points of the customer journey. Of course, this is predicated by the ability to communicate in real-time, i.e. being able to recognise who the customer is and having their contact details, for example email address and/ or mobile number.
Jericho has relationships with a number of different VoC platform providers.