Find more examples, case studies and stories in our latest book
Having conducted hundreds of customer satisfaction and loyalty surveys over the last 20 years, we know first-hand what it takes to deliver CX excellence in b2b markets. Unfortunately, exceptional customer experiences are not as common as they should be, and it is this that drove us to write ‘B2B Customer Experience – A Practical Guide To Delivering Exceptional CX’.
The book is out now and is available to buy here. To celebrate the launch of the book we will be sharing a selection of different interviews with CX professionals, each talking about their own journey towards CX excellence. The second of which, with Molson Coor’s Carol Sheppard, is below.
Carol Sheppard – Customer Experience Research Manager, Molson Coors
How did your journey for customer experience start?
We are in our sixth year of building our customer experience initiative. It all started back in 2012 within the Independent-on-Premise (IOP) part of our company, the then Head of IOP decided we must do something different. Back then our profit was declining and we had started to lose market share so we needed to focus on doing something different, we chose customer experience.
“Back then our profit was declining and we had started to lose market share so we needed to focus on doing something different, we chose customer experience.”
How did you go about convincing others that focusing on customer experience is a worthwhile cause?
It is all about taking small steps and showing tangible differences to the business.
Thinking back to when Canada started on their journey they wanted to know what the ROI would be and so they spoke to the UK team to get their expert opinion. Our recommendation was to feel the fear and do it anyway. However, what we did know is that you’ve got to have top-level down buy in otherwise the wider organisation won’t follow.
We were able to share the UK progress and ROI figures with Canada which gave them confidence in moving forward but you never know; they will definitely reap the benefit but in Canada it could have an even bigger effect.
So how do you keep momentum going within the company and spreading best practice on a global level?
It is all about communication. We have weekly calls and a score card showing whether we’ve achieved perfect delivery, what our call waiting times have been etc. We have lots of different measurements to ensure that everything is right and this also includes the NPS score.
We’ve only had a true complaints process in the last three years and so it is enabling us to be more customer focused and deal with any problems as they arise.
Molson Coors looks a very different company in 2012 than it does today. From just one person looking at customer experience back in 2012 we now have 35 people involved in customer experience globally, and these people are critical to keeping the momentum going.
“From just one person looking at customer experience back in 2012 we now have 35 people involved in customer experience globally, and these people are critical to keeping the momentum going.”
We have 18 people (one Customer Experience Director and one Customer Experience Manager in each country) across Central Europe, these are new roles to our business. We have a programme for rolling out workshops in those territories so teams can learn from what we’ve done in the UK. If we’ve got something that works, why not share it and workshops are the best way of doing this. At the present we have an objective to smash “satisfactory”. Satisfactory isn’t good enough anymore.
What has worked best for you in building a customer centric company?
I must say that if you’ve got good customer insight it’s an excellent starting point. However, I think it is a mixture of getting customer insight, understanding where you currently stand with certain metrics, and what you need to do to build on these metrics. All these put together contribute to building a customer culture within any business.
“I think it is a mixture of getting customer insight, understanding where you currently stand with certain metrics, and what you need to do to build on these metrics. All these put together contribute to building a customer culture within any business.”
About three years ago we had a brainstorm and came up with the idea of Customer Inc. Customer Inc. is a selection of customer personas we have built up that represent our different customers we deal with. This initiative has definitely worked best for us.
It is an on and offline campaign to increase the voice of the customer back into the company. We use all kinds of things like Yammer, emailers but also Lego men and cress heads to keep customers front of mind and make sure that people look after their customers.
Aligned with this campaign, the customer cut-outs have worked the best. We have created life size cardboard cut outs of customers and we’ve got them everywhere from in reception, canteens, in every meeting room; even in the breweries. Each one is updated regularly with recent feedback from surveys and it keeps the campaign fresh in people’s minds.
What does the future hold?
In 2012 we were at a low but since we started the NPS journey, profits have gone up and up and so has the NPS score. Therefore the future is more of the same but on a global level with a big emphasis on mainland Europe. After all, we are nothing without our customers and so 2018 and beyond is all about thinking like a customer, being customer focused and focusing on the metrics that matter most to the customer.
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