Hello and welcome to the Customer Experience Podcast with host Emma Dark.In the final episode of the Customer Experience podcast, Emma chats with Kate Birtles from Biffa.Whilst almost everyone won’t deem waste management as something all that ‘CX:ie’, the way we think about it has never been more important when you think about its environmental impact and how it affects the customer.Kate outlines how her new customer team ensures they are always walking in their customer's shoes, getting out on the frontline and getting to know them, whilst cascading the customer's voice right across the business.Lots to take in here so with no further ado, here’s Emma and Kate.– Shownotes:Introduction - Meeting Kate Birtles Customer Service Director at Biffa- Introducing the topic on driving customer experience in waste management How is Kate driving the customer experience strategy? 1:40 - Where ever you have a customer interaction, it is important to have a customer strategy to ensure the best CX-  improving the customer experience team within Biffa during the restrictions of the past couple of yearsWhat does Biffa do to perfect the customer experience? 3:40 - Covering the basics, Biffa being an invisible service to customers, picking up waste at the right time, efficiently, sustainability, improving the environmental impact of waste management.How does being sustainable and looking after the planet benefit the customer? 5:55- Our purpose is to change the way people think about waste- what can we do to prevent waste from being waste, looking into recyclables and recovering energy from waste, minimising landfill, encouraging education, keeping things as simple as possible.How do you approach the complexities of waste management within the organisation and externally to the customer? 8:20 - Understanding who the customer is. - Having a sensible conversation and understanding what their need is and then finding solutions first before imposing needs.- Managing local council needs and customer needs.How does digitalisation come into play within waste management? 9:55- We are still learning but eager to further develop with customer portals to offer feedback.- Making sure the customer experience is as flawless as possible.- Making sure the service is customisable so customers can choose what they do and don’t want.What does the new CX team do at Biffa?-  Management spending time with the front line going out to understand customers and the company voice face to face.- Understanding the customer journey from start to finish. - Understanding if there is a process problem looking in from a customer perspective.How do you manage your customer maps? 14:45- Initiatives and methodologies on how to prioritise tasks.- Needing to start from the beginning with a blank piece of paper and mapping out what the ideal customer experience should be and spring boarding from there.- Understanding what the customer pain is and offering solutions as soon as possible and implementing them as trials.  How to cascade the customer voice across the organisation? 16:20-It is a challenge as always especially due to the recent challenges; people are change fatigued.- Increasing the positivity and transparency about the customer journey and experience. How do you approach customer centricity? 18:30- It helps that everyone is customer centric. It is a challenge that everyone’s idea of what the customer needs are slightly different. - It’s good to celebrate the wins with customers but equally it is important to recognise the problems customers can face as well.- Focus groups from various areas of the organisations, bringing ideas to them and discussing the pros and cons.- Making sure everyone is apart of the change.How involved is the customer in those changes? 20:40- Getting customers to come in, starting discussions on the portal, getting feedback with customer panels.- Although we have so much information available, we are still not always able to transfer that into palpable changes, it can be trial and error.What have you noticed with regards to poor service as a customer yourself? 24:10- A lot of organisations are still using the pandemic as an excuse for poor customer service.- Not using the amazing technological advances to optimise customer experiences, chatbots, FAQ’s on-demand. - Walking in the shoes of the customer is still a basic but vital option to improve customer experience. How to make the customer experience the beating heart of the organisation? 28:40 - Making sure we don’t drive anti-customer behaviour that generates money but pushes customers away.- Making sure you’re measuring things that customers actually care about. - Working out the balance between customer-centricity and employee satisfaction.Does Biffa have enough customer metrics so that you can see the impact to the customer?- Yes, although we can still do better.- It is one thing to say we are customer centric but its more important to act it.What are some brands you think are doing well? 33:00  - The obvious ones are Zappos because of how they managed the digital transformation, personalise the customer experience, freedom of people on the ground to use the brains to come up with great CX improvements.- John Lewis, great no nonsense to customer issues – they sort it out - At Biffa we are not trying to be Disney, we are offering a service that fixes problems really quickly and with as little pain as possible What are some of the key pain points of the strategy to improve customer centricity? 36:30- The changes we want to make are not always in alignment with the business agenda as a whole.- Some things require time and the right type of communication to make the changes tangible.- Using data to prove the changes are vital. What are positive examples of the impacts of the pandemic? 39:50- Customer call centres working from home quickly and seamlessly. - Amazing covid safety measures quickly to help with a speedy hybrid working culture. - Proactively working out how to communicate to customers using different channels. - Thinking and acting quicker. What are some key predictions in the world of CX? 42:55- Making sure the proposition is for the customer and employees.- Investing in your employees.- Are we being responsible with data.- Are we looking at the environment appropriately.What is your advice for others involved in CX? 45:30 - You need to get top your customers in any way that suits your organisation: get out there and be a customer, go through their journey and understand the positive and negatives of their journey.

Welcome to the Customer Experience Podcast with S&S Chief CX Officer and host Emma Dark.As leaders, how do we successfully approach digitisation in the retail industry? In this episode, Emma has a chat with Heidi Reynolds, Retail Director at WHSmith - one of the oldest retailers in history established over 200 years ago. This is a true heritage brand and while its core values have remained, the organisation has had to continually evolve and transform their customer experiences over two centuries.So how has WHSmith embraced the shifting sands of digitisation? How do they pair physical and digital experiences? What about under the hood, internally with their people - how do they bring them on the digital journey?A fascinating discussion that is valuable for anyone in the retail space, learning from one of the biggest and best.Enjoy.--SHOWNOTESIntroduction - 0:54 How their leaders approach digitalisation in the retail industry Meet Retail Director Heidi Reynolds, she talks about her experience in retail and the movement to digitisation. How to reinvent the store of the future - 3:50  Will there always be a place for the high street? Know your customers and who's not your customers The essential component to truly understand your customer - 4:50 How to use as many methods as possible to reach out to all types of customers The critical aspect of making assumptions of who your customers are based on their purchase - you might miss out on their actual needs Work out what it is you are seeking to understand in order to meet customer needs The partnership between physical and digital - 8:20 How to have a customer perspective  to understand if you are meeting their needs Understand your customers' shopping habits How to adapt to support your customer  Meet the needs of a customer experience online How can you bring your 'in-store staff' on the digital journey? - 11:15  Supporting and encouraging people to take these steps is difficult and change can lead to retention issues How to offer support to less digitally able colleagues to make them feel comfortable Be transparent and open about why it is important to go on this journey Ensure that people feel confident and safe in their abilities and the support systems around them to go forward with the change together What are the biggest change skills needed? - 16:36  How to communicate and understand where the support is needed Understand that customers are going on this journey with you Be prepared for the physical and technical development of moving online What is the purpose of a physical store when everything is moving online? 19:50 In-store colleagues need to keep the relationship with the customer Conversations need to focus on more alternatives for the customer and can offer insight into their needs Fewer people in-store isn’t always a good thing, it can compromise the customer experience Customers are more likely to go into the store to ask questions when they can't find the answers online Cultivating a culture of caring for the customer is important  How to take the customers along with you on the changes - 21:55 All organisations will have to adapt according to their customer base How to understand customer engagement in-store VS online  How to understand the role of your marketing and how it direct customers to the products How have your teams set themselves up to manage different customers? - 31:35 Understand how to appeal to customers of all ages Don’t overcomplicate your offer Connect with all your customers - IKEA caters for young families with food and play areas  How retailers can ‘get it right’ - 35:35 Inspiration, innovation and value Managing expectations  Do what you say; the ‘good’, the ‘bad’ and the 'ugly' What obstacles have you had to face? - 37:50 How to stay relevant and live harmoniously between High Street stores and online How to keep a presence in the highstreets space and increase sales How to navigate a world of continuous change How to encourage people to visit both the physical and online store  How has change changed? - 39:45 With every year the speed of change increases Direction for retail is moving so rapidly that some businesses won’t be able to keep up  Continuously asking for feedback  What are predictions for the next 5 years? - 41:55 The speed at which people get their products will increase in speed Both immersive experiences and  in-store products will become more popular Find the full show notes and episode here: https://www.sullivanstanley.com/insights/the-customer-experience-podcast-how-whsmith-led-digitalisation-in-the-retail-industry/

“Customer-first, not digital-first. Work in the shoes of your customers and figure out what they want for today and tomorrow.”Those are the sage words of Andrew Clayton, Head of Customer Experience at Close Brothers. Having previously worked as an executive across multiple sectors for the past 30 years, Andrew provides us with some great insight into how organisations can handle the gap between those who benefit from the Digital Age and those who don’t.Emma and Andrew discuss how to create a ‘design tribe’ that sits within teams and units across the business, how to identify, approach and support ‘vulnerable customers’ and some of the future challenges for organisations going through this transformation.There is loads of value for any CX exec leading teams in the digital age, so we hope you enjoy the show.--SHOWNOTES:Introduction Been leading transformation for the last 15 years across financial services, utilities and healthcare Focused on how to drive sustainable customer organic growth How to bring brand and purpose together Purpose is the new buzzword, but how do you bring it to life for your customers and people every day? Make the purpose resonate with everyone in the organisation Reinforce it through your comms channels every day How do you bring purpose to life every day Put your customer at the centre of your decision-making Bravery to say we let the customer down That covers not just the customer, but your wider brand It covers your people experiences as well It all works together as one How has the digitalisation of the financial services industry impacted CX? You need to be sensitive where digital makes sense in a relationship-based business You need to dissect the customer journey end to end Augment the journeys, not replace them And involve the right people to make that change Deciding which journeys need humans, and which should be digital (or both?) Walk in the shoes of your customers Understand how the journey feels for each segment Where can digital demonstrate value How do you manage and govern those journeys How do you involve the customers with the testing? Different industries are at different stages of test and learn It’s a critical part as they experience the outcome Customer labs can really help But the caution is- make sure you’ve got the right team so they’re ready to be implemented when they can scale What skillsets enable digital customer experiences? You need to democratise skills in the organisation It can’t be done with a centre of expertise I’ve created a ‘design tribe’ that sat within teams and units across the business Getting cultural buy-in across the organisation It’s a daily job of leaders to reinforce the purpose Make sure you pick out highlights of great work Are we ensuring the changes we are making are positively affecting the purpose around customer? Going from bricks and mortar to fully digital They need to be humancentric AND digitally-enabled There are touchpoints where we can digitalise and remove friction High volume transactions that don’t bring value to the customer can be alleviated by automation For B2B - how can we use digital tools to enable sales and accounts (internally) Employee journey for that digital transformation It’s always hard to change peoples behaviours in day to day work Engage and involve them so they can see the value early Lots of training, support, coaching and communication It’s a change project in itself Ensuring customers are embracing the changes Your ‘listening post’ needs to always be on You need the ingredients and accountability to own the feedback and action it AI is great for high volume simple transactions which make things easier The biggest challenge is to make omnichannel works  How to identify, approach and support ‘vulnerable customers’  You need to identify who they are first and in what form Understanding what the needs are i.e. different interactions Equip your agents with the emotional intelligence to identify them Commitment from leadership top-down that it’s key The greatest challenge when digitalising customer experience It’s not a tech challenge, it’s a people challenge - both internally (your people) and customer Make sure you have the capabilities in place within your organisation, creating the right teams to co-create and innovate ‘Digital garages’ aren’t the answer- involve the right people from day one What keeps you motivated to keep pushing ‘customer first’ I’m passionate about helping companies grow and doing the right thing for customers And working with customers who put purpose and values at the centre of the organisation There is still a lot to do! Using Covid as an excuse to not deliver a good customer experiencePeople have long memories and they won’t be able to hang onto those excuses What are the future battlegrounds and innovations in the world of customer? Delivering a great brand experience and continuing to earn trust Sustainability and diversity agendas Are your products fair value? Use of data and predictive analytics Tackling society challenges - need to think beyond your own organisations Demonstrating the value of CX to drive retention and positive referrals ---Find the full show notes and episode description here: https://www.sullivanstanley.com/insights/the-cx-podcast-the-digital-divide-with-andrew-clayton

Join Emma Dark, S&S Chief Customer Experience Officer in episode 004 of the Customer Experience Podcast, with our guest Amy Farrer on the jump from Telco to Tech-co. Amy Farrer is the Digital Capability and Planning Director at BT where her responsibilities include mobilising squads to support the Consumer Strategy, developing BT’s Digital Capability with a focus on agile ways of working, and continuing to put customers at the heart of BT’s mission statement. Amy and Emma talk about the importance of the customer sitting within every department, and how Amy is a champion of continuous improvement in BT, delivering customer and business value, quickly and sustainably. Today she talks us through the challenges the pandemic presented, how the demands of the customer continue to change, and how adaptation and agile working is the new normal while supporting her staff's development in the process. Hope you enjoy the show!

The importance of being a data driven organisation goes well beyond the world of customer. Making informed and speedy decisions and utilising customer feedback is imperative in today’s age where markets and economies can change very suddenly. We were lucky enough to hear from the Global Data Officer at Specsavers Helen Mannion who has been leading the charge of building an internal culture that has data at the heart of everything they do. Emma and Helen share stories on using data to drive a strong customer experience, the challenges of building that culture internally and even sheds some light on where the future of data and analytics is heading. This one is not to be missed, so please enjoy the show and please hit the subscribe button to make sure you don’t miss another episode.

Terminator. Blade Runner. Ex Machina. iRobot. While Emma’s chat today with Mark Billingham of the Very Group isn’t quite as dramatic as some of those blockbusters, the topic of AI has been around for a long time.Mark gives us some amazing insight into his learnings, practical tips and overwhelmingly positive results of building a bot to handle a huge amount of customer queries each month - 250,000 to be exact.They dive into what capability you need sitting behind the bot, how they got customers involved using their UX Lab (which is as cool as it sounds), the opportunities it creates for your internal team and why the job is never done even after you have built your bot. If you are looking to build an AI chatbot in your organisation, here is a 45-minute practical guide from someone who has done just that. So please enjoy the show and don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast. Intro - 1.20   250,000 contacts handled per month at The Very Group AI frees up advisers for more complex and emotive questions for customers Contacts have reduced by 23% and nearly 50% over two years The bot is getting ⅘ stars for ease of use from customers The catalyst for building AI functionality - 2.37 Previously navigated trying out a bot in Vodafone called Toby Learnt how NOT to do it Need to understand every single reason a customer contacts you There were 10,000 different reasons they got in touch Acts as a concierge service and fix it, otherwise will send to a human Training a bot is like training a person - takes time What was the goal? - 7.29 Don’t upset our customers Put something on the web that got users to the right place and answers quickly Ideally, people can self-serve which benefits both us and customers Start with ease and simplicity  The Capability that sat behind the AI - 9.43 Used our own web development team to create a look and feel Then use tech dev team to build but use IBM Watson technology in the background But all knowledge comes from the customer care team Customer Involvement - 11.24 We have a UX lab where we get customers to come in and try out the bot Kept it going during the pandemic virtually, but not the same as the face to face Feedback can often be based on how comfortable they are with technology ‘I wouldn’t have used this bot before, but now I absolutely would’ 40% of customers use our bot, so plenty of work to do UX Lab Investment - 14.14 Need two rooms - can be really basic Just need customers using the tech and giving you feedback Doesn’t have to be Big Brother /MI5 Intentional Actions Delivered During Change Project - 17.07 Identify key reasons why they contact us Understand what we need to build Build the most important questions first Make sure its useful straight away means the customers are on board Where does the bot need guidance? The balance between it being too ‘botty’ but also not too human and missing the tone What are the next steps to perfection? - 20.51 Target is to go from 40% to 70% using the bot Need to expose the bot to more people - only available for people who are logged in The next step will be using them on the outside of the site SEO needs to work for us to point to the bot Teach it to answer more queries 25% have to ring contact centre after - so need to focus on them, get it below 10% Biggest Challenges - 25.19 Hygiene - we are a digital business so web changes Finding the right resource and prioritisation Making sure the language is absolutely spot on How far through the maturity curve is AI? Have to make sure using the bot is optional for users Managing the internal feeling that the robots are taking our jobs? - 29.11 The organisation has been continuously evolving for the last 90 years We have a high tolerance for change Give lots of notice and move onto other campaigns Re-investing savings made and into your people Biggest benefits for your employees - 32.21 The new set of skills and roles that have been developed internally Continuous improvement, change management culture Created specialism that people can grow entire careers from Where is the future headed? - 36.50 Pandemic has swung it back to the preference for human touch Bots will become more mainstream and better You will have a divide of people based on consumer demographics My 8-year-old son uses Alexa for everything Bots could be superseded by voice assistants  Video is up for debate. It’s expensive and Zoom fatigue hasn’t helped Customer Feedback - 42.24 Yes, positive reaction and easy to navigate Use NPS and TrustPilot feedback Negative is when there’s a handover between channels Advice before an organisation kicks off a bot build? - 43.19 Understand why customers contact you.  Don’t shoe-horn assumptions into the bot Don’t lie to people that its a human No dead ends It’s a consistent journey and needs continual management

Join Emma Dark in her debut episode of the Customer Experience Podcast where she chats with Chief Customer Officer and Author Sharon Boyd.