When was the last time you attended a match or a concert and were asked to give up your seat? United Airlines have made one customer’s on-the-ground travel experience more stressful than flying upside down in a hurricane. And United’s response has got to be the worst form of resolution we have ever witnessed. Giving an insight into how much they and their sector truly care about their customers.
With the average number of people flying each year increasing, airlines are continuing to reduce the space afforded to passengers as they aim to increase the amount of people on their flights. Unlike the grocery retail sector, where we’ve seen discount brands like Aldi and Lidl disrupt the mainstream grocers with their simple ‘low price, quick service’ model, the Airline industry has been critically damaged by layered pricing strategies, overbooked flights and their reluctance to take their customers’ comfort and travel experience seriously.
If the Airline industry wants to buck this trend then it needs to look at its leading brands and learn from them. Southwest Airlines have ranked 9th in the USA Customer Experience Excellence Report, the US’s highest ranking airline. Southwest are an organisation that cares passionately about its customers; it empathises with the unfairness of hidden fees that other companies work into their price plans, and it wants the customer to receive the best deal possible. It calls its own approach ‘transfarency’, which means it doesn’t include extra charges for bags, additional luggage, or last minute flight changes or cancellations. As such, Southwest has performed strongly across The Six Pillars, particularly in Empathy, Expectations and Integrity, where its scores are 12 per cent higher than the US average.
Zappos in the USA and First Direct in the UK are two of the world’s leading CX companies. Both hire employees exclusively from the caring sector. They know that the best way to differentiate their businesses is via CX excellence. They also know that the best way to do this is via a hiring policy of caring and empathetic staff and training them across the key emotions of CX excellence.
Airlines have gone down the route of the Insurance and Telecoms sector where churn is regular and customers are viewed as numbers on a spreadsheet. Gone are the days when flying was an amazing experience, it has now been replaced with stress and inconvenience. But the outrage towards United Airlines last week shows that the customer’s patience with airlines has reached breaking point and the industry now need to put their hand up and accepted that it’s time for a change.
One of the best ways of explaining how CX works is by giving real life examples of Customer Experience Excellence. We have found genuine customer stories and shared insights into how these bring to life the Six Pillars in our CX framework.
The Six Pillars are based on creating emotional connections with customers and include Personalisation, Integrity, Empathy, Time & Effort, Expectations and Resolution.
Ireland waves goodbye to Hailo
Albert Einstein remarked that “a thing should be made as simple as it can be but not simpler.”
The handover from Hailo to MyTaxi has been one of the smoothest and most straightforward I’ve experienced with a mobile app. As soon as I downloaded the app and opened it, it immediately gave me the option to merge all my details with my Hailo app. No inputting data, no redoing my credit card details. Simple
What is the least number of steps required for the customer to achieve their objective? A recent much publicised advert from Lidl dramatized how much easier they are to do business with than Morrisons. The ad listed the 44 steps you needed to undertake to achieve lower prices via rival supermarket Morrison’s loyalty card, or the ad said “you could just go to Lidl”. Our research shows that any more than three steps begin to irritate or confuse. NPS scores tend to fall at step 4. I counted a total of 3 steps from downloading the new MyTaxi app to actually ordering a taxi, which exceeded my expectations having been worried about making the switch initially.
Emergency necessities in a flash
For a price of between one and five dollars, students on Stanford University’s campus can now order an emergency delivery of essentials. Based on the idea that many of the items that people need while out and about are already at home, Letsjetpack provides travel sizes of 15 different products. Delivery is by fellow students, known as ‘Jetpackers’.
Rather than having to make an extra trip to the store, students download the app, select the products that are needed and within minutes, receive their delivery. From deodorant and energy drinks to painkillers and Kleenex, LetsJetpack covers most daily remedy needs. The founder of the company is planning to expand soon and bringing in the idea of selling themed kits, such as hangover cures or cold remedies.
Letsjetpack have built their business with the pillars of Time&Effort and Empathy in mind. Being students themselves, they understand the nightmare that can come from forgetting essential toiletries or cosmetics and are prepared to get them to whoever needs them, whenever or wherever.
The case of the missing textbooks
Is there anything better than a good mystery? This particular case involved a schoolbag full of GCSE textbooks being left aboard a train. As far as excuses go, it’s not quite ‘the dog ate my homework’, but it’s close. Harriet, a member of staff, could have handed in the bag to lost property. But instead, she imagined what a nightmare losing all of your GCSE work must be, and put on her detective hat. Unfortunately, there weren’t too many clues in the bag, so Harriet followed her detective’s instinct and took a look at the textbooks. She discovered the name of the student’s school, and then gave them a call. Then, with a little help from teachers, she tracked down the lucky student, and reunited them with their work. Case closed!
Resolution is an important aspect of The Six Pillars. Indeed, every brand should prepare for such an eventuality in their customer experience strategy as, even with the most refined processes, there is a high likelihood of something going wrong. For organisations, the art lies in being able to deal with problems swiftly and efficiently. And if a member of staff is willing to go ‘above and beyond’ to resolve a customer’s problem, the customer may end up with a better opinion of the brand than they had before the problem.
Story courtesy of Virgin Trains –to read more Virgin customer stories visit their site here
Pizza on command
Anyone can now place an order for Dominos with the Google Assistant on Google Home by saying, “OK Google, order Dominos.” At that point the customer is seamlessly handed off to Dom, Dominos home-grown voice-activated virtual ordering assistant. Dom guides the customer through the ordering process using natural-language ordering technology. And if a customer doesn’t have ‘Google home’ they can do the same with the app on their phone.
Key parts of the customer experience (often because they happen first) are the time we spend waiting and the effort we have to expend to achieve our objectives.
Managing waiting time and effort is therefore critical to positive memories of the experience. Now that customers don’t need to expend any effort other than saying a command to their phone or ‘Google home’, all that stands in the way of them eating their pizza is the delivery time, which can be monitored on the app. Dominos Pizza is covering every aspect of the customer journey brilliantly.
Staff hold the key to remarkable experiences
A bank customer needed to withdraw cash from his account late on a Friday. Luckily for him the teller in the bank was willing to go out of her way to help a customer in need. Read the story below.
My wife and I had been in Florida when late on a Friday afternoon I got a call from my brother telling me that my mother had passed away. I started making arrangements to fly up to NY to take care of everything, and realizing that I needed a lot of cash, I quickly asked my wife to call the bank and see what time they closed at.”
“I got to the bank, and found it was locked, but knocked on the door, hoping someone would still be there. A woman came to the door, unlocked it and let me in, telling me that she spoke to my wife. She said she was sorry about my mother and that the vault was locked so she couldn’t get any cash. But she told me to sit down, and said “Make yourself comfortable. I’ll be right back.” She went back to the front door, went out, and locked me in the bank. There I was, locked inside a bank branch by myself on a late Friday afternoon. A few minutes later she came back to the front door, unlocked it, and came back in. She then gave me four $100 bills and said “I know this isn’t as much as you wanted, but I hope it can tide you over until you can get more.” I asked her where she got the money from, and she said “I went out to the ATM and took it out of my account. You can pay me back when you get back from NY.”
Some things can’t be taught to staff. This is definitely an experience that falls under this bracket. It just goes to show the importance of hiring the right people. Staff who are willing to go out of their way for your customer are your most important asset. They are the face of your business and have the power to make your customer’s experience with it a remarkable one, or a poor one.
We are always looking for examples of CX Excellence. If you have any yourself please send it on to usand we will feature it in our blog.
If you would like to explore how your company can activate CX excellence, e-mail Michael Killeento discuss further.
