Customer Experience Design

Emergency responses that become standard

No-one reading this can possibly have missed the recent news about weather related flooding across much of the UK. Hundreds of thousands of families have been affected. And when this type of extreme event occurs insurers are often the lifeline that many people look to in order to get their lives back to normal.

I can't speak for other insurers, but the company I work for  has provided some of its most impressive customer service over the last few weeks. Task forces have been mobilised. Field staff have gone out in appalling conditions. Settlements have been agreed with customers in record time. Quick decisions and actions have been taken - cutting through or completely ignoring the usual bureaucracy and red tape which get in the way. Many customer have felt that their insurer really has delivered for them in their time of need. A huge amount of goodwill has been created.

But once things get back to normal then I fear that we'll revert to being the organisation we were before the floods. That's certainly the pattern over recent years and nothing has happened to suggest that this time it will be anything different.

Why is that?

When a major disaster occurs, it's a disaster for insurers as well. It's expensive for a start in terms of additional claims costs. It involves a massive increase in work load over a  short period of time. It represents a PR opportunity / threat  as the media spotlight is turned towards the disaster.  All of this means that there are several pressures and incentives for insurers to get their act together. Quick  service and settlements generally minimise cost. Goodwill can be created by responding sympathetically.

So of course the insurance industry often performs heroically and impressively.

But in the normal course of events outside of major disasters, such pressures don't exist in quite the same way. Insurers expect to get claims. and they have processes and arrangements to deal with them. but individually such claims don't amount to much for large financial organisations. It's easy to lose sight of the fact that for the people involved in a claim it can be a disaster for them. Whether this happens alongside thousands of their neighbours, or in isolation is often no different. A destroyed house or car is a destroyed house or car regardless of the cause.

Without the motivation of feeling like they too are caught up in a major disaster then insurers seem unable or unwilling to be heroic.

This feels like an issue around intent. If leaders and managers can cut through red tape and side-step complex processes quickly some of the time, then the challenge is for them to be able to do this all the time. They've got to feel that it's an emergency all the time.

If you want a different answer then change the question

What companies ask their employees to do for them is fundamental to what they actually deliver. And far too often  companies ask their employees to do things which create no long term value for either them or their customers. Here are two different challenges that you could set the same group of employees. Both are concerned with revenue and growth and profit. Only one of them is likely to be successful in the long term.

Challenge 1. Design a way to sell as much of product X as we can in the next 12 months. Seems like a sensible challenge to set the people who work in a business doesn't it? No business can succeed without sales. And if you can shift high levels of volume then you'd be doing something right wouldn't you? Especially as this is the kind of challenge that gets set in most companies  most of the time. So the employees will find ways of shifting volume. Of hitting and exceeding targets. Of creating sales behaviours that can deliver against this challenge. And if these work in year 1, then do you know what? It probably makes sense to do more of the same in year 2, especially as our competitors are adotping the same kind of strategies.

Challenge 2. Design a way for us to deliver such a powerful customer experience that each of our customers brings new customers to us. This is a challenge based around a completely different strategic intent. One that recognises the value that comes from having business strategies which avoid commoditisation. Which avoid a price and promotion based feeding frenzy. Which avoids ultra thin margins or even losses. Which avoids blah, blah advertising. Which recognises that customer loyalty and customer advocacy are enormously powerful drivers of commercial success. 

And if you set your employees challenge 2, and equip them with the means to be creative, then the chances are that they will come up with some simply astonishing ways in which to build customer loyalty and customer advocacy. Things that will make you say wow.

So what challenges are you gonna set your employees and your colleagues? 

Innovate or die

Innovate or die. Someone once said that. Or if they didn't they should have.

Very, very few companies are genuine innovators. I'm not talking about product innovation - which in many sectors is healthy and responsible for creating ever more amazing things.

I'm talking about service innovation. In which companies create completely new experiences for their customers which stand out clearly against the bland and cloned offerings that typify an industry. Something that makes customers stop and think. That changes the story in their head about how it's supposed to be from that point on.

Most companies don't invest in innovation. They're too busy doing what they've always done. Exhorting their employees to sell more and chasing targets. Screaming out their advertising messages as loudly as they can in order to try and break through the protective barriers that customers are wrapping around themselves. Upping the ante with each other in terms of ever more ludicrous advertising messages.

Customers aren't interested in your brand. They don't believe what you say it is. Your brand is what they say it is. And if it's tired, and predictable, and  not very  authentic, then  you're in trouble.

How much money did your company spend on service innovation last year? Compare this to how much it spent on marketing. To how much it spent on new customer aquisition.To how much it spent chasing sales targets. 

If you spent almost nothing on service innovation compared to what you spent on all these other things, then you're in trouble. The 'where have all our customers gone?' kind of trouble.

Innovate or die

Where do you think the value is?

• Product v. Proposition
• Rational v. Intuitive
• Profit now v. Customer happiness
• Creating a process v. Designing the experience
• A product called motor insurance v. A product called wowing customers
• Cost benefit analysis v. Doing the right thing
• Chasing the sale v. Impressing the customer
• Service v. Experience
• Saying v. Doing
• Advertising v. Marketing
• Promising v. Delivering
• Surviving v. Prospering
• Failing v. Surviving
• Bad profits v. Good profits
• Selling to new customers v. Retaining existing customers

What do you and your organisation do to make sure that things on the right hand side of this list gets built into what you do every day? Are you even having conversations about the stuff on the right? Can you afford not to?