Alan Williams and Dave Stubberfield On 5 Ways To Create a Wow! Customer Experience

Embed the brand identity in every interaction with all stakeholders. At a five-star hotel and country club, we gave out sachets of poppy seeds to guests on departure with a message from Tom the Head Gardener “to remember your stay with us”.

As a part of our series about the five things a business should do to create a Wow! customer experience, I had the pleasure of interviewing Alan Williams and Dave Stubberfield.

Alan Williams is the founder of SERVICEBRAND GLOBAL and advises business leaders internationally to deliver value-driven service. Dave Stubberfield is the director of Carter Consultancy and specializes in enabling cultural transformation to help businesses achieve greatness. They are the authors of Supercharging the Customer Experience: How Organizational Alignment Drives Performance.

Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

Alan: At school, I wanted to go to university to stretch myself academically and also gain a qualification that would provide a foundation for a career. The hotel industry appealed because it was a business with energy and excitement, so I studied Hotel & Catering Administration at Surrey University. A twenty-year career in commercial hospitality management followed (eventually running five-star hotels and conference centres), and then ten years in facilities management senior leadership roles. I set up my management consultancy business in 2005 and have worked on industry award-winning projects in more than thirty countries.

Dave: When I left school, I wasn’t sure what direction to take, but I knew that university wasn’t for me. I started as an apprentice with BT and, after completing the 3 years, was invited by my General Manager to lead a new organisation-wide initiative called Continuous Improvement. This is where I found my calling, and since then have gone on to add Change Management and Customer Experience to my skillset. I call these methodologies the ‘triangle of truth’, as they are all intrinsically linked and need to be consciously considered when taking on any of the three on their own. I now lead a multi-award-winning consultancy company where I enable leaders of organizations to succeed in these areas.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?

Alan: My first employment when I was sixteen was a summer job in a hotel restaurant and one of my tasks was to fill the salt and pepper cruets. One morning there was a complaint from a customer at breakfast and we found out that I had used castor sugar instead of salt.

Dave: I started working when I was sixteen too, as a kitchen porter in a local pub. I was asked to bring up a lettuce from the cold room in the cellar, so off I went. I came back upstairs with a cabbage to the amusement of all of my colleagues and bosses.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

Alan: Peter Montaina was the Operations Manager at the London InterContinental when I was an Assistant Conference and Events Manager. One word that summed up Peter was ‘meticulous’. One day, I forgot to pass on a message to Peter that a guest would not be attending a lunch. He explained to me in no uncertain terms the impact this had on the event: the chair and place setting was still there when people sat down and had to be dealt with at that time instead of it being done earlier and nobody noticing. Peter taught me so much about how to ‘supercharge the customer experience’: an obsession over small details, the importance of planning ahead and communication, and how to see through the eyes of the customer.

Dave: For me, there are stand-out people in every role I’ve ever had that taught me valuable lessons along the way, starting from the pub landlord in my first job. In the corporate world, I have had managers, mentors and leaders who have helped shape who I am today, so it is difficult to call out one person. I will share one piece of advice that I was given very early on in my career: the 6 Ps — prior planning and preparation prevents poor performances. I apply this to everything I take on and it helps me to keep focused.

Thank you for that. Let’s now pivot to the main focus of our interview. This might be intuitive, but I think it’s helpful to specifically articulate it. In your words, can you share a few reasons why great customer service and a great customer experience is essential for success in business?

Perhaps the single biggest reason to remember is that without customers, there is no need for the organization. Great customer service and a great customer experience are the key to unlocking a virtuous circle of success for organizations. It is quite easy to understand how this starts with improved customer satisfaction, reduced complaints, more repeat business (volume and product/service range), customer advocacy, increased sales (and profit). What is often overlooked is the positive impact on employees (recognition, motivation, productivity, pride, sense of teamwork, retention, development opportunities, advocacy, income), the organization (business performance, increased resources, enhanced reputation, growth opportunities), service partners (in many of the same ways as employees), investors (return on investment, trust, willingness to invest) and local communities (patronage, recruitment, pride, advocacy). In this ‘Age of the Customer’, the customer experience, even if this is a ‘one-off’, can be the differentiator in retaining a customer or losing them to a competitor.

We have all had times either in a store, or online, when we’ve had a very poor experience as a customer or user. If the importance of a good customer experience is so intuitive, and apparent, where is the disconnect? How is it that so many companies do not make this a priority?

When we were thinking about our book, we asked the question “With all the great content out there on the topic, why is great customer experience so rare?”. This helped us to realize the essence of ‘Supercharging the Customer Experience’: the importance of context over content. We believe that a focus on ‘content’ rather than applying this content in an appropriate way for the individual context is one explanation of this disconnect. We also believe that the emergence of CX as a dedicated profession/function might have had a negative impact in some settings because of the temptation to give the responsibility for delivering a great customer experience to the CX team and ‘head of’ rather than it being a whole organization responsibility. We think of CX as a mindset and culture rather than a function or set of tools and processes.

Do you think that more competition helps force companies to improve the customer experience they offer? Are there other external pressures that can force a company to improve the customer experience?

It would be easy to answer “yes” to the question about competition helping to improve customer service. This certainly happens in demanding customer service environments where this is the customers’ primary concern. However, I have also seen the opposite effect. For example, in a B2B environment and a procurement process which is focused on obtaining a service for the lowest cost. This can encourage a cost reduction focus at the expense of customer service.

Other external pressures that can force or encourage improved customer service are regulation/legislation and advancements in other non-related service settings, e.g. the ease of pre-booking theatre/cinema and airline tickets has had an impact on expectations of the hotel arrival/registration process.

Something else to consider is the rise of popularity in CX and the possibility of organization leaders seeing it as a buzzword or a box that needs to be ticked. They might put in place some basic practices or procedures but do not embed a CX mindset and culture. To the outsider looking at the organization, it might appear that CX is an important focus for the organization, but further exploration and experience can quickly reveal that this is purely superficial.

Can you share with us a story from your experience about a customer who was “Wowed” by the experience you provided?

Dave: I was working with a client, helping them to become more proactive in their customer experience efforts and one of my tasks was to call customers and ask how they found the product and service recently. One customer was very anxious to address an ongoing problem. I helped to find a resolution by contacting the support team and expediting the fix. During the conversations with the customer, it became evident that his organization could benefit from an additional feature. During one of our regular catch-up calls, I explained how they could use the feature and, very quickly, they understood how it would positively impact their business. I then passed the information to the sales team, who followed up and secured the sale. This previously anxious customer was now happy and very satisfied, with his problem resolved and additional functionality to benefit his business. This led to my client implementing the practice of proactively contacting customers as a new standard for all customers. There was strict emphasis on designing these calls to engage customers, rather than to sell to them.

Did that Wow! experience have any long-term ripple effects? Can you share the story?

Dave: This project was initially part of a small team of 20 people in one region, but its success led to a knock-on effect on the rest of the organization where there has been global adoption of these new practices. The intention of these calls is still very clear — check-in with our customers, and the results have been phenomenal. There has been a 15% increase in upsells across its products and services, with an increase of 24% in customer retention. Customer satisfaction has soared as well, with scores increasing by over 30% which is a direct correlation of an increase in the employee engagement satisfaction score, rising by 25%. The beauty of this ripple effect is that it’s still ongoing. There are some teams where this practice is still new and they are yet to realise the full benefit. By helping to instil a CX culture, there has been a widespread positive impact across the whole organization.

Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things a business leader should know in order to create a Wow! Customer Experience.

1. Clearly define your ambition to supercharge the customer experience with a values-led organizational alignment approach. When I (Alan) was working in the Corporate Real Estate Services function for a big four bank, we articulated this as Our World Class Way which drove a service excellence mindset supported by an operating framework and support processes.
2. Embed the brand identity in every interaction with all stakeholders. At a five-star hotel and country club, we gave out sachets of poppy seeds to guests on departure with a message from Tom the Head Gardener “to remember your stay with us”.
3. Use recognition to celebrate desired employee (and service partner) behaviours and create the organisational ‘folklore’. Alan remembers a programme he introduced where the best example of values-led behaviour was chosen each month and a personal gift chosen by the winner was presented. One young man shed tears at the award photo shoot.
4. Ensure that the organization’s systems and processes or ‘infrastructure’ support and reinforce the alignment of brand identity, employee engagement and customer experience (rather than ‘get in the way’). In our book, we reference how Nordstrom will not approve the implementation of an IT system unless it can be demonstrated how it will benefit the customer.
5. Assess the impact of alignment at a quantitative and qualitative level with senior-level governance in place to ensure accountability. At a conference centre, we implemented a customer feedback process called RACE (Race to Achieve Customer Excellence) and communicated all customer comments for the team to be aware of, share and make improvements as necessary.

Are there a few things that can be done so that when a customer or client has a Wow! experience, they inspire others to reach out to you as well?

We believe that organizational stakeholders (especially customers and employees) are the new marketing department. We believe that the successful organizations of the future will be those that establish a sense of shared values with all stakeholder groups and then equip and encourage them to share their experiences. It’s also key to note that the potential Wow! experience could come from any person or team within the organization — it’s not always a case of it being the customer service teams!

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

Alan: I would create a movement led by the top 100 business leaders in the world who would commit 1% of their joint organization profits and other resources available to them (people, knowledge, tools, connections) to provide every single person on the planet with the basics: food, clean water/air, shelter/safety, healthcare, sleep, education and dignity.

Dave: Adding to this, I would highlight the importance of kindness and empathy. If people can become more empathetic and kinder to each other, the opportunities are endless. All it takes is for one act of random kindness to light a fire in someone else to give something back to another individual. This could have exponential benefits.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

Alan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanservicebrandglobal/ and X @ourSERVICEBRAND

Dave: www.linkedin.com/in/davestubberfield , https://www.linkedin.com/company/carter-consultancy-uk and Instagram @carter_consultancy

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!