If you are a customer, and let's face it we all are sometimes, then how do you feel when the PR is great but the actual experience is terrible? In this episode, I walk through a recent experience with a U.K high street brand and explain which of the 6 customer journey touchpoints they got right, and which they didn't so that you can think about how you take your customers through their experience with you.
Talkwalker article here: Customer Thermometer here
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Hello, and welcome to this episode of the unnoticed entrepreneur. Jim James, here with you today. I want, just ask you the question of that is how is the customer experience? When they deal with you and you're a company. Because. Now public relations. Isn't just about what we get written about. It is what other people say about us as well. And now we're social media. Everybody can be an experience. Share. Everyone could be a critic. And that could be magnified. So what did you share with you? Some ideas about measuring the customer journey. And just ask you to think about how are you managing the customer experience and making sure that you're delighting customers once they've come. Come in the door. And I'm going to use some personal experiences and anecdotes. Which is really what's prompted me to share this today. Okay. So let's just look at the customer journey. So it used to be a very simple. Public relations piece of work. Maybe you'd read about somebody a. restaurant or a business in a newspaper magazine. You may see an advert. Or something, for example, a sign downtown or on the way to the airport, for example. But now. The customer journey is not only one or two touch points, but it's consistent right up through to the point of purchase. And. at point of purchase and then post-purchase. I want you to share with you a recent experience that I've had, where I went to get my car serviced and it's a mini Cooper S it's a nice car. And if you know anything about the customer service here in the UK, when you buy a car, The garage is make the most money out of the after sale service. So it could be very expensive. So I was. Looking for an alternative. And. I found when I found a big. Big. Branded repair. I shop here in the UK. Called I went online. I was able to find my local repair shop. And I spoke to somebody online or the chat. They guided me to look at the different. service. Scheduled that I needed. I put my. Registration. Number the car registration into the system. And it told me the kind of car it was. And. The latest service that it required. Asked me if I wanted to, book that in. And if I did, I could choose by postcode my latest and nearest garage and service time. The online digital experience was awesome. And the pricing. Meant that it was going to be less than half the price of the standard. Mini garage. I thought this is going to be fantastic. Stick. So the digital experience, everything from the ad words to the keywords, to the blog about what to expect. From a car service. Was all done perfectly. So the digital team. And the customer. acquisition team was done brilliantly. See, if we look at a customer journey, I can look at, for example, the talk Walker website, they have six steps. They say. Step number one There's awareness. I needed to get my car serviced. I've got little flashing bulbs. Step two is the research. I went online and did a quick search for many service, two years service. Step three. Engagement. I had a chat. With the online assistant for the Halfords its website. The next then I was engaged and then they got me to convert. I committed. And in fact I even pre-booked and prepaid using the monthly interest free payment. Now, this is where it all went wrong. Step number five, I went down to the local garage to get the car service. And the car park was completely full. went in, there was a slightly, well, very harried looking young man. And he said, oh, sorry. Cert. It's my first. First week in this. Garage and. Four of our six. Technicians. are away. So, if you don't mind waiting, I'll see what I can do for you. What's your registration. So I gave him the registration. Is that all? All that's right. It's a service. Service a full two years service. No problem, sir. I'll see what I can do. All ready. The delivery at the point of purchase, isn't quite as I'd expected from. My digital. Experience which had led me. To believe I was going to be received and. Be organized. And that someone will be able to drive my car in because I had an SMS to say, remember to drop your car off at eight 30 to be on time. So I, duly turned up at. Eight 30. after dropping the children off at school, And I was met. By this overwrought young man who told me he just arrived. Another customer came just after me. And he had been told that he should be there at 8 45. He service for an mot. And he was told by the young man who'd only been there a week that. The person in charge of doing the mot had been in a car accident. And wasn't going to be there today. Could he leave the car or better? Still take it away. Over the. The period of the next half. Oh for now. The succession. And people who had. Had SMS is to tell them to be there on time, drove their cars and found there was nowhere left to park. And. I decided to say to this young. Oh man. I'll. I'll remove one problem from your experience today. I'll take my car and I'll come back another day. But I said, you did say on the phone that I could have a courtesy car. For the day because you. Well to have my car all day. Yeah. I said the young man. Here's a car for you. It's parked around the side. You can go and get into that. So I got into this car and it was filthy. Cigarette Ash everywhere. I turned it on and it was. Out of fuel. I had only 40. Kilometres left and I was going to drive 10 kilometers home and 10 kilometers back. And I was thinking. This isn't really gonna work. Out. So I parked the car was The phone call and someone parked in front of me. And a man got. With a Halfords it's branded. Jacket. And I. I said, well, you're parked in front of me. I'm about to leave. He said, oh, sorry. So you can't take that car. Who said you'd take that car so well, the young man inside. So he can't take that car. That's a. that's. Uh, mechanics car, you can't drive that so, well, it is filthy. It has no Petrel. And he said, well, it's not only that. So it's not insured. If you drive that car, so it won't be legal on the road. So I, Julie got out of the car, took all my things out again. and went inside. I overheard the exchange between. What I understood. Now to be the regional manager. And this young man who'd been there for just a week who was trying to sort everything out. Meanwhile, a young technician, the only one who was actually working that day was wandering around with an oil stained rag. Wondering which car he used to start on and I peered through, into the workshop and I could see. Span is on the floor. I could see oil. With lids off and I could see cars in various states of. Starting and finishing. The supervisor proceeded to talk in front of this young man, who'd been there for weeks explaining. That the agency staff had let them down. And that it was all really chaos and that he never normally. Only worked in this shop at all. All, but they would get to the bottom of it. Meanwhile, I have a, quite an important. Two year service. Brake linings, brake pads, oil filters, micro filters, and so on. I'm starting to think that the mini garage or though twice the price may have been a much less risky. Investment of my time. So whilst I'm. Waiting to get my keys back. The area manager explains to his young man, the rest of us who are waiting in the slightly, crowded and slightly anxious. feeling reception. That. Four of the six staff are not turning up. Not only that. The young man who'd been doing the MOT wasn't in an accident tool. That was a lie that the man had been there for one week had concocted. To try and make everybody sort of feel somehow better about the situation. The man who is going to have his car mot. Also took his keys back and decided to leave. And I said, I think I'll just get my keys back because I think I can't have that car anymore. And they supervise said, no, I tell you what happened. Because a young technician had an Evie on the ramp. Thought the electric vehicle was in park and, had got out of the car because there was no engine noise thought that it would been turned off. And this electric vehicle has shot off the ramp across the. garage and driven into the wall. And so they had given the spare pool car to the owner of the Evie. Only to find. When he unfortunately had an accident that the car wasn't insured. Not so reassuring. The whole story in itself. So I said, well, I tell you what, I'll just take my mini. Back home with me. So step five of the Talk Walker. Customer journey. Is delivery. When it comes to advocacy, which is step six of the customer journey. You can imagine. How people like me who feel aggrieved because frankly we've been lied to. We'll likely to share that story. We know that happy customers. Share once or twice, but unhappy customers. I share multiple times; in fact 9 to 10 times. It's a social desire to warn other people not to go there. The manager rang me 20 minutes later, they said we might be able to fit you in. Two weeks time at a different facility, sir. Would you like me to book that in for you now? And I said, you know what? I don't think so. I think I'll just have my money back. What happens is that having Raised awareness. Having got me through the research and the conversion. funnel. When I have my product issue under delivery. If I am not happy. I'm not only going to not. buy. From them, but I'm going to start to share. And because of social media, we can share. At scale. We can. Post photographs of the workshop in disarray. We could put it on our Twitter, on our Facebook, on our LinkedIn. If we're really not happy, we can start to do what I've been doing with one company's I'm recording, using loom. The unhappy experiences I'm having. And I'm sending it through to them, but I'm also started to share those. On my social media with an ad. Symbol saying. Do you know, this is your customer service. Why you not responding to us? And we're saying, why are you not responding? Because the promise was there. If there was no promise, we wouldn't worry. But if there was a promise. And it is unrequited down. We're going to be really unhappy. So as we know public relations is about building a great reputation. But if your customer journey. Is poor at any stage. It doesn't matter how much good PR you've done because you're going to have churn. And you're going to have disloyalty. Worse still, you're going to have your users. potential users becoming auntie users. When we look at PR, we have to manage all the touch points in the customer journey. And. Let's face it. customer journey. Is reflected by how good we are. For example, technology. How good we are serving, for example, the disabled or the under abled person,, the old person that doesn't know how to use the app. And that's the only way to communicate with customer service. For example. We have to think about. Uh, public relations. Not from our point of view, but how the customer experiences. We know that there are net promoter scores, NPS. There are customer effort scores. There's a. Task. Completion score. There's a customer lifetime value. All of these you can find out about on TalkWalker site or generally. There is no point in doing good PR if we give bad customer service or bad customer experience. So I'll leave that with you because the best advocates. As we know. happy customers. And if they're not happy customers that go to Amazon ratings or net score, or one of these other rating. products. And that could be the kiss of death. So. As you're thinking about your public relations. Don't just think about the front end, think about the whole way through. Because otherwise people like me, they get bought in will feel. Kind of, so barest will feel so stung. That we will become your worst public relations nightmare. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the unnoticed entrepreneur. And I really hope. This show helps you. If you like it, please do rate it. We have a link in the show notes at the end. On how to rate the podcast. We'll show if you're interested, we have the book. The I noticed entrepreneur online at Amazon. Thank you for joining me. On this the unnoticed entrepreneur.
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