How did a world-leading software organisation bring the latest version of its flagship product to market that incorporated the feedback of millions of users from around the globe? Hear how Microsoft’s Windows 7 story evolved by harnessing the power of customer insight to create a product with customer needs at the forefront of the innovation and development.

During this session you’ll hear:
- How Microsoft aligns product innovation strategies to customer experience objectives
- The diverse ways in which Microsoft gathers and integrates customer feedback
- How this insight leads to creating new customer acquisition and loyalty strategies

“I’m a PC and Windows 7 was my idea.”

• Brand Image – How do you bring alive the brand piece internally for the team?
• How do you take steps to demonstrate your brand promise in your customer communication – let’s explore it and hear from our team and our customers?
• Where is the value at an operational level within the contact centre?
• The Problem: why is there a gap between the corporate brands and operational reality?
• The Effect: what happens when customers perceive the gap?
• The Solution: what impact does closing the gap have on the bottom line?

Nearly a decade ago, Satmetrix co-created the Net Promoter Score, which has taken the world by storm. Simplicity, link to financial growth, organisational KPI – all these factors have contributed to building this metric into what has become a worldwide standard for measuring and improving customer experience. But to understand the true power of Net Promoter, we need to go beyond the score…

Naomi Kasolowsky from Satmetrix will first focus on the Net Promoter discipline, and how to make your programme successful:

• Digging deeper into Net Promoter
• Measuring what matters
• Net Promoter economics
• Best practices and success factors

Real-life examples of this presentation will be illustrated by an external speaker who will give practical advice related to Net Promoter best practices.

Happy staff equals a successful business. And this contentment can be passed outside the business to customers, clients and stakeholders through the medium of social media.

Using a range of case studies, including the BBC and community of practice Vets Now, Helen will show how companies are using social media to engage with staff, which, helping to improve communication and customer service in general.

Helen will also explore the best way for implementing social media internally by looking at:

• How to develop a social media strategy for internal communication
• Ownership and how to get buy-in from senior members of staff and sponsors
• How to implement and roll out social media to staff
• Social media policy for employess

Since integrating two retail catalogue giants in Littlewoods and Great Universal, Shop Direct Group, supported by its shareholders, has been driving a programme of customer experience improvement.  With no pre-defined budget, and stuttering support of senior management, the results achieved have been made possible through a great deal of will, determination and its Customer 1st programme.

Who are Shop Direct Group? (Chris Plank)

• 2 minute introductory video
• Our history
• The integration period
• Our ‘customer service legacy’

Customer Experience Transformation  (Ian Golding)

• The introduction of the ‘Customer 1st programme’
• Translating what we think we do into ‘Moments of Truth’
• How we measure the customer experience
• How we engage our people through ‘Customer 1st Aid’

The proof is in the pudding! (Chris Plank)

• Customer 1st achievements
• Examples of improvements
• Don’t take our word for it – customer video
   

With traditional advertising becoming less and less effective, return on marketing investments are getting smaller as fewer people respond to our messages. Visitors just don’t pay attention to adverts as much as they used to. Do we continue to shout louder or is there another way to attract new customers to our business and retain existing customers?

Generating positive word of mouth promotion for our business, whether it is done online or offline, starts and ends with the customer experience. This is especially true in a service industry such as tourism, where the primary outcome is the way visitors feel about their experience. The challenge for tourism operators is to ensure every visitor gets world-class customer service and is inspired to talk about the visit to others after they leave in a way that makes them crave the same experience.

This session will show you how to use social media as a complementary approach to traditional marketing techniques, not as a replacement. Whether you’re in tourism or not, this session will demonstrate why social media needs to be fully integrated into the marketing strategy of the business and not to be seen purely as a tactical activity.

Using real-life case studies, delegates will learn about:

• Why traditional advertising is not working any more
• Harnessing the power of word of mouth
• Web 2.0 and joining the conversation
• Monitoring social media - Return on Engagement
• Creating a web 2.0 marketing strategy

The relatively new field of customer experience is settling down to a number of shared assumptions that add up to a common language. But how well do these concepts stand up to scientific scrutiny? Throughout the last two decades, John Bunyard has been undertaking pioneering research into the ways in which potential customers experience products and services, particularly in the context of their expectations. Now he will be sharing experimental proof that some of our most closely held beliefs about customer behaviour are simply wrong. He will also demonstrate how large corporations like Honda are using exciting new techniques for understanding consumer experience from the inside out, and applying the findings strategically to new business acquisition.

• What does science say about current theory?
• How can we understand the customer’s brain better?
• Why do expectations matter so much?
• How can businesses turn insight into profit?
   

• Most companies use CEM programmes to measure Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty, but such metrics aren’t actionable in and of themselves.
• Most companies fail to contact customers to tell them what’s been done with their feedback.
• Learn how to create a CEM programme that is actionable, driving alerts to escalate customer issues.
• Learn how Nationwide Autocentres delivers alerts to customers as well, driving referral business while improving customer satisfaction and repeat business.

This is war. Personally, I am sick of swingeing attempts by large organisations to contain the customer, trap them in rules and processes allegedly designed to protect us. What rubbish! At Volkswagen Group we are breaking the mould. We are putting our customers in the driving seat (and I don’t mean just by selling cars!) To do this, we need to create a chain of empowerment and trust, and sometimes that is uncomfortable and even counter intuitive. But, if we aren’t occasionally feeling uncomfortable when we’re serving our customers, then we aren’t digging deep enough and our expectations are too low.

• How brand and CE delivery are intrinsically linked
  • ‘Sometimes the only barriers to providing exceptional service are the ones we carry in our heads’.

•  A motivating and relevant cause can ignite an organisation
  • It needs to be end to end and not bits and pieces of the process!

• Why you need to engage everyone on CE delivery
  • However, what happens if you don’t
  • Documenting customer issues and raising them with key stakeholders is important
  • It needs to be joined up – to ensure a consistent approach

• How making a stronger connection with your customers can lead to better CE delivery
  • Improving standards in customer communications counts
  • By turning communications into good customer dialogue you will see a difference
  • It should not be about customer tolerance but about customer excellence
  • So, our behaviours count!

• How to achieve a cultural shift towards a more customer focused organisation
  • Aligning ownership to best practice allows you to focus on what works
  • This allows you to improve retention, secure repeat business and increase satisfaction with your service
  • Be creative, be challenging be tenacious

This session will share the experience of working with Barclays Wealth Operations to support the development the skills and capabilities of Transformational Leaders . This is set against the backdrop of tough change challenges and the Organsiational Objective of becoming the one of the top Five Global Wealth management Organisations in the next few years. The differentiator iwill be the intrinsic Confidence and Passion to deliver an exceptional Client Expereince through developing a deeper understanding of leadership preferences and their impact on Culture and Engagement . It will also include the stretching of Leadership Capabilities in 8 core dimensions.

We will particualry focus on sharing personal stories and transitions, in such as areas as Leading from Within, Facilitating Development and Leading Change. We want to inspire with the results that have started to become visible.

• Social Networks and Customer Experience: creating competitive advantage from the buzz channel.
• The Monkey Sphere: how many customers are you able to conceptualize as people?
• Breake the limits: above the Dumbar's number.
• Managing the Monkey Sphere: serve your customers and creating acquisition and retention opportunities.
• The buzz: turn the viral logic in a tremendous opportunity
• Providing the ROI managing the Social Networks: seriously managing a monkey sphere is hardly a monkey's business

• Everyday in your company people get out of bed and upset customers which don’t come back – What are you doing about it? (Design & Measurement)
• How much is Dissatisfaction effecting your business? (Measuring and Business Growth)
• Limitations to what companies can do – How do you prioritise? (Change)
• What is customer centricity? How do you create interaction? (Change)
• How do you build a great CE without big budget? What can SME’s learn from companies with big budgets? ( Business Growth and or new customer Acquisition)
• How competent are we at challenging CW (conventional wisdom)? (Measurement)

• How we listen to and understand
  • the consumer no longer respondent to the proliferation of brands through mass media
  • the client’s actual needs
  • the context placing experiential marketing in full rise as a 21st century “art”
• How we frame
  • experiences that dazzle senses, touch hearts and stimulate minds
• How we implement
  • experiences that achieve the best and most compelling ROI: consumers’ recommendations to fellow consumers and build Brand Ambassadors pool
  • experiential marketing strategies involving an incredible number of expertise
• How we sustain
  • results by designing and implementing measuring tools
• Global case studies of excellence, including Funky Business’ own studies

In a commercial world awash with change initiatives and programmes, many of which achieve questionable results, Mercedes-Benz UK presents itself as a shining example of the ability to actually ‘make change happen’.

Five years ago, under the leadership of Mike Belk, Managing Director of the Mercedes-Benz UK Customer Services Group, the company set out its vision to deliver a premium brand, class leading customer experience through the natural, everyday customer service behaviour and performance of over 9000 staff working throughout its 169 Dealerships across the UK. Against the backdrop of far-reaching global transformation, comprehensive Dealer rationalisation in this country and an extensive new vehicle launch programme, the company embarked on an ambitious, all-encompassing strategy, including a top-down, fully integrated communication and training programme, to make its vision become a reality.

Results to date across a wide range of performance indicators demonstrate the effectiveness of that strategy with the marque having accelerated from 26th to 3rd in the industry-wide JD Power rankings (the fastest rise ever) and Mercedes-Benz having just been crowned ‘Number One for Customer Service’ in its sector by the Institute of Customer Service.

Mike will be talking to Jill Dean, Client Services Director of Power Train, which has worked with Mercedes-Benz throughout this exciting, but challenging project. He will reveal the secrets of its success and bring to life some of the techniques employed to achieve such a spectacular result. As Mike will explain, “It began in the bedroom and went from there!”

• What needs to change in order to keep up with the ever changing fickle needs of the customer
• Can you just change the attitude within a company or do you need to go from the ground up and change it all, or is there a half way house 
• How do you being to make that change 
• How do you monitor and benchmark the success of the change
   

• The impact of social media on the traditional customer service paradigm
• Some emerging trends: complaint communities, help networks, customer service on the go
• Setting up social media customer service at The Carphone Warehouse
• Customer experience is the new customer service

The impact of social media on the customer service industry has resulted in huge shifts in thinking and behaviour taking place over the last 12 - 18 months. This is forcing companies to redefine, re-interpret and at times, re-engineer the way in which they engage with their customers.

Companies are moving away from what was an essentially private, one-to-one customer transaction, to a more public, voyeuristic and empathetic experience between people. The relationship a company has with its customers is increasingly taking place on their territory and on their terms.

Social media is the catalyst, and Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, AudioBoo, Wordpress amongst others, its agents of change.

Out of this has emerged a new paradigm that is forcibly tipping the power dynamic into the hands of a more socially active and vocal customer happy to help themselves, and in so doing, bypass the need to engage with a company altogether.

This session explores the impact of social media on the traditional customer service paradigm, some of the emerging trends, and raises some of the questions that need to be answered in order for a company to continue to provide a relevant customer service experience.

• Introduction – definitions of change and common circumstances where change management is needed
• Issues within change – control and blame, how to spot and what to do
• Process of change – Awareness, responsibility and commitment, know the process but don’t be a slave to it
• Group work – own experiences, questions and discussion to learn from each other, Chatham House Rules
• Successsful change management methods – how you can make it work within your contact centre, from tomorrow, top tips to get the ball rolling
• Sustainable change – after tomorrow, techniques to keep the changes in place and convince the sceptics
• Checking you’re still on course – how evaluation, appraisal and in-the-moment feedback play a part in change
• Common issues encountered – the avoidance of change practical examples and what to do about it
• Conclusion – overview and final questions