Customer Excellence: Simple but not Easy (Part 2)

On Friday I shared the first half of the inspirational experience I had at the national Net Promoter Score (NPS) event presented by N3w Strategy on the topic “Development and Retention of Customer Excellence: Simple but not Easy”.

Experience Sessions

The morning session was characterised by presentations from experts on the importance of making not only our customers and their needs our first priority, but also to tap into the energy and potential of our employees so that their authentic passion will be the fire that ignites the heart of the customer to move from passive satisfied customer to loyal co-promoter of the brand.

After a scrumptious lunch, which gave opportunity for delegates to meet each other and share experiences, two rounds of workshops (called experience sessions) were held. It involved delegates attending two out of four possible sessions with the customer relations experts at each of four large companies: Philips Healthcare, Univé, XS4ALL and Toyota. Each presented a particular customer excellence problem to the group. Delegates were then to team up and in their teams devise a solution to be presented to the experts, after which the team in each session with the best solution would be rewarded with an invitation to visit the particular company for a best practice masterclass.

I picked out Philips and Toyota, although I found it a pity not to be able to attend them all!

Philips Healthcare: Fight for Delight

In the first session, Arne van de Wijdeven, Director Customer Experience & Customer Advocacy from Philips Healthcare shared a challenge that he faced in the business unit specialising in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology, namely how to increase the passion for the needs of the customer (radiologists who use these highly complex machines) among the technical experts who design and build it. He also wanted to convince his co-directors of the need to go beyond good design towards an even more user-friendly interface that will ultimately also serve the end client, i.e. the patient, better. Philips’ vision is to have improved the lives of three billion people worldwide by 2025.

Teams were given time to discuss and devise a solution. Thereafter a representative from each team could present its solution to the group. Most presentations shared some common themes, including creating opportunities for direct contact and dialogue between the technical staff and radiologists, as well as inviting the directors to hospitals to observe radiologists at work and to receive their feedback (and even undergo a scan). Some presentations very competently also addressed the effect of such solutions not only on the customer experience, but also on the company’s vision and their bottom line.

Toyota: Making NPS Sustainable

The second session I attended was presented by Lex van den Elsen, Manager Dealer Development at Toyota importer, Louwman & Parqui. He shared the great extent to, and many ways in, which NPS has been implemented with great success at Toyota, including a whole host of initiatives through which Toyota dealers across the Netherlands are being encouraged to tap into and become passionate about meeting the needs of their customers. Yet it seems that NPS still somehow isn’t quite internalised by every dealer, resulting in satisfied, but not necessarily loyal customers. His question was how they as a head office could make NPS sustainable throughout the business, i.e. in every dealership, resulting in continuously improved customer loyalty?

 Teams presenting their solutions came up with fairly supportive suggestions, however our team were in agreement that the amount of initiatives he shared were so overwhelming that it gave the impression of a top-down approach. Our answer to his question therefore was: They can’t! Until a position of equivalence (being of equal or same value) is not taken in by head office, dealers will not feel acknowledged for the strength, experience, motivation and insight they already have. Until ownership for decisions regarding NPS is not actually entrusted to the dealers, they will not feel motivated to take on that ownership and discover their own passion for the customer – and from there devise and implement their own NPS strategies. For NPS to be authentic to the end customer, it needs to be authentic to the dealer. And authenticity requires asking the right questions to discover what dealers really need. And then to listen well. And then to support them in their needs while they discover the benefits of NPS for themselves, because they want to and not because they feel they should.

Winners of the respective masterclasses were to be announced at the end of the day.

NPS Presentation: Nationale Nederlanden

After completion of the experience sessions, Jaap Wilms, Programme Manager for NPS at Nationale Nederlanden insurance company, took the stage and shared what his company has done in just one year since implementing NPS. In a fun, creative and enthusiastic presentation he shared eight tips for NPS implementers, which have assisted in the successes he has achieved with the programme thus far. These included in brief:

1.       Standing on the soap box and sharing your story

2.       Passionately practicing what you are preaching

3.       Focusing on bringing the top and bottom of the company on board first

4.       Stimulating a sense of competition regarding NPS

5.       Creating a buzz and ensuring NPS is talked about by everyone

6.       Dropping catch phrases at every opportunity

7.       Authenticity, authenticity, authenticity

8.       Finally filling up the puzzle by including the middle layers

A Musical State of Wonder

The day was beautifully concluded by pianist Daria van den Bercken, winner of the Amsterdam Prize in 2012, who once discovered her passion for the music of Handel and wanted to share it with as many people as possible. This led her to find creative ways of bringing his music to the people – from playing her piano while being suspended from a crane above a busy town square, to letting people listen to his music on a headphone and recording their diverse reactions on how they experienced it. She then continued to wow us with a few beautiful pieces of music, leaving a lasting impression of the power of passion in order to move people from passives to promoters.

And the Winner is…

Apart from the state of wonder that this day left has me with, I was also most proud of our second team’s achievement of having won a masterclass with Toyota, based on the advice provided from within the ideas of Coaching Leadership. I am now more convinced than ever that there is no better way than Coaching Leadership to bring out the best in people.