The customer experience is in the relationship Pt 2 transcription

By Fiona Boyd |

There are times when internet content businesses hit their instant success moment, and that may have been after a significant long haul slog. That’s the time to make sure you have the right professionals on your team. Phil Grant of Nexia ASR explains to Fiona Boyd, how he tries to help clients whose businesses are running up and who need to get the financial side of things organised quickly. This is the transcription of the video post.

Fiona: I guess you know I see it from that point of view, oh, suddenly we have to hire the right advisors. Yes, the money’s there, but how long is it going to keep flowing, all those questions that you know a business that bursts out of the blue, you know, faces. Do you come across those?

Fiona: Of course you’d embrace them, wouldn’t you?

Phil: Look, you do, and again, it’s more about, you know, you look at the people you’re dealing with and you think, are they people of integrity and et cetera, and if you really believe in their business, you know, absolutely, you try and support them, you get excited about it and passionate about what they’re doing and so you try and support them in the process. But, you know, again, you know, the fit has to be right. If you’re not getting on, I think it’ll come out and the experience for both parties won’t be good. It’s an important point to make that as an advisor, you want to have a good experience also. You want to enjoy actually delivering the service to them, so customer experience is critical. From being the advisor, if you don’t enjoy it and have a good experience, I don’t think the person on the other side’s going to have a good experience also.

Make the right match with your professional advisors and your business won't be going up in flames.

Fiona: With the, the sort of like reframing to customer experience, I’ve got to, I remember my first flight on a Virgin Blue airplane, and how much fun it was. After flying, you know, for years on the other airlines, how stodgy they were, and as the customer you were almost looked down on as you were seated, and the experience was always, you know, icky, and then the first Virgin Blue flight that I went on, it was fun, the dialogue was, about lightening the experience, making it easier to get through, knowing that everyone finds flying a bit, uncomfortable.

Phil: Sure.

Fiona: I guess the term customer experience to me is sort of that golden era when this new way of doing things…

Phil: …sure…

Fiona: …burst on to the scene, and, yeah, do you agree with that, that customer experience…

Phil: …oh, critical…

Fiona: …is about doing things a bit differently, and a better way?

Phil: Yeah, uh, and not being scared to try something, and I think for Virgin it was their point of difference. They identified that, their business, sorry, the space or the industry was stodgy, was hard and it was frustrating, you could never get what you wanted, so they tried a business model where it was easy, it was more cost competitive, it was fun. So all the things that everybody hated about the other…

Fiona: …they did the opposite….

Phil: …they did the opposite, and did it better, and I think they saw success out of that, and I think, you know, it takes a particular individual to see the way to do that. But I think that is, the success of a business today, is if you can see what, you know, if you can identify that your point of difference is, and clearly doing things with your customers in a better way, and giving them a better experience, would have to be your point of difference, when you’re competing against maybe an older, more staid, and you know, business which has been around for a long time which has got stuck in its sort of old, perhaps corporate ways, and I think if you can do things differently, and you identify where people’s enjoyment will lie, and where they’ll have a better experience, I think it’s got to be a recipe for success.

Fiona: We’ve spoken quite a lot about how you try to create the right customer experience for your clients and the businesses you work with, but just putting yourself in the shoes where you’re going out to dinner with your family in a restaurant you haven’t tried, what customer experience do you expect, when you turn up?

Phil: For me it’s more about the people who are delivering the service actually being interested and actually being – attending to what I want, so, you know, being respectful that I don’t need a waiter hovering over me every five minutes, sort of, trying to pour a glass of wine or whatever it happens to be.

But you know, and that’s hard, because they don’t know you, you’ve walked in the restaurant and they don’t really know you, but I think in that context, I think they have to try and sum you up pretty quickly, and strike up a friendly conversation with you, and just try and gauge fairly quickly, well what sort of people are these, what are these customers like? What do I think they’re probably going to like out of dining in my restaurant, you know?

And there’s going to be certain things, you know you go to a restaurant and you know that there’s a particular style, they do things in a particular manner, so therefore as a customer you have to accept well, that’s what I’m going there for, and hopefully they’re true to that, but I think also there has – I think it’d be nice if they can tailor it a bit more towards the customer walking in the door. So for me, I’m not, I don’t have large expectations but I would like to think people could identify what I’m after and support me in that and deliver what I’m looking for.

Fiona: When was the last time someone delivered a service that blew your socks off, that you actually said, that was the experience I wanted, or, that was a surprise and I liked that.

Phil: I had an experience when I was in Sydney recently, and my son and I were, flying back, and we had a hire car, and unfortunately we left something in the hire car. And, there was a ten minute gap between us leaving the car and remembering that we hadn’t, that we left something in there. We raced back, and the goods that were in there were stolen, they were taken.

Terrible experience. So potentially for that hire car company, they had a big dilemma, how are we going to deal with this issue? Because the first thing to do is, say it’s not our responsibility. To their credit, they have done everything that was humanly possible to try and recover those goods, and they’ve sent me money back for the price of the goods, and they even sent my wife flowers. And for me, that was an enormous experience, so it went from a situation that was very distressing, because the item was actually an anniversary present for my wife, so it was distressing, you know, and they completely turned it around, and I thought, that was impressive, that was really impressive, because I was, I wasn’t heated up but I was ready to do a whole lot of stuff which was going to let the world know that this organisation hadn’t supported me…

Fiona: …which we can do these days…

Phil: …which we can do these days. But I didn’t, I was restrained, and I gave them the opportunity to actually deliver and they did, they did, they have delivered, and there’s still another bit to that which will hopefully play out, but as far as I’m concerned they’ve done the right thing, and to me that was an exceptional service, I think they did, they did what, they should do, but unfortunately I think we’ve been conditioned to downgrade that and expect that they wouldn’t do it. And that was sort of my initial reaction, but I think they did…yeah, it was good, it was terrific, it was really good. And it was good to see that they did actually follow through and do the right thing.

Fiona: That’s a really interesting point as well because what you’re revealing there is that the customer experience isn’t just about what happens when things go right, but what do you do and what experiences do you give the customer when things go wrong?

Phil: Sure. And I think that’s, it’s the relationship – again, I draw the analogy to a relationship, you know, relationships have their good times and their bad times, and, you know, we all need to know how to deal with the impact of those things in both of those times and it’s no different with customers, you can have good experiences and you can have bad experiences, and particularly in businesses that are growing and you’re delegating some of that interaction to other people in your organisation, you can’t control it. You can’t control it.

You can have many systems and processes in terms of trying to, make sure that things are right – doesn’t always happen – and relationships with other people in your organisation don’t always work with your customers, and so things might go wrong, so you need to learn how to deal with that and react appropriately to that to restore the trust and restore the experience, you know, and I think how you react to those things is almost more important to how you actually, you know, cos once you’ve got a relationship established and you’ve got that mutual respect and trust, things have to go pretty bad before they get sort of washed away but when something does go wrong, how you respond to that I think is critically important.

Fiona: So Phil, really, the key going forward is, focus on the relationship and get the experience right…

Phil: …Absolutely…

Fiona: …for both parties…

Phil: …absolutely, and I think, particularly in what we’ve seen in the last twelve to eighteen months with the global financial crisis, I think most things you read and you hear about and I mean I agree with is get the relationship, restore the relationship, make sure you’re close to your customers and give them a good experience, cos if you do give them a good experience I think they’ll stick, and, it’s, you want them to be, the longevity of a customer is what’s important cos it costs a lot of money to get new customers, far easier to keep your existing ones.

Fiona: Phil, thank you for your time today.

Phil: Pleasure, thanks very much.

Phil Grant is a Partner at the boutique full service accounting firm, Nexia ASR.

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