Midlands CXPA Network Meeting - August 2020 Event Round Up

We’re emerging from a Pandemic, what happens next for CX? 

That was the questions we sought to answer at our inaugural Midlands Network CXPA meeting. Over 40 CX professionals joined our Zoom meeting, not only from the Midlands but from around the UK and as far as Australia. We enjoyed a plethora of insights, case studies and inspiring presentations in what was a lively and though provoking event for CX professionals.

InMoment’s Insight’s Director, Tracey Pankhurst kicked off the agenda with some valuable insights from a recent study on the organisational impact of COVID-19 across a variety of key UK industry sectors. The study sought to understand the impact of C19 and the level of optimism for future recovery. Reviewing sectors which have been heavily impacted like Hospitality, Travel, Automotive and Retail examples of responses were presented. InMoment’s observations across a wide spectrum of leading brands have shown that

“Crisis can often fuel innovation”

as they have witnessed many new digital channel developments emerge over the recent months. Tesco’s desire to monitor their VOC data more closely through the pandemic, with daily reporting was shared; they wanted to stay close to how their customers were feeling and respond to their needs and emerging pain points as nimbly as possible. 

The same study also looked at the organisational response to employee needs as well as customer needs. With a clear need to respond to ensuring employees feel they have job security, salary stability and their mental wellbeing is supported there’s a clear recognition that this has to be considered in an individual way and employees need to feel listened to.

Next we heard from Andrew Cushing, Customer Director for Jewson, the UK’s largest builder’s merchant. Andrew took us on their journey from the past 18months where they first up defined with clarity their purpose and values to drive their business, customer & colleague strategy forward. With a laser focus on improving their customer experience it was brilliant to hear how their CX design had been led from the frontline. A key success factor was appointing a Head of CX from within; finding someone who

“instinctively put customer and colleague first”.

Having mapped the key customer journeys to find the pain points they then went out to the frontline, to the Yard and branch colleagues to ask “What’s getting in the way?”. From that they found ways to automate, reduce or eliminate processes or jobs that would help create better experiences for customers. Then C19 landed. Overnight they had to close over 500 branches and assess their customer and colleague plans. The clear purpose and values they created 12month earlier became crucial in guiding their way forward. Although only a few branches which supported essential services stayed open, none of the branch managers were furloughed – instead they recognised the need to keep in touch with customers. Jewson made sure that they had a strong proactive customer communications plan in place to help customers understand the measures they were implementing and understood how trading was changing in response to C19. This was deemed a key factor in the results of a customer survey in May which showed “95% of customer felt safe” when trading with Jewson. In the same vein, the business was very proud of an 18pt uplift in their employee NPS during the pandemic.  Emerging from the pandemic, they are focusing on maintaining strong levels of communication with customers to mitigate and manage customer issues proactively.

Having heard about organisational sentiment emerging from C19 and then a live case study from Jewson the presenting baton fell to Sian Kerr from Watermelon Research. 

Sian presented the latest consumer perspective on C19 and where expectations now firmly sit. Throughout the pandemic Watermelon Research have been running a weekly and then fortnightly poll and tracker survey. The results have evolved and very clearly found a distinctive shift in what is important to consumers having come through a global pandemic. In a study pre-C19 Watermelon found that Personalisation (35%) was deemed as most important out of 5 Principles of Outstanding Experiences. The most recent assessment of the same five principles found that Personalisation has slipped from a share of 35% to just 10% whilst Integrity leaped from 15% to 30% and Resolution from 10% to 20% (Effort (25%) and Empathy (15%) remain stable). 

This shift shows that consumers now value more the brands that communicate with honesty and transparency, are treating employees fairly, are helpful and proactive in their customer service amongst other factors such as being ethical and using their brand voice for the good of social causes. 

Last but by no means least, we heard from international CX speaker Clare Muscutt who shared her pandemic journey which culminated in the evolution of Women In CX. Having always been a resolute champion and cheerleader of women and a self-proclaimed feminist; Clare used her time (which would ordinarily have been spent jet setting to international CX speaker gigs) to build a movement supporting Women in CX. From the creation of a lively and professional podcast with the support of Joakim Thorn, she is now in the final stages of testing the community platform to provide a space for Women in CX to support, inspire and collaborate with each other. Sign up to the weekly e-newsletter at https://womenincx.communityand join the community. 

We rounded off a packed agenda with some virtual breakout rooms to meet new faces and share current challenges. 

The feedback was super positive and the engagement from participants high including some great questions for our speakers. 

"Great event with really engaging content"

"Really good stimulating afternoon, nice to be away from BAU for an afternoon"

"Great session, so pleased I got to listen to Clare, a real inspiration".

The UK Midlands CXPA Network has now been born and with the support of our sponsors including Confirmit we’ll be putting on a regular calendar of events – if you’d like to hear about them first – sign up on the CXPA website here : https://www.cxpa.org/browse/communities/localnetwork?CommunityKey=5d701bd2-6817-4254-9c46-131ddd125dbe

If you’d like to support or get involved with the network in anyway – get in touch with Network Leader Hannah Foley hannah@yak-cx.co.uk / https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/hannah-foley/ , Naeem Arif https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/naeemarif/ or Rohilla Nasreen https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/rohilla-nasreen-19392393/