Transcriber: Gia Linh Reviewer: Emma G
A couple of years ago, my family and I lived this story.
My daughter was two and a half years old and she was on potty training.
Now, suddenly she said the words that no parent ever wants to hear,
“Mommy, Daddy, I need to do pee pee.”
I’m going to [inaudible], right?
Because we all know that it only takes
a matter of minutes before, well, you get it.
So we reached out to a store employee in order to ask
whether we could use the toilet, and an employee said no.
Reached out to a second employee, again, she said no.
So we asked for the store manager and the store manager took a deep breath.
“Okay, she can go.”
Bad experiences like these are common. Now think about it yourself.
Think about an interaction that you had with an organization.
And if the first one that comes to mind is a positive experience,
please raise your right hand.
The first one that comes to mind is a negative experience,
please raise your left hand.
This is what I see all the time.
I always see more left hands than right hands.
Bad experiences are common.
A recent study by Qualtrics shows that 8 out of 10 consumers
want organizations to improve their experience.
Eight out of ten!
That's quite a lot, isn't it? But how can that be?
Don’t we give up on a lot of personal information,
personal data that they can use to improve the customer experience?
Aren’t we filling in all these surveys and writing all these online reviews
that they can use to improve the experience?
What is going on? How can this situation happen?
Is it because they don’t care about it?
Well, actually, no.
They do care about improving the customer experience is high
on the managerial agenda these days. So they care about it.
Is it because they don’t have the resources?
Well, no, again, they do have the resources.
There are more articles, keynote speakers, inspirational speakers, blog posts,
books, consulting firms, softwares that help them to improve
the customer experience, so they have more resources.
Is it because the return isn’t big enough?
Is it because all these investments simply do not pay off? No. Again.
Because investments in the customer experience do pay off.
Studies show that there is a relationship
between improving customer experience and organizational performance.
Even for monopolists, if there’s one type of company
that shouldn’t care about the customer experience, it’s a monopolist.
You need to go there anyway.
And still we see an effect.
That’s strange, isn’t it?
They have more resources than ever before.
They see a positive return and they’re willing to do it.
Puff! What is going on?
Well, organizations are actually not made
to deliver great experiences to their customers.
What I see in many organizations
is that they are taking initiatives that only scratch the surface
like some have a box of chocolates for their our customers.
What we need are initiatives that dig deeper.
Initiatives that go beneath the surface like the themes today.
Some organizations are not made to deliver great experiences to their customers.
Am I making this up? Of course not.
Let me give you some examples that will illustrate this point.
First of all, organizations are too obsessed with efficiency.
And if you’re a manufacturing firm that makes a lot of sense.
Because the more efficient your production process the less failures
and the more satisfied customers you will have.
But for interactions with people, for customer experiences,
it’s a different ball game.
Efficiency improves satisfaction up to a certain point.
But beyond that point, it actually destroys the customer experience.
Let me give you some examples to illustrate.
Don’t you have a feeling every now and then
that actually you were bothering the company?
They’re doing something super efficient and you are bothering them.
Like my wife and I, when we asked that employee,
whether my daughter could go to the toilet?
She was being super efficient with a certain process
and we were bothering her.
Or when you reach out through a conference center.
How often do you have the feeling that you are disturbing them,
that they are trying to get you off the line as quickly as possible?
Well, let me tell you, the fact is
customer experiences are often the result of an inefficient process.
Like a handwritten note inside an online order.
The feeling that someone took special care about you.
Awesome small talk at a check out.
From an organizational point of view that is super inefficient.
Printing 100 cards is much easier,
much more efficient than writing one.
So maybe we can change something.
We need to convince organizations that inefficient processes,
inefficient processes are sometimes the most effective experiences.
So that’s the first one.
The second example is that organizations are obsessed with control.
They actually don't trust their customers.
And in a way, they are right, because we know from studies
that about 1 to 2% of customers actually misbehave.
But what do organizations do? They take actions aimed at all costs.
So why punish 99% of customers
in order to prevent that 1 or 2% from misbehaving?
That’s what they’re doing.
My daughter was not allowed to go to the toilet because they fear theft.
They fear that people will steal something.
But why punish a two and a half year old girl for just that?
We’re not an exempt. If you go to the store right now,
you want to take a shopping cart, you need to insert a coin in there.
I don’t know about you, but I’m always the idiot that forget the coin.
And prior to the COVID pandemic, that was the gold standard.
So when you have a COVID pandemic and that was like a wonderful autonomy,
because it didn’t matter whether I forgot a coin or not,
I could just take a shopping cart.
But as soon as the waves were over, I needed to insert that coin again.
Why? Because they believe that without that coin,
shopping carts would end up everywhere, which obviously they don't.
Organizations also don’t trust their employees.
I’ve worked with organizations that have 40 indicators
of whether their employees are working longer enough. 40!
So what happens in those organizations is that employees do what's management,
and that's what studies show.
If you control your employees extensively, then they do what you measure.
But if you create a culture that is based on trust,
what we know from research is that employees not only do what is asked,
but they actually go the extra mile.
And the extra mile is perfect for customer experience.
So organizations need to loosen up control.
They need to let go of control and start trusting customers and employees again.
Third example - organizations these days are not structured well.
A typical organization consists of several departments and business units.
You have a marketing department, service department, logistics department,
finance department, an H.R. department,
you have a business unit A, B and C.
What? Where’s the costumer?
Where's the customer?
In essence, all of these departments have some relationship with a customer.
You just have a another department
that is, again, partly responsible for the customer
that is finding a bunch of good again.
We need to take initiatives that dig deeper.
We need to fundamentally rethink organizations.
Why not switch from all these departments
and business units to units based on customers?
So that one unit is responsible for one big customer
or for a group of customers.
It's super beneficial for the customer.
There’s only one department that isn’t taking care of me.
So organizations really need to get rid of that 50, 60,
70 year old business models that are using today
and restructure themselves to become much more customer oriented.
What we need is something fundamental.
We need a [inaudible] revolution.
Organizations need to realize
that customers are not circling around organizations,
but it’s actually the other way around.
It’s organizations that circle around customs.
Only then the customer experience can improve.
And hopefully one day, my daughter can go to the store
with her own children and they’re allowed to do pee ppe.
Thank you very much. (Applause)