Ryan Powell’s Blog

Well, I had a great time in HK. My feet hardly touched the ground during my entire 11-day stay. I’ve been slow to blog of late as I’m busy sifting through all the photos and choosing the best ones for my Flickr page.  I’ll put the more complete galleries on my site in the World Photos gallery.

There were several occasions during my trip where I got to experience outstanding customer service in Hong Kong.  Essentially, shop staff went out of their way to help.  Over here you might take their assistance as intrusive.  I have to admit it took me a couple of days to adjust.

Picture this: I managed to fry my mobile phone whilst plugging it in to charge one day and I dropped my iPod, which then refused to work anymore - the hard disk died.  So after that double-whammy I visited a local mall to see about replacing both of them just before I returned to the UK.

I don’t have a lot of time in which to write this post so I’ll cut to the chase.  Every single item I intended to buy in the electronics store I visited was taken out of its packaging so I could play with it before parting with my money.  That included switching the phone on and demonstrating that all contents were present and correct in the three boxes (I made and impulse purchase of a very nifty iPod Shuffle too!)

Awesome experience, helpful and friendly staff who could so easily have given me the Tottenham Court Road box-shifting treatment…

It’s been a long time since I’ve taken a long-haul flight. Today sees me taking a direct flight out to Hong Kong from London’s Heathrow. I am intrigued to know what this experience is going to be like as I’m flying in Business Class - Club World.

The last time I flew in Club I was the benefactor of a complementary upgrade at the gate, which came as a complete surprise! This time however, I made the conscious decision to fork out the extra cash for the pleasure. My (male) logic ran something like this… a) it is getting late to book a decent-priced economy ticket, b) oh look, the economy tickets are more expensive than business anyway, c) well I haven’t had a decent holiday this year anyway, d) perhaps I won’t be quite so jet-lagged and well, e) who enjoys flying cattle-class on long flights anyway?

Thinking about it… buying the ticket online fell at the final hurdle the first time around. I reached the payment page and when I clicked the “right let’s buy this thing” button, I was booted back to the start of the process completely uncertain whether the sizeable purchase had gone through on my credit card or not?! After a short(ish) wait on the phone, I confirmed with the helpful BA call centre guy that in fact, there was no booking registered in my name - and I did indeed need to start over.

Since then I have had no issues to speak of, the second attempt was fruitful. I received my (automated) email confirmations without a hitch. Nice touch a couple of days ago, I received a “did you remember you’re flying with us in just a few days now and we think you ought to think about a, b and c” email.

Bang up to the present then and it’s the day of truth. I fly tonight. One slight issue, it’s darned foggy out there - so much so BA has grounded ALL domestic British mainland flights for the whole day! So fingers crossed I get away tonight…
I have checked in; found I’m lucky enough to be seated in row 13… But then, after looking at the alternatives, I decided to stick with it, ‘coz I got a window, which might be rather cool when it comes to landing (over the sea) in Hong Kong on the other end.

Right well, not a lot more to look forward to until I get to the airport (on the tube!) and join the throngs, (tens of thousands) of people trying to get away from Blightey for the next week or two…

Why is it that I have to think so hard to come up with a really good example of great customer service? I am struggling so much I thought it would be easier to solicit your examples whilst I share some points of view on the reasons why…

Of course, we consumers are hard to please! In fact there is just no pleasing some people – of that there is no doubt! However, dig a little deeper and you start to uncover a variety of reasons for poor customer experiences – and guess what, some of the underlying causes aren’t that difficult to modify.

For example, did you know that a good proportion of people in customer service and customer-facing roles don’t actually want to deal with customers as a part of their job? It might sound odd, but how many times have you been asked whether or not you actually want to deal with customers when you’ve interviewed for sales or service roles? Research backs up this point and a number of books and white papers have been written espousing the need to find this out when interviewing potential employees.

The most alluring element of good customer service for me, is when whatever happened to make me feel good is repeated, be that on different occasions, in different parts of the company or across their different channels (phone, branch, online…) You have to look hard to find examples of repeatable, deliberate, positive customer experience enhancing behaviour today, but I do believe the tide might finally be turning.

People like Colin Shaw of Beyond Philosophy have been talking about customer experience as ‘the next big thing’ in business for several years now. However, like so much thought-leadership, it takes time for fresh perspectives to gain traction and to move beyond being a ‘fad’.

I firmly believe customer experience has moved up the boardroom agenda over the past 12-18 months as companies start to realise consumers aren’t mugs and that we are increasingly willing to take our business to the competition (churn).

The signs are there. Customer experience (CE) is increasingly synonymous with the much older acronym for Customer Relationship Management – CRM. My feeling is that the association adds weight to the CE concept. I have seen a number of service providers and technology firms starting to adopt CE terminology in their literature. Mind you, the sceptic in me wonders how many of them will try and sell you on the idea that their gizmo or gadget will somehow revolutionise your customer experience, when in fact the lion’s share of responsibility for making that happens lies instead with the staff in the company.

Remaining positive, it is surprising just how many large organizations in the UK have made moves in the right direction over the past year or so by appointing a Head of -, or Director of Customer Experience. That can only be a good thing, and hopefully the beginning of a long-term strategic shift towards making more of an effort to treat consumers with a little bit more of a personal touch. More soon.

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So, I think if I asked you to tell me about recent poor customer service experiences, there would be tons of posts on the blog.  Therefore, I’m going to make it a little more tricky.  There are, believe it or not, some organizations out there that claim to put the customer at the centre of everything they do - customer experience is in their organization’s DNA, so to speak!  Let’s test that theory then?!

Who has gone that extra distance for you?  Which company made you feel … special?  And, importantly, did they actually manage to repeat the behaviour on more than one occassion - perhaps even in different parts of their business (location, phone, branch, online?)

This is my first blog on t’internet! I am passionate about improving customer experience. My intention is to observe how customer experiences evolve over the coming months and years to see whether businesses are actually listening to us - their customers. you are invited to contribute to the blog, with one proviso - please refrain from using abusive language and naming individuals.

In case you were wondering about the name of the blog… “Cex” comprises the ‘c’ of customer and ‘ex’ of experience and taken together, the three capital letters of the blog name spell out C - R - M, which is the my profession.