16 July 2015

White paper author

Lucia Elliott - Principal, Creighton Ward

Designing meaningful experiences

 

As sponsor and partner of the 2015 World Business Forum, Australia Post's Chief Marketing Officer Greg Sutherland spoke of our mission to design customer experiences that put consumers at the heart of Australia Post's decision making. And it's the importance of putting the customer first that was also the focus of Don Peppers' talk at the Forum.

'Extreme trust' - the new customer imperative

As a leading authority on customer experience, Don Peppers spoke about 'Trust or bust: Six reasons why 'extreme trust' is the new customer imperative. Topics covered in Don's talk included:

1. Customers are now assets, capital… and disrupters

Google, AirBNB and Uber have no warehouses, inventory or SKUs. The value of their businesses lie in their customer base. And it's their customers that now create more value, more quickly than any other single business asset.

2. Frictionless experience comes first

Whether you provide a 'call me' button on your website, or launch in-session support chat around your FAQs, use technology to eliminate obstacles for customers.

3. There's no such thing as an algorithm for trust

Competence can be automated, but good intentions and championing your customers' interests, is less likely to reveal itself in an algorithm. Empathy lies at the heart of trust and, at least for the foreseeable future, it's not a computer's strong point.

4. The more we interact, the more we need to trust

Zuckerberg's Law of Information Sharing predicts that every 20 years we interact a thousand times more with others. Peppers believes it's therefore essential to embrace 'proactive trustworthiness', because customers will not just expect, but also assume you've put them first.

5. Call centres will become cloud counsellors

Technology is enabling deflection of customer issues via automation. Which means there will be fewer and fewer of them that reach a call centre. However, the ones that do will be 'escalated' issues that require more empathy than ever before.

6. Powering up your people

Peppers urges companies to furnish their employees with the power to act and react with humanity and empathy. In doing so they'll not only become your greatest customer champions, but also your most inspired company 'storytellers'.

You can read more about Don Peppers' insights on 'extreme trust' by downloading the full report (PDF 160kB).