With Customer Experience being high on the radar for businesses, it’s no surprise that The Cranfield Customer Management Forum (CCMF) set the agenda for their February workshop ‘Winning with Customer Experience’.
A series of thought provoking presentations were made by previous winners and finalists from the UK Customer Experience Awards 2013 including: Mark Hill, Managing Director at ResponseTek; Jack May, Marketing Manager at Currency Index; Michael Conway, Managing Director at Clothes2Order; and Amanda Woodward, CEx Manager and Katie Cobb, CEx Executive at KC Communications.
Mark Hill, MD at ResponseTex discussed how a customer focussed culture is vital to enable organistations to be able to differentiate themselves, and that although Customer Experience is already top of the agenda for many companies, it must be driven down through the business to be successful. ResponseTex launched ‘The Pulse’ at Telecoms Company, Three, which has given the company detailed, real-time customer insight to make the necessary changes to improve the customer experience journey. Since its launch in 2011, there has been a significant improvement in the NPS (Net Promoter Score) for Three and there has been huge buy-in across the business.
Jack May, Marketing Director at Currency Index gave a lively presentation on how Currency Index’s social media strategy had enabled them to raise their profile and that all important return on investment. He reeled off a whole list of tools they successfully use to engage with their customers such as YouTube, hootsuite, tweetdeck and yatterbox.
Michal Conway, MD at Clothes2Order – a company which supplies clothing for uniforms and promotions, explained how as part of their project to make 2012/2013 the year of the customer, they focussed on creating an exceptional experience for customers. They invested in ecommerce to allow easy online ordering, invested in capacity to increase reliability and speed of delivery, and developed a customer focus culture within the organisation. These developments in customer experience have led to high levels of customer satisfaction, resulting in rapid growth of the business, which is currently growing at over 60% year on year.
Amanda Woodward, CEx Manager and Katie Cobb, CEx Executive at KC Communications, shared the success of their award winning initiative ‘Are you wearing your customer spectacles?’. Overall winners at the UK Customer Experience Awards 2013, their initiative involved every member of staff being given a large pair of glasses to remind them to see things through the eyes of the customer. Buy in from colleagues has really made the programme come to life and instilled empowerment across the organisation. It’s clear everybody lives and breathes the programme and the programme’s success speaks for itself. The number of customer complaints has fallen and the NPS score has significantly increased.
In the afternoon session, Emmanuel Said and Dr Emma MacDonald presented brand new research conducted by Cranfield University which provides a dive into the role of insight in ensuring a better customer experience, with the objective of understanding how market insight leads to action. CCMF members and guests then took part in a workshop to pilot and comment on a new diagnostic tool to help managers make best use of their insight.
The Cranfield Customer Management Forum, in collaboration with Awards International has also just released the white paper ‘Experience Co-Creation: Lessons from the UK Customer Experience Awards 2013’. The synthesis and knowledge in the white paper capture learnings from leading organisations and establish known principles about customer management which will be extremely valuable for all participating in the awards going forwards. To view a copy please use this link http://cxm.co.uk/free-white-paper/
The UK Customer Experience Awards are now well underway for 2014 and open for entries. The deadline for entries is 5th June and the awards will culminate at a spectacular event on September 25th 2014 at the ExCel London. The format of the awards follows that of previous years, with judging finalist presentations during the morning and announcing the winners at a gala lunch and awards ceremony in the afternoon, making for a very exciting event.
To find out more about entering the awards, judging and sponsorship opportunities please contact: Lisa Bailey on 01223 911755 or email Lisa via lisa@awardsinternational.eu