The Art of Customer Experience

Human conversations are our business

 Customer Experience: the new holy grail

If there is a single common theme in all of our conversations with today’s

leaders, it’s the quest for the holy grail of how to deliver a world class customer
Fact
experience. Most leaders can describe a great experience when it has In the past
five years 50%
happened to them - but ask them if they’ve managed to create a business that
delivers ‘great’ over and over again, well that’s a different story.
of the ICS top
Fact Fact 10 best brands
for customer
th
s wi
m p anie cacy 78% of people are willing to pay
Co advo mes
high hree ti e
t
grow er than one
th more for better service service have been
the same five
fa s t a
and se in
norm increa tes Blue Sky’s research found that only 21% of
t a
poin correl nal
N
t
P
o
S
a
d io
i
n ad lion
il
t respondents rated the UK as ‘excellent’ in terms
of ‘feeling human’ and interestingly, a whopping companies
£9m d sales
ease ool 78% of these people would be willing to pay
incr on Sch s)
d
(Lon conom
ic more for better service.
o f E

A focus on customer experience makes sense financially, there’s definitely

room for improvement and most leaders just want to know how.
1
Customer Experience has changed beyond recognition
We are all now living on a super-connected,
omni-channel planet. Customers want to
choose how, when and why they connect with
the companies they buy from and they’re just
a couple of clicks away from information that
helps them choose whether you’re hot or not

2
– in today’s economy, reputation is like a flash
mob; it spreads fast.

Beyond meeting expectations there is limited additional

The vast majority of sales and service teams loyalty to be gained and customer effort is by far the
still use conventional ‘delight’ strategies to try best prediction of long-term loyalty.
to wow and woo their customers. However,
all the latest research shows that delivering Put simply, whether they are buying,
on basic promises matters much more to
customers than bells and whistles. Exceeding
enquiring, needing help or complaining - if
expectations does not measurably increase you make it easy, customers reward you
loyalty – but effortless service does. with boundless loyalty.
The old ‘soft’ skills are not enough

3
Making it feel easy for customers relies to some
degree (35%) on the steps in the process to get
what customers want, but a whopping 65% of my
perception of how easy you are to deal with is
down to how you make me ‘feel’ when I interact
with you.

4
There are a specific set of customer interaction
skills that drive a perception of ease, a sense
of confidence and a very human feel to the
experience – these are the things that are simply
not showing up enough in every conversation.

Fact
A conversation with
a customer service
agent in a contact Changing the customer experience starts with changing the
centre is 4 x more conversations that are happening between customers and your front
likely to create a
disloyal customer than line teams. Out with the old, in with the new
an advocate
 Change the conversation:
at every level in your business

If being world class at customer experience

were as simple as exposing front line customer
service teams to some new skills, we’d put
them all on a training course and then watch
and wait for the rise in rankings and the awards
to come flooding in. But it’s not that easy,
which is why so many customer experience
programmes fail.

There is specific work to be done with each

layer of your business:
1 The tone is set by the top
2 Leaders create the climate for people
engagement and customer experience to
thrive
3 1st and 2nd line managers have ‘in the
moment’ coaching conversations...
4 ...so that where the rubber hits the road
truly human conversations happen over and
over again to create loyal customers
 Where to focus:
it’s a bit like paint by numbers

You get the customers you deserve – the top

100 customer experience companies have
The areas of focus to separate
done the work to ensure their customers are the best from the ‘meh’.
at the heart of everything they do.

At Blue Sky, we’ve been working with best for

service brands (as well as those trying to get
there) for the last 18 years so we are very
clear on where you need to focus to transform
customer experience. 

It’s not rocket science so in the end it boils down to how much you
want to do it, not whether you have it in your corporate bones
 Know what you stand for

1 At the heart of a customer focused business is

a clear customer ethos.This defines the stake
in the ground, the spirit with which we look after
our customers that everyone can inhabit easily
and guides everything we do. One organisation’s
‘make it easy’ is another’s ‘be a dream maker’ - the
key is to be really clear on what good looks like
2 Blue Sky work with you to deliver what your
organisation stands for and build the narrative “I really liked the fact that the solution
that sets the tone for customer culture right from
the top
was built on the foundation of the skills
3 We then work with the top team to create being demonstrated by those who are
some cultural signatures that all people can see most successful”
and demonstrate we mean business
British Gas

Define your intent and visibly

take action to show you mean business
 Create the climate

There are things that leaders do in ‘best for service’

businesses that create the climate for a great
The nine things are...
customer experience to thrive.
Engage People - inspire your people
We’ve spent 18 years obsessively finding out what to join you in the revolution
they are, we’ve bottled them and by sharing them
we’ve been able to help big teams, divisions and
companies step change their customer experience Shift and reframe (negative thinking)
and grow value at every point of contact. - learn how to be a genius at getting
people to see a different perspective
We bring a toolkit of activities, insights and science
to each of the nine areas to inspire and encourage Create a permission culture -
leaders to create the climate for success. everyone needs to know how
empowered they really are
“It has been an absolute pleasure to work with a group of like-
minded people. The Blue Sky team really do put words into
actions and worked with us to turn our vision into reality.”
EDF Energy, Customer Service Director

Symbolic action - visibly demonstrate Create accountability - you get what you ask
your commitment to customer for and what you spend time talking about:
make sure it’s the stuff you want

Show up - get up close and personal, Encourage customer focused behaviours -

proximity is everything BEST
encourage the behaviours, don’t ‘manage’
them

+
Clear the path - create the space for Create a culture of positive critique - catch
people to do it the way you’re asking them doing it right

There are nine things that

leaders need to do every day
 Encourage the new behaviours to show up

Team leaders hold the keys to success. It’s that simple. • Skills coaching is different from behavioural coaching.
They need to encourage the specific behaviours We’ll use our 28 coaching cards to drive the skills in
that drive great customer experience and human the conversation
conversations to show up every single day. • Line managers can create the space to coach their
teams every week if they take control of their
We have some strong beliefs informed by our extensive environment
experience in successful transformation programmes:
• Line managers must 100% know what good looks
and sounds like in the art of a conversation with a
customer and be able to demonstrate it with their
teams
• Coaching is not an activity that takes place remotely
with a form to fill in and some boxes to tick - it
should be happening every day and looks like lots of
different things (28, to be precise) and done well, can
drive a different conversation in the very next call
Live
conversations
Changing manager behaviour requires ‘in situ’ coaching,
in the operation and over eight weeks.They don’t
just change because you tell them to. Our solutions
provide an eight week operational embeddding
approach to be sure the managers really shift and
embed the behaviours. We call this ‘live conversations’
and it has delivered significant improvements in many
organisations.

“I do more pop up coaching than ever;

I praise people regularly. As a company
we focus on negatives. Can’t be doing
that anymore. Doesn’t work. We have
to lift these people…and everything You’ve got to know what
will fall into place. Make them valued. good looks like and get it
Listen to them.”
Severn Trent Water to show up every day
New skills for a new experience

If you want to create an effortless and

human experience, there’s a bit more
to it than you’d perhaps think. Having
spent years analysing the mindsets and
behaviours of top performing customer
service advisors, we’ve built our NPS
boosting solution on five key mindsets
and nine essential skills that drive the real
difference.

To engage people in the ‘why change’,

our pearls of wisdom harness the best
of the neuroscience, human behavioural
psychology and customer experience
research to bring the ‘why this stuff works’.

Make it human
 Find your ninja:
learning that is totally relevant
N

In the past three years alone we’ve

worked with over 50,000 customer
service advisors for some of the biggest
labour inclusion
household brands.The role’s the same, next issue
the context is always different. For one avoidance
big bank, being human, present and
accountable was key to the shift, for a advocating
water company it was ease, warmth
and occasional surprise that shunted
them up the rankings. We use our
expertise to help you find your ninja to C-Sat 1 Average
drive the difference. C-Sat 5 Average

We work with you to find the ninjas that drive results in

your environment and design learning to bring them to
the heart of what you do and how you do it
Embedded Learning Methodology:
how you actually get people to change behaviour
We apply our
Embedded Learning
Methodology to
all of our learning
programmes and
the result is
that the learning
sticks, behaviours
change and results
improve.
Sustainability is at the core of our approach

We’ve got a trailblazing rocket of really cool stuff that we

bring to help you stimulate, invigorate and motivate long
after the initial big change.

“I loved that the

+ session was a mix of
talking, videos and
participation. I am now
more open minded
and curious than
before and eager to
practice.”
Virgin Media
 Case studies

“I have worked with Blue Sky on a number of

successful programmes. They are dynamic and
creative in their approach, plus they deliver with
passion and pride, as if they were part of our own
organisation. They understand us, our challenges and
our culture as an organisation.

This is of major importance in delivering a solution

that will engage with our people, our customers
and ultimately make the difference in our
performance.”
 NPS went up
More Th>n wanted to become a truly customer-centric
organisation and make every customer interaction as effortless
from 53.9 to 55.1%
as possible. In line with its vision and in partnership with Blue Sky,
they launched ‘Good to Great’, as a test and build programme,
to gather robust feedback around the service transformation QA increased from 77%
needed.
to 87% within 3 months
Based on a significant uplift in customer advocacy, following
the pilot, a full roll-out of the programme was delivered to
1,085 front-line customer managers and 86 team leaders. Pilot
delegates were encouraged to act as service champions and a
train-the-trainer took place to ensure further training could be
achieved via internal resource.

The project involved multiple suppliers and demanded rigour

around open and clear communication and real commitment to
delivering results across the whole business.
The Great People programme set out to change how people operated
across the organisation.

STW aspired to improve their SIM (OfWAT measure) position by taking

steps to improve customer experience. For them this meant reducing the
number of repeat and abandoned calls, managing complaints effectively
and improving customer experience. It was also about creating a cultural
shift, giving people the skills to be more customer focused in the moment
and raising awareness of the importance of being accountable for creating
better customer experiences.

Programme sustainability was built into the solution in two key ways:

1 Internal trainers worked side-by-side with the Blue Sky team during
delivery
2 and are now responsible for working with new starters
Processes and practices have been re-balanced to establish coaching as
an essential day-to-day activity
 27% Increase in
Following a review of their customer satisfaction and employee
engagement results, it was clear to O2 that a significant service
transformation was needed to retain their customer base.This customer
would require tackling the attitudinal and behavioural issues
that had historically driven sales, but impacted the customer satisfaction
experience and loyalty.

Blue Sky were chosen as their partner to deliver ‘Stay Connected’,

an innovative and engaging customer service solution attended
by front-line staff, their managers and the internal L&D team. Stay
Connected addressed individuals’ awareness and understanding
of the service delivered by their competitors, their mindset and
7% Improvement
in call quality

7.4%
behaviour towards the customer, how they could better connect
on an emotional level and be empowered to make decisions in
Reduction
their best interest (through removing unnecessary bureaucracy). in customer
The results have been outstanding and include a reduction in churn
churn that represents an incremental net financial benefit in
excess of £2.5 million per annum on the bottom-line, translating
to an ROI in excess of 500%.
Having separated from Lloyds Banking Group in Events were held across the UK to recruit the best
September 2013,TSB was created to bring more customer service representatives, known as ‘trailblazers’
competition to the UK Banking market and ultimately in the business, who then completed a five-day training
better banking for all. course and were provided with a training toolkit ‘in a
box’. 12 of the trailblazers then became coaches, who
With a clear vision for becoming the “local bank for played a major role in cascading and embedding service
Britain”, they wanted to create a customer service values across the bank.
experience that was uniquely theirs and train in a set
of customer service experiences and principles that Customer profiles and life-size room props were
would embody a distinctly TSB way of giving customer designed and created to illustrate and differentiate
service and of dealing with customers. customer communication preferences and with local
venues being used for learning sessions, the programme
Blue Sky were asked to create the training content had a real community feel.
and to deliver the training to upskill all leaders and
front-line colleagues in TSB’s branches and call centres. The programme has been accredited by the ICS,
TSB’s vision was that training design and delivery who have praised it in all areas, highlighting that ‘it
would happen in parallel, with the early scenarios being was extremely strong and consistently referred to
trained out, whilst later ones were still being designed. links across all of the competency areas’.They have
also acknowledged its simplicity of message and have
awarded it the highest level of recognition.
Blue Sky partnered with Barclays Africa and ABSA to design Prior to the programme commencing, Barclays Africa
and deliver a Complaints Transformation programme, to was not in a favourable position in the eyes of the
reduce the volume of complaints and handle those that do ombudsman, due to the amount of complaints they
occur brilliantly.The ultimate goal was to become the best had received; they are now the bank with the lowest
bank for customer service in Africa. number of complaints, an incredible achievement! On
a more personal level a common language has been
Barclays Africa quickly identified that as a company, as established for employees, which empowers them
geographically complex as it was, came challenges around to do the right thing for the customer and there has
transferring information, as well as handling and logging been a noticeable increase in staff morale.

9%
complaints.
reduction in escalated
The solution Blue Sky put in place started with its
senior leaders and their role in making change happen, complaints from the
through sharing their compelling stories. Hundreds of
people in hundreds of branches were touched by the
front-line

44% YOY increase in

programme, which was branded with teaser campaigns,
high energy and fun. We worked with people to have
better conversations, work in an effortless way and be customer
accountable for the customer experience, end-to-end.
compliments
 37%
Blue Sky were first engaged by BT in 2013 to transform
customer experience and ultimately NPS in a division of the
business that was suffering from a legacy of low accountability,
a minus 40% NPS, a long tenured workforce who had lost faith
in their ability to actually make a difference and were creating a
improvement in FCR culture of ‘shunting’ customers and repeat contact.

Whilst skill development was needed at the front-line to

200%
reconnect people with the brand and drive better customer
experiences, the real work had to be done at a leadership
level, to equip leaders to lead change and to re-build trust.
High challenge/support leadership events focused on driving
accountability for the changes required and creating an
improvement in agent environment for building a customer-focused mindset. Leaders
sat over and above the were also coached on how to drive a greater sense of purpose
in front-line customer interactions and creating an elevated
control group responsibility for solving customer problems.
25% uplift in cross-sell already seen by We delivered large-scale events for approximately
200 people at a time, starting with managers. We
an outsourced offshore partner used new, engaging ideas, such as graffiti table cloths
and giant mind maps as part of the events, along with
Blue Sky were engaged by Virgin Media in early video content and questionnaires.
2015 to provide a sales and service transformation
programme for 5,000 of their onshore and offshore In any service transformation programme we
agents in Manilla and Bangalore. With an inconsistent design, Blue Sky appreciate that the simplicity of the
approach to managing performance and a desire messaging is crucial, especially when working with
to grow the business, the leadership team had a large, diverse populations.The messages were clear
number of objectives to deliver against; specifically and simple; be curious, notice more, be imaginative.
they were looking to raise the value in every customer These mindsets ran throughout the programme and
conversation through cross-selling, upselling and its collateral was designed around them.
reducing downspins to improve their overall service
experience. A coaching blitz to embed the new skills is now in
operation, supported by coaching cards designed by
As a client, they had experienced a lot of different Blue Sky, to help embed coaching techniques.
learning programmes, so wanted an approach that was
totally unique and offered fresh thinking - it needed to be
full of energy, high impact, brilliantly engaging, fun and funky.
 Ready to rock?
At Blue Sky we are passionate about people
development and changing behaviour to drive
The Old Malt House
results. We provide a combination of coaching,
33 The Street
consulting and training for senior leadership
Shalford
teams, first-line managers and front-line sales
Guildford
and service staff - all geared towards improving
Surrey
business performance.
GU4 8BU

t. +44 (0)1483 739400 Visit www.blue-sky.co.uk to discover how you can

e. [email protected] benefit from our approach and learn more about
the results we have achieved with our clients.
www.blue-sky.co.uk