Inspirational Keynote Speaker on Customer Experience & Winning Loyalty | Top 50 Global CX Influencer | MC | CX Advisor | Non Executive Director | Trustee | Former Chief Customer Officer |
Did you hear the one about the airline that sent an NPS survey to a customer who had their flight they cancelled? True story. Every day, customers are let down by broken processes, poor journey design, and data silos that don't speak to each other. Here's what went down. A friend had their flight home cancelled and was left stranded in a foreign land. They were directed to customer service, like many others in this situation. After frustrating hours trying to reach customer service, my friend vowed, "Never again with this f****ing airline!" Later that day, his phone pinged with an email from the airline. Had he given up hope too soon? Was this good news? Nope. It was a satisfaction survey asking about his experience of his flight. ????♂? "How likely are you to recommend us?" they asked. I won't share what he wrote. This isn't a one off. Part of the problem lies in teams set up and managed in silos. Leaders are drilled to see things through the lens of their function, not the customer, lacking awareness of the impacts around them. This is where great CX functions come into their own. Don't confine them to just talking about NPS and CSAT. Unleash them into your business. They view the business as an ecosystem and can help you discover these blind spots before your customers do, if you let them. What’s your experience with broken customer journeys?
Brian Larsen
6 个月
I don't know. If you're going to have NPS as a barometer, better that you are sampling everyone. Like, that's the point right? Gather feedback when things go wrong too, to inform the business? Is this just an NPS is a bad metric take?
David Hoar
6 个月
Siloed?and automated processes—these things are inevitable. A batch list of direct-paying passengers is sent to the email engine x hours after their flight is scheduled to land. There's no old-school data management to 'exclude' passengers who have been disrupted from this list, partly due to operational and marketing/comms systems being hard to reconcile. Once you are in the flying tube, you are on a manifest and in a despatch system. The cost of bridging these two Worlds has been reviewed by most IT teams and deemed too expensive and complex, and hence parked.
Samuel Wills
5 个月
On the other side, this reminds me of a Eurostar journey I had which was delayed for 3hrs as we sat outside Paris after hitting a deer. By the time we pulled into the station I had already received an apology email with 3 clear options for compensation. This was then swiftly followed by a further email acknowledging the delay and asking how they could of improved the service on board as we waited. A bit like the recent Singapore airlines response. Never underestimate the power of service recovery for differentiating customer experiences, Learning opportunities and snatching victory from the jaws of defeat!
Kerry Sudale
6 个月
Well, at least they aren't just asking those who had a great experience I guess ??
My take is that NPS was immaterial to this situation. Experiences are had whether you measure them or not. In this case, the airline was measuring, and that specific customer was the victim of a canceled flight. This is an experience the airline should be measuring and should want to know about and act upon. The survey was not the problem. The main problem was customer service and the frustration the customer had to go through to get resolution (and get home safely). The fact that they used NPS as the metric says something a bit more disturbing to me. Someone thought that NPS should be included in a transactional survey. Not such a clever idea and Fred Reichheld might agree. NPS was misplaced (misused) in this case which further angered the customer. The customer might be thinking, "Recommend you? No, I want to SCREAM at you." The survey itself wasn't the issue here in my opinion. The process worked as intended and as designed. It uncovered an upset customer that the airline should have then demonstrated how good they are at service recovery - acknowledge, empathize, and resolve - as ? Shep Hyken recommends. The fact that they used NPS in the survey suggests something different. That indicates they have a metric fixation.
Scott Gilbey
6 个月
Let's not assume the survey is related to the actual travel. As CX people, we need to know the detail to have credibility when we complain and/or suggest improvements. It is likely the survey was scheduled well in advance, or triggered by a standard event, such as an arrival at the destination, or at the time of arrival as originally booked, or by a monetary transaction such as clearing a credit card payment previously on hold. As a CX advisor, I'd like to know from the survey sender: 1--> how did you decide to send a survey at this time? 2--> what did you hope to learn? 3--> are you in marketing or ops? 4--> did you already know the customer was pissed? 5--> can you, or do you even want to, follow up? 6--> if you were the customer, what would you do?
Alfred John Seni
6 个月
I thought I was just one of the few who had this kind of experience. Our flight was delayed, and airline was not even trying to make things right, we were completely ignored( not even apologies or updates were given). Next day I received the email asking me to give feeback. That disconnect I find it to be shocking the least. If you are not going to make any effort to care for the customer, why would you ask for feedback? Why would you even want to find an NPS score for that matter?
Alyssa Hurd
6 个月
Personally, I would love to ban the NPS. It's tired and over used but executives fixate on it and think it is the ONLY data point. It's A data point...just one of many that tell the CX story. NPS surveys are so easily manipulated.
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6 个月It is SHOCKING how disconnected Ops and CX can be at companies. Companies MUST realize that good experience design REQUIRES good process And oh how I wish I could read your friend's responses. I can only imagine...