A leading Lancashire customer service expert was a judge at this year’s National Customer Service Awards, hosted at Wembley stadium.
Phil Heaven, Regional Director at Shopper’s Anonymous, Lancashire judged the Customer Centric Culture award category. A shortlist of seven entries made presentations to a panel of judges which included Phil, with leading card provider Capital One being announced as the overall winner at the evening’s black-tie dinner.
Phil said: “There were some key features across the finalists:
- a strong base of measurement data (of customer feedback) has been established.
- each company had developed an internal network of customer champions,
- customer insight is shared across all functions within the business and internal customer service is measured
- importance of building customer loyalty for long-term growth.
- Net Promoter Score was the overwhelming choice used to measure performance,
- all used a combination of data, and insight, to drive change in their organisation.
- some had to consciously move away from a revenue optimisation culture to achieve customer centricity,
- companies held daily or weekly ’hour’ for ‘Voice of the Customer’ meetings.
- employee and engagement surveys were intertwined in the customer programme.
- customer journey mapping (including the digital experience), was often the catalyst for change.
- customer data was on-line by way of dashboards (or similar). “The trend is your friend”
“A clear theme from the entrants was that Customer Experience will increasingly become the key competitive battleground in the future and that by 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator in business to business.
“This is because differences between products and services are diminishing, and the only way a brand can to distinguish itself is by focusing on the whole customer experience.”
