{"id":15632,"date":"2013-11-17T09:51:11","date_gmt":"2013-11-17T14:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beyondphilosophy.com\/?p=15632"},"modified":"2019-12-04T03:55:11","modified_gmt":"2019-12-04T08:55:11","slug":"stop-being-a-hero-create-a-natural-customer-experience-that-is-inspiring-human-and-achievable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beyondphilosophy.com\/stop-being-a-hero-create-a-natural-customer-experience-that-is-inspiring-human-and-achievable\/","title":{"rendered":"Stop Being a Hero! Create a Natural Customer Experience that is Inspiring, Human and Achievable"},"content":{"rendered":"

Inspiring. Human. Achievable. We are constantly being asked by our clients how they can create a Customer Experience<\/a> that is consistent. Here are two examples, one outlining what not to do; the other outlining a much better approach.<\/p>\n

The hero approach<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Last year I wrote about a blogger who ordered a Morton\u2019s steak over Twitter. You may recall Morton\u2019s met the blogger at the airport with his steak. A lot of buzz was generated by this outstanding act of \u201ccustomer service.\u201d<\/p>\n

My view was this wasn\u2019t Customer service, more a publicity stunt on behalf of Morton\u2019s. It wasn\u2019t replicable and certainly they haven\u2019t been consistent in the delivery of the same experience of other people. I call this the hero approach as the world is not full of heroes. Heroes by definition are unusual. If they weren\u2019t, these heroic acts would just be business as usual.<\/p>\n

You cannot base your business on heroes. Like all heroic acts they should be celebrated, encouraged but it\u2019s difficult to make them consistent. So what is the alternative?<\/p>\n

The natural approach<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Contrast this with Lily Robinson, aged 3 and 1\/2 years old. She recently wrote a letter to Sainsbury, one of the largest supermarket in the UK. Her question was simple: why is Tiger Bread called Tiger Bread? Lily even drew a sketch of a tiger, which you can see here:<\/p>\n

\"Stop<\/a><\/p>\n

The fact that Lily Robinson wrote a letter to Sainsbury\u2019s is not the only newsworthy event. What is newsworthy is the natural reply of Chris King, a Customer Manager at Sainsbury\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Chris wasn\u2019t trying to be a hero. He wasn\u2019t trying to get publicity, he just felt a natural empathy to the young customer. Therefore the way Chris dealt with this was just a natural part of him as a person. The language Chris uses was as if he was talking to a little girl in the street. He writes that, the first baker \u201cloooooooong [sic]\u201d ago thought the bread resembled a tiger, not a giraffe. By using children\u2019s language and a simple story, this letter is a prime example of how to engage customer emotion. Chris adopts his tone in other ways, by using \u201cMum\u201d and \u201cDad,\u201d in place of the words mother and father. The \u00a3 3 ($5) gift card with a tongue-in-cheek warning to get permission before buying sweets is another beautiful touch.<\/p>\n

Finally, I love the fact that Chris closes the letter by indicating his age, \u201c27 and 1\/3.\u201d You can see Chris\u2019s letter here:<\/p>\n

\"letter<\/a><\/p>\n

Sainsbury\u2019s response to Lily also generated an enormous response (to date, it has been shared over 18,000 times on Facebook) and it is feasible.<\/p>\n

Is this replicable? Yes. Can you train your employees to act in this way? Yes, but ideally you select people who or naturally good at this. The Supermarket\u2019s letter to Lilly demonstrates the real power of building an experience that is natural. When you employ people who have a natural ability it is replicable. You need to know the experience you are trying to deliver. It means you are therefore recruiting people who are naturally good at delivering that experience.<\/p>\n

It also means the company\u2019s employees need to feel empowered to engage naturally and build this emotional connection. Chris did this for no other reason than to make someone feel special. We all know that some people would feel uncomfortable in doing that. Not all people are naturally gifted in that way. So don\u2019t employ those people for this kind of job.<\/p>\n

Emotional Intelligence<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Some ten years ago, when I was VP of Customer Experience at British Telecom (BT) I was charged with improving our Customer Experience. I decided that we needed to improve the levels of emotional engagement<\/a> with our Customers. At the same time we were closing sites and moving to a front office, back office approach. This was our opportunity to make a significant change.<\/p>\n

I decided anyone who wanted a job in the front office, talking directly to customers, needed to have a sufficient level of emotional intelligence to do this, to align to our new experience. To achieve this we implemented a psychometric test with anyone that wanted a role in the front office. Bearing in mind all applicants had been dealing with customers directly before, I was amazed that 50% of the people that took the test failed. These people were not \u201cnaturally good\u201d a building a relationship with Customers, so they didn\u2019t and our business suffered.<\/p>\n

What are the levels of \u201cnatural\u201d people in your organisation? Or do you just rely on heroes?<\/p>\n

We all know bad news travels fast. Sometimes, just sometimes, good news travels fast as well. I\u2019m off to Sainsbury\u2019s to buy some Tiger Bread!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Inspiring. Human. Achievable. We are constantly being asked by our clients how they can create a Customer Experience that is consistent. Here are two examples, one outlining what not to do; the other outlining a much better approach. The hero approach Last year I wrote about a blogger who ordered a Morton\u2019s steak over Twitter. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beyondphilosophy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beyondphilosophy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beyondphilosophy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beyondphilosophy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beyondphilosophy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/beyondphilosophy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15632\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beyondphilosophy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beyondphilosophy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beyondphilosophy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}