Customer Experience in Asia: Awesome or Gruesome?

AWESOME

GRUESOME

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE IN ASIA

OR

A CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT ASIA 2013 SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT

While there is no doubt that delivering great customer service is key to a company‟s

success, trying to put the necessary processes, infrastructure and, most importantly, people

to deliver on that goal is another matter. The famous Sam Walton, founder of Walmart,

currently the biggest company on the planet, wouldn‟t even stop at “best” when it comes to

customer service.

In Asia, customer experience management certainly has a room for improvement. While

Asians are known for their hospitality, delivering a “legendary” customer experience requires

a lot more. The advent of technology and social media even complicates the service delivery

of many companies as it can serve as a double-edged sword.

In this Special Supplement for Customer Experience Management Asia happening on 2-3

October 2013 in Singapore, we dived deeper into the issue and obtained revealing insights

from some of the top the companies that can speak eloquently about the subject of

customer experience.

Read on to find out how great customer service is linked to a company‟s profitability and

how Asian companies can build a genuine customer-centric organisation.

Darwin Jayson Mariano

IQPC Worldwide

“The goal, as a company, is to have customer service that is not just the best,

but legendary.” – Sam Walton, Founder of Walmart

In Asia, the human interaction needs continue to

be fairly large and ultimately, the level of service

depends on the last person on the block in the

customer-facing channels. - Ratan Kesh, HDFC Bank

To attend Customer Experience Management Asia 2013, email [email protected] or call +65 6722 9388

Customer Experience Trends for 2013 10


1 A knowledgeable representative and a timely response are the

most valuable components of a great service experience.

Hotels, online retailers, and banks provide the best customer

service experiences.

Live agent remains the preferred interaction type, followed by

email and then there is a significant drop to web chat, etc.

(this varies by age demographic)

Historical information access is deemed the most valuable

feature of an interaction.

Not being able to understand the agent is rated as the most

frustrating part of an interaction.

Customers are more willing to use social media to praise a

good service experience vs. complaining about a poor

experience.

Customers aren‟t willing to pay extra for higher level service.

The ability to get a scheduled call‐back was the most desired

mobile application functionality.

The most valuable technical service to offer customers is

“an easy way to provide feedback”.

Comprehensive reporting and analytics is the top feature

desired by contact center professionals.

2 3

4 5

6 7

8 9

10

Source: Interactive Intelligence Customer Experience Research Study 2013

Be the customer. Don’t lose sight of that,

and don’t step away from what your

customers live and breathe.

- Michael Mucci, eBay


ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION

BUILDING A CUSTOMER-

CENTRIC ORGANISATION

With the advancement in technology and liberalization of knowledge, the shifting

balance of power has never been more imminent. Today, consumers have the power to

literally, make or break an organization. Companies that are at the forefront of

providing a great customer experience are the ones who usually stay on top. How does

Asia fare in the field of customer experience management? How can technology

improve (or destroy) a company‟s customer service delivery? Four experts in the field of

customer experience management who will be speaking at the coming Customer

Experience Management Asia 2013 shared their insights on the matter.

Louise has deep experience in financial services

across sales, training, marketing, customer value

propositions, brand and strategy. She heads up

the Customer Experience team and works right

across the enterprise to engage the business in

the benefits of the customer-centred thinking and

design

Louise Long

Head of Customer Experience,

National Australia Bank

Michael Mucci

Sr. APAC Regional Business Analyst

eBay

Michael has three years‟ experience in the

customer services industry specializing in self-

service strategy for the APAC region. This is

supplemented with a background in reporting,

analytics and project management. His role now

includes support for eBay‟s global Mobile

experience locally in APAC.

HDFC Bank is the second largest Private Sector

Bank in India and Ratan‟s job entails framing and

executing Customer Service and Quality Strategy

for the bank. He leads a team of Lean Sigma

MBBs responsible to achieve Service Excellence

and to enable the bank in providing a wide range

of financial products and services to its 30 million

customers in a cost effective manner.

Ratan Kesh

Senior Vice President and Head of

Service Quality, HDFC Bank

Mr. Lutfi Al Shukaili

VP - Head of Business Excellence

Ajman Bank


Lutfi is responsible for positioning Ajman Bank as

a market leader in service quality across all

customer touch points by establishing, designing

and implementing Customer Experience

strategies and frameworks. Prior to this, he was

the Head of Service Quality and Performance

Development at Dubai Bank, responsible for

leading the bank to receive “Best Islamic and

Most Improved Bank Award”

Darwin Jayson Mariano: How does Asia compare

with more advanced regions like US or Europe in

the field of customer experience management? In

which areas do you think Asia needs some

improvement?

Louise Long: Answering on the basis of Australia

compared to US and Europe, I think that in some

respects we have a way to go in the way we

regard and design customer experience. We still

think of customer experience as the efficient

management of our services. That is a view that is

“inside-out” not “outside-in”. An organisation

focusing on customer experience may still be

thinking about how efficiently (i.e., fast, low cost)

they manage complaints, or call centres, and not

how, we can better design the services that our

customers use based on the needs they meet.

Lutfi Al Shukaili: Generally speaking, Asia has

been ahead of the pack when it comes to

customer service, the airlines industry being a

good case in point. However, it is difficult to

generalize as there are significant variations

between the countries that make up Asia, Europe,

and US and between the different business

sectors. Additionally, whereas Asia has led in

terms of the human elements of service delivery,

there have been a couple of innovative firms in

the US and Europe that have been creative in

terms of leveraging aesthetics and technology to

enhance the overall customer experience. The

focus in Asia should mainly be on the emerging

markets where customer expectations are

increasing.

Ratan Kesh: Asian people in general are very

hospitable, more sensitive to human feelings but

surprisingly the general level of customer service

is not up to the mark as is observed in the US.

This is primarily due to lack of technology

adoption in Asian companies. The tech platforms

are improving in Asia but the end to end

integrated and the integrated view of various

platforms is lacking. Other problem is that

customers, in general, in the US have adopted

technology in a big way, thus eliminating the need

for human interface, thus making it easier for the

service providers. In Asia, the human interaction

needs continue to be fairly large and ultimately,

the level of service depends on the last person on

the block in the customer facing channels.

Training needs are huge and due to higher level

of attrition, there are more challenges in Asia.

Europe is somewhat similar to US but it is

believed that human behaviour / intention to

service is lacking among the large cross-section

of people which makes the level of service poorer

to US and even Asia, in some sense.

Michael Mucci: I think that in the realm of

customer service, the Asian market is more

complex. You have a lot of diverse cultures which

geographically may be near each other but are far

from similar. One of the biggest obstacles from a

global standpoint is to recognise that and see

that the subtleties in handling customers in each

of those markets are very different. Customer

experience management in Asia absolutely needs

improvement. It is something that we are in the

process of undertaking, looking at the APAC

region not as a whole but at each of its market

levels and further beyond – e-commerce in

particular. We are in a retail business and retail is

a very domestic experience. To capture that

experience, you need to recognise these

differences.


The focus in Asia should mainly be on the

emerging markets where customer expectations

are increasing.

- Mr. Lutfi Al Shukaili, Ajman Bank


Darwin Jayson Mariano: Let‟s talk about today‟s

multi-channel environment. Do you think it

creates more challenges or more opportunities –

and why?

Louise Long: “Multi-channel” is a not a customer-

centric concept, and therefore creates challenges

if we continue to label it as such. If by the term we

mean, “answering the problem” – how do we

allow our customers to interact with us in multiple

ways, and still provide a consistently good

experience, that is remembered and integrated

when they next interact? – then it is a great

opportunity.

Lutfi Al Shukaili: Multi-channel environment

creates more challenges as customers become

more fragmented and it becomes less clear which

channels and technologies to invest in.

Technological change is rapid and can be difficult

for some organizations to keep up with. This

environment can be mitigated and converted into

an opportunity provided a company truly

understands its customer segments and has up-

to-date information on their channel usage trends

and preferences – but many times that is not the

case, as few companies tend to be so customer-

oriented.

Ratan Kesh: Multi-Channel environment creates

both challenges and opportunities. Challenges

because the pace of technology development is

huge and the public in general (read: customers)

are adopting technology in a big way quite easily.

Social Media is catching up very fast. However,

for service providers, it is not as easy to design/

develop and implement new technology to cope

up with the multi-channel development. This

creates a mismatch leading to perceived gap in

service for a section of customers. Conversely,

multi-channel is an opportunity because it helps

understand customer behaviour in a much more

comprehensive manner, thus product

development and testing becomes easier. The

outcome of a new product or service launch is

available instantly instead of waiting for a longer

cycle as it used to be in the earlier days. Multi-

channel environment also helps identify which

customer likes which channel and thus the

marketing and service efforts can be sharpened

rather than making those “carpet bombing”

activities and hoping for the best possible

outcome.

Michael Mucci: I think currently it creates more

challenges only because I have yet to see a

company fully pre-execute on a multi-channel

offering. However, I see tremendous potential

there I believe it will continue to have tremendous

potential. Mobile, iPad, and tablets are the new

things. However, with the pace of technology,

these things also might be obsolete in a few years

replaced by Google glasses etc.

Darwin Jayson Mariano: In your industry, has

social media been beneficial in improving

customer experience? What are important

lessons have you learned in dealing with social

media?

Louise Long: Social media has been embraced by

some but not all of the Australian banks. NAB

(National Australia Bank) has been deliberate in

its use of social media to communicate change to

our customers, share our community activities,

illicit customer feedback, as well as respond to

complaints. Social media is only one of the ways


Organisation should only become

active in social media if it is prepared

for a two-way conversation with its

customers.

- Louise Long, National Australia Bank


our customers can interact with us where they are

in control and we need to remember that. The

evolving psychology of complaining through social

media (“it‟s the only way to get a good result”) is a

good example. Lessons learnt include that an

organisation should only become active in social

media if it is prepared for a two-way conversation

with its customers.

Lutfi Al Shukaili: Social media has become an

open channel for customers to share their

experiences with their service providers;

organizations should use the information and the

feedback to further enhance their proposition and

overall experience.

Ratan Kesh: In Indian banking industry, the

customers in the urban areas have adopted

social media to share opinion about banks‟

products and services. Considering that large

percentage of the conversation in social media is

negative (sharing poor experiences), the banks

have very little choice but to have a social media

strategy. We found great value in engaging

customers through social media and creating a

positive impact about bank‟s brand, products and

services. Some of the lessons learned include:

• Social media should be to listen and resolve

customer issues rather than to market products.

• Speed of response is the key

• Avoid putting anonymous bloggers/characters

to say planted “good feedback” about brands.

Customers can figure it out easily causing further

damage to brands.

Michael Mucci: Definitely beneficial. Absolutely!

As for the lessons learned, we haven‟t had any

detrimental and/or negative impact but we are

learning there is a lot of power in social media

and in spreading the word through online

mediums. The fear that most people seem to

have is quickly outweighed by loyal customers

defending the company – and we are seeing that

with ebay. It‟s a bit of a leap of faith.

Darwin Jayson Mariano: What‟s the best

“customer experience management” advice can

you give to other organisations out there?

Louise Long: Think about the values of the

company – does its DNA reflect a genuine desire

to create business value whilst doing the right

thing for the customer? How is that reflected in

its competitive strategies?

Do not try and „own‟ the customer experience in

an organisation – everyone who works for the

organisation owns it. Customer experience (or

customer-centricity) is a competency that needs

to be built into the culture, into the fabric of the

organisation; not another silo or function to be

managed.

Do try to improve the organisation‟s way of

working by considering the customer first – for

better, sustainable outcomes. Do think about

how it can achieve the same business value (and

improve it) by creating customer value as well.

Lutfi Al Shukaili: Understand and deliver what

your customers need. Customer experience

needs a solid foundation to grow and can only

truly flourish in an environment where the internal

customer (i.e. employee experience) is given

significant importance and attention. Attempts to


patch a poor external customer experience

without building a vibrant and positive

organizational culture where your employees feel

happy, secure, and inspired will only lead to short-

lived and limited gains.

Ratan Kesh: 1) Organisational structure for

customer experience management team plays a

critical role. It should have integrated umbrella

platform to: a) capture voice of customers

(through complaints handling team); b) Audit of

Services across customer facing channels and; c)

Business Process Improvement (BPI) team.

2) Never put target to reduce customer

complaints

3) “Managing the Tail” i.e handling the last 0.1%

exception is key to moving from Good to Great.

99.9% will be great experience but the last 0.1%

can cause tremendous damage to brand image

due to multi-channel environment and social

media platform.

Michael Mucci: Be the customer. Don‟t lose sight

of that, and don‟t step away from what your

customers live and breathe. The moment you do

that, that will be the moment your solutions will

be disconnected from what your customers want.

It‟s really about doing what the customer does.

BONUS VIDEO:

Real Customers‟

Experiences – the good,

the bad, the best

Click to watch the

4-minute video


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvSiX7XXbSk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvSiX7XXbSk

KEY THEMES COVERED AT CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT ASIA 2013 Building customer centric organizations and using them to drive business Excellence in branding and customer experience across various customer touch points Implementing a holistic customer experience management framework Capitalising on data analytics and big data

Building a customer-centric organization in today’s multi-channel environment to gain competitive advantage

www.customerexperienceasia.com

To attend Customer Experience Management Asia 2013 happening on 2-3 October in Singapore, call +65 6722 9388 or email [email protected]

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Customer Experience in Asia: Awesome or Gruesome?

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