Customer Experience Superheroes - Series 4 Episode 3 - From Customer Service to Customer Care with Nick Lygo-Baker

Nick Lygo-Baker has spent many years research agency side to develop a specialism in voice of the customer. Having moved to become a CX consultant, leading Paradigm CX Ltd, he's been able to take his specialism to many clients to help them both understand how to generate more powerful insights, but also how to convert what they find into actionable improvements.

In conversation with global CX consultant and mentor Christopher Brooks, host of the CX Superheroes podcast series, they discuss one area of particular attention is customer service, and how companies can turn this 'cost to serve' function into having a customer care purpose and contribute towards revenue protection. With specific reference to the importance of this consideration during a pandemic.

Nick shares his first hand experience of these real challenges with international clients, which form part of a new book entitled Customer Experience 2 which he contributes towards. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:17

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Client Shapes Customer Experience Superheroes. This is the podcast series where I, Christopher Brooks, bring you information, insights, and ideas relevant to the world of customer experience, with a particular focus on what we feel are the superpowers individuals need in order to be a success in today's world of customer experience. In today's episode, we meet Nick Ligo Baker. Nick is CEO of CX Paradigm and is also a contributor to a book coming out called Customer Experience 2, in which he focuses his attention on the evolution from customer service to customer care. So here we are, another CX Superheroes podcast episode. And I'm delighted today to have with us Nick Ligo Baker. Hello, Nick.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

Good morning. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_01 1:11

Yeah, I'm really pleased you're here to join us today. We have been collaborating on a new book, Customer Experience 2. And you're someone who I think many of us in the sector know well because of your pedigree background. I'd like to help our listeners understand a bit more about your journey to get here in terms of customer experience.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Yeah, absolutely. I I have a retail management degree, fell into business at the university, and uh wanted to specialise in something rather than being more generic. And from there, I left university and worked for an entertainment products distributor, effectively in uh category management. Part of that was understanding people's behaviour, their buying practices, and why they bought what they did. But it was also quite a tech-driven business. So I was heavily involved in digitisation of music, streaming at that point, and working with vendors and major labels to get them to develop relationships and support new technologies as that came through. And that was fantastic. I really enjoyed that innovation part of the role. But from there, I moved into a very small startup in mystery shopping, it's the first online mystery shopping business, believe in the UK. And yeah, that developed into voice of customer, CSAT, brand auditing. So I guess that's for me where I cut my teeth really in customer experience. Yeah, from there I uh moved into leadership roles within some of the larger global players, so Ipsos Mori and uh Candile Consulting.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Very evidence-based then when you kind of your approach to customer experience, you're not so much of a hedonistic approach, it's much more fundamentally rooted in evidence when you when you come to talk about customer experience.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Absolutely, and I I think I've had the benefit now of being both client side and agency side, but it all started really with with my degree, and that retail element was was not just about what you put on the shelves, it's it's how you do it, how you engage customers and customer experience at that time, although it wasn't necessarily called that, was fundamentally the driver behind why that course existed and you know the reasons for success in in retail. For me, just carrying that forward and that that interest that was sparked in doing those things in my degree has led me to to continue doing that. I've enjoyed that with a passion. Yeah, I've deviated a couple of times with a few projects into shopper marketing and to shopper insight. But yeah, the calling's always been back to more pure tech strategy voice of customer stuff.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

Brilliant. In the in this new book, you're bringing a lot of that experience into the page or onto the page for us. Uh so the the title of your chapter is Customer Service to Customer Care, Organizational Alignment to Create Better Customer Outcomes. So, you know, what is what is the elevator pitch?

SPEAKER_00 3:51

It it's a combination of case study and practical guidance. Um, and what I found with some other writings is that practical guidance can be a little bit too direct. Uh, you must do this to get this outcome. And life's not like that. So, what I wanted to do was bring some practical examples of where I've personally gone through some of the challenges that people face on their their own route to creating more custom-centric businesses and how I overcame them, some of the things that happened, and and what my advice would be to to overcoming them, but um done in a way that's um much more about the narrative and the story and not necessarily just the uh yeah the process steps that were taken.

SPEAKER_01 4:29

In it we we get a feeling for for you as much as we get a feeling for the topic, because this is you know, this is the story that you've been through. It's it's you know, you've you've felt the pain, you've got the the the battle scars from it. I mean, are you are you revealing? Are you is it are you helping us kind of understand what not to do as well as what to do?

SPEAKER_00 4:47

Yes, I think there's a yeah, there's a few elements in here where there are always some unexpected outcomes through the processes that you go through. When those things happen, it's it's how do you deal with them? And for me, it was very much taking a pragmatic view, but also using the resources and creating relationships in various businesses to help them. And I've always taken the view that within business people want to achieve, they want to do the right thing. So when they set out to achieve a more customer-centric business, they all feel that they want to do, you know, have that end goal in mind. The challenge comes when there are slight differences in the understanding of what customer experience, customer centricity might be for that business. And that's why I touched on the the organizational alignment. And I know there's some there's some challenges at the moment in thought leadership that you don't need to be fully aligned in order to create some customer centricity. And to a degree, there are some processes that can be made more customer focused without having the rest of the business involved. But if you truly want to become focused on creating better customer outcomes, the entire business has to understand that that's a strategic aim, and therefore there's a degree of alignment. You know, how much alignment will differ between businesses, but fundamentally there needs to be a common goal in order to create that momentum in the right direction.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

It would be fair to say, even with you kind of bringing it to life in terms of sort of more like a case study, it still requires a certain level of competency and capability as an individual in those organizations to win over trust, doesn't it? You can't just come in there with examples of where you've done it elsewhere and it happens. I mean, there's a real human side to this, isn't there?

SPEAKER_00 6:29

Yes, yeah. I I I came into a couple of businesses and you start with, I guess, borrowed authority. I suppose the hiring director or CEO that's brought you in gives you a role, he tells the rest of the business this person's come in to do this job, and to a degree you have some authority to come in and talk to people, make change, put things, you know, meetings in diaries, etc. That doesn't last long. There's a the real importance to navigate a business and understand who the real key stakeholders are who truly do have the influence or the understanding of knowledge to really help you succeed. So it's it's fundamental to build those relationships really quickly and to understand who needs the help and more importantly who has the knowledge and insight to be able to feed in to any change process. And for me, that's that's one of the biggest learnings. It's you you you can't just sit at the top of the business and try and make friends with the board of directors. Yes, they have to sign things off and move things forwards, but you really have to understand those who are going to be most affected by any potential change and take their feedback on for them what could be improved because they are the font of knowledge. And uh yeah, if you don't unlock that and you don't connect the dots, then uh yeah, most projects will take longer or they'll fall flat or they just won't succeed.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

So, do you think is that a case of you enabling them to do their job better by presenting a potential solution, or is it at those early stages when you're sort of not sure which direction you're going? It's is is it about authenticity and honesty and openness and transparency so they can see that you're there to serve as opposed to shout and strive forward regardless of whether they take your direction or not?

SPEAKER_00 8:10

There's always a need to adapt your style to the organization and to listen to how people who I've perceived to be more successful in those organizations, how they act, what they do, and how they communicate with with people. Very quickly, you can get an understanding of the culture of the organization, then you can start looking at where things can improve. And by improvement, that's that's quite often looking at some of the processes. But for me it was it was about co-creating a strategic framework, ensuring that there was enough contribution to that so that people at every level in the organisation could buy into that vision, and then using that as a means of becoming the foundation of what happens next. I wrote this in the chapter about making sure that every decision was based on understanding what impact that had on the customer. Was it easy and did it add value to customers? And secondly, were we making things easier and adding value to our staff? And if we ticked both of those boxes with every decision we made, we were more likely to meet the customer experience framework we've created, but also be more successful when it came to the adoption of these process changes and the outcomes that we were hoping to achieve for our customers.

SPEAKER_01 9:23

Great. So recognising that actually the you know you needed to enable staff to feel that it was a worthwhile initiative in order for the customers to then eventually get the value. If the staff don't see the value of what you're doing, then it doesn't matter how great it is for customers. Is that what you're saying?

SPEAKER_00 9:39

Yeah, that's the kind of foundation really. It's showing people that there's a better way of doing it that's easier for them, but also makes the outcome for the customers better. And you know, the more senior you become, the I suppose the less connected you become with your customers. So if you can start articulating that across the board in the same type of language, you start to get that momentum, you get that more connected buy-in. But one of the key parts of that is to say, well, that that's almost the foundation, that's the purpose of this project. Yeah, we've started to influence people, we've started to get people aligned to we are looking at this, this is what's coming. Yeah, a few businesses I've worked with have been quite reluctant to share openly what the plans are going to be, because at that stage they're just plans. You know, they they like to say this is the decision and this is what we're gonna do. And for me, that can be quite a shock to some businesses and makes it quite difficult, therefore, to get buying an adoption. So this was very much about here's the framework that we're looking to implement, and this is the the long-term aim, but the process of getting there was still very much a fluid process whilst we were engaging with everybody in the business. So, what that did creates a degree of momentum. Yep, uh, it created an anticipation because people say, Okay, what's happening? When's it going to come? And then, secondly, it makes it happen because if you've made a commitment, something's going to come, you can't just say, Oh, we forgot about that, because actually that that just undermines the process. By doing it, we were starting to get people to make commitments to change. Not all change was huge. Yeah, there's a few processes that were quite different, and I'll talk about that in a minute. But it was important that those we we set some small expectations and then we started to meet those promises. And the more we met those promises, the more, as you say, authenticity and belief you know started to build with people in that business. That trust that I was earning through going through those processes and small steps and delivering on those promises was enabling me to then you know stretch the level of change and the promises that we could make to our customers in the interest of the broader business.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

Picking up on the title, I mean, are we talking about here recognising an organization in its maturity? So it's functional in what it does, you know, kind of it's very serviced-based. That is a function that it's doing to actually becoming care-based, where it's almost that's the outcome it's trying to fulfill. I mean, when you say sort of you you assessed where they are, was this sort of something you held in your head? Do you find evidence around to support an a need to get them to kind of care about their customers?

SPEAKER_00 12:12

It's yeah, and I've seen it in quite a few businesses, particularly where they they have call contact centres, call centres outside of retail. Quite often the call centre is not regarded with the same level of importance as you would get with the front-end retail. Because the front-end retail is where all the sales come from, and the call centre is typically picking up all the problems that that's that created when it's failed. It's a frustration of mine that their businesses don't take that quite as seriously as the sort of first point of looking at how to get insights and information because they they look at the sale, they look at the voice of customer based on that sales point, they don't look at necessarily what's the service recovery been like. How do we maintain the same brand values when we recover a customer as we did when we were selling to them and when we were inviting them through our brand marketing initiatives? That was part of the process for me. It was to learn more about the insights from the contact centres. It was about then assessing are we delivering that brand promise consistently across all of the customer touch points, and does that brand promise meet the objective of the business? And slowly by you know just questioning those motives, starting to unpick and then rebuild that strategy in partnership with those stakeholders to make sure that they were really comfortable with what we were trying to achieve in order to then make it easier to implement the decisions that were needed to achieve that.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Are there particular functions or types within the organization that are either slow to adopt or resistant, more likely to resist, or does it really depend on the organisation?

SPEAKER_00 13:50

In some cases, customer experience is a very operational thing. That is often more rigid and also for them potentially more risky, although not always the case. Others, you know, customer insight, customer experience sits with marketing, it's a brand thing, yeah, it's not as tangible. Yeah, again, depending on where it sits, changes how you approach it. Um, yeah, I've I've heard stories of where it sits with HR because it's a people thing, but um, my experience is typically that it sits between marketing and operations, and occasionally on you know, for some of the really large organizations, they might have a uh customer insight division which will report into one or the other. So they they have put more focus and resource into it, but it still fundamentally sits under a marketing or an operational leadership.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

And and is that just a reflection of where we are with customer experience? I guess you know, if we rewind the clock a bit, digital sometimes set with IT, it's sometimes set with operations, sometimes it was marketing until you know it it's found its own its own place in the organization. Customer experience, in my experience, doesn't seem to have a home. It's either hell-bent on telling the business, you know, everyone owns customer experience, or it's it's aligned to service, or it's aligned to marketing or to operations. Does that create its own tension in the organization?

SPEAKER_00 15:13

I think historically organizations have been structured in a way that that just creates silos and makes it more difficult to work cross-function because it's you know you have a very clear role in the organization. You are a cog in a machine and you do your thing. Customer experience is about more than that. It's it has a function and an ownership in each one of those potential departments. So pulling it out and having it as its own entity is very difficult for organisations that are already set up in those historical silos. Um it's easier with new startups, they they can focus on it and create their own divisions that look after customer experience that have ownership in each of the previous sort of functional setups. But it's a bigger challenge for those businesses that are set up in a more traditional way. And often businesses are 60, 70, 100 years old, um, and in some cases financial services, yeah, they've been almost doing the same thing in retail banking for 150, 160 years. So changing behaviour is is a big ask. Um, and digitisation and and more recently, the use of smartphones and technology is having probably the biggest impact in change of behaviour in the last 10 years than they've had in a dec in a century. So there's a lot to consider when you know what what does customer centricity really mean? And I've seen a split really from you know customer service being a very functional piece, customer care being a kind of next bridge, and then customer experience being the overarching piece. So you're working towards better customer experience. You start with a level of customer service, which is about delivering on the brand promise, and then customer care is taking that to the next level, empowering staff who would previously be limited in what they could do to attend to a customer issue or resolve a challenge, um, and enabling them to do more than they would otherwise have been permitted. So it's it's creating a better customer experience, a better employee experience, um, dealing with things faster and more efficiently is going to be in the long term much cheaper to deliver.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

You talked there about kind of say these inefficiency. I'd imagine when you're embarking upon these engagements, at least one person will talk about well, what how do we measure the contribution? How do we measure both financially and non-financially the gain we're going to get by in introducing this disruption to our organization? As a as a man kind of you know born of evidence-based tracking studies, how how have you found that particular conversation? Is it is it uh an easy we measure this, or is it a bit more open in terms of you know, let's see where it goes and let's let's retrospectively look back and see what we've achieved? How how do you play that?

SPEAKER_00 18:05

One of my quotes is always without data, insight is just opinion. And that can be dangerous because what feels right in your mind might be totally different to the majority of your customer base. So that there has to be a degree of testing and and checking, of course. And I guess ironically, yes, my background shouts measurement numbers, stats, and figures, but um, only when you start looking at the more qualitative element of it and start reading between the lines can you truly find you know the insights that help you create action. With every business, it's okay, you're asking us to make X million pounds worth of investment to make a fundamental change to our business. Why would we do that? And what am I going to see in return? So, yeah, one of the examples I've had is that journey was going to be significant in terms of costs. Yeah, the stakeholders that were going to fund that had already borne costs of other projects, and this was on top of that, and as a priority, it was probably a bit lower down for them than it would otherwise have been if the organization was truly customer-centric. It starts off by, okay, what's the increase in cost? But then it's about working with the business analysts to say, okay, if we make some changes here and we move some of these roles out to other parts of the business, what are we going to see back in the efficiencies? All of the time, reminding ourselves, are we making it easy for ourselves? Are we adding value to the customer? And are we going through those two questions relating to customers and staff? We're able to say, right, we can take some workload away from one part of the business that slows down the outcome to a customer. We can hand that to another part of the organisation that's directly talking to the customer to enable them and empower them to make change immediately, and that delivers a much better customer outcome, saves us seven or eight touch points handling data and information that inevitably delivers a cost. So when you start looking at it in those efficiency terms, you can say, well, actually, we're able to deliver better experience for our customers, and for every transaction we have with a customer now on the touch point, we can return X amount of money that we wouldn't otherwise have been able to see. Increased costs of change, but long-term recovery was always part of the calculation because there had to be a degree of why what's in it for us. And it's much harder to say, well, your customers will love you more and they'll be more loyal because you know what does the loyalty mean? We know that customer acquisition is always going to be far higher than customer retention. Yeah, it's a relatively commonly understood fact, I guess, as part of business, but that needs to be proved. It needs to be, you know, you need proof points and you need stats and numbers to actually get that across. And with most change management processes, that that needs to be realised relatively quickly. There are a few quick wins that that in a couple of my engagements we've been able to put in quickly that have seen an instant reduction in cost. For example, one of them would be moving away from physical vouchering for refunds or gifts, for example, or goodwill, making that electronic. So you don't have the production cost of a voucher, you don't have the postage cost of sending it to a customer, and a customer can have something instantly that they could redeem online, which means their experience is far quicker and faster, they're more likely to return to you, and yet the business saves a fortune in postage and production costs. So there are some things you can do really quickly. You can then prove to the business that that small change has just saved you £70,000 a year in postage, for example. Whilst it might not seem a lot in a scheme of the size of the business, it's those little things that say, actually, I've just paid for the cost of me as a consultant for that project. The overall return on investment that you're going. to see over four or five years is going to keep growing and my value has been proven. It's not always easy to do that, but in some cases, depending as you say, on the maturity of the organization, you are able to find a few low, you know, some low-hanging fruit and some quick wins that that you can use as part of that building of trust and getting into the the swing of of becoming more customer centric.

SPEAKER_01 22:24

Having worked and I know you you've got a background in payments as well, haven't you? So you know this space really well. But um you know some of the the issuers and the large organizations will say but that money that we keep on our system is earning good interest you know whilst we're not paying it back. But you know is is the reality well you know it's not your money in the first place. You know if you think about customer centricity that money belonged to your your customers and you should be getting it back to them. So it's not just customer service you've got to have conversations with finance and be able to prove to them that in the long term we will benefit here. You know don't don't think about this short-term cycle but I'm I I mean I don't know what you found but in the past I've certainly found organizations who are profiting from customers through bad experiences. Now they didn't set out to do that but it just was the way the things were set up and they've become sort of dependent on some of these poisons. How do you sort of you know transform them and move them that is service to care isn't it how do you move them then from that state to a to a better state?

SPEAKER_00 23:30

I guess there's there's a couple of things there for me is what one is what what's the underlying technology? How long has it been in place and is is that the root cause of the issue? Yeah is it simply because they cannot process a refund fast enough to get it back to the customer no matter how intent and efficient they are in terms of the processing at a people level. And then secondly it's it's where does it sit? Who has the ownership of it? Traditionally finance teams have probably been the gatekeepers to these things. Is that the most efficient way of doing it? Yeah that arguably there is almost no benefit to holding on to cash at all because the interest rates are so low it just doesn't make sense anymore and there's no and yeah from a customer centric point of view you wouldn't do it anyway but yeah I I can't see now that there's any motivation for any business holding onto the cash if they owe it back to their customer in a refund because they're not going to make anything on interest. So yeah that for me is a is a non-argument anyway for right now. But I think there are processes that sit with different teams and yeah if it if it doesn't feel broken to them then why try and fix it? But they may be once or twice removed from the customer interface and they don't know that you know if they don't press a re process a refund at five to five that evening because they want to knock off a bit early that that then adds another 24 48 hours to that customer getting their money back. So again take taking those teams through the customer journey when it came to resolving refunds was a enlightening to them because they hadn't realized the impact of their actions but also it meant that they were able to contribute to the solution because they were going well I'm fed up with receiving all of this information in Excel and then having to load it up into a system and I can process it individually but I can't do that you know ongoing I've got other jobs and other tasks to do. Yeah that the solution in many cases there is to say well why don't we empower the agents at the front end and trust them with our money. We trust a yeah a store manager in a shop to to run a million plus pound business yet we don't run a team trust the team leader in a call centre to own a couple of thousand pounds worth of refunds a week. In terms of scale it's all relative and and that's that's where I sort of loop back around to my you know the call centre is not treated in the same way that the the front end store would be but actually they have as much if not more impact on the customer relationship than the stores do in the first place because they're recovering issues typically. But then secondly to be able to action those and it's it can take a little bit of negotiation and trust building with senior finance people to say look we're going to take some responsibility away for the the cash flow of the business and give it to another department or it might even be an outsourcer who'll put in various processes to minimise the risk of of fraud but the reality is fraud is usually less than one if not half a percent of all transactions so yeah why damage the relationship with 99% of your customers for the sake of preventing one £10 refund. So it's it's those types of conversations that that that take place in order for us then to say right let's build some process let's make everybody comfortable with that process and let's move the responsibility for that task to the front end so that the customer has a better experience. The agent is able to do something you know their role is to fix things and if they can't it's usually frustrating for them to be taking call after call with frustrated customers. So it gives them the opportunity to fix things first time and then yeah the finance team you know lose a handful of tasks which quite often don't sit at the top of their priority list and it means that they can focus on their their core function. But it's about winning hearts and minds to a degree taking people through that journey getting them to contribute to that process so that everybody's comfortable with that piece of change.

SPEAKER_01 27:27

I think it's a brilliant example because it's kind of got everything in there isn't it? I mean the employee piece helping them understand the impact that their decisions are having on other people it's not just customers but on colleagues that that lack of trust that sits with it amongst the agents because you know they're not allowed to give a refund that must permeate through everything that they do. You know they must feel very uncomfortable about not having that trust. Plus you've got another department that is looking after a task because money is involved but that's about the only link there. And as you say because they're not connected to the customer it's not really their priority and if it so you can imagine the the quality of the experience that they apply to it is not going to be consistent with perhaps the way that a a retail assistant will will help someone in the changing room process or something. So it's it it there's lots of mismatch there. And then you know coupled with the fact that the effort involved is back to your sort of equation it's showing the something benefits the customer and it benefits the employee then actually both outcomes are are fulfilled. I mean I think it's a it's a it feels like a small but a massive example at the same time because it just kind of covers all the bases. It's a great example. So do you think organisations over the last few months have needed to change their approach and their views on how they they manage their customers because obviously there's been a lot fewer transactions going on there. So the opportunities to to experience those organizations are fewer and and almost if it's an existing contract it becomes the post-purchase experience things like refunds and other service mechanics. How do you think organisations have coped have they needed to adjust or have have we as consumers forced them to adjust?

SPEAKER_00 29:24

For many there's been a a seized and a missed opportunity I think those who've seized the opportunity have gone right let's just reevaluate what our customer journeys are and are the personas that we've created for our business still applicable because things have changed. Yeah they've changed in terms of the service that we can be delivered because all of a sudden we've got screens up we've got hand sanitizing we've got face masks we've got all of these things that would previously have been considered barriers to service being compulsory and yeah there's a degree of acceptance because everybody knows they have to there might be some frustrations with some but ultimately we have to accept that these changes are in place. But there's no reason therefore to stop thinking about how we improve the customer experience that the customer experience is now going to be different and things we did before may not be possible yet alone relevant to new expectations you know I've seen several comments to say that you know retailers in particular are now trading in trust as opposed to um you know brand strength.

SPEAKER_01 30:30

My observation has been those organizations that think about what they provide as a service have really struggled to get past the HSE agenda. It's for them it's been really challenging to put it in place and it's interesting you talk about you know those bar those things that are now barriers to trading we've seen over the last few years you know certainly at banks they've come down and now they've they've kind of gone back up. They've always been seen to be preventing business from happening. But there are those organizations who are embracing it and just kind of going look it's just part of the business as unusual and we've still got to deliver that great customer experience. You know it's going to be a new experience and to your point some of the things we did before are not going to be relevant experiences. You know sort of maybe the concierge doing the handshake as you come into the hotel doesn't work anymore. And you know so we've got to find a different way of doing it. But it doesn't mean we don't do it. It doesn't mean the concierge doesn't greet you. The greeter hopefully is still there in some capacity be it automated or I don't know at Disney stores. But you know you don't you don't pull back and stop doing the things that you've built up as being important in your customer experience. And I guess if you're in the mindset which you think service that probably is something that you'll struggle with. If you're in the mindset that says care, you'll say hey hey these things are still important you know our customers still need to feel welcome when they come into our store. So let's think about that. I've been shocked at how easy organizations have adopted nature's warning colours of yellow yellow and black you know everyone has kind of put yellow and black everywhere. These are normally taped around crime scenes these are places we're told to get out and now you're trying to encourage me in. I think to your your point you need to be all aligned on that in terms of understanding we still have customers we've got to care for them because if the finance team are saying but there's no money coming in it's like well actually no we're we're trading in trust we're trading in building relationships for the future here that we've got to accept that you know it's lean times at the minute but it's not because they've given up on us it's because it's just not available to them. I mean do do do you think we're going to have some winners and losers here? I mean you said there are some missed opportunities.

SPEAKER_00 32:45

Yeah I think there's the the it's about timing as much as anything else I think there are some organisations that have just you know panicked and had a bit of a knee-jerk and have as you say not considered yeah the behavioural impact of some of the changes they put in there's a degree of timing I think there's there's a need to reevaluate the journey what does the brand stand for? Yeah why do we have an organisation what do we first create it for before it became a business that was servicing its own profits which quite often is is the case for large organisations particularly PLCs with shareholders you know why did it kick off in the first place and what was the success factor for it existing? For companies that have gone back to those real basics they can re-determine how to retain that level of engagement but then adapt process distancing washing hands or or just you know the services they can now provide in a different way.

SPEAKER_01 33:36

And the reason I mention it is because the I I think probably you would find in the organizers you work with this is testing their mettle isn't it because if they're making that commitment to become customer carers it's actually you know I've kind of said to organisations it shouldn't matter if it's sort of profits or pandemic champagne corks or crisis customer centricity is a forever strategy you adapt to the environment around you you don't you don't detach from customer centricity and say we'll park that now and come back to it when kind of times are better. So I guess you know the way you've approached it with organizations, you're laying the foundations for for whatever climate aren't you it's not just for boom time.

SPEAKER_00 34:18

It's about creating a vision that can be applied internationally because every different country has different cultural norms, different expectations you know the brand itself needs to stay true because that's that's what creates the brand ultimately for those companies that they've perhaps done the same thing for many many years without having to really adapt they become so entrenched in what they do and how they do it. This pandemic has been very difficult for them. And even before that I think this the if you take the restaurant industry for example there's been so many collapsing that wasn't because of the pandemic that was probably the last three or four years where just social behaviours have changed. People are less likely to spend time in restaurants waiting to be served because you know they want to get on with other fun stuff. As a result the restaurant industry has taken a real battery. Yeah it possibly started as far back as 2007 when you know this the smoking ban happened in pubs so pubs started to shut down those who adapted became much more food focused and restaurant based. And then again as as times changed and people's expectations have got cash rich, time poor, the cliche they haven't really adapted to to do things like takeaway food in a lot of places. So of course you shut your pub down uh or your restaurant because of the pandemic you have no other source of income and that's that's been the final straw. Yeah there's good examples of of online presence uh I think Primark is probably the most famously known at the moment who don't have or didn't have any e-commerce um solution. And they were reportedly losing um you know several million pounds a week in revenue and had no means of continuing to trade during the the lockdown. I'm I'm sure and in fact I'm pretty certain they're they're they're working on that now but um those who you know put all their apples in the same cart so to speak were were then struggling when things changed.

SPEAKER_01 36:10

To your point this is just another challenge for industry. Hopefully whilst we recognise that it's it's it's now impossible to predict what the future will throw at us you need to be focusing on the customer because that's kind of you know despite all this change they're the only constant in the in the equation so you know you need to be able to get to them and I I can imagine from a Primark perspective there may be something about the importance of driving people into the store because you come in for two you take out 10 but actually what it's led to is short-sightedness in terms of the the the e-commerce business and I mean maybe there are other factors as well but it's recognizing that your customers are shopping online so therefore you better be in that marketplace.

SPEAKER_00 36:57

I'm sure they're learning and they'll be adapting and they're not the only retailer they're just probably the largest one that that springs demand.

SPEAKER_01 37:03

Yes no absolutely absolutely if people want to hear more about this this topic then so it's it's in the book the book is is just out isn't it it's just out it's available on Amazon you can get it on Kindle you can get a paperback copy isn't that right yeah it's been out on Kindle since uh beginning July it's now available on paperback to order so get your hands on it. 20 plus contributors in there I've got a chapter in there you've got a chapter in there some other great topics in it's a real variety of stuff isn't it in sort of a bite size so that's great. But if Nick if people want to get hold of you they can go to I guess paradigmcx.com go on online and find you or you're happy kind of get into a conversation on LinkedIn if someone's got anything they want to share? Absolutely yep yeah I'm relatively straightforward to find hopefully excellent well I've really enjoyed our conversation thanks for bringing your chapter to life I think there's an awful lot of theory and models and frameworks out there but it's only when you hear it from someone who's been in the trenches you can really get a feel for just how challenging it is and I think that's what your chapter does for us. So thank you for that you know invariably we'll bump into each other again. So I'd just say a goodbye for now Nick and uh thanks once again for being on the Customer Experience Superheroes podcast.

SPEAKER_00 38:12

Thanks so much