​As we enter 2018, it is common to speculate on what will be the key trends that will impact us in the New Year.
 
Whilst attending an Australian Marketing Institute (AMI) event in December last year, I was asked where do I see customer experience (CX) going in 2018? Is it going to plateau or thrive?
 
Let me preface my response by re-stating that today’s customers have high expectations of the day-to-day experiences they receive from any business they choose to deal with. Customers today are savvier, better educated, have greater choice and are more demanding. And when organisations fail to deliver against expectations customers will, and do, take flight. Rapidly evolving customer expectations have the potential to dramatically impact many organisations in 2018 – both positively or negatively.
 
Plateau or thrive? Well it depends on how business leaders view customer centricity and CX in the context of their core strategy. In my experience, there are few organisations in Australia that have truly embraced customer centricity as central to its business. Customer centricity is fundamental to delivering outstanding CX consistently (whilst being responsive to evolving customer demands).
 
Many organisations point to CX success through tackling the low hanging fruit. But then it all runs out of steam. Why? Because they do not have the absolute commitment required to make the transformation to a customer centric business.
 
An observation is that many businesses have appointed CX Managers but provided them with little power to impact the degree of transformation required to move the organisation towards being truly customer focused. I’m reluctant to say this, but it could be considered a mark of ‘tokenism’. I certainly have empathy for those managers that have been put into a CX role without the ability to drive any meaningful operational change.
 
Why does this occur? I’d suggest that most businesses in Australia are still in their infancy when it comes to customer centricity and CX: those that fully grasp it will prosper whilst the gap between those that continue to wander down the same pathway (of low hanging fruit and slow change) will struggle to succeed.
 
I was interested to note the findings of Forester’s 2017 CX Index. In particular: “CX quality has declined or plateaued. In 2018, 30% of companies will see further declines in CX performance and those declines will translate into a net loss of a point of growth’.
 
Will 2018 see CX thrive in Australia? In my view, not unless we see some significant movement: customer centricity must be at the heart of business strategy and receive the focus and resourcing to drive significant cultural and operational change. As Forrester puts it: (the risk is) “too many executives will continue to ignore evidence of market disruption and procrastinate until evidence is overwhelming, putting their firms at risk as we enter 2019”.
 
Is your business at risk?
 
We can help you mitigate that risk. Call me for a non obligation discussion about what is possible.
 
Andrew Thornton
Co-Founder and Director
0478 300 658

First published by Mumbrella

The Australian marketing and advertising industry is awash with associations, dubbed "self-serving social clubs", eating up resources and competing with each other for members.
Mumbrella's Simon Canning looks 
​

​When Trinity P3 founder Darren Woolley branded Australia’s marketing and advertising associations “self-serving social clubs” who are “peddling crap”, at least one major industry association CEO demanded a right of reply.

Woolley’s incendiary comments on a panel at Mumbrella360 debating transparency have been far from welcomed by those marshalling memberships, but the question remains: is Australia overrun with associations, councils and institutes?

The list of associations reads like a bowl of alphabet soup. There is the IAB, AANA, MFA, AMI, IAA, ADMA, PRIA and the Communications Council.

Added to the mix are local chapters and another host of stand-alone associations: The MADC, AADC, PADC, BADC, AWARD, the AGDA, IIA, APSMA and the IABC.

Each of them claims ownership of a “unique” market, serving specific needs but many overlap, recruiting the members from the same agencies and in some cases even sharing board members.
​
Speaking after the presentation, Woolley said the industry would be better served with just three or four better-resourced organisations which could be more focussed on serving both the industry and raising the profile of their members.

The profusion of associations sparked Woolley’s attacks, but the IAB’s CEO Vijay Solanki has been the first to reject the assertions.

“I wish we could be a social club but we are pretty flat out whether it’s developing all the standards and guidelines that we’ve been doing from viewability to evolving independent measurement to doing the revenue work we do with PwC,” Solanki tells Mumbrella.

“The IAB has a mission to simplify and inspire in digital advertising to grow trust and value.

“Digital advertising revenues have grown from 5% to almost 50% in the last 10 years – you will recall that [recent] PwC numbers predict more growth. But whilst we have grown, so has the number of vendors and technologies. For some people, this has created a complexity. So we have a professional duty to help simplify and also to remind the industry of the ‘magic’ you can do with digital with data, UX, creative, engagement etc – the inspire part – changing all the time as technology (smart phones to smart everything) evolve.”
​
The Australian Marketing Institute is the peak body for marketers and offers courses and accreditation to practitioners, but last year the future of the organisation was thrown into peril after it was warned to cut costs and grow membership. Auditors said there was “significant doubt” the AMI could “continue as a going concern” unless the organisation was turned around.

AMI chair Andrew Thornton, co-founder and director at advisory business The Customer Edge, agreed there could be a perception that the market is overcrowded.

“On the face of it, there seems to be too many associations within the broader spectrum of ‘marketing’ in Australia,” Thornton says.

“But we need to be mindful that ‘marketing’, in its broadest sense, incorporates multiple disciplines.
​
“Associations exist for the benefit of their members. The key challenge for any association is to remain relevant to and valued by its member base – whether individual members or corporate members. That is, how relevant to me (the member) is what the association represents and how well do I value the benefits the association provides me? The other challenge, of course, is to remain financially viable to support the delivery of the desired benefits to members.”

He says there could be an argument for the number of associations representing the industry to be reduced and indeed that it could already be happening.

“Whilst I believe there is scope for consolidation within the industry, this needs to be balanced by the interests of members – who, after all, are the life blood of any association,” Thornton said.

“I do think that we will see consolidation occurring across the industry – it is inevitable given the changing needs of members and their expectations. And the costs associated with running an association.

“From the AMI’s perspective, we have focused on having a clear understanding of what our members want and expect from their association. In short, this is about helping them to fuel their careers through access to education, training, professional standards and accreditation supporting them across each stage in their career path. In this way, we are aiming to remain relevant to and valued by our members now and into the future. That is what our members tell us they want from us.”

Thornton admits the AMI itself is open to aligning with other industry bodies if the fit is right.

“Is the AMI open to considering alignment with other industry bodies? The short answer is yes, but the caveat is that it must firstly be in the best interest of our members and, secondly, also in the interests of the members of the other association,” he says.

Financial viability is a major question facing many of the groups, with the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association wound up at the end of 2015 after failing to broker a merger with the IAB. Small to medium publishers’ association, Publishers Australia (for which Mumbrella parent company Focal Attractions provided management services) also went into administration briefly in 2014.
​
AIMIA’s assets were swept up by ADMA, once know as the Australian Direct Marketing Association, which has reinvented itself for the digital age as the Association for Data-Driven Marketing and Advertising under the leadership of Jodie Sangster.

​Sangster has overseen the growth the association to become the largest media, marketing and advertising association in Australia,  and has struck strategic alliances with the AMI and the Australian Retail Institute.

​ADMA is the only organisation in the marketing and communications sphere to make its full financial statements available online through its annual report.

In its 2016 annual report ADMA had a profit of $113,127, a turn-around from the previous year’s loss of $306,939 on income of $7.72m.

Under Sangster’s leadership ADMA has shifted from an organisation that represented direct-mail specialists – the purveyors of what was disparagingly referred to in the industry as “shit that folds” – to become the focal point for marketers using data to support their campaigns.

During her tenure ADMA has continued to grow and the association now boasts a number of events including breakfasts, lunches, courses and the 2017 ADMA Global Forum while membership has nearly doubled from 350 to 650.

Having overseen the metamorphosis of the association she sees industry consolidation as a certainty, but believes even though there is overlap in some sectors, ADMA has strong proposition for its members.

“If you go back 10 or ever more, 15, years, there were some very distinct areas that needed representation,” Sangster says.

“For example, we were the direct marketing association and that was quite a different discipline to mainstream advertising, which was different from media, which was different from online. At that time that was the reason those associations came up, because it was a community of people who needed representation in a specific area.

“If you fast-forward to now what we have seen over the past five, six years has been a merger of marketing, advertising, content, technology and they have all kind of come together and are now becoming much more part of one discipline which is much more around customer, customer experience. So that’s why you are starting to see overlap and that the associations are starting to overlap each other in terms of some of the subject matter that they represent.”

She said ADMA had managed to create a clear position in the market across member education, and other areas because of its clear focus on data and technology, but the sheer number of associations was a real question.
“Are we over-serviced? I think the answer is yes, we are over-serviced and there probably does need to be some consolidation moving into the future and I have said that for a while,” she says.
​
“What is important is that people will join a place that they feel they belong and I think that community is so important, whether its in our personal lives or our professional lives.”

Tony Hale, CEO of the Communications Council and former CEO of the newspaper industry body, The Newspaper Works, says he believes each organisation services very specific needs of their memberships.

He says constitutionally any industry organisation has to serve its members.

“If you went back to the constitutions of all of the different industry associations you would find a different membership base by constitution.

“The AANA and ADMA are organisations that serve the marketer’s community,” Hale says.

“Even by name the Australian Association of National Advertisers, they represent clients. ADMA used to be the direct marketing association but its now the Association for Data-Driven Marketing and Advertising, they are there to represent clients, to represent advertisers. Now they are very different organisations because the AANA are really there, at the heart of what they do is to protect the self-regulatory system. ADMA are there for data-driven and analytics and all of that sort of stuff and the marketers who hook into ADMA are anyone with a big database.”

He says the IAB is not a membership organisation but is similar to the OMA, ThinkTV and other representative groups.

“The Comms Council is for creative agencies. It was set up as a single entity for the AFA, the APG, AWARD and that sort of stuff which were entities on their own, that’s what it was set up for, was to bring those together.
“Our objectives are clear and we are the only one in the commercial creativity space doing this.”
​
The two associations some are suggesting should come together are the Communications Council and the Media Federation of Australia which many believe should be working as one with the re-convergence of media and creative.

Sophie Madden, CEO of the MFA rejects such an alliance should take place, although she admits it is an issue and will always be a possibility.

“We have a purpose that we deliver to,” Madden says.

“There is a strong feeling that, certainly in this market, we have a reason for being and our members are all really engaged with that.”

The MFA represents all the media agencies aligned with the major holding companies and a number of independent agencies.

“From a member perspective there is clearly a view that we are needed. I think that certainly with the Comms Council, because that represents creative agencies, we don’t see ourselves as in competition to them and I don’t believe they see us as competition to them.”

She says the two organisations worked together where there were common issues and where it was appropriate but the two groups diverge when it comes to systems development and research specific to their members.
​
“That doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t necessarily change in the future because the industry constantly changes, but certainly for now that is how we operate and that is how our members want us to operate.”

The Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) is on the hunt for a new CEO after the resignation of Sunita Gloster to head to Ten.

Gloster is credited with having reactivated the organisation which some said had come to represent the epitome of the “boys’ club” under its former leaders.

Gloster has grown the membership of the AANA significantly, launched the annual Reset conference and created a business show series for Sky, Marketing Dividends.

Chairman Matt Tapper says the role of the organisation was to champion self regulation.

“The Australian Association of National Advertisers’ core purpose is to ensure that we evolve Australia’s self-regulatory system of advertising so that we continue to meet community standards and thereby preserve our right to commercial free speech, free of government regulation,” Tapper says.

“We also are responsible for prosecuting brand owners’ views on the major issues that impact the effectiveness of our advertising spend, be that advocating for accurate, independent measurement and standards or any other matter that leads to better accountability for how our money is spent.”

He says working with other industry associations was also at the heart of the AANA’s remit.

“To achieve these outcomes we work closely with a range of other associations that represent different stakeholders including agencies, media owners, regulators and the wider community.  Finally, we undertake a range of activities that are designed to advance the profession of marketing, including exposing Australia’s marketing community to global best practice and encouraging debate on matters that impact our profitability and reputation.”

Tapper says the AANA is also continuously evaluating how it works with other associations.

“Given the fast-moving changes in our industry and the pressure on time and expenditure it is a question that we ask ourselves regularly but we’re not actively pursuing anything concrete at this point in time,” he says.

The AANA charges a sliding scale for members based on advertising spend, with companies with marketing budgets of more than $50m paying $37,352, while those with spends of less than $10m pay $6,255.

Marketing services companies with ad revenue of more than $200m pay the same top rate on a sliding scale.

More than a dozen associations are hoovering up millions of dollars in membership fees from agencies and individuals, used to sustain administrations ranging from just handful of people to more than two dozen.

The sacking of Alex Malley as the CEO of accounting body CPA Australia after a sustained campaign questioning his salary and marketing focused on building his personal brand has also thrown a wider spotlight on the costs of association executives.

With agency and business margins squeezed, the value members are able to extract from their membership fees is also under scrutiny.

Mumbrella asked all the associations interviewed if they would publicly disclose executive salaries if asked by members, with all but the IAB saying it was a matter for their boards and that their financials were independently audit.

The IAB’s Solanki said he would disclose his salary if requested by members and the board.

But the question remains, is the Australian marketing and communications industry drowning in its alphabet soup?

While every organisation sought to justify its existence, convergence means lines between them are increasingly blurred.

Some are already contemplating a future of amalgamation, while others are steadfastly resisting the idea.
​
Time, it would seem, is the only factor in doubt. Willingly or grudgingly, the world of marketing and communications associations seems set to have its alphabet culled.
 
Simon Canning
Simon is Mumbrella's marketing and advertising editor. In a career spanning journalism and communications over more than 30 years Simon has become one of Australia’s most respected analysts and commentators on the advertising, marketing and media industries. A regular commentator on radio and TV, Simon has also worked in media in the US and UK.
 

​Over recent years, customer expectations have dramatically increased and are only set to increase further.  Many companies are implementing CX strategies that not only include a ‘wow’ factor but provide great customer experiences at every touch point.  If you are not one of these companies, rest assured that your customer will be dealing with another business, perhaps another industry, that is doing just that and it is only a matter of time before they expect the same of you.

Businesses that are successful at CX, have undertaken a thorough study of not only what their customers want and need but also of how the business is currently meeting those expectations.  This should take into account executive perception, employee perception and customer perception as this is commonly where gaps are identified and need to be addressed. If business goals are not aligned with customer wants and needs, a business cannot excel in CX.  A business that understands customer pain points can develop strategies to address them, thereby eliminating some customer frustrations and providing an improved customer desired experience.

In understanding the customers wants and needs, it will become apparent that customers do not want to be engaged at every touchpoint; they do however want value. In identifying what value can be provided at each touchpoint, a business can then determine when and how to engage the customer.  Unlike user experience, which is single channel or touch point focused, customer experience is formed through the culmination of experiences and perceptions of many touchpoints throughout their life-cycle.  A successful CX strategy must therefore be omnichannel. 

However, delighting your customer should not be the key driver behind a CX strategy.  CX initiatives can and should be implemented to deliver tangible business growth and the business case should demonstrate the likely return on investment.  In some instances, that benefit will not be realised until the mid or even long term.  Instead of scaling back the CX initiatives, the CX strategy should be used to influence the business strategy to help deliver a customer experience that is profitable to the business and more cost effective than the competitors.

And it’s not just the CX and business strategy that need to work together.  Customers touch too many parts of the business for any one department to be soley responsible for problem solving or indeed providing a great experience.  Customers don’t care which department is responsible for each aspect of their product or service – and nor should they have to.  Customers want an experience that is unique to them and their journey, not to be hamstrung by a siloed organisational structure.

For business, this can result in uncertainty where a cookie cutter approach is simple not going to satisfy.  To succeed this uncertainty must be embraced – after all it is here to stay – and systems developed that are agile enough to quickly respond to the ever changing environment.  Indeed, developing an agile CX strategy, can benefit from many of the methodologies that the IT sector have been using for years – multi-disciplinary teams, breaking projects down into targeted sprints, cross-functional workshops, and working with prototypes and iterative testing.  In this way, CX initiatives can be implemented in shorter time frames, refined to reflect customer behaviour and evolved as customer demands change.  The results will not only benefit your customers and garner you that competitive edge but result in more engaged employees and faster decision making.
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With the demand for great CX so high and the rapidly changing nature of drivers behind that demand, CX can no longer be a considered a ‘set and forget’ strategy. 

• Businesses must develop a deep understanding of their customers to stand any chance of being able to meet their expectations. 
• A successful CX strategy needs to be holistic, understand all the customer touchpoints and what is desired from each point.
• CX strategy and business strategy must influence each other to develop a cost effective way of delivering great customer experience. 
• Agility is the key to the future – rapid response to market changes, refining and evolving along the way.

Address these areas and you are on the path to developing long and meaningful engagements with your customers.

The Australian Marketing Institute, in conjunction with Vision Critical, recently completed a study* amongst 244 marketers to gain an understanding of the current status of VoC programs in Australia.
​
The key findings were stunning.  Here are the top line stats:

• Only 37% of all respondents stated they had heard of VoC programs
• Of those respondents who stated they had heard of VoC, 80% stated they believe VoC programs to be critical to the success of their business

 
I was staggered at the quantum of the gap between the level of those that had simply ‘heard’ of VoC programs and those that hadn’t.  So, who are they listening to?
 
The majority of respondents stated that they could do more to develop and apply their VoC programs; however, only 28% believed that their VoC program was “integrated within the business”.
 
So, this leads me to the point: why are VoC programs important?
 
Customer centric businesses use VoC programs to listen to their customers to better understand how well they are performing against customer expectations.  This informs the strategic decision making process leading to higher customer satisfaction, enhanced retention and acquisition levels and, ultimately, greater share of customer spend.
 
VoC programs go well beyond retrospectively approaching customers on past experiences alone; instead, it offers businesses the opportunity to plan ahead and indentify potential challenges and perceptions of a brand, product or service at any given time.  VoC is pivotal in informing and engaging businesses with customers to build stronger relationships over time.
 
Given this, why is it that few businesses seem to really get it?  Whilst there is growing recognition of the rationale for and value to be gained from VoC programs, most businesses are still in their infancy when it comes to VoC.  As the research shows, there is still a high degree of ignorance and (dare I say) tokenism.
 
The VoC challenge in Australia is to overcome:

• A lack of integration into the business
• A lack of leadership and direction
• A lack of internal buy-in
• Unrealistic expectations

 
Many businesses have embarked on VoC by adopting the use of the Net Promoter System (NPS).  A good start, but NPS does not provide your business with a holistic view of the VoC.  What about the (typically) 80%of customers that do not contact the customer care/call centre?  What do they think?
 
An effective VoC ‘program’ draws on multiple sources/tools for collecting and applying customer insight (e.g. CSat studies and the use of insight communities) and, ideally, analysing this data on a common platform; a platform that enables businesses to listen to, act on and measure customer insight, performance and feedback.
 
Too often, the insights around the customer’s experience are the domain of the ‘front office’ whilst the ‘back office’ makes decisions in blissful ignorance of what impact these decisions may have on the customer.  Your VoC program must be supported by mechanisms to ensure there is a clear ‘line of sight’ between your customer facing teams and back office teams to ensure there is a common understanding of how business decisions may impact the customer’s experience.  A holistic understanding and buy-in is what is required – from the leadership down.
 
It is also important to measure the impact of your VoC program but make sure you set realistic expectations.  Economic proof is compelling especially when all employees understand the proof points, because this is the fuel for progress.
 
It is time to get serious about it people.  Start listening to the voice of your customers – if you haven’t already.  There is a lot to be gained from really embracing a VoC program as a key competitive tool for your business.  Bottom line: it will help you produce better outcomes for your customers and your business.
​
Want to know more about developing an effective VoC program for your business? Why not give me a call on 0478 300 658 or email me at andrew@thecustomeredge.com.au. 
 
*Defining Voice of Customer Programs Report 2016

I recently returned from trekking to the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania – the world’s highest freestanding mountain and the highest in Africa at 5,895m or 19,341 feet above sea level.

When you take on such a monumental task, you put your faith in the experience of others – in this instance our Lead Guide, Florence, and his team.

Florence’s sole objective was to get all of us - our climbing group of 8 - to the summit and back safely.

What I found interesting was how he consistently and purposely motivated and managed the group under challenging and variable conditions. There were some clear lessons that can be just as effectively applied to the management of work place teams or a CX implementation project team as they are to climbing to the roof of Africa.
​
In the limited space I have, let me give you a few examples:

1. A consistent catch phrase was ‘together we can…’:  It may sound obvious, but every morning, before setting out, Florence would remind us that we can only achieve our end objective if we all work together and support each other. And, indeed, we did even though half of our group had never met each other before the climb. This meant encouraging one another as we focused on achieving the short term goals that lead to our ultimate objective; or helping a team member when they found the going tough, and doing that little bit extra to help motivate the rest of the team.
   
   
2. ‘Pole Pole’: Swahili for slowly, slowly.  Slow and steady together was how we were going to achieve our objective of making the summit. We were constantly reminded of this mantra. And the lead trekker changed depending on how other members of the team were travelling to help set the right pace.

1. ‘Checky Checky’. By checking in with each of us each morning and evening (monitoring our health, mood and energy), Florence knew what modifications were needed to get the team through the day.

1. After hours of trekking, we would ask: ‘how far to the next camp?’ Florence would reply: “Just around the corner”. It usually wasn’t (except for when we neared camp, of course). The point being that Florence would manage our expectations; he set short term goals. If he had said we were 3 or 4 hours away from the camp, there was a risk of us becoming disheartened. The lesson being that by setting short term, incremental goals, you are more likely to achieve your end objective.

1. ‘Congratulations’:  after reaching the Summit, everyone of our 37 support team congratulated us on our achievement; they were all – regardless of their respective roles –a critical part of our success and joined with us in celebrating that success.

 
A final observation: Florence explained to us that everyone involved with the trek starts as a porter; his salient point being: “How can I manage the team effectively without having been in their shoes?” Empathy and understanding of what your team is experiencing is a hallmark of sound leadership.
 
Whether it’s climbing a mountain or in our day-to-day working lives as managers or leaders, I believe we should all embrace these fundamental lessons.
 

by Orla Tynan Babb, Co-founder and Director, The Customer Edge

 
We’ve previously discussed the role of technology in customer experience.  While some consultants (vendors perhaps) advocate that technology can provide a customer experience solution, at The Customer Edge we challenge that line of thought.  In our experience, it all begins with the right mindset.  If you and your leadership team do not consider customer experience as (a) critical and (b) an income generating point of difference, then the organisation will never become customer centric (read customer obsessed) irrespective of the technology deployed.

However, given that every organisation has an existing technology infrastructure doesn’t it make sense to utilise what you have, even though you may not have the state of the art solution that you are dreaming about.

Let me share with you my recent experience with a national health insurance provider.  I’ll keep the detail brief but please bear with me to the end as I think there are a couple of learnings in this for all of us.
 
Unable to complete my claim through the online app, I was directed into the city offices to complete my claim in person.  While this was both time consuming and inconvenient, I did indeed leave with transaction receipts stating my claim would be paid within the next 5 business days.  Okay, maybe that isn’t quite correct…I think the receipt probably states that my claim will be processed in the next 5 days, I assumed that meant paid.  After 15 days, I’d heard nothing so called and relayed my story to the contact centre.  They were very good, but it took 90 mins for them to inform me that part of my claim had been declined due to an internal policy.  Unhappy with the outcome I asked how I could escalate my case as I wanted to understand the policy further (not to mention how was I to know in advance that such a policy existed).  The customer contact rep told me to submit an email as my case could not be escalated on the phone.
 
Maintaining my cool (and sense of humour) I duly wrote an email, providing all the references I could to try and make it as easy as possible for the person at the other end to tie it all together. Within a matter of days, I received my statement indicating that only one of the 3 items had been paid.  I responded asking why and received a very swift reply stating that claims could not be accepted online (bear in mind I was not trying to submit a new claim, just resolve an outstanding one).  Their recommendation was to (a) use the online app (b) visit a store (c) call the call centre or (d) submit my claim in writing…via traditional mail……  A little déjà vu, perhaps?
 
I won’t bore you any longer with my own experience but it has left me thinking about the channels that are set up for customer engagement and how they are used. In this day and age, where customer experience is becoming ‘the thing’ that people are buying, is it okay to limit the channels of communications to specific lines of enquiry? I have no hesitation in suggesting had my email been about the excellent levels of service received that they would have accepted it and it would quite rightly have made its way up the hierarchy to the manager and perhaps even their manager. The provider had chosen email as their preferred channel of communication to offer an update on my case.  Why should I not be able to respond via the same channel?
 
Professionally, these are the key take out for me:
​
1.A new technology system does not come with a new mindset.  Delivering great customer experience has to start with a mindset that wants to put the customer at centre of everything they do.

2.Company policies are important and are there for a reason. However, if they are being used by a call centre to explain a course of action, the policy needs to be explainable to the customer.

3.Customers have multiple ways to engage with an organisation.  The lines of communication open must be kept open and where possible, via the channel the customer has selected.
​
4.The customer is not the product specialist, that is the provider’s role.  Do not assume a customer understands your business, after all they may only interact with you infrequently. 
 
But what’s the biggest take out of this experience?  For me, it will be my family membership.  We’ll be moving on…all four of us…not because of the outcome of the claim but because the provider made it so difficult for me to communicate with them.  

Many of you may be familiar with the concept of design thinking: a methodology, these days not exclusive for designers, that helps people understand and develop creative ways to solve a specific issue, generally business oriented. This approach to thinking is now extending to CXM, and increasingly being used by The Customer Edge in our engagement with clients.
 
Design thinking involves a set of principles that are applied to a problem. In the CX sense, it involves developing empathy with the customer and devising a responsive, and flexible organisational culture.
 
The key principles of design thinking are:

1. Focus on customer experiences, especially their emotional ones: to build empathy, a design centric organisation empowers employees to observe customer behaviour and draw conclusions about what people need and want. These conclusions are difficult to express in quantitative language; but utilise emotional language (such as desires and aspirations) instead to describe brands, products/services and customers. A traditional customer value proposition is a promise of ‘utility’. An emotional value proposition is a promise of ‘feeling’. The aim is to positively impact user experiences. This focus on delivering great customer experiences isn’t limited to marketers and strategists – it permeates every customer facing function within the organisations. In essence, it is the culture of the business.
   
   
2. Create ‘models’ to examine complex problems: design thinking, first used to develop physical products, is now being applied to complex intangible considerations, such as customer experience. The use of customer journey maps and customer experience mapping are examples of tools and models for building an understanding of the customer experience.
   
   
3. Use prototyping to explore potential solutions: Whilst tools such as customer experience mapping explore the ‘problem’ space, prototyping explores the ‘solution’ space. In short, prototypes are a way to communicate ideas and potential solutions to customer issues and problems.
   
   
4. Tolerate and cope with failure: a design culture is ‘nurturing’ and doesn’t encourage failure. But recognises that the iterative nature of the design process is that it is rare to get things right the first time. The culture of a customer centric business acknowledges this process and allows employees to take (calculated) risks in the prototyping process.
   
   
5. Exhibit thoughtful restraint: many products that are built on an emotional value proposition are simpler than competitive offerings. This restraint is grown out of deliberate decisions about what the product or service should or should not do relative to the target customers. The aim is to offer customers a clear and simple experience.

Of course, adopting a design thinking culture has its challenges. Firstly, the whole organisation needs to embrace design thinking as a core element of its culture. In doing so, they need to overcome several hurdles. These include accepting more ambiguity, embracing risk as transformative innovation is inherently risky; resetting expectations as design thinking – as powerful as it is – doesn’t solve all problems. But it does help organisations cut through complexity and helping organisations imagine the future.
 
Finally, adopting this perspective isn’t easy – especially as on a whole of business basis. But doing so helps create a workplace where employees can respond quickly to changing business needs – in particular, addressing the ever changing and evolving customer needs and expectations.
 
At The Customer Edge we embrace design thinking in our approach to solving problems as we work with many of our clients. Why? Simply because it helps us to achieve better results for our clients.

​I recently returned from an adventure to climb Mt Kilimanjaro in Tanzania …and just for the record, I did make it to the summit but that's a story for another day.

Post Kili, we headed to Zanzibar for some well deserved R&R.

Checking into the Fumba Beach Lodge we were greeted by a charming manager, Shamouil, who welcomed us on behalf of the owner of the hotel (now I should point out that whilst this is not a high-end resort, it is part of a chain of lodges). What followed was the best ‘hotel induction’ I have ever experienced – and over the years I have stayed in a lot of hotels around the world.

What was it that set this experience apart from all the others? 

Quite simply, it was very personal. We were taken to the beach front bar, and given a welcome drink… in itself, not unusual. However, we were then asked what each of us was expecting and wanted from our stay at the hotel.

Everyone in our party talked about what they wanted to do…and it was all duly noted. We were then escorted by Shamouil (please note, not ushered on by one of his team), on a tour of the resort facilities addressing each of our individual needs in the process. We ended with a briefing on the features and facilities of our bungalows that we would call home for the next few days (facing the rolling waves just a few metres away!). As Shamouil went to leave he said; “I will now leave you to settle in – be aware of the monkeys as they like to ‘borrow’ things. If you need anything at all, please contact me directly. I will see you in the beach bar at 5pm for sunset drinks”. Cynically, I thought: Of course you will…I’ve heard that before.

We all re-grouped for lunch – the service and food was excellent. Relaxed and unfussed befitting of the environment. Our friends – unprompted – opened with: “Wow. How good was that briefing by Shamouil?”.

A wonderfully relaxed afternoon by the pool – looking out over the ocean – only interrupted by ‘tea’ at 4pm.

Arriving at the Dhow bar (made from a traditional Zanzibar boat hull) at sunset, we were in fact greeted by Shamouil. My cynicism smashed! We enjoyed a drink with him and good conversation. I commented on how good I found the experience with the check-in and how thorough the introduction to the resort was. Shamouil was humble; “It’s just what I do”, he said. He told me that he had worked in all aspects of the hotel business; starting by washing dishes, all the way up to management. Along the way, he had learned that the hotel business was “all about people” and “understanding their needs”. And that he wants everyone who stays at the Resort to have a “great experience…after all, that’s what brings them back”.

This focus on the ‘customer’ – or ‘guest’ as Shamouil preferred – was infectious. There was a management intern on ‘work experience’ and she told me that she had quickly learned from Shamouil’s example; he was ‘fanatical’ about delivering great service, she told me.

Shamouil and I chatted several times during our stay; when it came time to check out of the resort, Shamouil and his team were there to say goodbye and to thank us for staying with them. It was like leaving the home of good friends.

So, why am I telling this story?

Because, in this age of technology aided CXM, it is refreshing to receive an experience that is driven out of a genuine interest in the customer. And it’s easy to differentiate ‘genuine’ from a ‘manufactured’ experience.

As we say at The Customer Edge, it all starts with the right mind set.
 
Andrew Thornton
Co-Founder and Director

by Andrew Thornton, Co-founder and Director, The Customer Edge

Engaging customers with compelling, contextually relevant, experiences is the new competitive high ground. 

But the commonly asked question in many Australian businesses, that are striving to embrace customer experience (CX) management, is ‘who owns the customer experience?’.

Debate exists as to where the ownership should sit: is it at the C suite? With the customer service or contact team? Or do the marketers own it given their inherent connection with the market place?

A number of recent studies have been undertaken to try to clarify this point.
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This is supported by the Vision Critical work which identified that there is ‘an attitudinal shift occurring whereby whole organisational buy-in to customer centricity must occur’. Cross collaboration and cross organisational alignment is critical to successful CX management; organisational silos were identified as a key impediment to CX efforts, such as embracing personalisation.

There is no doubt that strong leadership with organisations making the transition to a CX focus is critical.


​I’m often asked who is showing strong leadership in relation to CX. One really good example is Vaughn Richter, CEO of ING Direct. He is quoted as saying: “It starts with a purpose, which (for ING Direct) is to help our customers to get ahead, and our view is that everything else is an outcome”. He adds that: “There are a lot of studies that show companies with a purpose ultimately outperform companies without”. Richter, as I understand it, is quite evangelical in his focus on delivering outstanding customer experiences. Such evangelic belief becomes infectious.  

Of course, having CX left, right and centre of the corporate strategy is essential in engendering a whole of business focus on the CX. And strong leadership – across all levels of the organisation – is required to truly build a customer obsessed culture.

We can’t leave the question of who owns the customer experience’ without considering the rise of the ‘Customer Experience Manager’ as the designated ‘owner’ of the CX.

Many of the organisations we (The Customer Edge) engage with claim they are ‘customer focused’, they cite the appointment of a Customer Experience Manager or even a Chief Customer Officer as evidence of this. Some of these appointments are new roles, whilst many are essentially a change in title.

But the critical question is: do these roles have the level of influence to drive the change required to transition the business to being ‘customer centric’, or is it a case of a ‘tick the box’ appointment? Our observation is that, in many cases, these positions have limited ability to influence the change required – so most are, sadly, destined to fail.

Don’t get me wrong, there is a role within any business for someone to champion CX – to be the catalyst for organisational change and to provide stewardship for CX – at least early in the cultural change journey. But, ultimately, it requires a whole of business belief in the value of CX management.

So, bottom line. Who should own the customer experience? In short, everyone in the organisation.

But those organisations on the transition path to effective CX management need a catalyst to drive the cultural transformation required to be truly customer centric. Strong leadership at all levels in the organisation is critical. And, as the research indicates, today’s marketers play a key role in driving a focus on CX. But, as the Vision Critical study rightly pointed out, cross collaboration and cross organisational alignment is a critical success factor when it comes to CX.