Yorkshire-based KC was announced as the overall winner of the UK Customers Experience Awards 2013.
But who is KC and what it is about the way they do business with their customers that makes them stand out?
A quirk of history means that the area KC serves – Hull & East Yorkshire – is unique because it’s the only part of the UK where BT, and other telecoms’ providers don’t operate.
According to KC, many of its customers are frustrated by the lack of choice in the local phone and broadband market and see KC as the reason.
“Customers can’t vote with their feet and switch to another supplier if they are unhappy with our service, so it’s really important that we give them an outstanding brand experience,” explained Gary Young, KC’s Director of Business and Consumer Services.
This approach paved the way for KC’s brand vision, which is that KC want their customers to be proud that KC is part of their local life.
KC introduced a new Customer Spectacles Programme that aims to see everything through the eyes of their customers.
“At the heart of the programme is the principle that by encouraging, listening to and, most importantly, acting on feedback from customers we can give them a better experience and improve the performance of our business.
“A key part of the programme is looking at every aspect of our business from our customers’ perspective – putting on our customer spectacles – and asking what elements of our products and services, our processes, our communication and our behaviours we can change for the better.”
The customer spectacles programme incorporates:-
• Improving Insight – Introducing new ways to capture customer feedback and insight at every interaction with us. Understanding the voice of the customer and digging deeper was key.
• Customer Journey Mapping – Walking through every process with our customer spectacles on to understand thoughts, feelings and sentiment.
• Improvement Initiatives – Identifying root causes, fixing the right issues and realising the benefits for the business and of course our customers.
• Employee Engagement – Keeping the programme alive internally and promoting the benefits and importance of the ‘Customer Spectacles’ Programme’ means that we’ve created real and lasting change.
Gary added: “Everyone at KC is absolutely thrilled to be recognised for our efforts to give our customers a great experience, regardless of the type of interaction they have with us. What’s most important to us is what our customers think about our service. It’s this feedback that’s led to us making more than 100 improvements during the last year alone to our products, our processes and the way we interact with customers.
“The improved customer satisfaction results we’ve seen during this time and the awards we’ve just received give us great confidence that we’re on the right track to consistently meet and exceed our customers’ needs.
“However, we won’t rest there. There’s always more we can do, and we’ll keep listening to customers and making the improvements they want to see.”
KC provides a range of communications services to consumers and businesses in Hull and East Yorkshire.
Part of the KCOM Group PLC, with history stretching back over a hundred years to 1904.
KC has around 500 employees and more than 140,000 customers.
KC’a primary measure of CS is Net Promoter Score. At the start of our customers spectacles programme our NPS score was at -42. They have increased this to +3.