Moving beyond the silos of brilliance!

So you have got a great looking website and mobile application — the usage of the site seems to be picking up as well — perhaps, there is some evidence of customers preferring your digital channels over traditional voice channels — enabling you to claim further importance, respect and slice of capital budget…

However, are you doing enough to develop your digital estate strategically and not at risk of creating another ‘silo of brilliance’?

In my experience, one of the key issues preventing transformational efforts (Digital or CX) post leadership consent and endorsement is lack of purposeful cross functional collaboration

Lets use a real life use cases to elaborate on this topic.

My British Gas online experience

A few months ago I cancelled my British Gas HomeCare cover (covers you for the breakdown of gas and central heating) because I had a new boiler installed which came with 12 months parts and labour warranty.

Then a few days ago, as part of my research, I tried logging into my British Gas online account (as a potential returning customer) and noticed that despite cancellation of service — certain features of British Gas online service still functioned.

The below screen shows the My Account screen for British Gas online portal:

I tried to login to my account (giving away my email address, I know)…

…and was presented with the Chat option that popped up almost instantly on the login screen.

It was reassuring to see that there was someone available to Chat however I proceeded with logging in to my account:

I couldn’t login to my account and was presented with an error message plus an option to call their helpline on an 0800 number, nice!

However, the Chat widget disappeared upon login failure (I assumed the Chat agent wasn’t capable of handling login failures — more on this assumption, later):

I decided to reset my login details and was presented with the following screen:

I selected the “I’ve forgotten my password” option and was presented with the following screen and message.

The message indicates that British Gas is still holding my email address in their database and their Password Reset process is taking advantage of it accordingly.

I received the following email to help me with password reset request.

The email addresses me as Mr Gilani — an indication that British Gas may hold more than just my email address.

Anyways, I clicked on the link provided…

and was presented with an option to choose new password (see the below screen). I chose a new password and clicked on the login button…

I was presented with the following screen and a couple of conflicting messages… apparently, my password had been changed however the system couldn’t log me in and suggested that I tried logging in later.

The messages reflect possible oversight in CX journey and process design — at this point, proactive Chat or offer of an 0800 number would have been well received.

I tried resetting the password on a few occasions and ended up with the same screen and messages.

Failing that — I opened up a fresh web session and decided to Chat with British Gas.

I didn’t have to wait long and was connected with the Chat agent — who told me that he was capable of handling any queries — albeit didn’t have any context on my enquiry or state of journey:

Overall, despite encountering the website errors, I thought my CX journey with British Gas was ok — since it was clear that they had sufficient resources (potential overstaffing?) to support me should things went south.

On the other hand, it is also apparent that there are ample opportunities to improve the design of the above mentioned journey and associated processes for returning customers.

Here is a list of the key observations:

• the fact that I couldn’t access my old account with British Gas is probably due to an intended strategy or business policy
• there are inconsistencies in how channels are being pitched to the customers throughout their journey i.e. Chat is offered at login screen but not when customer is facing technical issues; an 0800 is offered when customer faces login error but not when customer receives policy conflicting messages
• the Chat channel is disjointed and not being offered as a result of CX journey based events (as far as my journey was concerned)
• the Chat agents seems to be generalists and do not have visibility of customer journey or context — they have to start afresh with the customer
• there are technical considerations concerning the password reset process and accessing deceased accounts (reflects a policy v process conflict or an oversight)

The above observations highlight the common pitfalls most organizations face during their (CX or digital) transformation journeys.

For instance, consider the below screenshots from my Virgin Media account (under similar circumstances i.e. I had closed my account)…

…where I traveled a much more commercial rather than customer driven journey i.e. no proactive chat and no free phone number for support — though you can enquire about the latest offers by ringing their local rate number!

In my experience, often, organizational issues emanate from:

• silos of brilliance — give birth to an underlying organizational misalignments — resulting from perceived importance and success of an individual functional organization and lack of purposeful cross functional collaboration
• strategic limitations — concerning comprehensibility of vision, astute leadership and awareness/ understanding of critical business disciplines e.g. CX as both, science and an art; technological capabilities and innovation; responsiveness of enterprise value chain, etc.

However, here are a couple of questions that I would like us to ponder:

Would you treat your returning customers any different than the way British Gas did?

If yes, what CX strategies would you invoke and why?

I hope you enjoyed the post and I would love to hear your thoughts on the above questions.

Note: the purpose of this blog isn’t to single out and target British Gas or Virgin Media but to encourage a constructive debate around CX issues and related developments.

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I specialize in Omni CX Strategy, Operating Model Design and Digital Transformation — you can watch my intro video on Omni Channel Use Case here. and feel free to get in touch with me on zaheer.gilani@omnixco.com , +44(0)7984357010 or add me to your network. www.omnixco.com