photo credit: geofones

I was lucky enough to get invited to be a judge at the UK Customer Experience Awards (www.uk-ce-awards.co.uk) about ten days ago.

There were a range of categories and winners from across B2B and B2C industries, public and private sectors. You can take a look at the winners here.

As part of the judging team for the IT & Digital panel, we were able to see some great entries from some diverse businesses. There were some strong contenders but the winner: Siemens Industry Automation and Drive Technologies was out in front of the other contestants.

Their business: Solutions help to improve operational efficiency, energy management and to enhance the safety of manufacturing plants is not an area that I know a huge amount about. But, their passion, commitment and results generated by improving their customer experience was compelling.

However, there was one thing in their story that really stood out. Something that is really simple and something that I have thought about before. That was that they routinely ’embed’ a member of their team with a customers business for a fixed period of time or on a regular basis. That gives them incredible insight into their customers business, what is important to them, what is a challenge and how they, Siemens, can change, add or improve to serve them better.

It’s all about how building empathy can really drive customer retention and a better customer experience.

Depending on your business, this may not always be the easiest thing to do. But, asking the question ‘How can we do this?’ and even making small inroads to gaining a higher degree of empathy and insight can pay huge dividends. Just ask Siemens.

Can you put your people into your customers businesses to walk a mile in their shoes?