Chris Bell Managing Director of Customer Experiences a company that specialises in the development of high quality customer experiences said it was not rocket science especially in the present tough economy.

Bell said it can be more difficult to motivate people to step it up a notch when business is slow, that’s where the experience of someone that has a good knowledge of a customer experience strategy and the leadership skills to change attitudes and over time the business culture, come into their own.

Bell has developed a successful customer experience formula that shows the importance of working on the internal experience before developing the customer experience.

The Customer Experience Formula is what our new development programme CED is based on said Bell.

Customer Experience Formula:-

Involvement = Engagement

Engagement = Commitment

Commitment = Loyalty

Loyalty = Increased productivity

Bell said disengaged front-line employees don’t deliver consistently high quality experiences. In a recent survey it is estimated 67 percent of employees go to work everyday, disengaged.

Unless this improves customers will continue to receive ordinary, annoying and in some cases frustrating customer experiences that will motivate them to look for other options and they will make sure others hear about the experience.

The key is total involvement in the development of a customer experience strategy, WHY, because everyone plays a role in what is eventually delivered at the front counter.

For further information chris@customerexperiences.co.nz www.customerexperuiences.co.nz mb 027 2792360

Customers are sick and tired of being phoned right on dinner time, stopped in the street when they are running late, or having cards thrust in front of them as they check out of a hotel and asked to complete yet another survey.

We are well and truly over the novelty of completing surveys according to Chris Bell Managing Director of Customer Experiences a company that advises business on customer experience improvements.

Very few businesses act on the information customers provide and actually do something about the issues that have been raised and the reason for this especially when the feedback involves customer service and customer experience issues is, they don’t know how to act on the information or there is so much information they are just overwhelmed.

“Stop continually annoying your customers by asking them to complete surveys unless you are totally committed to acting on the results” is the message we would like to get across said Bell before customers get even more annoyed with being asked.

His message to business is that if you are genuine and really care about your customers, get back to them and advise them of the action you intend to take as a result of a survey. At least you can then be held to account. Then get professional advice if unsure how to improve performance.

Bell said that if customers can see that some effort is going into improving the customer experience most will be more than happy to take the time to provide feedback. His advice is to make sure the commitment to action is in place first.

For further information chris@customerexperiences.co.nz www.customerexperiences.co.nz mb 027 2792360

That was the question only 13 percent of respondents could answer in a recent US survey, however, 80 percent understood the importance of a customer experience strategy to their business.

Chris Bell Managing Director of Customer Experiences a company that specialises in developing customer experiences said he believes less than 13 percent of New Zealand businesses could answer that question.

Bell said this was concerning in todays highly competitive market where building employee & customer loyalty and positive word of mouth should be a priority.

To improve business knowledge and expertise in this vital area Bell has developed a two day programme called Customer Experience Development (CED) designed to give customer experience managers the methodology and skills to put in place a long-term customer experience strategy.

Bell said the programme will be available via both public and in-house workshops and includes on-going support as participants work through the development process.

The benefits to a business are many including:-

• Increased employee engagement & loyalty

• The ability to attract the right people

• Increased customer loyalty & word of mouth

• The ability to capitalise on the creativity of employees

• Takes the focus off price, increasing margins

• The ability to reduce marketing & recruitment costs

Bell said business is starting to realise that in a world of excess, uniformity and repetition, people buy experiences, not products or services. When people feel good about their experience they will not only return, they will tell their friends. To turn a financial exchange into a rewarding experience, businesses have to be creative and they have to be fully committed to seeing the world through their customers’ eyes.

chris@customerexperiences.co.nz mb027 2792360 www.customerexperiences.co.nz

New Zealand’s leading customer experience expert and managing director of Customer Experiences Ltd. Chris Bell has just launched Customer Experience Development (CED) with one goal – to increase business performance by delivering better service and experiences that add greater value for the customer.

Bell said the old approach of sending front-line employees to a customer service training workshop and thinking that was going to make the difference, is clearly not working for a number of reasons the major one being the lack of commitment to a complete strategy not just a “quick fix”.

Bell has been working with New Zealand companies developing high quality customer experiences since the launch of Customer Experiences Ltd in 2004 and said the reason for the customer experience approach was a direct result of seeing the customer service training workshop approach not delivering the promised outcomes.

Bell said that front-line skill development was a key part of the customer experience strategy but is only carried out once an organisation has defined the experience they will deliver and written service standards to ensure the consistency of performance. It’s only then that areas of skill development are addressed and measurements put in place.

Bell said it was clear in a recent survey that business does understand the advantages of a high quality customer experience to their business. The challenge is that only 13 percent said they knew how to put such a strategy in place. CED has now given business the opportunity to up skill a key person within an organisation to lead the development and implementation.

The advantages clearly outweigh the investment both for the business and customers including increased employee & customer loyalty and word of mouth recommendations, the ability to capitalise on the ideas within an organisation, lower marketing and recruitment costs and the ability to attract more of the right people, to name just a few.

For further information – chris@customerexperiences.co.nz

According to Chris Bell Managing Director of Customer Experiences a company that specialises in the development of high quality customer experiences.

Bell says everything a business does will have a positive or negative impact on that choice. What business still doesn’t realise is this fact, resulting in an ordinary, annoying or frustrating customer experience plus another customer that won’t be back and 8-10 other people will hear about it directly and many more via social networking and other internet options.

Bell said it’s critical that this situation improves across all industries especially tourism and related service sectors, before the 2011 Rugby World Cup.

Bell said one of the issues holding back improvements in this area is the lack of expertise to develop and implement a long-term customer experience strategy and the continued use of outdated quick fix methods like customer service training workshops conducted in isolation of any defined customer experience strategy.

Bell has some advice for those businesses contemplating the development of a customer experience strategy and that is –don’t start unless you are totally committed to a long-term approach. A lack of a long-term commitment will do more damage to your business both internally and with your customers than not doing anything at all.

Bell said he has seen too many businesses make a big fuss out of going down this track only to see it fizzle out after only a short period with the resulting loss of credibility and reputation.

Further information – chris@customerexperiences.co.nz www.customerexperiences.co.nz mb 027 2792360

Yet despite all the surveys, the countless workshops and seminars, the thousands of books written and research carried out on improving customer service and the quality of the customer experience…WHY are we still not receiving better customer service and having more high quality customer experiences? asks Chris Bell Managing Director of Customer Experiences Ltd..

Bell said it’s not due to the vast collection of statistical analysis, pie charts and graphs that apparently show what the customer wants.

Most organisations have a clear understanding of what their customer’s expectations are. In many cases it has been the business that has defined expectations in their marketing.

The “Experience Gap Analysis (EGA) study of both employees and customers found that employees consistently overestimated their level of service performance, believing they had delivered greater value than their customers on the receiving end were willing to give them credit for.

This is a clear case of employees applying one set of criteria to judge the quality of their service and customers rating the experience based on entirely different standards.

This gap has little to do with employee attitudes or motivation levels and everything to do with a lack of clear definitions. Bell said this leaves a business’s customer experience up to individuals to interpret, one of the main reasons for the inconsistent service customer’s receive.

Also contributing to the gap is an organisation’s focus. While paying lip service to the importance of the customer, the focus is clearly more on the organisation resulting in a lack of customer focus including support processes and systems geared to the delivery of high quality experiences.

Bell said the persistence’s of some organisations to continually advertise their commitment to the customer, proceeding to tell them all the wonderful things they are going to do for them does not actually create a better experience and today after being let down so many times, doesn’t even gain customers attention anymore. All it does is continue to create higher customer expectations.

Bell said the single most important factor between a truly customer focused organisation and the rest is the choice employees make every day regarding the quality of customer experience they deliver.

This is what business leadership should be focusing on, ensuring their leadership style and the resulting culture is providing the encouragement and resources that allows employees to consistently make the right choice.

For Further Information chris@customerexperiences.co.nz www.customerexperiences.co.nz mb 027 2792360

Bell said there are a number of reasons for the lack of focus on customer service training including- watching costs post recession, not wanting staff away from the workplace, high staff turnover and a reluctance to make an investment that may only be short term.

However, Bell thinks the main reason is the ineffectiveness of front line customer service training programmes, a result of a quick fix approach to improving performance in this area that has not worked for sometime and has therefore been seen as a cost rather than an investment.

Bell sights the low up take of a recently launched Tourism front line training programme as an example of this attitude. He said that businesses want to see a real return on these investments, even a heavily subsidised one like the tourism programme that has a goal of 7,000-10,000 people through it before next year’s Rugby World Cup and at this stage looks like it won’t come close.

Bell said that business needs to look at their customer service performance along side issues like the 67 percent of employees that go to work everyday disengaged and as a result are focused on only doing what’s necessary to hold down a job. Customers will not receive consistent high quality experiences from these people.

From our experience great customer experiences are reliant on three things-

1) Leadership that is employee & customer focused

2) A culture that has everyone committed to the continual improvement of their customer experience

3) The RIGHT people in the RIGHT positions

Bell said that businesses that have these three areas sorted out dramatically out perform their competitors, have higher numbers of loyal customers that are continually recommending them to others, have lower marketing costs due to increased word of mouth, have greater profitability due to less of a focus on price and have the right people wanting to work for them.

Bell is at a loss to understand why a business would not want these benefits and is urging business to refocus and make a genuine commitment to their people and customers and address their total customer experience not just the customer service aspect.

For further information – chris@customerexperiences.co.nz www.customerexperiences.co.nz mb 027 2792360

If a business is going to stand out from an ever increasingly crowded and competitive market place and remain profitable, it will need to start thinking about more creative ways to “add value” than just discounting prices on products and services that are no different from their competitors.

Unfortunately when it comes to gaining customer feedback business is still striving to have a satisfied customer defined as “just meeting expectations” this from Chris Bell Managing Director of Customer Experiences who along with Ray Sleeman has developed Customer Experience Tracker.

Bell says business needs to understand the goal is no longer to have a satisfied customer that was the goal 20 years ago.

The goal today is to increase customer loyalty and word of mouth recommendation.

For the first time New Zealand business has available to it a powerful resource “an inclusive approach to gaining and acting on employee and customer feedback” in a way that will have a positive impact on a businesses growth and profitability”.

Customer Experience Tracker is a toolkit that allows businesses to easily gain an accurate evaluation of how their customers feel about their current customer experience performance and how employees feel about their workplace and includes an ongoing strategic approach to continual improvements including greater customer loyalty, word of mouth recommendation, a reduction in operating costs, an increase in employee engagement resulting in improved productivity and ultimately a more profitable and valuable business.

The ability to benchmark within an industry has always been difficult, resulting in business not really knowing how they are performing. The Customer Experience Tracker will change that. Not only will a business be able to easily establish their own score they will be able to compare that score against their competitors and other sectors. The benchmarking ability will help to raise the performance of an industry’s customer experience resulting in benefits for all those participating businesses.

Customer Experience Tracker has been made possible due to the development of an international model called Net Promoter Score© used by a number of high profile overseas organisations in the airline, car rental, tourism, and medical industries and includes e-commerce based leaders like Amazon.com and e-bay and in New Zealand by Air New Zealand, House of Travel and Westpac Bank.

The motivation for the development of the Customer Experience Tracker has come from three main issues-

1) The continued obsession with the use of “customer satisfaction” as a measure of a business’s performance.

Clearly customer satisfaction relates to the delivery of the expected i.e. “meeting expectation”. Business is well aware that in this increasingly competitive and crowded market environment, just meeting customer expectations is not enough to influence customer behaviour and increase loyalty and word of mouth referrals.

Businesses must be asking customers the likelihood of recommending their business to others.

Organisations are beginning to understand that in an increasingly fragmented market the cost of trying to reach a target audience is sky rocketing. Couple this with new social networking technology and the power customers now have to tarnish or enhance a company’s brand reputation not just amongst friends and colleagues but to a global network then the importance of knowing how customers value their experience is paramount.

2) The lack of action taken as a result of customer feedback and the absence of a long-term strategic approach to customer experience improvement.

A number of surveys have shown that growing customer loyalty is among most CEOs top priorities, yet customers are continually treated in a way that doesn’t reflect this priority.

Organisations are held accountable for increasing profits. Financial results are what company’s measure. Loyal customer promoters are overlooked because they don’t show up on the balance sheet.

3) The fact that businesses will not deliver a consistently high quality customer experience that engages and builds relationships with their customers, unless their people are receiving the same

If business wants to reap the benefits of customer loyalty there needs to be a focus on creating employee loyalty.

These three issues and the fact that very few customers are actually having experiences that lead to advocacy has prompted a united approach driven by a motivation to see more businesses profiting from a continually improving Net Promoter Score©.

For further information – chris@customerexperiences.co.nz www.customerexperiences.co.nz mb 027 2792360

Chris Bell Managing Director of Customer Experiences Ltd, a company that bases all customer experience development on exceeding expectations, said that unless all organisations adopt this focus, visitors will continue to have inconsistent experiences that result in no recommendation or damaging word of mouth.

Bell is the co- founder along with Ray Sleeman of a unique resource designed to measure and improve the customer experience and ensure on-going positive word of mouth.

Customer Experience Tracker has given the visitor industry the opportunity to not just listen to advice from the likes of Pollock but act on that advice in a highly effective and beneficial way.

Bell said that it’s frustrating to see organisations continuing to gather customer feedback with little intention of using that feedback to improve the experience.

Customer Experience tracker is now giving business the opportunity to take their customer feedback and use it as part of a more comprehensive strategic approach to customer experience improvement. It also allows organisations to benchmark both internally and against competitors.

Bell says it time for action. Customers are well and truly over organisations that continue to ask for feedback and don’t act on the information. He suggests that research company’s outline their action plan to survey participants before asking them to contribute.

For further information – chris@customerexperiences.co.nz www.customerexperiences.co.nz mb 027 2792360

Chris Bell Managing Director Customer Experiences a company that specialises in the development of high quality customer experiences said the survey showed that 61 percent of New Zealanders stopped dealing with a business because of a poor customer experience.

Bell said this was just the tip of the iceberg. Organisations must realise that on average customers will tell 8-12 others about the experience, morale and staff turnover can be affected and at the very least employee disengagement will increase.

The survey also highlighted the role social media broadcast is now playing in the business decisions customers are making.

69 percent of those surveyed reported that word of mouth recommendations played a greater role in choosing the business they would deal with, over all other forms of advertising.

Bell said that positive word of mouth is the result of a customer consistently receiving a high quality experience with an organisation. Bell said our reputation is on the line when we recommend to others and we don’t do that lightly which is why word of mouth is so powerful.

For further information – chris@customerexperiences.co.nz www.customerexperiences.co.nz mb 027 2792360