#18 – Customer experience training, NPS LinkedIn Group, KONE, Customer Journey Mapping


Customer strategy

Welcome to the 18th edition of my customer strategy newsletter. The five topics this week are:

  1. Thoughts about customer experience training
  2. Transactional / touchpoint research on the Net Promoter System forum on LinkedIn
  3. Latest blog posts
  4. Notable items from other sites
  5. Looking forward

Thoughts about consistency in customer experience training

Earlier this week, I was failing to communicate with someone about a customer feedback process. It became evident that we were using the same words to mean different things. Each of us naturally thought the other did not know what they were talking about. However, I knew the other person was well-educated, with over ten years of relevant work experience. So… what was the problem?

Let me diverge from the subject for a moment. I think you will find it relevant. I want to say a few words about religious beliefs. I have lived and worked in seven countries and travelled to many more. The people I have met believe in many different gods, or indeed in none at all. My observation is that most people believe what they believe not because it is true, but simply because they were born in a particular place, and into a particular family. In discussions, I have found that even the most ardent born-again Christian evangelist will accept that they might be an equally enthusiastic believer in Shinto, had they been born in Japan, or Hindu, had they been born in Delhi.

Back to customer experience. Most of us believe in the measurement and improvement systems we use because of our specific education, the companies we have joined, and the training we have received. Like religions, these differences cause communication issues. This is where consistency of training comes in. All companies should ensure that their teams are trained in a single customer experience research and improvement process. It does not matter all that much which one you choose. (OK, that last sentence was an attempt to be diplomatic. What I really think is that everyone should implement the Net Promoter System, and the DMAIC version of Lean Six Sigma. However, I accept that if I had received a different education and worked for different companies, I might believe something else.) Consistent training ensures clarity and consistency of communication and execution.

 Latest focus areas for the LinkedIn Net Promoter System (NPS) group

We are now half way through the month of May. I chose the setting of NPS goals as the focus subject for the first half of the month. For the next two weeks, the subject is the transactional / customer journey measurement. To get the discussion started, I have asked three questions:

  1. How do you decide which touchpoints, episodes, transactions or events on a customer journey merit feedback?
  2. How can you tell which ones are worth the effort of a feedback and improvement process?
  3. Should you try to cover them all?

I hope the subject will stimulate discussion. The LinkedIn group is here.

I took over the management of the group in late March. While it has over 23,000 members, not very many are active. I have been doing my best to block posts that are pure advertising. Some level of advertising can’t be avoided as LinkedIn does not allow long posts in groups. This means it is to be expected that people (including me) will link to their own websites or longer posts by others. Compared to other LinkedIn groups, I believe it is already a better place for open discussions. Please free to write to me with any improvement suggestions you may have.

Our latest blog posts

Last week’s post on the work of the customer experience leader or Chief Customer Officer had over 1,000 views, so I have expanded on the subject this week. Older posts are of course still available on the blog page.





image Virgin Atlantic and how to over-recover Detractors

All of this talk about the United Airlines customer experience fiasco reminded me of the opposite experience Virgin once gave a colleague… Don’t be afraid to over-recover Detractors. Note that my former DEC colleague has just confirmed that all of what follows is 100% true……

Notable customer experience items from other sites

McKinsey article: Lifting customer experience at an elevator company

I have been a fan of KONE for many years. The elevator industry is one of the rare ones where leaders come from small countries: Schindler from Switzerland and KONE from Finland. I knew KONE was serious about serving customers, but had no idea how serious until seeing this video interview with Pierre Liautaud, KONE EVP, accompanies by a transcript by Nicolas Maechler from McKinsey’s Paris office. The thing I found most striking was their adoption of what I call Implement and Experiment when I think about business strategy. Experiments they carried out the people who service elevators in private buildings in France are now being extended to the other areas of the company. The article is here.

Insightful article on customer journey maps by Jeff Rum for SocialMediaToday.com

I read a lot of articles about customer journey mapping. Most seem to follow a single template. They advise mapping everything before improving anything. I found Jeff Rum’s thinking to be different, and I have to say, better. He proposes a seven-step process for establishing a journey map. The early steps ensure you will not waste time working on maps that will never be used. His first step includes alignment with organizational goals, ensuring you know what you are going to do with the output. Step four is an “empathy map”, a concept I have not seen used in journey mapping before. Worth reading. The article is here.

Looking forward

I like to do some original research or what is known as ‘meta research’ every three or four months. I am currently working out what the next interesting subject could be. By interesting, I mean interesting to you, rather than just to me. I currently have two thoughts, and would welcome feedback. The first is to study all articles I can find that establish a formal mathematical relationship between NPS trends and company market share or revenue trends. I would then try to group them and draw an overall conclusion. A challenge is that companies hold most of the data on the topic, and it is company confidential. Nonetheless, I think the study is worth doing.

My second thought is about repeating the analysis I did on the relationship between customer customer and employee satisfaction, using a different data source for customer satisfaction. I am thinking of using the Temkin Experience Index, which Bruce has been kind enough to put in the public domain. I may also be able to use JD Power data.  Your views on which of these studies I should prioritize are welcome.

Your reviews of our books continue to be most welcome. You can visit my Amazon author’s page here. Links to the reviews are at the bottom. This is the US site, and I have also set up author’s pages on a few others. While we have sold books in Japan, I have not been able to determine whether using Google Translate produces a good enough result to set up an author’s page there.



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