Customer Experience Marketing Executives’ Conference 2011 Elisabeth Brinton Chief Business & Public Affairs Officer Powering forward. Together.

Customer ExperienceMarketing Executives’ Conference 2011

Elisabeth BrintonChief Business & Public Affairs Officer

Powering forward. Together.

SMUD

• Community owned electric service provider since 1946

• 900 square mile service territory serves 1.4 million people in the greater Sacramento area

• Sixth largest public utility in the U.S.

• Seven wards represented by publically elected board

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The Times They Are A-Changing

“The curious thing is that with these exponential changes, so much of what we currently know is just getting to be wrong.  So many of our assumptions are getting to be wrong.  As such, as we move forward, not only is it going to be a question of learning, it is also going to be a question of unlearning.” 

John Seely Brown

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It’s about people

“Lesson’s from Apple – Do simple things well; be obsessive about quality and attention to detail; no matter how good you are, you can always do it better; it’s not about technology – it is about users and their personal experience.”    

The Apple Effect by Alan M. Webber in The Christian Science Monitor, Sept 19th 2011

“Defining how computers are used, not how they are manufactured, will create real value … the computer is a thing, but what people want is not a thing, but to do things.”

Steve Jobs 1991

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Empowered Consumers

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State of The Customer Experience

Forrester Research’s 2010 Customer Experience Index asked more than 4,600 U.S. consumers about their interactions with 133 firms across 14 different industries.

Only 13 firms received "excellent" customer experience ratings and 45 were rated either “poor” or “very poor.”

“There is a considerable opportunity for companies to drive better business results by improving their customer experience management efforts.”

Bruce Temkin, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester

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Source: Forrester’s 2010 Consumer Experience Index

Customer Experience by Industry

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“A Customer Experience is an interaction between an organization and a Customer. It is a blend of an organization’s physical performance, the senses stimulated and emotions evoked, each intuitively measured against customer expectations across all moments of contact.”

www.beyondphilosophy.com

Customer Experience Defined

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Rise of the Experience Economy

Customization

Commoditization

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What is the Customer Experience Worth? About $4 Billion

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Positive Experiences…

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Thinking Outside In

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How Do You Want Your Customer to Feel?

Rational

Emotional

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What Customers WantHarvard Business Review – Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers

Fast and easy problem resolution is valued more than exceeding customer expectations

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What Customers WantHarvard Business Review – Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers

Customers want to contact the company once, provide their information once, speak to one person, and use only one channel to resolve their problem

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What Customers WantHarvard Business Review – Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers

67% prefer self-service channels, 33% prefer talking to person. Just three years ago, these

numbers were reversed.16

What Customers WantHarvard Business Review – Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers

Become customers because of

the brand and quality

Become customers because of

the brand and quality

But leave because of poor customer

service

But leave because of poor customer

service

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Three Organizational Pitfalls

1. Lack of cooperation across departments

2. Limited understanding of customer needs across the organization

3. The general power of inertia within a business.

“These three pitfalls often share one root cause: a company is too internally focused.”

Elizabeth Glagowski, Peppers and Rogers - “What is Wrecking Your Customer Experience”

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Customer Experience Strategies

1. A seat in the C-suite

SMUD: That would be my seat.

“The customer experience should be the responsibility of all departments, ideally with a C-level executive overseeing the cross-departmental communication and projects.”

Elizabeth Glagowski, Peppers and Rogers

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Customer Experience Strategies

2. Cross-channel alignment

A customer thinks of a company as one entity and today expects alignment across channels. Meanwhile, most companies still think of themselves as a series of departments.

Elizabeth Glagowski, Peppers and Rogers - “What is Wrecking Your Customer Experience”

SMUD: CRM, integrating marketing efforts, cross functional matrixed teams for Smart Meter rollout, and aligning web, IVR, and, contact center with rebranding efforts

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Customer Experience Strategies

3. Sustaining a customer-focused culture

“The trick is for the brand to live in the hearts and minds of all employees,“

Bruce Temkin, Forrester

"Customer experience focus is a culture that needs to sit in all parts of the organization, and is driven on a daily basis by all employees."

Paul de Laat, Vodafone

SMUD: Rebranding efforts and work with Gallup

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Customer Experience Strategies

4. Customer-based metrics

"Companies should develop a set of customer-centric loyalty metrics that they track in the same way and at the same level that they track business metrics like sales and profitability,“

Bruce Temkin, Forrester

SMUD: First call resolution, employee and customer engagement, and gauging loyalty through the propensity to switch and recommend SMUD

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The Future

• New and faster devices

• Additional touch points

• More interaction and conversations

• More demand for self service options

• More demand for rich web content

• More informing and less selling

• Less patience, higher expectations

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Sources

• Elizabeth Glagowski, Peppers and Rogers’ 1 to 1 Magazine, http://www.1to1media.com/view.aspx?docid=32178

• Bruce Temkin, Forrester Research, The 2010 Customer Experience Index, 2010

• Kerry Bodine, Ron Rogowski, Forrester Research, 2011 Customer Experience Predictions

• Beyond Philosophy - www.beyondphilosopy.com

• Matthew Dixon, Karen Freeman, and Nicholas Toman, Harvard Business Review, "Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers”

• Joseph Pine, TED Video http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/joseph_pine_on_what_consumers_want.html

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APPENDIX

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What Customers WantHarvard Business Review – Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers

• Purchase because of quality and brand, but leave because of poor customer service

• Loyalty driven by quick and easy problem resolution rather than exceeding expectations

• Contact the company once, no repeating information or switching service channels

• 67% prefer self-service channels, 33% prefer talking to person

• 57% of inbound calls visited website first

• 30% of inbound calls are simultaneously on your website

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