www.empathica.com
Successful Global
Customer Experience
Programme
Well-established brands seeking growth increasingly seek expansion into international markets. As the company orients around the expanded operations, key questions emerge in how to best put the customer at the heart of the business in widely different markets and ensure global consistency while addressing local customer needs.
Growth of Multi-Market
Customer Experience Management (CEM)
Organising around a multi-market, multi-cultural delivery of a brand experience is a multi-faceted challenge. The specifics that define great customer experience vary by country, but universally, when customers experience good service, they increasingly return and become brand loyal. Consistently delivering those great experiences is a huge competitive advantage in emerging markets and a key differentiator in mature markets.
In some countries the concept of ‘customer service’ is a new idea – and being asked to give your opinion, even newer. And for markets who will be using CEM for the first time, it can be scary to hear directly from their customers. They may not like what they will hear.
Countries are at different points in their CEM journey. Some still use mystery shopping and / or paper-based surveys; some have leaped that stage directly to full scale CEM, whilst others have yet to begin to focus on the customer experience at all. Some markets have taken advantage of the newest technologies, seeking customer feedback via tablet and Near Field Communication and QR codes, while others have only ever received feedback via pen and paper.
To design a CEM programme that can provide global insight into key performance areas and drive business performance improvement is a massive - and exhilarating - challenge.
Empathica design and deliver global CEM programmes for some of the biggest global brands, including Starbucks and Levi’s, in over 50 countries. In developing those programmes, we have identified core elements of successful global CEM programmes that drive business improvement and customer loyalty. The purpose of this paper is to highlight lessons learned over a decade spent rolling out CEM programmes around the world.
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Top 10 Tips For a Successful Global CEM Programme
The business has sorted the supply chain challenges, adapted the marketing and merchandise to the local market and initiated a customer experience focus. So...how do you capture how well and how consistently you are delivering those experiences?
Recognise That Global Brands are Delivered Locally
Even if the brand is global in its appeal, customers experience that brand differently. Service expectations between cultures and markets are different; delivery of that experience differs, too. Behaviour standards that may make sense in head office may be ineffective (or even insulting) in other markets. For example, people around the world like to feel welcomed, but what form should that welcome take? Mandating an American-style hearty hello to dining guests as they enter a restaurant might feel forced and inappropriate in other, more restrained countries.
While businesses have improved dramatically in adapting their food and merchandise offerings to local preferences, the focus on adapting the service experience has often lagged behind.
It is crucial to listen to the local markets and their expectations, because even the best locally-adapted product can be damaged if delivered in context of a poor overall experience. And that impacts the global brand.
Build the Optimal Programme you can
Under the Opportunities and Challenges of Each Market
To manage a business globally, being able to compare performance across locations and countries is crucial. But some businesses make a mistake in trying to make things the same that should not be. In global CEM, there are multiple layers of challenges.
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Technology challenges - like those noted above can be tricky - for example, just because some markets may not be ready for a web-based survey methodology does not mean that no markets should move forward with it.Behaviour standards that may make sense in head office
may be ineffective (or even insulting) in other markets. For example, people around the world like to feel welcomed,
but what form should that welcome take? Mandating an
American-style hearty hello to dining guests as they enter a restaurant might feel forced and inappropriate in other,
more restrained countries.
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Service challenges - in markets where the business focus on customer experience is new, coaching managers to deliver a consistent level of experience is diffi cult; helping front line staff see the value of consistently engaging their customers is even more daunting.•
Cultural challenges - in markets where people have not previously had the freedom or the cultural impetus to express their preferences, it can be a challenge to drive responses. Ten years ago, when implementing the fi rst CEM programmes in Asia, clients repeatedly said that ‘no one will respond. They’ve never been asked to provide their opinion – and are too reserved to make their opinions known.’ In reality, CEM programmes have thrived in Asian markets when they have provided a culturally appropriate continued engagement with the brand: It is a mark of respect to appreciate your customers and ask for their insight.At Empathica, we assess market readiness carefully in designing a global programme and it’s not just the technology preparedness that drives the decision. Markets are in different phases of their CEM journey. Some markets are innovators and eager to be early adopters. Some markets may need to see the programme’s value proven within the business, somewhere other than the home or Head Offi ce market. What is crucial to the programme design is to understand what drives successful adoption within the particular brand’s business and build on the type of introduction that works in that business.
Design the Global Programme to be Culturally Relevant and Functionally Equivalent Across Markets
Customer-facing programme design needs to be as sensitive to local markets as the service delivery is: the method of invitation and the incentive for participation offered are crucial components in engaging each market. There is a continuous need to balance methodological consistency with practical execution. One way to maximise the programme’s consistency is to strive for functional equivalency: i.e., keep to a core design that ‘fl exes’ to respond to local market requirements.
In order to manage business globally, comparisons across markets have to be meaningful. Research-driven global insights and measurement of global progress require a consistent framework to assess change. In order to provide that consistent core, we design multi-market programmes to be ‘functionally equivalent’ because sometimes the best of intentions can go bad!
Consistent research methodology would require that all markets use the same incentive for participation. But what might encourage customer engagement in one market might drive discomfort in another. For example, in an early casual dining CEM programme introduced in Taiwan, the incentive was the existing United States offer: Buy One Dinner, Get One Free. That incentive was considered a strong inducement to participate and worked exceptionally well in the US to encourage participation. In Taiwan, however, there was very low uptake of the offer. Discussion with the market team led to quick identifi cation of the issue: it was uncomfortable and potentially rude to host a companion for a meal, and then redeem the offer in front of them. There was concern that the guest might feel diminished, perhaps that they had only been invited because the guest’s meal was free.
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The incentive was changed to a free shared appetiser and engagement improved dramatically. Even though the appetiser incentive was actually of less ‘value’ than the full dinner, it was a shared event that did not single out an individual guest. For both cultural and practical reasons, a change in incentive worked very well.
Because the offer was still ‘functionally equivalent’ (it was a generous offer of product), it helped to maintain programme consistency. If one market offers £1 off the customer’s next purchase, while another offers a free meal, changes in participation and response are harder to compare. To maintain cultural relevance, you may need to adjust the programme design when necessary. In those cases, offering a similar, but not necessarily identical, incentive can help the programme thrive.
Realise that Translations are Just the Start
Don’t just translate the right words, use the right tone: Everyone works hard to avoid the ‘bad translation’ meme that roars through social media. And it is essential to engage your customers in the language of the location – in tone and language. It’s not just getting a word-for-word translation of an invitation or a survey, one must consider the tone (e.g., is a more formal use of honorifi cs the right tone for your brand in Japan or is your brand casual and breezy and customers more comfortable with a less formal approach?)
Measure on the right scales: In global market research, there is much discussion of appropriate use of measurement scales. The cultural impact on scoring patterns is a much researched topic and one of subtle complexity. On a 5-point scale – with 5 being the best score, does a 4 mean the same thing in Germany and Japan and Mexico? And even if the performance assessment were equivalent (though research suggests it is not), is it interpreted the same way?
German schools use a rating system in which a 1 is best score; but a score of 5? That would be near failing. Asking German customers to rate on the same scale pattern would challenge interpretation of the common experience. It’s just as easy to invert the scale in the markets like Germany for whom a 1 is the highest performance. It’s knowing where changes like that need to happen that is crucial.
Market and cultural differences in relative ‘hard’ or ‘easy’ ratings complicates use of American-designed indices, such as the Net Promoter Score. Customers in some markets would be shocked that their scores of an 8 (on a zero to 10-point scale) are not considered Promoters. There is wide variance in how customers in different markets rate great service; it is important not to assign meaning that they do not agree with.
Remember It’s Not About the Number,
It’s About Continuously Improving the Experience
Once you’re using the right scales, how do you drive improvement? Many businesses want to set a single, global target: for example: every market is expected to achieve a 70% on Overall Satisfaction.
But the reality is that goal may be simply out of reach for markets that are ‘hard raters’. In fact, an Overall Satisfaction score of 65% may be much harder to attain in Germany than a 75% is in Italy. What makes for a meaningful goal?
The meaningful comparison typically is not the score but the improvement ratio. By targeting a level of improvement (e.g., all markets are expected to improve 6 percentage points in the next fi scal year or to outperform the local competitive set), each market can identify ways to drive their improvement within the relevant context. And the challenge is a consistent one: globally, it’s hard to deliver consistent improvement; in some countries, it is easier to deliver a score.
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As part of that drive for consistent improvement, it is not enough to report scores. It is essential to support in-market teams with action-planning tools.
And remember, the language of the reporting system needs to be the language of the teams that are required to deliver that improvement. In some countries, upper management speak English – but do not necessarily speak fluently the primary languages of that country. Remember that location managers are often fluent in languages other than what the corporate executives speak. In many Middle Eastern countries, for example, Quick Serve Restaurant managers are often not from the region and are not native Arabic speakers. Delivering their reporting and action planning in Arabic may not support the managers effectively; it must be delivered in the language of the people driving the business on the ground.
Engage the People Closest to Your Customers in Launching the Programme
In order to implement a global CEM programme effectively, the business must recognise what level of customer feedback experience the market has. While pre-launch communications and training support are essential in all markets, for those where hearing directly from the customers is a new experience, that communication needs to be more intensive and more explicit.
Many locations have only known negative attention on service - they hear when someone has had a poor experience. But the opportunity for learning from positive customer feedback is a new (and perhaps not entirely trusted) experience. It is essential that the business is transparent about its expectations for the CEM programme – how it will be used and the benefits it will deliver. For many markets, allowing customers to tell the business specifically how they feel can be seen as a threat to managers’ control. It is essential for location managers to ‘own’ their local customers and their local customer experience.
If the CEM programme is to be a component of the management bonuses, that transparency is even more essential. Restaurant and Store teams need to understand from the beginning what the customer experience feedback represents and how the programme can help to improve the experience.
Interpret Feedback in the Relevant Context
The programme is up and running...customers and store/restaurant teams are engaged. Now what do the scores actually mean?
In addition to the caveats around score interpretation (see Tip #5), data-driven insights must be locally grounded in order to be meaningful. Far too often, global programmes are set up centrally and key local components are missed, leading to substantial understanding and inaccurate assumptions.
For example, for many retail and restaurant businesses there is a substantial challenge in delivering effectively on weekends versus on weekdays. Staffing, customer traffic and footfall are all impacted differently by the flow of business on a weekend versus a weekday. Many CEM programmes are designed to look at that feedback on those different parts of the week to identify opportunities for improvement. And that is a great idea. Unless you have defined the weekend as Saturday and Sunday and apply that definition globally. In many places in the world, the ‘weekend’ is actually Friday/Saturday – or, in some places, Thursday/Friday.
If your programme auto-defines ‘weekends’ and does not adjust for different market definitions, the insights generated are deeply flawed.
Strategic opportunities are often missed in analysis around massively different holiday spending patterns. Not all markets celebrate Christmas. And not all markets that do celebrate Christmas start the holiday season the day after the American Thanksgiving. But far too often, analyses of trends are centrally held and those conducting the research miss real insight into market performance. The country level is only the first layer of cultural relevance; markets – at the regional or even city level - can vary dramatically within countries. This focus on market relevancy is core to Empathica’s engagement in global CEM and that knowledge and insight a key piece of what we deliver to our clients’ global CEM programmes.
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Target Opportunities that Most Impact Your Customers and Share Best Practices to Improve
Once the programme is effectively launched and teams wholly engaged, how can you drive that continuous improvement businesses seek? A key component of an effective CEM programme is the use of an action-planning tool that focuses effort on the areas that mean the most to your customers. This focus is an area that Empathica helps brands to define. We work to assure these focus areas are analytically derived, experience honed and strategically relevant.
And once managers know how they are currently performing on those key focus areas, they will want to know how to improve. Social sharing of best practices that work within your business - within your market - is a huge benefit to rapidly improving performance. Empathica LocalTM is one tool that provides that platform
to see how other managers have effectively overcome challenges and removed barriers to improved performance.
Engage with Your Customers and Continue to Listen to Them
A core element of Empathica’s CEM offering is the use of Customer WOWs and Rescues. Far too often, customer feedback has historically meant customer complaints. And managers and store/restaurant teams can be wary of ‘more feedback.’ But the crucial difference is that typically 80% of your customers are actually having pretty good experiences – and often your staff are making a positive difference in your customers’ days. The problem is that staff rarely hear about those great experiences – and unfortunately they almost always hear about the (much rarer) bad experience.
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It’s important to make it easy for your customers to share those great moments – and we share those comments directly with your store/restaurant teams. That recognition of great work supports your teams’ continued positive engagement with customers and with your brand. It’s often a new experience for front line staff to see specific recognition from their customers and it’s a positive inducement to continue to deliver that great service.
And when your customers say they had a great experience and are highly likely to recommend your brand, we make it easy for them to do exactly that: Empathica’s unique, patented GoRecommend social media advocacy platform allows your customers to broadcast their good experience to their social media world via, for example, Facebook, Twitter, VK.com or email. And the good news travels fast! GoRecommend has delivered over 1.5 million brand recommendations to over 180 million potential customers in the past 3 years.
Celebrate Success at Each Stage
It’s true that people will do what gets measured, but they will repeat what gets rewarded. At each stage of the global CEM introduction, there are opportunities to recognise and reward engagement. Establishing a positive cycle of engagement early on brings huge benefits, including building trust within the business. Hearing directly from customers and guests is a very new experience in many countries. It can be, frankly, quite scary. And many employees have had minimal experience with positive approaches to service delivery (they will have heard from their superiors on flaws, mistakes and upset customers – but very little else!). Programmes such as these provide a new channel for positive engagement with staff. For the first time, customers can easily provide feedback on what went right and staff can hear how much of what they are currently delivering is on making customers happy.
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From the initial introduction, store and restaurant teams can celebrate early accomplishments:
Generating a robust number of monthly responses. Receiving their first customer WOW. Reading the social media comments their delighted customers are posting. And, of course, hitting their performance improvement targets.
Celebrating performance lets teams know that their efforts are recognised and encourages repeating that good behaviour. There is a wealth of good news in these programmes; successful programmes celebrate that news with the people they most rely on to deliver great customer experiences: the store/restaurant staff.
Summary:
Designing effective global CEM programmes that continue a brand’s engagement with customers is a crucial step toward improving business performance. Well-designed global Customer Experience programmes can add enormous value to businesses that seek to develop their international profile and can deliver strong rewards in customer loyalty and customer advocacy. And those two outcomes drive measurably improved business performance in sales, increased average spend and more frequent return.
The combination of improved business performance and enhanced customer experience helps businesses thrive in a highly competitive global market.
data using state-of-the-art surveying and dashboard reporting software allows for performance-improvement solutions, evidence-based marketing insights, and customer experience management consulting. Empathica is headquartered in Toronto, Canada with executive consultant offices throughout the United States and a European office in Birmingham, England.