The recipe for remodelling customer experience

So, who is the Mary Berry in your firm? And how well are you managing the GBBO (and ?no, that’s not the Great British Bake Off, it’s the Great Big Business Opportunity) of customer service? 

The importance of consistency across the entire customer journey was highlighted in a major study by McKinsey & Company. They found that it increased satisfaction, built trust, and boosted loyalty, and that overall satisfaction was more likely to lift revenues and reduce the cost of servicing those customers, potentially by as much as 20 per cent. 

The McKinsey researchers identified three core areas: customer journey consistency, emotional consistency, and communication consistency. These are aspects we’ve been looking at during our monthly review of stats and anecdotal data from our mystery shopping and client research.

The service experience must be the same at every touch, otherwise the experience is skewed. A simple example may be that well-trained front-line receptionists demonstrate great telephone skills, but when the call is transferred to other departments, or callers use direct dial numbers, ?it doesn’t follow through. ?An impatient ‘no, they’re not here’ from another member of a department could cause real damage to their colleague’s client relationship. 

There’s also the problem of consistency in satisfying customer expectation across multi-channel delivery. Research by Forrester suggests clients who send an email will expect a response within six hours. Other figures suggest that consumers expect a five-minute response time for anything they’ve raised with a brand on social media channels – enough to strike fear into the heart of any lawyer. Whatever the timeframe, today’s customers expect to contact companies through their channel of choice and to receive a consistent service.

A great example of consistency in action is what’s been happening at Dubai Airports, as reported recently in the Harvard Business Review. The organisation already runs the world’s busiest airport, with 66.5 million passengers in 2013, but could see it needed a game-changer to achieve its vision of becoming the world’s leading airport company. Recognising that the only way to make a meaningful change to its service culture was by engaging vendors and partners, as well as its own staff, Dubai Airports has invested in training for a staggering 39,000 people outside its own organisation, as well as its own 3,400 staff members. 

The aim is behavioural consistency, and therefore customer experience consistency, at every possible touch point. Samya Ketait, vice president of learning and development, says: ‘This is a huge project, but a worthwhile one. It means that regardless of who you meet at Dubai Airports – a police officer, a cleaner, an immigration officer… you should have the same positive customer experience.’

Okay, who’s got that whisk?

Helen Hamilton-Shaw is director of services at LawNet @LawNetUK www.lawnet.co.uk