egyii blog

Today I saw a press release advertising an online course in Customer Experience Management, emphasising its ability to show learners how to measure a set of key aspects of the customer experience.

To me the very concept of customer experience management conjours up images of organisations somehow trying to control the experience the customer has with them. It reminds me of CRM software and operational processes and metrics applied to every aspect of the idea.

Of course, it’s great if an organisation can improve the way its customers experience the process of buying and using their product or service,  but this is a very different thing from a group of executives trying to manage such a thing.

What it comes down to is the way people behave, both in carrying out tasks in the background that support the customer experience and in interacting with customers. Yes, it’ important to have efficient systems and processes. But too often executives focus on these because they are quantifiable and easy to manage, to the exclusion of creating positive change in their people.

This is the hard part. Much easier to install a new Customer Experience Management system. From my 20 years experience of helping people at work learn and change, it seems that three conditions are necessary for this to work:

We must become acutely aware of the need for change

We must look honestly at our existing behavioural patterns and the results they are producing, and feel inspired to give our customers a great experience. This inspiration can come from different sources depending on the nature of the business and its leaders.

We must know how to change

We must be given tools that enable us to change both our thinking and our behaviour in our own special way. Scripted recipes for all to follow will never work. When our individual map of the world is in line with the idea of giving a great experience to our customers, then the behaviour will follow with relative ease.

We must be given the chance to change

Expecting habitual thoughts and behaviours to change overnight is unrealistic. This takes time. We need to be given a plan where we make simple, small changes over a specified time period as we install our new patterns. This means we need reminding and supporting.

So my plea to organisations our there talking about managing their customer experience – help your people first. Help them to be the very best they can be and then let them loose. And stop measuring them!

James Irvine, Team Egyii, Singapore

If we want become great communicators, we need to know how to step back and see the communication process as it happens. This means that we are able to notice the kinds of words, body language and voice qualities that a person is using and use this information to understand how that person thinks.

One of the most important understandings of Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) is that ‘the map is not the territory’. We take in information from around us through our senses, in particular our sight, hearing and feelings. We then interpret this information in our own individual way, depending on a whole host of things such as our beliefs, experiences, upbringing, culture etc.

In other words, we create our own individual map of reality – and this is always going to be different from what is  actually ‘out there’ i.e. the ‘territory’. Not only that, every person’s map will be different from everyone else’s.

To be great communicators, then, we must be great observers. Only when we have taken the trouble to stand back and notice how another person is communicating can we begin to understand their map. How do they express themselves? What kinds of key words and phrases do they use? What do their gestures and facial expression tell us? What are they saying with their tone of voice?

A final word: just being aware that other people’s maps are different from our own is a simple step towards communication excellence, as this creates tolerance and a desire to investigate and understand. This alone can help us to create great performance.

James Irvine, Team Egyii, Singapore

Press Release! Hot off the wires..

Singapore, May 25th, 2009

Egyii, the Singapore based learning and development consultancy, has announced its launch into the Consumer and Retail Banking space, leading with a new perspective on “customer experience.”

Egyii will continue to focus on its current agenda of Priority and Private Banking but will expand into Consumer and Retail Banking with more thought leadership, web based material and customized, in-house curriculums.

Trip Allen, Egyii’s Director of Sales and Marketing, says “The Consumer and Retail space is a logical choice for us. In fact, the banks have requested that we move into this space. And with customer experience initiatives in banking being a top priority, it makes sense that we link all the different banking programmes together.“

James Irvine, Egyii Director of Programme Development, says “Financial organizations are struggling and it is the customer who is suffering, causing a break of loyalty and trust and a loss of business.”

“Bankers can continue to focus on re-engineering products, systems and policies. Alternatively, they can break the mold and focus on the customer and the customer experience.”

For the “Improving the Customer Experience in Banking” white paper: White Paper

For our updated overview, please see:

Egyii Overview May 2009 

Thank you.

Trip & James, Team Egyii, Singapore

Last week I allowed the business environment to ‘get to me’. In the face of a challenging sales scenario I looked to the future and saw black clouds. This perception affected my drive and I started to become despondent. The change in my mood in turn affected my behaviour and even my speech became slower and less decisive. This, of course, affected the response I got from people I do business with.

Have you noticed any change in your thinking, mood and behaviour? Perhaps you just experience an underlying tone of anxiety as you go about your business. The problem is, this change directly affects the way others feel around you and about you, creating a knock-on effect on all kinds of results. If you’re client-facing, their experience of you might affect their attitude towards your organisation.

What’s happening here?

This is why it is critical for every executive to understand what’s happening to them and get control of it. John Assaraf, in his book Having It All, says “We don’t see everything there is to see; we only see what we are conditioned to see.” What this means is that we interpret information coming to us through a very personal filter. And this filter is made up of what we believe about the world around us and the kinds of things we tell ourselves all day long.

Our perceptions of the world are unique to us, and we can either allow these perceptions to de-motivate us and affect our performance, or we can look at our beliefs and internal messages and understand how they control us.

How important is this?

John Assaraf goes on to say “We talk, act, and pretend out of the prejudices of our beliefs. As a result, our beliefs and habits affect our self-esteem, our relationships, our prosperity, our job performance, our mental and physical health, and even the way other people treat us, because people treat us exactly the way we see and treat ourselves.”

What can we do?

It is essential to our performance that we find the time to sit down on our own and think about what we truly believe about ourselves and others and link these beliefs to our present thinking, mood and behaviour. It is an awakening when we realise that a belief we developed many years ago is controlling our performance today, even if that belief is no longer relevant.

It is also important to realise that these beliefs are just thoughts that we have created in our own minds. They are an illusion. And as such, we are free to eliminate them and replace them with new beliefs that serve us today. This point is crucial – we all have the ability to control what goes on in our mind, and being able to do this on a constant basis is the secret of mental and emotional strength and ultimately, success in what we set out to accomplish.

Back to my story – I realised that my despondency was the result of a belief that I did not have control over my destiny. Changing this belief into a more empowering one meant that I was able to turn my mood around and become less stressed and more productive.

James Irvine, Team Egyii, Singapore

Financial organizations are at a crossroad. They are struggling and it is the customer who is suffering, causing a break of loyalty and trust and a loss of business.

How to address this?

Bankers can continue to focus on re-engineering products, systems and policies. Alternatively, they can break the mold and  focus on the customer and the customer experience.

What is missing from many of  the “customer experience” banking programs today?

For more, click here: Improving the Customer Experience in Banking: Egyii White Paper

Organisations are doing a lot these days to enhance the ‘customer experience’. They are training and motivating employees to engage their customers at a higher level; and they are putting in systems, processes and policies to make doing business easier and more enjoyable for their customers.

We at Egyii ask: how can our employees engage their customers so that they really ‘connect’ with them and leave them feeling great about the organisation?

What actually happens between the employee and the customer as they are interacting with each other makes one of the most lasting impressions. How a customer feels when she walks away from an interaction remains with her long after she has forgotten about the content.

 How can an employee create that customer connection that leaves them with such a great feeling?

First, the employee must be authentic.

This means he must be aware of his feelings when interacting with the customer. He must use this awareness to respond to his customer with his ‘truth’, the genuine emotion that he is experiencing.

Of course, if he is feeling irritated he does not show irritation, but he does acknowledge it himself and deal with it so that when he does respond to the customer the signals he sends are genuine. If he does not acknowledge his feelings he will communicate a ‘false’ persona to his customer which will be picked up, probably unconsciously. The result will be that the customer will leave with a slightly negative impression of the employee. There will certainly be no memorable customer experience.

This ongoing self-awareness on the part of the employee is crucial if the customer is not to feel that he is just ‘going through the motions’. Too many times customers experience employees as ’superficial’ and ‘insincere’ because they are just acting out and have no connection with their real selves.

Second, the employee must become aware of his customer’s emotions and connect with their ‘truth’.

Often a customer will communicate with a lot of words and gestures, most of which do not represent where they are really coming from.

If an employee wants his customer to feel truly understood, he must pay attention and find the words, gestures and emotion that tell him “I am here.” By acknowledging the customer’s real thoughts and feelings he creates a bridge between them that the customer appreciates. Finding the customer’s ‘truth’ requires paying close attention and using intuition to sense and interpret the signals they are sending.

Connecting with your customer, then, happens when the employee’s ‘truth’ and the customer’s ‘truth’ are in a dance with each other. When an employee taps into his real self and eliminates all the posturing and acting, then he begins to be authentic. And when he takes the trouble to really pay attention to his customer and discover their real self, then he connects and a great customer experience is enabled.

James Irvine, Team Egyii, Singapore

Kare Anderson titles her recent blog ‘Coddle and Keep Customers – Even in a Cold Economy’.  She talks about a cafe near her home in Sausalito, California that now offers fresh-baked pastries and coffee to drive-by customers.

Now let’s transfer this image of ‘coddled customers’ to the experience people have with their banks. My Collins Concise English Dictionary defines ‘coddle’ as ‘to treat with indulgence’. Wouldn’t this kind of experience be the kind of thing that would drive you to a bank and keep you there long term?

Yes, we know that banks are designing comfortable, even luxurious environments where their customers can lounge over a fresh-brewed coffee. But while coffee and pastries are a cafe’s product, coffee and sofas are not a bank’s product. To coddle us, banks must treat us with indulgence, not just provide nice furniture.

It’s time that banks put aside their product innovations and selling tactics and get to know what the words ‘treat us with indulgence’ mean in their context. Here are just three suggestions:

Firstly, treat your customers like the intelligent people that they are. This means knowing your area of expertise backwards and only offering the highest quality, well-considered advice.

Secondly, be one hundred percent present in the presence of your customers. Pay attention to them and respond to what they are communicating instead of your own idea of what you want to say.

Thirdly, get your own attitude sorted out. Make sure that you have a strong purpose and are clear about what your personal values are, so that you come across as sincere, authentic and caring.

Treating bank customers with indulgence means taking them under your expert wing and looking after them. That’s all we really want. We can get the coffee round the corner.

James Irvine, Team Egyii, Singapore