The CX Goalkeeper with Miles C. Thomas is about 5 steps to great service and great experiences

Miles C. Thomas is the global head of customer service and experience at International Baccalaureate. Founder HumanizedCX & CX Wales. Chair of Judges at the CX awards and internationally recognized CX leader. A customer experience, success, service and operations leader for organizations such as Deloitte and the International Baccalaureate.

Miles explains five steps for a great service and great experiences

1) Engaging and empowering leadership – Executives who understand the importance of CX Buy-in

• Leader should enable the organization (e.g., from tools and training point of view) to empower employees to meet objectives

• One key success factor is to speak the language of the executives (e.g. about ROI)

• Technology should be leveraged as an enabler. The focus should be on customer

2) Culture, employee experience and empowerment

• The culture is behind everything you do

• Employees should have a voice (as customers) to create a sense of belonging

• Empower employees to make a difference: avoiding escalation and giving the employees the opportunity to solve customers’ escalation

• Trust employees (they can also judge situations)

• The right culture is key to solve issues

Miles shares a great example how to understand and empathize with customers, owning and clarify customers issues in a timely manner and make the customer feel happy

3) Build trust and advocacy (consistent service experience)

• Make sure that customer know what to expect from us (the easiest is to share an SLA – service level agreement as “you will get an answer with the next 24h”)

• A clear experience is valuable for employees and for customers (maintaining promises)

• Offering consistent experiences is key and keep customer in loop on what is happening

• Sometimes you can apply the “Random Act of Kindness” and provide something unexpected to the customers. Show that you care about customers.

The book of Ian Golding «Customer What» was mentioned as an example.

4) Understand your customers (VOC)

Based on three principles defined by Bruce Temkin:

i) Make sure that the service you provide meet needs

ii) make experiences low effort and

iii) make experience enjoyable

• Experience data should be linked to operational data --> to predict and make right decision

• The Voice of The Customer is more than a survey and should be adapted to cover the end-to-end experience

• It is important to have also direct conversation with customers to build a relationship

• Customers should feel heard

• Employees should be act and react on the feedbacks

5) Act on this understanding (be seen to act)

• If you don't act you will stop getting feedback

• The actions create engagement

• Even if you cannot implement something customers suggest - inform them and show your appreciation

• Pay attention to complaints, here an action is always required an action. Understand how the customer is feeling, fix the issue and ensure that it is not happening again

• The actions build trust, make people feeling valued

How to contact Miles:

https://www.cxwales.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/milesct/

His GOLD NUGGET:

Best in class companies start showing that they understand customers, that they care about customers also in a broader way (outside of the direct relationship)