From antique stalls to IT: Why customer experience is timeless

The term ‘customer experience’ has risen to prominence with the digitisation of services, particularly in the increasingly competitive and complex banking and telecommunications sectors. But in reality, customer experience is much more than a strategy to navigate a competitive landscape and digital disruption. It has to be the absolute central cog in a business, with everything else – from product sets, to go-to-market strategies – designed around it. By Lee James, CTO, EMEA at Rackspace.

Sunday, 31st May 2020 Posted 4 years ago in by Phil Alsop

This notion of customer centricity harks back to the spirit of traditional shop fronts and market stalls, where the guiding principle was about identifying a customer need and fulfilling it. In today’s age of metrics and customer relationship management (CRM) systems, it’s easy to become focused on qualifying absolutely everything when it comes to customer experience. But this shouldn’t be the case.

Antiquing to IT

Growing up working alongside my parents on their antiques stall, it was about having a variety of choice for customers – from wardrobes to grandfather clocks. Some customers would come knowing exactly what they wanted, but many had nothing specific in mind. Over the years I’ve realised that many of these early learnings also apply to IT services. With a diverse range of challenges and opportunities facing businesses today, customer experience in IT services is about listening and identifying a customer need, then having the breadth of offering to design a tailored solution.

Here are three timeless winning approaches to customer experience.

Work with the customer

With digital transformation, it can often feel like something is being done to you rather than with you. It is important to work with the customer so you both completely understand what they are looking to get out of the transformation. A service provider should be an extension of an organisation’s team as opposed to an outside force coming in, changing the way they operate. It becomes easier to secure buy-in and support if the transformation is presented as something that will be actively achieved together.

Personalise the customer experience

Organisations are facing a range of diverse challenges and opportunities that has changed the customer and vendor relationship. IT leaders are increasingly looking for guidance on the best IT implementations to drive a specific business outcome, rather than going out to purchase a specific solution. As a result, trust plays an even more critical role in this relationship. IT leaders must trust they are being provided with the best guidance in implementing new technologies to meet their business goals.

This responsibility rests on the shoulders of the service provider. IT leaders should be provided with the option to select and combine services to build customised solutions that meet their unique business and project requirements. No two cloud journeys are the same, and digital solutions must be built around each customer’s needs with an unbiased approach.

Bring your whole self to work

We must not forget an integral part of the customer experience: the team working to deliver the customer’s goals. Promoting a company culture which celebrates and encourages individuality fosters a conducive working environment leading to higher productivity. By encouraging staff to be the same at work as they are in their personal lives you recognise them as people. This is an approach they can use to build meaningful relationships with customers.

Working with the customer as a ‘person’ could be as simple as offering a gesture of goodwill. This can go a long way in terms of building a relationship that is friendly, trusting, and transparent. An excellent example of this was shown by a Rackspace employee when conducting updates to a customer’s IT system. Though this unexpected maintenance meant that the customer would miss their family dinner, this was a situation quickly rectified by the Racker who sent a pizza delivery directly to the customer’s desk whilst they waited. This small gesture demonstrates how organisations can easily step away from their corporate ‘front’ to conduct a meaningful interaction.

People buy from people. The traditional approach to customer experience – connecting and listening to people – still wins out. When we talk about customer experience, we should remember that is not a strategy to be implemented or a business target to hit, but a meaningful way of connecting with those around us.