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 third of which, with Coveris’ Jo Ormrod, is below.
Jo Ormrod, Strategic Business Development Director, Coveris
What challenges have you faced around improving the customer experience?
Coveris has evolved over the last few years and become a lot bigger organisation than we used to be. Obviously, when you’re a bigger organisation it brings different problems and the main one is with the people factor; making sure everyone is aligned to the company vision.
Training people from different countries and cultures about what customer service and customer excellence means can be a challenge. Last year we employed someone to look specifically at customer excellence so this is a good positive step to show to the customer that they are very much central to our thinking.
“Last year we employed someone to look specifically at customer excellence so this is a good positive step to show to the customer that they are very much central to our thinking.”
In any large company you need to have processes and people who are process driven. However, this is another challenge as this breeds a culture where people don’t make a decision unless a piece of paper tells you it’s the right decision to make. Of course we need processes but we also need people who are intuitive about what is right when it comes to customer service. If you think that something is right for the customer you’ve just got to have to think of a way to make it work.
What changes would you make to improve the customer experience in the future?
If I could make any changes it would be that every person in the business knew what customer excellence meant to us from the top down. I want us all to be consistent around the touch points. I’d want our magic wand to let everybody know what customer excellence means and we would train all the new staff to reinforce what it means.
“If I could make any changes it would be that every person in the business knew what customer excellence meant to us from the top down.”
The second thing I would do is make ourselves easier to deal with and get rid of all the red tape so people have more autonomy to make decisions with the customer in mind.
What advice would you give to anyone embarking on their CX journey?
My advice to other people would be “don’t let the process take over”. Think about the customer in any process that you do.
I understand why you have to have processes but when does it start becoming detrimental to the customer and how do you pick up on this? When you add all these items together it makes you harder to deal with.
If customer service is really important to a company it should be central to everything the company does and not just a function or an isolated division.
The most important thing is understanding what customers want and making sure they know that you care. Then the difficulty is getting that same experience running across the whole of the business so that we live and breathe customers and get a consistency of experience across the business.
“The most important thing is understanding what customers want and making sure they know that you care.”
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