Throwing a spotlight on customer service
October 4, 2011British Airways and using suppliers to deliver your customer experience
October 11, 2011Maz Iqbal over at The Customer Blog has started to question the use of the label ‘customer experience’ in a recent post: Why do only a handful of companies excel at cultivating customer loyalty? I agree. It’s a badge that gets thrown around way too much.
Here’s some comments on the GB cycling teams efforts in the recent world championships that I saw recently that made me think about the ‘badging’ up of many customer experience efforts.
The comments via an interview on the BBC come from Dave Brailsford, who oversees Britain’s road racers alongside pro cycling’s Team Sky and GB’s successful track cycling programme. On the team’s performance over the championship he said:
“If you dare to set high expectations and work hard enough, most of the time you get there in my experience”
Arguably, the biggest success in the championship was Mark Cavendish winning the world championship in the senior mens race. A victory that has not been accomplished by a UK rider for 46 years. Tom Simpson was the UK’s last cycling world champion back in 1965.
I watched the race enthralled at how they operated as a team and executed their plan.
However, it was the back story to this victory that really interested me and was what Brailsford was alluding to.
Their victory was 3 years in the making. They had been planning for this event ever since the location and course were announced 3 years ago as they knew that it offered them and the team their best chance of success.
Their preparation was meticulous, their plans were very public, everyone knew what they were going to do and everyone tried to stop them doing it. But, the GB team controlled the race and executed their plan beautifully. And now the UK for the first time in 46 years has a cycling world champion in Mark Cavendish.
The lesson here for me in the customer experience arena is this:
- Some firms just talk about customer experience and then fail to deliver;
- Some firms don’t talk about it and just deliver;
- But, it seems to me that the leaders in most things, especially in the area of delivering a great customer experience, don’t really talk about it they just seem to set high targets and expectations and then deliver
Think about some of the leaders: First Direct, John Lewis, Apple, ??, ??
Time for less talk?
15 Comments
Adrian,
It strikes me that most of the talk is to get people to agree that it is the right thing to do. But if you have to get people to agree then you may well be doomed to failure from the start.
So why is it that some companies don’t need to talk? What is in their DNA and how did it get there?
James
Hi James,
I think you are right that there is something in companies DNA that just makes them want to do the right thing(s). Personally, I think it comes down to company and personal values and culture. Not the stuff that gets talked about and ‘cascaded down’ and ‘socialised’ around orgs but the stuff that lies at the very heart of who you are, what you do and who you ask to join and lead your organisation.
So, I believe it is combination of what we believe, what we do, how we do things and how we treat each other. Too many companies get to the first one and then don’t follow through and that’s where I think they trip up and the real successes are created.
Adrian
To make a customer experience really great, a team should really make plans carefully and execute it according on how they’ve plan it. Once you made a plan and didn’t follow it, you’ll surely won’t have the goal that you wanted to have.
Cool post, Carrera are the ultimate bikes.
Thank you for stopping. Not sure I’d agree that Carrera are the ultimate bikes though 😉
We dont typically comment but I gotta say respect for your publish about this 1.