Episode 37: Small But Mighty - What Lessons Can SMBs Teach Us About CX? | With Swanny Henry

Full transcript:

Swanny Henry  00:00

Every company, at their level, should do this: getting as much data as possible to be able to use it and understand better who they are, to target them better, build a better product, build better marketing materials, a better customer support service, better training – better everything.

David Bain  00:21

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Hey, it’s David. What makes customer experience great, and what makes it not so good? And what can big companies learn from small companies about customer experience? That's what we're discussing today with a lady who has 12 years of experience in customer-centric roles, both in France and the UK. She has worked mostly in luxury and tech, and her main driver is the positive impact her work has on others. She is currently the Customer Journey Director at MySense.ai. A warm welcome to the Strategic Marketing Show, Swanny Henry.

Swanny Henry  01:11

Hello, David.

David Bain  01:12

Hey Swanny, thanks so much for joining us. You can find Swanny over at MySense.ai. So Swanny, what are the key elements that create great customer experience,

Swanny Henry  01:24

To me, customer experience connects the dots between all the elements of the customer journey. It really depends on the company and the strategy of the company.

If I use my experience in my current role as an example, we are a health tech company and it's a startup. My purpose is that we need to deploy the MySense product within peoples’ homes. Because nothing exists yet, I have to build a custom experience from scratch. I need to build something that works, that's basic, and that works – that strong foundation. So I need to understand what the key elements of the customer journey are, to be able to make it consistent and smooth – from the moment they hear about the product to the moment they stop using the product.

David Bain  02:24

So it sounds like, then, you have your ‘identified customer journey’ to begin with (which we actually just discussed in the previous episode) and you layer the experience that prospects have with your brand, with your content, on top of your customer journey in order to link up the various marketing channels. Would that be a reasonable way of describing it?

Swanny Henry  02:50

Yes, that's a reasonable way of describing it. I would add to this that it might not only be marketing; it might be customer support, it might be training, etc. What is our strategy and what are our pain points? And how can we fix and find solutions to these pain points? These solutions might be through marketing, it might be through training, it might be through customer support, and it can be through product as well. It's connecting all these dots.

David Bain  03:26

That is an absolutely wonderful point because I think that it's a bugbear of many marketers that they know that customers, or potential customers, have these interactions with your company – with customer service departments, with sales departments, and with product, as you say, as well – and that impacts whether or not they choose to do business with you, either as a first customer or a repeat customer as well. So it certainly has an impact on marketing success.

Maybe taking a slight detour on our initial topic here, how can marketers best encourage customer service teams and sales teams to work more closely with them, to have that joined-up customer experience?

Swanny Henry  04:11

That’s a good question. For customer experience, what will be very useful to marketers is getting insights, and I'm going to talk about assumptions. Our main issue is that we make a lot of assumptions in customer experience, and we need, as much as possible, to avoid them. To not have that many assumptions, marketers (not only marketers, but every team) should talk to each other to avoid these assumptions.

So a marketer who would need to create a document for, say, point of sale printing, would need to understand who the clients are. To be able to understand who the clients how they would need to talk to the sales team, and potentially have the opportunity to talk to the clients directly – to understand who they are, what they want, what their needs are, and what their requirements are, and not to assume who they are just because.

It's easy to make assumptions about things like, “Oh, I wouldn't do this. I wouldn't buy this product in the store, because I never go to that store.” The question is, “But are you the target of the product? Do you know what they want?” I would say that marketers need to go to sales teams as much as possible to get the information about, “Who is my target?” In the same way, sales teams need to go to marketers to explain to them who their clients are, so that they can get the tools and the marketing tools they need to be able to sell better.

David Bain  06:02

Okay, so essentially, to ensure that there's one view of who the customer is, across all the different departments in the business that happened to have direct interactions with that customer.

Swanny Henry  06:14

Yes. Yes, exactly. Ideally, I would say (and this is what we're trying to do as much as possible) we’re trying to shadow our users, clients, customers, etc., to see what it looks like for them and what their expectations, pain points, and difficulties are. Because it's the best way to understand how we can improve the product and how we can personalize our messaging for them.

David Bain  06:45

So you've worked in larger brands and you work for a smaller brand now (possibly a growing brand, possibly going to be a larger brand), but there are different sizes of companies out there. I think the way that people experience interactions with a brand, i.e. customer experience, can be different in smaller companies versus larger companies.

I'd like to explore what you feel is the same between larger companies and smaller companies, when it comes to considering best practice customer experience, and what is different. Shall we start off with what's the same first of all?

Swanny Henry  07:21

What’s the same? I would say, in terms of best practices, it’s: who is my target? Doing research to understand who your target is, build personas, segment your audience, and constantly refine it. Embed into your journey research initiatives like surveys or customer satisfaction surveys, for example, is a very simple and very useful one. Voice of Customer reports are very useful as well because you can better learn what their pain points are.

Every company, at their level, should do this: getting as much data as possible to be able to use it and understand better who they are, to target them better, build a better product, build better marketing materials, a better customer support service, better training – better everything.

David Bain  08:17

Okay. The other side of the question, the other side of the coin, is, what is a bit different between the way that great customer experience is delivered in large companies versus small ones?

Swanny Henry  08:31

I will base it on my experience, mostly. But I would say, in startups and small companies (and mostly in those I worked for and am working for), the customer experience, first, is a department. It's a function. We need to build the foundation of a customer journey and the customer experience. So we need something simple that works and that will be effortless for the customer. We just need something that works.

But, in a bigger company, they already have a customer experience customer journey. Maybe they don't name it like this, but it already exists, because they have a marketing department and they have a customer support department, they have a training department, etc. It's more about, “How can we improve it? How can we continuously improve it?”

Maybe they will create this function under the marketing department, which is quite common. When, in a small company, customer experience can start with customer experience. For example, customer marketing was in my team at some point, but we’re too small to have a marketing team, so we’re outsourcing it now. So we just have customer experience. I think that would be the main difference. In small companies, we need just the foundations and the basics at the beginning. In big companies, we need to wow. How can we create these ‘wow’ things? How can we marvel the customer?

David Bain  10:09

Recently, there has been a rapid technological evolution, and that seems to be speeding up. I would imagine that, sometimes, smaller companies embrace new technology a little bit more quickly than larger companies.

Is that the case? And if so, does that give, to certain degrees, some smaller companies a little bit more advantage over larger companies, when it comes to novel customer experiences?

Swanny Henry  10:42

I would say yes and no. Yes because – again, I'm going to give examples from the companies I worked for, because I worked for two tech startups. The product was innovative and, because the product was innovative, the audience was different and unknown. The experience was obviously different and unknown, so we needed to be innovative in the customer experience; we needed to define which channels we needed to use. In this way, it was different.

But, for bigger companies, they often have the budget. Maybe they need to adapt, and because they’re bigger they need time to operate this digital transformation. But they also have the budget to do it well. In small companies, we often rely on investments, and the budget can be tight. I'm not saying all companies, but it can be tight.

It might be longer and harder to operate this digital transformation, not only for us but, because it's an innovative product, we need to operate this digital transformation for our customers – and change is very hard for customers. They always want something new, and it's everyone. They always want something new; we always want something new. But when we have this new thing that we need to adapt and integrate into our daily life, it's not always easy. I think that would be the difference.

David Bain  12:27

Yes. I think there are a couple of different sides to that as well because, certainly, customers are always looking for new experiences. They have different changing expectations all the time. I.e., perhaps WhatsApp, now, is a preferred way of communicating for some industries, compared with perhaps what email has been in the past.

However, I would also say that some customers don't like change. They don't like change in terms of radical website redesigns. Where they once visited to get information or customer service has completely disappeared, and the way that you interact has disappeared as well.

How do you marry up that need, or desire, for new things and changes and improved experiences with making sure that the customers actually understand where things are?

Swanny Henry  13:24

Yes, that’s a very good question. How do we accompany and handhold the customer? That’s not very true, actually, because it depends on who the customer is. If this is a very tech-savvy customer (if our target is a very tech-savvy customer), maybe this person will want to investigate for themselves and dig into things and they will want to have very techie videos and content – and they will want to find information themselves. They won't want to use customer support.

But if we have vulnerable adults as an audience or maybe people who are not tech-savvy, they will just want to talk to people and they will need a lot of training. Maybe they will not be very interested in the product itself and the benefits that they will get from the product. Well, the approach will be very different because maybe we need to accompany them. Maybe we need to engage with them before they get the product installed – to explain and reassure them of what the product does. Maybe we'll need to install the product ourselves so that they don't have to bother with this task and we’re sure the product will be installed. Maybe we'll need, then, to engage them to make sure they’re confident and reassured after the installation of the product. The whole journey, and the whole approach, will be completely different depending on who our audience is and what the product is.

David Bain  15:01

How do you build great customer experience into a marketing strategy?

Swanny Henry  15:06

Building great customer experience into a marketing strategy? I'm sorry, I'm repeating myself, but first, understand who your customer is and what they want. Never assume anything. Never assume anything, however (I'm going to contradict myself in the same sentence), in small companies, contrary to the big companies, sometimes you don't have the data. You don't know who your audience is, exactly. You have an idea, but you don't know, and you have to assume some elements.

You always need to ask yourself; can I validate this assumption now? And, if I can validate it now, how do I do it? And if I can’t, how can I get the most accurate assumption now? Often, I build workshops with several teams in the company – like the finance team, marketing team, customer support, etc. – and we try to think, “What would my target audience do in this context?” To build the best experience, you start like this.

Then you map the existing journey, and you identify what doesn't help achieve your goal and what is not aligned with your company strategy. You identify these pain points and prioritize; what do I need to tackle now? What do I need to work on now? And what's my strategy? What’s my goal, and how do I find a solution for this? What's the best solution? And what's the simplest solution as well? I would say that simple is always the best solution. It needs to be simple for the customer. It needs to be simple for the company as well.

David Bain  17:05

I like the way started off by talking about the importance of validating assumptions. I think it's easy to have experienced marketing teams think that they know exactly what's going on in terms of the mindset of the customer. How do you go about validating an assumption?

Swanny Henry  17:21

You test it. I would say with data. There are so many ways of doing it. If you don't have any customers yet, for example, there are many ways you can try to validate it. It might not be accurate, but you can try.

If you're testing an app, for example, see, does it work? Is it intuitive? You can try and go to a coffee shop and ask people if they have two minutes to test it for you. It's random people, but at least it's spontaneous. They're not expecting it, they've never used it, and they will try to see if it's intuitive.

Otherwise, it depends on what you want to do, but I would do surveys, I would do interviews, and I would do focus groups. It takes time but, for some customers, it's actually very interesting to see how they are sometimes very interested in just participating and sharing. So it's always worth a try.

David Bain  18:25

You also believe that going the extra mile can be extremely worthwhile, and I believe that you've used a case study to talk about this in the past.

Swanny Henry  18:33

Yes. So I worked a little bit at Harrods and my background is in luxury. I really find the luxury industry, and customer experience in the luxury industry, fascinating because it looks like everything is possible. You always need to go the extra mile, and I wanted to talk about Harrods because this is Harrods’ motto. They're really trying to go the extra mile, and there are many things they're trying to do to achieve this.

Just some simple examples. For example, in the swimwear section (when was it? Five years ago.) they were spraying some coconut perfume just to immerse people into this beach feel – like they're on an island and people want to go on holiday. When you go from one department, one floor, to another, you have this different feel. This is going the extra mile. They also had this experience of a husband who bought a helicopter for his wife and asked Harrods to wrap it as a present for her. You can see it online. If you Google it, you can find the wrapped helicopter. It's going the extra mile, making the user, the customer, unique and feel like they’re exceptional. It’s luxury. Of course, it maybe raises questions, but it's what luxury is.

There's also another part of luxury that's interesting, and what is interesting at Harrods is: Harrods is a brand, and it has a lot of brands in it. Storytelling for a luxury maison, a luxury company, is critical because, often, luxury maisons have a history – a history of the founder and of the craftsmen. So, when you sell, you have this storytelling. You tell this story to make people dream and to have their eyes sparkle a little bit. And depending on the customer, on the shop floor, the impact is different.

You have customers who can afford the product and you have customers, at Harrods, who can't afford the product. This is what's incredible with Harrods, it’s that you have all types of customers. You have those who are here like they’re in a museum, visiting and discovering all these brands and trying to be immersed in this incredible experience. And you have those who are here to shop. When you tell the incredible story of the brand to the customer who can't afford it, they are usually so impressed, and their eyes are sparkling. It’s a world they don't know. It's actually the best part for me, telling the story to someone who has never heard it before and who’s not used to it, because it has such a great impact on them.

For them, and this is where Harrods was smart, they have their own brand – and their own brand can be afforded by everyone. So those who can't afford those luxury brands will go then to the Harrods brand floor (I can’t remember, the fifth floor maybe) and they will buy a souvenir of Harrods to remember this moment. So it won't be the luxury brand, but it will be the Harrods brand. I think it's just quite interesting how storytelling can have an impact on people, and on customers.

David Bain  22:26

That's great, a great example there. It sounds like the higher end of a brand that you are, the more luxurious of a brand you are, you have to ensure that you have that succinct story of your beginnings as a brand. And involve your prospects in that as much as you can to get them passionate about what it is that you do and the ‘Why?’ that your brand is heading towards. Joining the customer together to actually solve that challenge or take them along on that story will make them more likely to purchase from you.

Just finally, in relation to your first example there – the coconut scent on the bathing costumes – was there any way that Harrods could go about actually measuring the bottom-line impact of doing that? For instance, did they do a split test? Did they do one day, a department without any spray in, and one day with the spray in, to see what the different conversion rates, in terms of purchases, were?

Swanny Henry  23:31

Yeah, I would say that’s a good point, I think maybe A/B testing before the coconut spray and after the coconut spray? I don't know, maybe they had another scent before. Maybe they had, like, a seawater scent before, and which one is working better? But yeah, that's a good point: to measure. Because you can't measure this on social media, for example. All the Instagrammers, for example, couldn't post about this at all. You can't measure it that way.

David Bain  24:09

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, not necessarily thinking about what we've been discussing so far, what is the number one thing marketers need to incorporate into their strategy?

Swanny Henry  24:20

Not incorporating, but avoiding, I would say – and it goes with research. It's exactly what we mentioned earlier; it's avoiding assumptions. Trying to not assume anything and validate a hypothesis as much and as often as possible. Because, as we mentioned before, it's very easy.

I can give an example of one time when I assumed and had a big prejudice, but we learn from these mistakes, and the more mistakes we make, the less we're doing them. I was working in a tech company, and it was a very techie product, really, for a techie audience. I was working with New Zealand, and I was interviewing one of our volunteers who was using the product.

Our volunteers mostly either absolutely need the product, and they don't have a choice, and they're using it – or they're very tech savvy and they just use it because they love the technology. I was asking, “Oh, what's your hobby? What sports do you like?”, and because they were from New Zealand, my stupid assumption was that they loved rugby. It cannot be anything else. But actually, that was completely incorrect as they loved car racing and monster trucks because, actually, they loved the technology of these sports – which makes sense.

But I'm happy I asked this question because, for my marketing strategy, to be able to advertise our product, I knew that it wouldn't be during a rugby match on TV – when you have a TV ad that would advertise this product – but more, maybe, during Formula One on TV that I would advertise it.

Swanny Henry  26:26

Prejudices and assumptions and very easy to make. We have loads of them. We just need to try to be aware of them and avoid them.

David Bain  26:38

And perhaps even dive in to discover them, because I think there are many unknown or undiscovered self-prejudices that you have. So it's important to ask yourself that kind of question at important decisions, in terms of what you're doing with your customer journeys.

Swanny Henry  26:59

Yeah, we're so biased, in many ways. So yes, never assume anything – and always involve other teams because they have a different point of view. Finance can be brilliant. We often never think of the finance team, but they have such good insight, sometimes, and can be very helpful for customer experience.

David Bain  27:26

I've been your host, David Bain. You can find Swanny over at MySense.ai. Swanny, thanks so much for being on the Strategic Marketing Show.

Swanny Henry  27:33

Thank you very much, David.

David Bain  27:36

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