Digital Innovation
On the importance
of proactive
communication
Kenny Bain (KB): The customer is now
in control of the dialogue, which is why it’s
the Age of the Customer. The key to this
is the proliferation of communication
channels. Any customer interaction can
be amplified and heard by many. This is
where the need to manage the customer’s
experience comes in, because more and
more businesses will have to differentiate
on the experience they give customers.
Because of that amplification,
advocating your brand becomes
really important; as well as a negative
experience being amplified, you can
also amplify positive experiences and
businesses can grow on the back of that.
Jeremy Tipper (JT): Ovo Energy is
a good example. As a challenger brand,
it’s being built on significantly better
customer experience in an industry that
is not particularly well regarded for great
customer experience.
KB: Yes, and HomeServe rebranded
four or five years ago on the back of a
‘customer first’ programme; putting
customer experience at the heart of
its business. Living and breathing that
message was front and centre of their
rebirth and they’ve grown exponentially
on the back of that. (See feature, p20)
Jen Morris (JM): They’re open about
it. They had a record-breaking fine, a dire
experience with customers, and knew
they had to change. They now listen
to their employees as much as to their
customers and say “tell us anything; if it’s
not right for customers, we’ll change it”.
KB: Your people arguably become
more important when you have so
many communication channels; you
need to arm them with the right tools
“You’re no longer
the owners of your
brand, you’re the
curators of the
experience”
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and information for them to respond
consistently across each of the channels
that might be put in the spotlight.
On the need for
consistency
JM: Customers now are so savvy, they
know if a brand is trying to hoodwink
them and will research it; they’ll listen
to other consumers more than the
brand. Every channel you communicate
through has to give a consistent message.
KB: Taking the negative United Airlines
example, they were too quick to go to the
media, when they didn’t have the facts
and came out with the wrong message.
The images of the bloodied passenger had
already gone viral. It might be an extreme
example, but it increases the importance
of the employee engagement piece.
On extending consumer
engagement principles
to candidate experience
KB: We’re co-developing a candidate
experience proposition, tracking the
feedback of the candidate’s interaction
with a business as it goes through
recruitment, hiring and onboarding.
JT: The context is that, as consumers,
our experience is getting better by the day
(think one-click buy at Amazon), so our
expectations of organisations and how
they treat us is ever increasing. Those
extraordinary consumer experiences
raise standards and there’s a growing
expectation among candidates that their
experiences should be just as good.
We thought about that in the context
of the candidate journey for which we are
accountable on behalf of our customers,
and also how we get feedback from
candidates. And it has to be said that
today, it’s not a particularly dynamic or
insightful process. Traditionally, we’ve
surveyed candidates when they’ve either
got the job or have exited the process.
That gives insight into how they’re
feeling, but it’s not something we can act
upon, because it’s retrospective.
We saw what Rant & Rave is doing
to help organisations gain real-time
customer feedback and sentiment on
their journeys as consumers, and their
“As consumers, our
experience is getting
better by the day, so
our expectations of
organisations and how
they treat us is ever
increasing”
interactions with companies, and thought
“how can we apply that model to the
candidate journey?”
Rew Golding (RG): Expectations are
sky-high, and acquiring and retaining
talent is crucial. It creates an opportunity
to take our consumer best practice and
understanding of working with brands
such as easyJet and HSBC and move that
into recruitment. It’s heartening that
Alexander Mann Solutions saw the value
in this real-time, actionable, emotional
capture opportunity. We’ve co-developed
a proposition that looks at measuring that
candidate journey and understanding
how it can work for Talent Collective
and its clients.
JT: Also, if you think about candidates
going through a recruitment experience
with a company, often, they are also
existing or potential consumers of that
brand; so the candidate journey could
cause a positive or negative perception,
or change their view towards that
organisation and its products or services.
Virgin Media assessed the impact
of a negative candidate journey on the
resigning of Virgin Media accounts. A
number of people who expressed that
they’d had a negative experience from a
recruitment standpoint cancelled their
accounts: so there’s a direct financial
correlation between a bad experience as
a candidate and the implications for the
business from financial perspective, and
its ability to retain customers.
On taking swift action
RG: Our software-as-a-service solution
is predicated on a real-time basis, and we
use different communication channels.
JM: If you capture feedback at the point