Are your customers satisfied?
Shaun Myers, Business
Service Director at Brenntag UK & Ireland, speaks to Speciality Chemicals
Magazine about the implications of customer satisfaction on business
performance, and opportunities that a focus on customer service excellence
presents to chemical companies.
According to the UK
Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI) the Customer Satisfaction score in the UK
in June 2017 was 78.2 – its highest point since January 2013. With negotiations
on the UK’s exits from the EU underway, the level of customer confidence
remains high on the agenda for the economy overall, and for the chemical industry
in particular.
Shaun Myers (SM),
Business Service Director at Brenntag UK & Ireland, tells us about his
company’s recent project to discover what their customers think about working
with Brenntag, and how this has influenced the business.
How did the project
come about?
SM: I’ve always held a
fairly simplistic view: develop a good understanding of what your customers
want and organize the business to exceed those wants. Running my own
departments or sites it was – and I use the phrase carefully – relatively easy,
as you were closer to the customer and could hear first hand all the delights
and disappointments. When I was given the job to look after all the sites in
the UK & Ireland the same thought preoccupied me, I just needed a grander
plan.
A key element is
understanding the different requirements from the vast array of industry types
we serve. Late last year we conducted our most in depth Customer Survey using a
global business to business research partner to ensure complete integrity and
help with the analysis and action plan. Subsequently we are sending pulse
surveys to a smaller number of customers each month to help understand the
positive impacts our changes are making, as well as confirming the work we
still have to do.
Discussions with our European
colleagues highlighted the value in a unified approach to the project. As a
global leader, our customers have the right to expect a consistent standard of
industry-leading service, although local geography, market dynamics and demands
do however require a tailored approach. Early adopters are our Brenntag
colleagues in North America, DACH Region, Italy, CEE Region and the list is
growing quickly.
What did you evaluate
in the survey, and what were the results?
We have traditionally
taken the temperature of our customers through annual surveys, but these only
really provided us with a snapshot of a moment in time. Our aim and objectives
is to hear thousands of voices and insights of our customers on the ongoing
basis. We have started this process through the pulse surveys and want to
expand much further into all of our customer touch points.
The ongoing results
are enlightening, in the sense that it is allowing us to have a much more
informed view on how our diverse customer base truly sees Brenntag service.
Customer expectations are constantly increasing and dynamic. We need to create
systems that allow us to respond to these changes, and to even anticipate these
changes, in order that we regularly, and consistently, outperform the
customer's expectations.
Have the results of
the survey altered Brenntag’s day to day operations?
In my view, it’s
necessary to challenge our current thinking on many levels. The journey towards
true customer-centricity is ultimately a comprehensive change management
programme. How our customers feel about their experiences with Brenntag depends
largely on the motivation, engagement and views of our colleagues, therefore to
improve that element is also a big part of reaching the next level of service
excellence and positive customer experiences.
Let’s use an example.
Today we find that more customers will escalate complaints; something that I
personally encourage. I however agree with the UKCSI view that, to be a genuine
leader in customer experience, we need to move way beyond measuring
transactional experiences such as number of complaints. To design a survey we
looked at the most detailed journey map: which interactions do customers
emotionally engage in, that we could look at in our quest of creating the
delight - the Wow moments. Dealing with customers with strong sense of emotion,
demonstrating the real empathy, emotional intelligence - all the aspects that
are probably not only about brand promises - it is about the personalization of
the experience to each customer.
Customer Experience
is becoming a new language for us. Customer Experience as a field is still
relatively novel, especially in Europe vs the US, and definitely in B2B
organizations. We need to learn from our cousins in the B2C world, but only
from those few who are genuinely world class. Every member of our staff has had
at least some level of training and discussion about the Survey results and how
we aim to improve. We have established Customer Experience teams at every
Brenntag location across the UK & Ireland, and an important point is that
these teams are cross functional, representing all areas of Brenntag business,
to evaluate how we connect and interact with Brenntag customers.
In addition to our
internal training and communication programmes, and as real testimony to the
commitment given by Russel (Argo, President Brenntag UK&Ireland) and my
fellow exec members, we have selected a team of 35 colleagues from across the
entire business to be trained to master practitioner level, involving over 300
days, by a world-renowned expert in the field. This is huge investment of time,
resource and in our colleagues who will be responsible for training the next
level of enthusiasts in the organisation.
So how would you
define customer service?
I actually think
customer service is somewhat a misnomer. Let’s talk about the notion of
customer experience instead! Let’s look at the whole process: from when a
customer just has an idea of what we supply, to placing an actual order there
may be hundreds of interactions and touch points. Customer experience is the
sum of all the highs and the lows, it is the culmination of the emotions.
Customer Service is
part of a process – Customer Experience is a passion, an attitude, a culture.
It is all about people and how they feel. The brands that outlast the
competition are the ones where customers feel the love and passion of the brand
and this passion is supported by robust, easy and simple processes. 150 years
of our history in the chemical industry, and our regular feedback from
customers and colleagues, tells us what is important and how they feel. We want
the name Brenntag to be synonymous with great customer experiences.
Should the customers
now expect perfect service from Brenntag?
We have circa 20,000
customers and process 150,000 orders annually in the UK & Ireland.
Extrapolating academic rules to our customer base, we generate around a billion
customer experiences a year, and each has the opportunity to delight or to
disappoint. Clearly our objective is to delight in as many of these moments as
possible, however we’re only human! The most important thing in those
interactions where we disappoint is that we listen and engage with the customer
to quickly recover the experience. We want to ensure that our customers enjoy
dealing with Brenntag because of the experience they receive from our
colleagues, not just because of the global scale, geographical coverage and
product offering that is inherent to Brenntag.
If you are reading
this and you are a customer of Brenntag – I implore you to let us have your
views and tell us about your experiences.
And lastly, what
books have inspired you in your quest for the excellent customer experience?
I'd find it
impossible to name just one book and it’s certainly a topic getting a lot of
attention these days. Who are my biggest influencers? Academically speaking it
starts with Fred Reichheld and his work on loyalty... Ken Blanchard’s work on
Customer Service is very powerful, John Kotter as the Leading Change guru, Jim
Collins for all round Business Sustainability and Growth, and of course the
UK’s own Chris Daffy who puts it all together nicely. This is science, not
science fiction!
Published: September 25, 2017
http://www.specchemonline.com/featuredarticles/are-your-customers-satisfied
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