Cross-channel

We wanted to do something different for our holiday this year, so we decided to go to Belgium and Luxembourg; which by the way, is an underrated holiday destination if you like castles and forests. Since we have a baby, we decided to drive there, to reduce the hassle. But how would this compare to our usual experience of taking the plane? I’ll use this case study to highlight some important components of the multichannel customer experience as we crossed the channel.

The booking process was pretty simple, and pretty much matched the process for booking a flight. The best part, however, was when we arrived at the ferry terminal in Dover. This is a classic case of a “moment of truth” – the customer is under stress, and the way customers are dealt with at times like this makes or breaks a customer experience.

We pulled straight off the motorway, through a well-organised and signposted road system. A good example of how the customer experience before the customer arrives into a company’s property is important. The Port Authority of Dover and the Highways Agency played their part in making this a good customer experience.

Next came the really clever bit. I’d like you to imagine the most efficient possible way you could process people onto a ferry, and I bet that the way P&O do it exceeds this.

We came to an arrangement of check-in booths with barriers, like motorway toll booths, and as we pulled up to the barrier, the man in the booth said “Mr Raistrick, how many people are travelling with you today?”. I was shocked and delighted. This was like arriving at the Ritz.

A camera at the gate, connected to a car number plate recognition system had matched the plate to the booking record, and appeared on the screen in the booth within a few seconds. This is the most important aspect of the multichannel customer experience – touchpoints between channels, and what makes or breaks this is whether the channel you’re using (in this case face to face) knows about the last channel you used to interact with the company (in this case web).

We were processed extremely rapidly, which was good for us, and good for P&O – a great example of how customer experience and cost-saving can go hand-in-hand. We were then given a lane number, which we hung on our reversing mirror, and drove through a well-organised system of hundreds of lanes, until we found ours.  A man checked the number on the mirror as we drove onto the ferry, increasing their efficiency and reducing delays.

Once on the ferry, the first thing which improved the customer experience was the usability of the navigation. We were on deck 5, and took the orange stairs, a fantastic cross-referencing system to allow us to find our car again.

The food and seating on ferry were, I must admit, nowhere near as good as what I’ve experienced on other ferries recently in Scotland, the Baltic and New Zealand, but then again, it was a lot cheaper too, so I didn’t necessarily expect this. A good example of how a company’s customer experience strategy can focus effort on those “moments of truth”, whilst not needing to improve the entire Customer Experience to maximise the RoI of Customer Experience investment.

Whilst on holiday, we decided to move our return date forward a day, so I logged onto the website, because this is much cheaper and easier than calling when you’re abroad. This was one moment of truth where I was disappointed – there was no way to change it online, and no information on how to do it either. I was wasting time – I wanted to be visiting castles, and here I was fishing around a website (or “some stupid website” as I no doubt referred to it at the time). At least the website had a phone number, so I called up, and they charged a nominal £10 fee to move the day. Stress over.

Customer service is often neglected as it is not seen as ‘critical path’, or is managed by a different team with a different budget. However, it is a key part of the customer experience, and relatively cheap improvements could make a lot of difference (and, in this case, reduce costs too, as channel shift from phone to web usually does).

When we returned from our holiday in Belgium, feeling suntanned (yes, suntanned!) and full of chocolate, we arrived at the port a bit early. Having driven quite a way, we were not in the mood for any hassle, but the same efficient booth greeted us, and we were booked onto the next available ferry hassle-free. The airlines could learn a thing or two from this high level of consistency between the way the customer is processed in different countries.

Not having to take the plane was a breath of fresh air. I didn’t have to stand in a line, take my shoes off, remove my laptop, deny myself access to liquids, have my retina scanned, or have my luggage rummaged. The airlines have no control over this, but it’s an important lesson in how third parties can make or break a customer experience. ‘Verified by Visa’ take note.

Although not perfect, my experience with P&O helped us to have the most relaxing holiday we’ve had in ages. A superb cross-channel customer experience.

This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com on 09/11/10 and is republished here with permission.

These days we live in an experience economy. Many organisations look to compete through some kind of service or product differentiated strategy rather than purely compete on price. But these days it’s a complex landscape, organisations have to work across multiple channels and deliver a joined up experience, across the web, the call centre, stores and other touch points. Consumers are no longer tolerant of organisations that don’t recognise them across these various touch points and are better equipped than ever before to drop something about it when things aren’t right. Read more…

London, UK, 5th November 2010

Customer preference for multi-channel customer experience is transforming big business in the UK

British businesses struggle in quest for “holy grail of single customer view”, as the number of brand touch-points on a customer’s journey continue to grow

More than two-thirds (69%) of UK businesses are just beginning to develop a multi-channel customer experience strategy, despite the increasing number of online and offline touch-points in a customer journey, according to research published today by Econsultancy and Foviance. Read more…

British companies are only now beginning to realise the importance of joined-up customer experience amid increased customer expectations and the growing number of touch-points on the customer’s interaction with a brand.

Behavioural experts in the field of Customer Experience, Foviance, analyse today’s consumers, who all expect businesses to have joined up channels. But they just aren’t providing the capability. In fact 69% of UK businesses say they are just beginning to develop their strategy.

Companies recognise the importance of the multi-channel customer experience but are typically failing to adopt a strategy or framework to enable a single customer view.

To download the whitepaper a valid e-mail address is required, however Foviance will not contact you unless you specifically request it.

A multi-channel world creates more routes for complaint about products and services every day. As each new platform evolves, so our avenues of complaint are broadening from purely manual actions to largely virtual ones.

It’s still possible to let our views be known manually through a letter or even face-to-face if we so desire. Most of us are perhaps more familiar with expressing opinions via electronic channels, such as telephone, fax, e-mail, forums or blogs. But now more people than ever before are also venting their spleens on digital or mobile platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, TripAdvisor –even FourSquare, Google Maps, and in the future on emerging applications such as augmented reality. Read more…

After having recently moved house, I decided to set up a new Internet connection. As I was already a mobile customer of theirs (which entitled me to a discount) I opted for an O2 broadband package. I wasn’t particularly pleased with the usability of the registration process on their website. I always get annoyed by small usability flaws and get even more angered when functionalities such as the address finder don’t work (O2, here is a hint for you). But what disappointed me was not so much the average user-friendliness of their site as, in the end, I managed to do what I wanted. What left me perplexed was their order follow-up strategy, which is in essence a very good concept that was poorly implemented. Read more…

The application (app) market is booming. The advent of the iPhone and its application concept just three years ago generated new ground for online revenues. Thanks to this development of the smartphone market and the emergence of app marketplaces such as Ovi (Nokia) and Android Market, the app business is at the exciting beginning of its story. Read more…

I have a friend Luke, who is a big gambler, big to me anyway as he’s happy to squander more than a month’s worth of wages over a weekend on horses, football and whatever else is happening at the time. He’s an alpha male, he’s loud, he can down a few pints and he enjoys life.

So when I think about my world of marketing, brand and user experience, I often look at him and consider that he is somewhat absolved from the matter, almost that he is not capable of being understood as an individual or won over as a customer on the grounds of such squandering. Read more…