Customer Experience Design

Offshoring

My own most recent experience was based on reporting a problem with my network drives to the IT support desk run by my company.

Three rings and the phone is answered. Then the automated voice kicks in. "Thanks you for calling Service Line. Calls may be recorded and monitored for our joint protection". What! Joint protection? Are they afraid of getting embroiled in some kind of mis-selling scandal. I work for the damn company. I just want someone to help me find my network drives.

Then the human element kicks in. And I can't understand a word the guy says. His voice is so strongly accented that  I have to ask him to repeat what he's said several times.  Eventually I work out that he's telling me to switch off my machine and reboot. No diagnosis. No fact finding. Just turn it off and reboot. and because my experience has been so rubbish to this point I can't be bothered to argue. It's just too painful.

Against what my instincts tell me, I reboot. Still no drives.

So here's where my head is at over this.

1. I have very right to expect the person at the other end of a help desk telephone to be able to understand me, and for me to be able to understand them. Frequently this is not the case in the interactions which occur with offshored employees.
2. I have every right to expect the other person to be  helpful and interested enough to actually try to find out the problem. Now this can fail in any country and in any culture. But how much more likely are people to throw in the towel if from the start there's an obvious communication difficulty?
3. I have every right to not dread calling a held desk.  But I do dread calling my company's IT help desk because my experiences of it have been so awful.

Someone, somewhere has seen a cost saving on a balance sheet as a result of outsourcing  this  help desk. It's a short term decision. The actual costs are  hidden, and measured in frustration,  failed interactions, timely and potential expensive workarounds,  multiple service calls to fix things that should have been fixed first time round, and  UK based employees who feel that  their lives just got a little harder and more complicated for no obvious reason.

 

Surprise me

When did you last surprise a customer? I mean really surprised them. Gave them an experience that was just completely different from the one they were expecting.

If you did pull such a surprise out of the hat I bet they talked about it. I bet that they talked about it to several people. I bet that even now (maybe months or years later) when your company gets mentioned by someone they’re with they still mention it.

And I bet that when you surprised the customer you enjoyed it. I bet it made you feel great. I bet it was one of the highlights of your day. I bet that you talked about it to other people.

So why wouldn’t you want to pleasantly surprise a few more customers? If you’re a manager why wouldn’t you want to encourage a climate in which your staff surprise customers and feel good about working for you?

No, I can’t think of any reasons either.

Unless of course:

·         It’s against company policy

·         We just don’t have time for stuff like that

·         It might cost too much (yeah, but blow millions on spam advertising that hardly anyone takes any notice of why don’t you)

·         It’s not defined in the process

·         Customers aren’t our responsibility

·         We don’t know how to

·         Customers don’t pay us to surprise them

·         I’ve never pleasantly surprised a customer in my life and I have no intention of starting now

Tough Questions

Thirty four questions that will change your company. If you can answer them. If you can make them part of how your company does business.

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1. How will you gain my permission to market to me and so make me aware of your products and services?
2. How will you get your company / products / services on my radar so that I might be interested in them?
3. What is it about your customer experience that will make me willingly choose your company over your competitors who may be cheaper?
4. How will you create advocacy in me and people I know in order to make me think about you in a really positive way?
5. What will you do to make me aware and interested in things that I may not know I want / need?
6. How will I know where to look and will it be the place that I want to look?
7. What will you do to ensure that you meet my needs properly, even if I can’t specify them clearly myself?
8. How will you make sure that the marketing material suits the medium and the product?
9. What will you do to ensure that I trust / like / understand what I’m seeing?
10. Is it clear what I need to do next and is it easy / convenient / sensible for me to do it?
11. How will you avoid annoying me through unwanted spam marketing and making me look at your full shop of products when I’m only really interested in a couple?
12. How will you make sure that your products and services clearly meet / exceed my needs and can I be sure of this quickly and safely?
13. How will you make sure that buying from you is functionally simple and accurate?
14. How will I know where I am and be able to back up / exit easily?
15. How will I be confident that data keying is being kept to a minimum (as defined by me the customer)?
16. How will I know that I can trust you for financial and data security?
17. What will you do to make sure that the things I buy from you arrive quickly (as defined by me the customer) and in excellent condition?
18. What will you do to make sure that rework and errors simply don’t occur?
19. What will you do to make sure that the promises you made to me before I bought from you are kept?
20. How will you know what my expectations are, and what will you do to meet or exceed them?
21. How will you make sure that if things go wrong you respond in such a way that I will enthuse over your service to my friends and family?
22. How will you make sure that any suppliers or partners you use are able to meet or exceed my expectations in the same way as if you were dealing with me directly?
23. What will you do to make sure that the experience you create for me is positively memorable to the point that I am enthusiastic about buying from you again?
24. What will you do to make sure that I’m almost certain to recommend you to my family and friends?
25. How will you deliver some nice surprises during my experience with you?
26. How will you stay in contact with me even after I have bought and used your product/ service?
27. What will you do to ensure that you remember me as an individual (my needs / wants / preferences / expectations)?
28. What customer experience design arrangements have you got in place to ensure that the experience you create for me is fully understood and deliberately and consistently delivered?
29. How will you learn from me in order to improve the experience that you deliver?
30. How will you make sure that you’re able to act on what you learn from me?
31. How can you be sure that those staff who don’t have directly customer facing jobs are able to take and apply an outside-in customer perspective to what they do?
32. What is in place to ensure that all these design principles are firmly embedded in the processes and procedures that support product development and launch?
33. What questions should we be asking ourselves that we don’t currently ask?
34. What needs to change to make all of these questions a part of how we run our business?