Today’s interview is with James Dodkins, founder of ROCKSTAR CX, international keynote speaker, accidental #1 best selling author and host of ‘This Week In CX.’ James joins me today to talk about the work that he does, what is going wrong with many customer experience transformation programmes and the 6 core elements of really good customer experience.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – What more empathy in business and artificial intelligence (AI) will look like – Interview with Minter Dial – and is number 294 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Here’s the highlights of my chat with James:

• James used to play guitar in a band called Speed Theory. Look them up on YouTube. But, beware they are a hardcore thrash metal band!
• James recently posted a video on LinkedIn that caught my eye entitled: The six core elements of really good customer experience.
• Emotion isn’t on the list because emotion is an outcome that gets created from the delivery of these six elements.
• The six elements that James talked about in the video are:
  • 1. Convenient – e.g. the method of how you do business with somebody.
  • 2. Easy – e.g. the amount of effort it takes to do business with somebody.
  • 3. Fast – e.g. the speed in which it takes to do business with somebody.
  • 4. Trackable – e.g. knowing the process and where you are in the process.
  • 5. Personalized – e.g. knowing you and the things you like; and
  • 6. Predictive – e.g. using data to predict what you might like.

• When you look at the list it seems like a bit of a no brainer list.
• But, it is an easy reminder of the many of the things that get lost in the design of many customer experiences.
• And, most companies aren’t doing these things right. They’re focused on different things.
• Some people may say some of the elements speak to the same thing. But, James maintains that they are all independent but interconnected.
• For example, let’s take an insurance company where it is convenient to claim because you can do it through an app, it’s easy to claim because it’s a one click claim process but it isn’t fast because the money comes seven weeks down the line.
• It’s not necessary for every customer experience to score highly on each of these elements.
• These elements are more principles and the philosophy behind your customer experience.
• Think of them like a musical graphic equalizer.
• You have to get your levels right and the levels are going to be relative to what your customer wants to achieve and what you as a business want to achieve.
• There was a lot of talk late last year that as many as 70 percent of all customer experience or digital transformation efforts weren’t meeting their objectives and satisfying their customers.
• Where most firms are falling down is outside of these six elements.
• Where they are failing is that they are not understanding what a successful outcome for a customer is. They are not understanding what their customers real needs are.
• Customer outcomes come first and the 6 core elements follow that.
• Monzo bank is a great example, outside of the usual suspects, that is doing well on all of the 6 core elements.
• Leaders should start by getting clear on what customer outcome they are aiming to deliver and then they should rate themselves on a scale of 1-10 on each of the 6 core elements. This will give them a benchmark so they can plan where they want to be in 12 months, say.
• Try and understand who your customers are at a deeper level more and on a personal level, how they think, how they make decisions, their personal values and their attributes rather than just the demographics of what gender they are and where they live.
• Once you understand that try and articulate what their outcomes could be and what their real needs are in any given experience.
• Once you understand that you can then design an experience to deliver against those outcomes using the 6 core elements to make sure that the experience you are delivering is the best it can be and will outperform your competition.

About James Dodkins

James used to be an actual, real life, legitimate, award-winning rockstar. He played guitar in a heavy metal band, released albums and tore up stages all over the world, James uses this unique experience to energize, empower and inspire his clients and their teams as a ‘Customer Experience Rockstar’.

He founded ROCKSTAR CX to help companies deliver rockstar customer experiences, move away from ‘business as usual’ and embrace ‘business unusual’ and turn their employees into ‘Rockstars’ and their customers into super-fans.

James is also an international keynote speaker and delivers the worlds first and only musical customer experience keynote. Complete with live guitar playing and musical customer experience examples.

James’ client list includes global brands such as Disney, Mercedes, Nike, Microsoft, Lego and many more.

Not only is James a rockstar consultant and trainer, he is also the host of weekly news show ‘This Week In CX’ and an accidental #1 Best Selling author (long story).

Check out ROCKSTAR CX, find out more about James here, investigate his books here, say Hi to him on Twitter @JDODKINS and connect with him on LinkedIn here.

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Thanks to Pixabay for the image.