Customer Experience Master Class

Overview

A 2/3-day workshop for senior management to consider how to use customer experience management to create improved business performance and sustainable competitive advantage.

This workshop will consider how to develop and implement a business strategy, based around customer experience management, which will deliver industry and/or sector leading business performance. It also investigates how exceptional service delivery may be harnessed to drive cultural change, motivate employees and create worthwhile differentiation and sustainable competitive advantage.

This workshop style event is highly interactive with opportunities throughout for questions, discussion and reflection. It is also action based and concludes with the creation of prioritised action plans.

Workshop content

The key topics of the workshop are as follows:

How Service Supremacy is used to create Competitive Advantage.

Jan Carlson, Gary Hamel, Kjell Nordstrom, Michael Porter, Frederick Reichheld and Barry Schwartz, are some of World’s top business thinkers. During this session we will consider their concepts and recommendations on the subjects of customer service and competitive strategy. We will also consider relevant competitive case studies such as BA/Easyjet/Virgin, BT/Orange/Talk Talk, Dyson/Hoover/Hotpoint, Marks & Spencer/John Lewis/BHS, Tesco/Sainsbury’s/ASDA, TNT/Federal Express/DHL or BMW/Mercedes/Toyota.

The key items to be considered will be:

• Why a differentiation strategy makes good business sense
• How service experience can become a key means of differentiation

Service Delivery and Superior Profitability

It is important to address the key issue of cost justification for customer service investments. We need to unearth all the ‘we couldn’t find the budget’ or ‘it costs too much’ or ‘we can’t afford to do it’ issues and attempt to turn them into ‘it makes a profit’ or ‘it pays for itself’ or at least, ‘we can’t afford not to do it’.

This is done by reference to the extensive research that now exists on this subject, the many case studies there are from around the world and by applying a great deal of basic business common sense.

The key items to be considered will be:

• The ROI/ROCE/EBITDA from investing in customer experiences
• Understanding and using lifetime customer relationship values

The Look and Feel of a Service Winner

Organisations that know how to use service as strategy have a great deal in common. Regardless of size, nationality, industry or market, there are a few essential things that they all have and do. From the outside they may look like any other business, but on the inside they act and feel very different to businesses that don’t have this focus. This session will explain what these key elements of difference are and show how they fit together to create a winning formula.

The key to be considered will be:

• Organisational issues – The way an organisation is structured has a major impact on service delivery. Simple structural changes can have big impacts. The best structures and how they work are considered in this section.
• Leadership issues - Leadership is something that has a massive impact but is generally misunderstood. Yet without it, it’s virtually impossible to achieve worthwhile sustainable success in any organisation. In this session we consider the simple but key elements of leadership and look at examples from around the world of how they have been used by great leaders like Jack Welch, Richard Branson, Jan Carlson and Terry Leahy.
• Cultural issues – It is impossible to deliver exceptional service externally to customers if it isn’t first being experienced internally by staff. It is therefore essential to consider the elements that combine to create an enabling internal service culture. Again, extensive use will be made of examples of how this has been done by successful service led businesses throughout the world.

How to build Sustainable Success through Customer Experience Management

There are four stages of customer experience management. Each stage has key elements that ensure the required results are achieved. These will be explained and their relevance discussed in this section. The key items to be considered will be:

Stage 1: Gathering, understanding and exploiting critical customer needs

• Mapping the Customer Journey(s) and using Circles of Service
• Exploiting customer experience opportunities
• Gathering, analyzing and using customer feedback
• Creating brand differentiation and competitive advantage

Stage 2: Delivering Service Perfection

• How to improve service delivery and reduce the cost of service – both at the same time!
• Delivering exactly against the brand promises
• Using Service Excelleration techniques (Systems Thinking and Sigma Service)

Stage 3: Creating Corporate WOWs

• Harnessing the amazing power of +1’s and WOWs
• Removing OUCH experiences
• The simple techniques of dazzling recovery

Stage 4: Going Whole Brain

• Understanding Whole Brain thinking
• Applying Whole Brain thinking

Winning Implementation

Tom Peters once said, “Aiming for good quality is a stupid idea. The only thing that counts is your quality getting better at a more rapid rate than you principle competitors.”

This doesn’t just apply to quality; it applies to everything in the business - especially service. In this session we will look at how the best organisations are continually improving and how they implement strategies with a pace that outstrips all their competitors.

The key items to be considered will be:

• Putting First Things First – Knowing what are the right things to do first can be critical to long-term success. This section will explain what they are and how to get them started.
• Staying Sharp – If people’s motivation, focus and/or ability go dull, then it will be impossible to sustain a winning pace. In this section we will consider the ways to keep everyone sharp and focussed on the key elements of success.
• Monitoring Progress – Rudyard Kipling once said,

“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”

This is especially true of the journey to create and deliver competitive advantage through addictive customer experiences. The best ways to keep a constant check on where you are going (and where you are) is outlined in this section.

• Rewarding Success - Success and rewards are (or should be) always linked. This session is therefore designed to consider the best ways to recognise and reward the behaviours and results that will sustain success.

Action Planning

This final session is designed to turn good ideas into worthwhile actions. Throughout the workshop delegates will have been noting the things that they believe require action. During this session we will readdress these items, agree priorities and outcomes, allocate responsibilities, and establish realistic time-scales.

Reference Materials

It’s important to have plenty of reference material during and after the workshop. Hard copies of all slides used will therefore be provided and relevant reference materials will be available throughout the event and recorded for reference following it.

Who’s already done it?

Workshops like this have been attended by people from all types and sizes of organisations. Listed below are a few of the better known ones.

What are the likely outcomes?

The precise outcomes obviously depend upon the delegates and the requirements of the different organisations. However, there are a few things that seem to be common to all these workshops. These are:

• The time goes very quickly.
• The delegates find it tiring but extremely enjoyable.
• People learn a lot and are inspired to learn more.
• Team spirit and mutual understanding is enhanced.
• The delegates grasp the connections between service, experiences, culture, leadership and strategy and realise how to use this to improve competitiveness and profitability.
• A ‘can do’ attitude is stimulated.
• Worthwhile goals are agreed and a strong commitment to achieving them is created.
• People return keen to share their new knowledge and enthusiasm with colleagues.

Cost and terms

This workshop is typically run over 2 or 3 days, final charges subject to the degree of tailoring required.

What next?

If you have people that would benefit from running a workshop for your business or attending one of our workshops please telephone Tel: +44-1483 549027 (GMT) to reserve your place(s).

Designed and led by: Chris Daffy from: The Academy of Service Excellence

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