Beyond customer experience: CX Mini Masterclass – E62

This CX Mini Masterclass explores the importance of human experience and why brands need to ensure that their promise is delivered to all stakeholders, not just customers. Special guest and CX thought leader, Pierre Daems, shares insights about why an ecosystem of human experiences is key to a brand’s success. If you’re looking for inspiration on how the essence of brand promise extends beyond the customer experience, and why this is something CX professionals should care about, then this episode is for you. Insights from a special guest Pierre Daems is a seasoned expert in the field of customer experience. He is the CEO of the French and Canadian strategy and management consultancy Aube Conseil, which specializes in customer experience management. Pierre is a CCXP, longstanding member of the CXPA and co-founder of the local CXPA communities in Paris and Montreal. He is a recognized expert and keynote speaker on customer experience management, with a focus on cities, airports, hospitals and a deep knowledge of Bank/insurance sector. If you are keen to get in touch with Pierre or follow his work, you can connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter. Pierre Daems, CCXP With such broad expertise working on citizen experience, patient experience and passenger experience, Pierre has been fortunate to help shape CX in a number of different sectors, for many years. For that reason, he’s the ideal person to help CX professionals push their thinking beyond just customer experience. What’s beyond customer experience? We’ve all heard about the importance of employee experience. Happy, engaged employees are more likely to deliver good customer experience. Pierre suggests that we shouldn’t stop there, but rather as CX practitioners, we should also understand the importance of other stakeholders and their experiences. Suppliers, partners, governments and even shareholders are not traditionally on the CX professional’s radar, but they should be. These stakeholder groups still play an important role within the brand’s ecosystem. In the case of suppliers and partners in particular, it’s easy to see how their experience (much like that of an employee) would influence the customer experience. The role of purpose Pierre suggests that a brand’s purpose is at the heart of the human experience it delivers to all stakeholders. He uses the example of Michelin brand, and their purpose: “The Michelin brand is the best expression of our Purpose: giving everyone a better way to move forward. It embodies the Group’s strengths with our customers and partners around the world. It’s a promise that defines us and commits us.” The Michelin Group A better way to move forward, isn’t just about tires or helping passengers move from point A to point B, it’s also applicable to shareholders, employees and others. The brand has decided to charge customers per kilometer rather than per tire, an innovative approach that delivers value to the company, its shareholders and customers. A great example of delivering the purpose to everyone, not just customers. Transcript Prefer to read? Here’s the transcript. Click to expand full transcript Welcome to Decoding the Customer, podcast about customer experience and how to realize customer-centric change in today’s dynamic business world. I’m Julia Ahlfeldt, certified customer experience professional, business advisor, and host of this program. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you’re new to the show, welcome. If you’re a returning listener, thanks and it’s great to have you back. This episode is part of my CX mini masterclass series here on Decoding the Customer. These episodes are published each Thursday and designed to be punchy bite-size overviews of key customer experience concepts and ideas for how you can help your organization thrive through customer centricity. Whether you’re new to the field of customer experience, are preparing for the CXP exam, or are a seasoned professional looking to brush up on a few basics, this series will help you improve your knowledge, skills, and performance to stand out as a CX professional. This is episode 62, and today I have another mini masterclass presented by a leading customer experience expert. I’m excited to introduce a new contributor to the show, Pierre Daems. Pierre is the CEO of French and Canadian Strategy and Management Consultancy, Aube Conseil, specializing in customer experience management. Pierre is a CCXP and the co-founder of the local CXPA communities in both Paris and Montreal. He’s a recognized expert and keynote speaker on customer experience management, with a focus on cities, or citizen experience, airports, which includes passenger experience, hospitals, which means patient experience, and he also has a deep knowledge of the banking and insurance sector. You may have noticed that Pierre isn’t my first international guest expert. Living in South Africa these last few years has opened my eyes to some of the cutting edge thinking that’s happening in the field of customer experience beyond the borders of the United States. Yes, customer experience first gained notoriety in the United States, but as a wave of empowered consumers has spread across the world, it’s given rise to some really amazing customer experience global thought leadership. Here in Decoding the Customer, I’m proud to feature guest experts not only from my home country, but also from elsewhere around the globe. In this episode, Pierre invites us as CX practitioners to take a broader look at experience, not just customer experience, but human experience, and how this is manifested through a brand’s vision and aspirations. Experiences are often delivered from an ecosystem that includes employees, shareholders, suppliers, and many other stakeholders. We as CX practitioners would be remiss if we didn’t think about the experiences of all these stakeholders. So if you’re looking for inspiration on how the essence of brand promise extends beyond the customer experience, and why this is something that we as CX professionals should care about, then stay tuned. As always, if you happen to be out for a run, cooking dinner, or driving to work, and here’s something that you’d like to remember later, don’t worry about writing it down. You can find an overview of the key concepts that we’ve covered today in the show notes for this episode, which are on my website, juliaahlfeldt.com or decodingthecustomer.com. I’ll also include links to find out more about Pierre’s work and how you can get in touch with him. So with that, I’ll let Pierre take it away. Thank you so much, Julia. I’m Pierre, Pierre Daems, and hi, I’m CCXP and working both in France and Canada to help companies develop a specific spirit that you all know, this spirit of customer experience. Today, you gave me, Julia, an opportunity to speak about belief that I do have about the evolution of customer experience. We all know that when working on customer experience, it’s not enough to go deep in understanding the customers. We also need to understand employees and really connect to their lives. I think that’s very important. For me, it’s really not enough. We should go a lot further. What do I mean? Again, when speaking about experience, the practices that we do have in terms of customer understanding about creating experience, about measuring experience, about putting some governance or change the culture, can be totally applied to people overall, meaning that in order to be stronger and sustainable as a company in the long term, I believe that we should not limit to only customers and employees, but we should care about all the different stakeholders of the company. Meaning, we should connect not only to the life of employees, of customers, but also of suppliers, of shareholders, of all partners in the city, and all kinds of partners that we can have. That’s only by this profound empathy for all the stakeholders of the company. That we’ll be able to deliver long-term value, not only for the company, but for humanity, I would say. So, how can you do that? We all know that it’s not enough also to have a good experience. That’s why, when speaking about customer experience and employee experience, we try to focus on the brand, and that is the promise that we want to deliver to customers. And our job, daily job, as customer experience specialists, is to deliver the brand on a day-to-day basis, and deliver the promise. So, that’s what we do, and I think that’s very important and not done everywhere. But when speaking about all the different stakeholders, what would it be? It cannot be the brand itself. It needs to be something higher than the brand. And then we come to the purpose. I believe that the backbone for all different stakeholders is and has to be really the purpose of the company. That needs to be delivered in a way for all different stakeholders. So let’s take an example, just to be really clear on what I mean. Maybe you know Michelin or Michelin, I don’t know how you call that, but the entire company. Their purpose is, I quote, we care about giving people a better way forward. That’s very interesting, because delivering this better way forward can really be applied to all different stakeholders. So it means that first, when working about the delivery of this purpose, that is again so important as it is for the brand in relation with customer experience, you need to understand what are the expectations and feelings today. Let’s start with the customer. What does it mean? What do they expect when they move? What do they today? How do they feel? Do they feel there’s somebody caring about them when using a tire? And then you try to say, OK, so now how can we do our best to make them feel that we care about them and that it’s a better way with Michelin and it’s a different shader? Because they care about giving you other ways to move that is not only classical ways. You know that, for example, on that matter, Michelin decided to make you pay per kilometer, not per tire. So that’s a big change in the experience of customers. That’s the same thing for employees. When Michelin cares about giving employees a better way forward, it’s also in the policy of what they do with the employees in the career they can have at Michelin. Then let’s think about what it can mean also for suppliers. It means also that giving suppliers a better way forward in their relation with Michelin would say to help them grow, to help their suppliers grow and develop themselves and find their way in the relation and through the relation with Michelin. Let’s apply that also to shareholders. I mean, a shareholder generally wants to have a good return on investment, but maybe there would be another way, also a better way forward in terms of investing in Michelin. It could be also to be part of the adventure of Michelin, that is, a company that has more than 100 years history and that wants to stay there for long. So be part of the history of Michelin for a shareholder can be also something that contributes to a better way forward for them. So that’s something I believe that is so important today to try to have a larger vision of what we do as customer experience specialists. Maybe we should use our tools and practices that we do have in companies to make sure that purpose and there are more and more companies in the world. And I know in France we have things changing and now purpose can be really like in the status of the companies. But if it’s only a sentence, it’s nothing. So to make your purpose alive, I think that we should use our tools of customer experience experts to this time deliver the promise. But you know, this incredible and fantastic promise of the purpose that goes a lot further than creating value for shareholders, but really create values for all stakeholders. I hope that approach and vision open new doors in your heads and maybe new companies. Thank you again so much, Julia, for this opportunity. See you soon. Bye. So there you have it. Special guest, Pierre Daems, sharing his insights on the importance and the power of the broader human experience that brands deliver to all stakeholders, not just their customers. As a challenge to you, my fellow CXer, I invite you to think about how your organization delivers its brand promise to one of the stakeholder groups that Pierre highlighted. Pick a group and then ask yourself or maybe ask your colleagues too, if you think that your brand is truly delivering on its promise to that group. If not, how has that impacted customer experience? And if you feel like you are delivering on that promise, then how has it augmented customer experience? Now, should this line of thinking catalyze a major revelation for you and your team, I’d love to hear about it. I’ll be back next Thursday with another CX Mini Masterclass episode. If you’d like to get in touch in the meantime, you can send me an email, tweet, or LinkedIn message. My handle is at Julia Ahlfeldt and my full contact details are also listed on my website, juliaahlfeldt.com or decodingthecustomer.com. See you next Thursday. Want to keep learning about CX? If you’d like to checkout more of these CX Mini Masterclasses or listen to my longer format CX expert interviews, check out the full listing of episodes for this CX podcast. Decoding the Customer is a series of customer experience podcasts created and produced by Julia Ahlfeldt, CCXP. Julia is a customer experience strategist, speaker and business advisor. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and one of the top experts in customer experience management. To find out more about how Julia can help your business achieve its CX goals, check out her customer experience advisory consulting services (including customer insights, CX measurement, leadership alignment and CX change implementation) or get in touch via email.