On October 1st 2024 The Foundation was officially 25 years old. It’s hard to comprehend how much has changed and what’s been learned over such a long time, despite having seen the whole journey first-hand.

The customer world 25 years ago

The big deal in October 1999 was the internet. We were in the middle of the original boom – or bubble as it came to be known.

• The biggest internet businesses included AOL, who grew by sending people CDs in the post to help them connect, and Yahoo, who had a person updating a web page every day listing all the new internet sites that had set up in the last 24 hours.

• Amazon’s results for 1999 expressed pride that book sales were now less than 50% of their revenue, and that they had won awards for their toy business, something they envisaged being a big part of their future

• Apple launched a spaceship-shaped device aiming to set the standard for wireless communications, that they explained could be abbreviated to ‘wi-fi’. The iPhone wouldn’t arrive until 2007.

• Kingfisher announced a brand new out of town megastore format called Big W, a giant Woolworths. Trading in Woolworths shares was suspended in 2008.

• In the world of music, Napster launched, allowing free digital music file-sharing. It was described as the year the music industry lost control. And iTunes then Spotify were yet to come.

• Google only entered the UK top 10 for websites in 2001.

• People at work asked things like ‘can I find someone to teach me the internet?’ (They couldn’t)

Our world 25 years ago

I had a lot more hair then. Slightly too much I now think.

I’d spent five years already thinking about the idea that became The Foundation, ever since working on advertising for the launch of Daewoo Cars in the UK. It was groundbreaking stuff. We saw something many car buyers wanted but weren’t getting – decent service – and with the management team doing the heaviest lifting, responded boldly through a whole different business model (directly owned distribution) and culture (belief in putting customers first and that sales would follow), encouraged by the burning ambition of the Koreans who wanted serious success only. Cautious safety in their eyes was failure.

The Foundation would repeat this way of thinking – making things better for customers of many different businesses by identifying both customers’ unmet needs and an innovative, viable business response. We would understand both customer and business parts of the challenge.

This seemed to be a way of creating strong foundations for sustained success – hence the name.

The service sector had been growing and it seemed that these businesses had more need than pure product companies to co-ordinate and orchestrate to create a good customer impression. More of their operations were visible and were experienced by customers. They were very different to a box of cornflakes where the customer bit could be more easily handled separately from most of the business.

But this idea of managing customers’ experiences wasn’t established.

• There were no CX teams

• No Chief Customer Officers

• No NPS even – that came in 2003, announced by a seminal article in Harvard Business Review

We had no idea how to describe ourselves. Our first brochure had on the front cover the headline ‘We are management consultants. We are not management consultants’. Awful!, Inside-out and self-interested, entirely unclear, reflective of a conversation at the time about ad agencies being in competition with management consultancies.

We also had little idea of how to do our work, how to sell it or who we needed to recruit to carry it all out.

We attracted 10 clients in our first year, half of which were dot com related (the boom really helped) and they included the Department of Education and Skills, NME and, thankfully, Volkswagen. A year in, the bubble burst. Although no one emails you to tell you. It all just slows down and you go from worrying about speed of growth to worrying about the blip to worrying about survival, bit by bit. Volkswagen asked for help with two projects that lasted for more than a year, and so once we had painfully cut back, we started to learn how to do this work for real.

To save you a blow by blow account, the biggest learning points in 25 years can be summarised in a list of five.

1. That the first and most fundamental challenge for anyone in doing customer-centric things well is perspective. You naturally see the world from the inside looking out, colleagues close, customers distant and quiet. But to do better for customers, you need to see things outside-in, starting with them and their very different worlds, and working gradually back to your sector and eventually to you, who you now remember is an organisation that’s extremely unimportant to them and often misunderstood too.

2. Two definitions are crucial.... ‘Customer’ is an imperfect word. Much breath is wasted in various sectors debating whether it’s better or worse than consumer, shopper, audience, passenger, resident, tenant, citizen, even human (and more). They are all imperfect. The longer more helpful idea is to think about ‘the people you serve’. The buyers, the users, the people around them, their communities, and the world they live in. The whole lot. But most pointedly, the people who, in the short term and in the long run, whose decisions you need to earn for you to succeed.... Being customer-led isn’t asking what they want and doing what they say – as customers we only know what we’ve always had – faster horses and all that. It is doing two things together – really understanding the problems customers need to solve or the outcomes they want, and then finding new and better solutions. The first of these is timeless – we want to get from A to B, to buy good food at affordable prices, to be entertained, to wear clothes that make us feel confident or attractive. The second, the new and better ways, changes all the time. At some point you create the best possible solution, and you scale it. Eventually someone else comes along, maybe with a new piece of technology, that allows a genuinely better solution to be created. As the incumbent, you’re busy running your machine, not thinking about customers and their original problem. Maybe you’re the BBC and Netflix starts, looking insignificant. But they bring a way of watching what you want when you want to that’s a new and better solution. You miss it and it grows. Once it’s significant there’s a completely new issue, because now they’re really good at things you’ve not had to deal with. To be fair, the BBC did have the iPlayer and were onto it fast, but Netflix has definitely done better. This is why these definitions matter.

3. In helping leaders do a better job of this, we learned that this is not an information problem. It’s about belief. Initially we thought it was information – getting customer insight in front of people from all across a business. But when that insight, and the market researcher who conveys it, tells you stuff that’s seriously inconvenient – like you’re losing share to Netflix in a way that looks serious – the information gets ignored. And if a few brave souls start to engage with it, then believing that their organisation could do something very different, successfully, is just too hard. It would have to be a collective effort, involving all manner of changes, doing wholly new things well.

4. There’s a powerful way of instilling these kinds of beliefs that we call Immersion. Immersion is about senior people making time to do two types of activity... Meeting and listening to a few customers directly, in person. This brings businesspeople into the real world, face to face with someone who might be angry or confused or just uninterested, but its personal. You can’t ignore it, you have to think about why. And you want to do something about it too as you start to see, and more importantly feel, why it matters and why perhaps your numbers have been going in the wrong direction.... And then alongside, meeting and listening to a few leaders of organisations in other sectors who have successfully tackled challenges with some similarities but lots of differences to your own. We call them Parallels. When you hear the story from someone who was really there, it’s obviously authentic. And you can also ask them directly what went wrong, what it cost, what they’d do differently next time. It’s not threatening because it’s a story about what someone else did, distant from you. But it leaves space for a team of leaders to let pennies drop. It IS like us a bit, and if they were here then they’d definitely do x, y and z. Hang on, we could do a version of that. Put together a few complementary parallels and you start to have new set of jigsaw pieces that describe a very different picture of a successful future, new and better ways of solving the inconvenient customer problems, one that the team believes in and owns.

5. Gradually we learned how to apply all this to more specific client questions, taking the principles into better specific answers.... Creating strategy that’s led by customers, outward-looking, outside-in – or developing customer strategies, choices about who to serve and which needs to meet... Developing more rounded and innovative propositions, promises you can deliver that make things better for customers first, and that earn their decisions as a result... Building visions of what your particular great customer experience looks like across the organisation (great for customers first, not the organisation first), and then systematic ways of measuring, managing and continually improving towards the ideal (informed by John Sills’ great book, The Human Experience)... Ways of changing whole organisations so they become genuinely customer centric, maybe even pioneering, building on learning from my own time writing the book The Customer Copernicus

25 years on, are customers in a better place?

In many ways yes. And in many ways no.

Last year we carried out a State of the Nation study into what we as customers of many, many organisations, experience on a regular basis. Our lives depend on the support we receive.

We looked at 44 categories surrounding us as people and asked how they are experienced – from brilliant and wonderful to awful and enraging.

The world of the internet, digital, mobile did well on the whole, seriously helping by making thing easier and more enjoyable. Amazon, Netflix, Apple…

But customers are NOT being well served in far too many areas of life, across many sectors and organisations:

• Things don’t work – the NHS and trains stood out

• It’s very hard to get in touch to sort stuff out – HMRC for example

• You waste my time – maybe Ryanair with all the tricks and friction with trying to book, or many, many call centres where your call is important to them but not enough to answer it within the hour

• And it takes an emotional toll. It’s stressful being let down in areas that really matter, or having something unjust happen that you can’t speak to anyone sympathetic about to make it right

This is a national problem, an invisible epidemic contributing to depression, misery and a lack of productivity on a personal level.

Why is it still so bad?

To be fair, the issues in organisations are pretty intractable.

• Teams have to be created to work at scale, and they only see their part, in silos

• Self-interested aims and metrics are commonplace and unquestioned, the norm – but they’re about how to make this organisation successful not the people it serves

• Attention is continually pulled inwards by the clamour of colleagues, regulators, owners and more, with customers quiet and far away

There are some great customer pioneers out there, but there’s a lot more that needs to be better.

Where to from here?

We’re doing all this because we want to make a difference.

We’ve stayed independent so we don’t get distracted from the task in hand.

But we want to enlist more people in helping to make the changes that society needs.

We should have not just outside-in businesses but outside-in public services, charities, political parties… they all fall into the same trap.

To help, we’re determinedly growing a Customer Pioneer Community, a group of like-minded people who want the world to be more of this kind of customer-led.

At its heart is a group of Mountaineers as we call them – currently more than 50 people who have been part of leadership teams that have successfully pioneered, making things better for customers, against the odds in all sorts of different situations, sectors and at different sizes. You can see who they are here.

By sharing their stories and their learning with people across the community, and by people across the community supporting each other, and with us supporting and keeping the flame burning, we think we can make a difference at a new scale.

The next five years are about building momentum… Maybe the next 25 years making more of a dent in the problem.

Let’s make organisations serving the people they’re there for exceptionally well, commonplace.

Let’s create more Customer Pioneers.

If someone asked if you thought customers from ethnic minority backgrounds were more or less satisfied with their customer experience than White customers, what would you say? What educated guesses would you take? What assumptions would you make? Would you believe ethnic minority customers feel that the situation has gotten better, or worse, in the past five years? It’s worth pausing for a minute to try to answer these questions before looking at the facts. I, for one, guessed wrong in many ways. 

The Foundation carried out a survey with a nationally representation sample of 2,000 adults in January 2023, to assess how customer experience has changed over time and what aspects of customer experience are seen as positive or negative.  

Generally, there are deep and widespread problems with customer experience across all groups in the UK: regardless of their sex, socio-economic group, region, household structure, employment sector, etc, most customers are unhappy with how businesses treat them. With one exception: age. Young customers are a lot more satisfied than older ones. Despite all the technological advances, the promises of a ‘personalised’ and ‘seamless’ experience, the constant requests for feedback supposed to improve products and services, the huge investment in complex functionalities and algorithms, dissatisfaction is high and growing. Things are not looking good.   

What interests me here, though, is how the experiences and perceptions of ethnic minority customers differ from those of White people.  I took a closer look at the experiences reported by the 257 non-White ethnic minority respondents in the sample, to examine how they compare.  

In relation to almost all dimensions considered, customers from ethnic minority backgrounds are significantly less dissatisfied with their customer experience than White customers. For instance: 

• 86% of White customers agree that companies ‘often feel impersonal and lost their 'human' touch’, compared to 74% of ethnic minority customers; 

• 84% of White customers think that companies ‘take customers for granted’, compared to 79% of ethnic minority customers; 

• 82% of White customers agree that companies are ‘more interested in cutting costs than giving a good experience’, compared to 77% of ethnic minority customers; 

• 79% of White customers agree that companies ‘send too many emails and requests asking for feedback’, compared to 74% of ethnic minority customers; 

• 42% of White customers agree that companies ‘respect their customers and employees’, while 54% of ethnic minority customer agree; 

• 36% of White customers think that companies are ‘straightforward to deal with’, while 47% of ethnic minority customers find them so; and 

• 34% of White customers agree that companies ‘take ownership of problems’, but nearly half (49%) of ethnic minority customers agree that they do.  

It's also fascinating to observe just how different perceptions of change are. When asked whether they think their experiences as customers ‘have gotten better or worse in the past five years’, 12% of White customers believe things got better and 47% believe they got worse. Among ethnic minority customers, 29% believe things got better and 31% believe they got worse. 

Why might that be? I don’t know but I would venture some educated guesses.  

I believe that much of the difference is accounted for by age. At a national level, Census data shows that people from ethnic minority groups are 12 years younger than their White British counterparts. As a result, it may well be that they are much less phased by the shift of much of retail to online, an environment where they are totally at ease. That might help explain why they are more likely to find companies straight-forward to deal with. Having said that, the respondents in this survey must all be somewhat digitally savvy because this was an online survey. 

It may be that shopping online significantly reduces personal interactions and, with that, the risk that assumptions are made about you as a customer - and a person - because of your skin colour, accent or dress.  

It may also be that these diverse young people have little recollection of a world when bank managers met customers face-to-face and delivered personalised advice or when people booked holidays after a visit to travel agents on their high street. They do not bemoan a past they have never known. 

Importantly, the vast majority (97%) of people from ethnic minority groups live in cities – often large multicultural inner cities. London, where about half of all people from ethnic minority groups in Britain live, has the most positive perceptions of customer experience: 21% of Londoners agree that things got better and 39% agreeing that they got worse. This is a lot more positive than any other UK regions.  

In these urban spaces, it is reasonable to assume that the frontline colleagues who serve customers will themselves be diverse. That matters a great deal to ethnic minority customers, both because it is often taken as a short-cut to indicate that the whole company is inclusive, and because it increases the likelihood that the interactions will be more open, human and empathetic. Having a multicultural population also means that the products and services on offer in the local area will probably cater to diverse needs. Perhaps having a wide range of options as a consumer also means that, where bad customer experiences do occur, a remedy or alternatives can be found quickly and the consequences are less severe.  

It is highly probable that the response to #BlackLivesMatter helped change ethnic minority – especially Black – consumers’ sense that they don’t matter to businesses. In the year following the murder of George Floyd, 37% of all adverts on TV featured a Black person. That is a significant over-representation, given that only 2.5% of the UK population is Black. Black people were suddenly visible on our screens and often portrayed in a positive light. This must go some way towards explaining why ethnic minority customers are less likely to feel that companies take customers for granted, or that they have lost their human touch, and why they also feel that the situation has improved over the past years. 

Why are customers from ethnic minority backgrounds less annoyed by requests for feedback? My hunch is that it is because people from minority groups rarely feel heard or that their voices matter. The opportunity to give feedback probably feels more valuable in that context.    

I confess that I don’t understand why ethnic minority customers are more likely to think companies ‘respect their customers and employees’ than their White peers, given the wealth of evidence about the workplace discrimination. Could it be a matter of having lower expectations in the first place? Maybe. Could it be a matter of different cultural attitudes to (reporting perceptions of) customer service? Maybe. Could it be that companies, on the whole, treat individuals better in their roles as ‘customers’ than the same individuals are treated in other roles, such as when they are ‘public service users’, ‘charity beneficiaries’, ‘victims of crime’, ‘students’ or plain ‘citizens’? Maybe.  

We just don’t know. Even where I made educated guesses, these could be off. Given that White British people are the minority in London and Birmingham, the UK's two largest cities, and that the number of people from ethnic minority groups keeps increasing generally, brands should seek to find out what is driving these very different perceptions between customers based on their ethnicity. In the absence of proper qualitative research and insights about these issues, valuable lessons about what leads to satisfaction with customer experience are wasted, and opportunities are left untapped. 

The Vrbo ads are enough to make anyone want a holiday. A stunning home. A beautiful family. Peace and quiet, fun and sunshine, adventure and excitement. Whatever takes your fancy. And most importantly, no one else to share it with.

Idyllic.

Except when no one also includes the property’s owners and a dog.

When the Brown family (not their real names, but they are real people who live a few doors down from me) arrived at their Vrbo rental home in Burgundy last summer for the first family holiday abroad since Covid they couldn’t wait for a fortnight in their own gite, with their own pool and their own privacy. But it turned out that all they were actually renting was a couple of bedrooms and a bathroom on the upstairs of the property while they shared the downstairs sitting room and kitchen as well as the garden and pool with the property’s owners and their dog.

The kitchen was very small, the dog was very large and the owner smoked in and outside the property.

Not so idyllic.

The family’s teenage daughters weren’t keen to sunbathe by the pool with the owner always in the garden and funnily enough, no one wanted to take up the hosts’ offers of dinner pour six.

After a week feeling more claustrophobic than calm and relaxed, they packed their bags and left. This wasn’t the holiday they’d planned.

It turned out that all they were actually renting was a couple of bedrooms and a bathroom.

But it wasn’t the end of the world, because Vrbo are a big and reputable company - owned by Expedia Group. They’d get in touch with them, explain that this wasn’t what they’d been promised, get their money back, book another holiday, put the Disaster in Bourgogne behind them.

But this was where the fun really started for them.

Vrbo’s brand promise is based on spending time with people you love - and only them. When they launched it in 2022, Hector Muelas, Senior Vice President of global creative at Expedia Group said, “Vrbo guests always get the whole place to themselves”. 

Seems very clear to me. In fact I love the promise.

Today it’s almost nine months later and Vrbo still refuse to admit that what the family bought wasn’t what they were sold. We all make mistakes and for platforms such as Vrbo they will make mistakes too, but it’s how brands respond to them that really matters. Vrbo’s response is the opposite of being customer-led and highlights the gap between a beautiful human brand promise and a disconnected tech-led reality.

When you look at what happened next, looking from the outside-in through the experience of the family, the lack of a human experience becomes very stark.

● They were forced to speak to a chat bot first, which is fine, but it couldn’t help with something this complicated and simply said they had to go somewhere else. Its responses felt like a machine that wanted the customer to make all the effort and didn’t reflect a brand that cared.

● When they eventually spoke to a Vrbo human their response was to tell them that they should have complained within 24 hours. Ignoring the fact that this was buried in the small print, it was a very difficult thing to do since the property had no wi-fi or mobile signal. That was another thing they’d been promised which turned out to be untrue.

● After radio silence for SIX weeks from their Vrbo claims handler, they took to Twitter and eventually got some engagement. They were asked to provide evidence that the owners had been at the property when they were there. The Browns sent them photos: the dog in the kitchen, the owner watering the garden. And crazily, these were rejected as insufficient.

● What exactly were Vrbo expecting? The Browns to ask the family (and dog) to pose alongside them looking angry like a photo from a local newspaper in the 1980s? Maybe collect the used cigarette butts like they do in TV crime dramas?

● Having your holiday ruined is bad enough, but then being treated without genuine empathy and asked to make all the effort, has made a bad situation even worse for the family. 

● The case still drags on for the Browns. There is no sign of a resolution. Vrbo continues to put up as many barriers as they can to protect revenue while minimising the effort they make to acknowledge their failings to their customers and make things right.

It is not easy to be customer-led, delivering your brand promise through your experience. We all naturally see the world from the inside-out, surrounded by colleagues, the business, and their industry. Customers can seem distant and peripheral.

What the Browns needed was a human experience to show empathy and understanding.

For Vrbo, they have created an experience that’s probably fine for 95% of the time and customers won’t have any issues. But for those, like the Browns, where the promise is not met it creates a much bigger impact than losing future customers. It creates a culture where not valuing the people that choose to give them their business grows: where it’s more important to limit losses and manage costs, rather than deliver the value they promise.

When the Browns complained, they could only speak to technology. What they needed was a human experience to show empathy and understanding. All you need to do is sit down and chat with the Browns and you can immediately understand how disappointed, let down and angry they’d felt when they arrived in their rental.

And for me this is the essential place where Vrbo are letting customers down.

They’re failing to see that in their line of business - pleasure, fun, relaxation, escapism - when it goes wrong, their customers are let down badly.

It’s not just a missing part of a flatpack. Or an Amazon delivery coming a day late. It’s the thing that people spend their lives saving for, looking forward to and needing to escape the craziness of everyday life.

Vrbo says proudly “Everyone knows how important it is to spend time together.”

But what they haven’t done is put that insight into their experience. If they’d have done that to the Browns from day one, their story would be very different.

Here at The Foundation, we are repeatedly tasked with getting organisations to understand what customers truly value and to then trailblaze on their behalf. For many, this means rethinking their business to put customers at the centre with a true understanding of what matters to them.

Usually, the bigger the business, the harder the challenge. This is because as organisations get bigger, not only do they have increasing pressure from stakeholders and financial targets, but the leaders of the business also become increasingly separated from the customers they serve. On the other end, you have successful startups who are often very customer-led. This is no surprise given they are built by founders trying to solve a problem for customers, so they are instinctively rooted in their needs. 

Recently, I was introduced to a startup called Fussy, a sustainable personal care brand on a mission to banish single-use plastic from people’s bathrooms. Their first product, a refillable deodorant, has been a huge success, with the company receiving backing on Dragon’s Den. I was so impressed that I (*non-impulsively) invested in their crowdfunding campaign. Since then, amongst other successes, they’ve just signed their first retail partnership with Tesco.  

But what made them so appealing to a big-timer like me, and the small-time investors on Dragons Den?  

This got me thinking about the nature of successful startups, and how they are often very connected to their customers. So, what can struggling big businesses learn from great examples of customer-led success in the startup world, such as Fussy? 

1 - They focus on solving a specific problem for a specific customer.

Many successful startups are founded by entrepreneurs who are passionate about solving a specific problem or addressing a particular need for customers. To do this successfully, they are familiar with the pain points (often as a consumer themselves) and have a relentless desire to create solutions that meet those needs. By doing this, customers become the centre of everything they do.

Fussy does this brilliantly. They have identified a gap in sustainable deodorant which is effective, convenient and as good for your skin as it is for the environment. They also know exactly who their customer is, the conscious consumer (primarily Gen Z’s) who want to purchase more socially responsible products. Perhaps more impressively, they also know who their customer isn’t and therefore aren't wasting time and money designing something for someone who doesn't want it. 

2 - They are adaptable and responsive.

Given their relentless pursuit to solve a specific customer problem, successful startups are not afraid to pivot quickly when things aren’t working. Being agile and responsive is important in adapting a product or service to meet customers' needs, particularly in the face of seismic market changes (*none needs reminding of COVID). This means they can change direction when something is clearly not landing, or they can do iterative development of a new product or service, feature-by-feature, through customer feedback, market research and a real understanding of customer behaviour.

Fussy are adaptable in their approach. They have experimented with both ingredients and design of their signature product, making it as easy as possible for customers to refill and reuse them. In terms of responsiveness, apart from identifying a clear market opportunity, they as a brand are incredibly responsive. They have also owned their mistakes. For example, they got into a bit of hot water over some adverts which compared their products to some Unilever products. Rather than shy away from this mistake, they delivered an olive tree to the Unilever headquarters with an apology letter and a note reading “our bad”. They were responsive, took ownership of the mistake and subsequently gained respect for it, most notably from the CEO of Unilever, Alan Hope, who replied by telling them “don’t sweat it”. 

3 - They focus on building strong relationships with their customers.

Given they are often focusing on a niche market or specific customer segment, startups often have a much closer relationship with their customers. They invest in building these relationships and engage regularly with customers to gather feedback and insights. Importantly, this isn't just a "going-through-the-motions" exercise, they truly understand the importance of doing it. This is because it allows customers to help shape product development, designing something people both want and need. It also creates a sense of community, which is important for both brand awareness and growth.

Fussy has a clear emphasis on building community. They have a strong social media following, a weekly newsletter and they form partnerships which are valuable to their customers. For example, during Black Friday week they launched a brand partnership scheme (the “green card”) to allow customers to get discounts on other sustainably-minded brands. Their customers also help to shape their future direction, such as through social media polls on what products they want to see next and which retailers they should partner with (e.g. Tesco). This has all contributed to their organic acquisition of customers which, while often being a steadier form of growth for a business, provides a better chance of long-term success.

In conclusion, successful startups, such as Fussy, are businesses which are customer-led as determined by their very nature. They reap the significant benefits of focusing on solving a specific problem for a specific customer, being adaptable and responsive, and building strong relationships with their customers. This allows them to better meet their needs whilst providing a sustainable model of organic long-term growth.

What’s more, these are all lessons that big businesses can learn from, especially as they seek to maintain customer focus and prioritise customer needs in the face of growth and competing priorities. That's because focus, adaptability and forming strong relationships with customers are just as important in maintaining success as it is in creating it.

1.     I support Arsenal

2.     I‘ve never drunk tea or coffee (but I do like Whisky)

3.     I spend an awful lot of time on trains.

But now, I think there’s a fourth thing to add to the list: I really, really love Honest Burgers.

I’d never heard of them before we moved to our new office in Kings Cross in 2017. But as luck would have it, the restaurant was right opposite our office. In fact, should there ever be a fire alarm, Honest Burgers is actually our meeting point. It’s strange how often we have fire drills.

At first, it was a handy meeting place with colleagues and clients. A nice restaurant, close by, with good food and quick service. But as I started going more regularly, I started learning more about the company and realised how much of what they do is what other companies aspire to. In particular – aside from the excellent burgers – there are three things I love: they’re authentic, they’re flexible, and they’re transparent.

Authentic

When you walk into the Honest Burgers in Kings Cross, you’ll notice the walls are filled with photos. Not staged shots or mass-produced prints, but photos taken by the team, of the team. The people serving you are the people in the selfies, having fun at work, and often showing what goes on behind the scenes.

The team themselves are lovely. There’s no uniform, no script, and no uncomfortable formality. They dress how they want, and the music always seems to be whatever playlist they fancied putting on that day. When they’re not busy, they seem to be enjoying each other’s company, chatting or sharing a drink behind the bar whilst they wait for someone to need their help, creating a friendly, relaxed atmosphere.

When we all returned to the office after the Covid lockdowns, the team seemed genuinely happy to see us. The first time we went in (to pick up a collection), we had a long chat, about how they were, how it had been for them, and how it had affected the business. When we got back into the office and opened the bag of food, this note was inside. There was something in my eye…

Flexible

As well as the menu staples, each restaurant has a ‘local’ special, only available in that place. The special usually has something to do with the local area. Recently I went to the Baker St branch, and their special was a collaboration with a local cheese shop, La Fromagerie. It’s a sign that the owners haven’t forgotten their own roots from Brixton market, cycling to Baker Street for their beef and buying their potatoes from the local veg shop opposite.

More than that, they’re also flexible with the menu they do have, which I know because – and here comes the admission - I have a *slightly* strange order.

Honest Burgers were one of the first places in the UK to offer the Beyond Meat ‘vegan’ burger, as part of their Plant Burger. I loved it immediately. It tasted good, but it also felt better, felt lighter, and didn’t leave you needing an afternoon nap.

The only problem is, I really love bacon. So, the next time I tried it, I order the ‘vegan’ plant burger, but with real bacon. After a quick double-check to make sure I knew what I was ordering, it turned up, no problem. And now, every time I go in, they ask me if I want my usual.

This might not seem like that big a deal, but I’ve tried this in a few other restaurants with limited success. Some tell me it’s not possible. Others feel the need to check multiple times. And in nearly every case, I either end up with vegan bacon (horrific) or the bacon on the side in a dish, because the chef cannot accept this can be a real combination someone actually wants.

Transparent

So, the people are great, and the service is great. But that doesn’t happen by accident. It happens by having a culture of openness and empowerment, a leadership team that’s connected to its customers and to its suppliers, that takes a broader perspective on what matters and is ambitious to be as good as it can be.

Step forward Honest Burgers’ ‘Honest Farming’ (which I heard about by reading a booklet on one of the tables).

As the owners said:

‘When your name’s Honest Burgers, there’s a lot to live up to. We’ve always worked hard to do the right thing by our suppliers, our customers and our teams. And, after ten years, we thought we’d got beef covered. We were doing the best we could. Until we realised we weren’t… We realised the only way we can genuinely do something about our carbon footprint is by fixing the stuff that guzzles the most carbon in the day-to-day business of running our restaurants. For us, that’s meat.’

They now have set farmers they work with (all of whom you can see on their website). They buy the whole cow from them, giving the farmers a steady, long-term income to invest in more sustainable farming techniques and knowledge of where their meat is going to. They sell the bits of meat they don’t need to other restaurants, ensuring there’s no food wasted.

They’ve taken the time to build deep, trusted relationships with those farmers:

‘One of the highlights of changing how we work with farmers is hosting groups of our farmers at our restaurants. The result of all their hard work is on the plate in front of them and we can thank them properly for everything they’re doing to get it there. It matters to us that we look after the people we work with beyond our teams in the restaurants. We just didn’t think about it enough before, but we are now.’

This transparency goes further, too. At a time when organisations are putting pressure on customers to make sustainable choices and work out their own carbon footprint, Honest Burgers do the work for them, with every restaurant showing exactly where the potatoes have come from, and how far they’ve travelled.

Clearly, in writing this I’m hoping to get either a) free burgers for life or b) a seat or burger named after me in the Kings Cross restaurant. But failing that, I hope it shows other organisations how simple it can be to create a great experience for your customers, colleagues, and suppliers if you empower your team and are open about how you work.

And if you’re not happy to let your colleagues be themselves, or to tell your customers what goes on behind the scenes, then you need to ask - what aren’t you being honest about?

Having made it to the airport, put bottles in plastic bags, and negotiated the fragrance-spray, Toblerone-filled gauntlet, we were all at the boarding gate with the plane about to leave.

Except… as we made our way in, a fierce-looking lady blocked the way, asking each passenger to put their hand luggage into one of those metal boxes to see if it was the right size.

Confidently, people put their bags in. Yet curiously, lots of the bags were too big, despite having been the right size for every other flight in the past twenty years.  

People looked on, utterly perplexed like they’d been the victim of some kind of Derren Brown mind trick. They took turns to take the bag out, stare at it, push it back in, stare at it, turn it over, stare at it, then kick the metal box to reveal how the trick worked.

The trick, it turned out, was less to do with hypnosis and more to do with healthy profits.

EasyJet had decided there were now two types of hand luggage. And if – minutes before boarding the plane – your bag didn’t fit their new small hand luggage criteria, you had a choice of paying £24 for it to go in the hold or leaving the airport the way you came. Your call.

It also turned out, if you’d paid £15 for ‘Speedy Boarding’ beforehand, you could take on a normal bag. If you paid this £24 now, you did not get the speedy boarding. Or your bag on the flight. It’s unclear what, exactly, you did get, except frustration and public shaming.

One by one, people tried the bags. One by one they looked angry, upset, and defeated. Elderly passengers queued up to pay their fine, see their bags disappear, then call their loved ones to say they’d be at least an hour later coming out of the airport on the other side.

And one by one, they shouted at the lady blocking their way. People got louder, angrier, apoplectic with rage at being – in their view – held hostage in this way. (I recently wrote about how Britain is becoming angrier)

When it was my turn, I tried to stay calmer

‘Why are EasyJet doing this?’ It’s ruining everyone’s trip’   

‘I don’t know – you’ll need to ask EasyJet’ she replied

‘Wait – you’re not from EasyJet?’

‘No, we work for the airport. They ask us to do this.’

‘So you have to stand here and take all this abuse on their behalf?’

‘Yep – everyday people shout at me, poke me, push me. Last week my colleague had a fire extinguisher thrown through the door at her’

‘And does anyone from EasyJet ever come and speak to customers?’

‘No – the last time we saw anyone from EasyJet here was about six months ago’.

It suddenly felt like being in a real-life Social Media storm. The front-line team being used a battering ram for the frustrated and fed-up, whilst the senior managers and decisions makers churn out platitudes about caring for their customers and colleagues, but avoid speaking to customers directly and hearing the inconvenient truths.

‘Hi, I’m Pablo! Welcome to my flight!’

Once onboard, the experience couldn’t have been more different.

‘Here comes the safety bit, which you’ll need to listen to if you haven’t been on board a plane since 1942. They say they update it, but…’

‘We’ve got a lovely in-flight magazine but be quick because it’s only a short flight and we’ll land before you’ve got to page five’

‘I hope you’ve had a great flight today! If you have, I’m Pablo. If you haven’t my name is Theresa and I thank you for flying with EasyJet!’

The frowns had turned to smiles in the EasyJet environment.

People were happy, laughing, and some even over-enthusiastically clapping. The flight took off early, landed early and – with the exception of those people having to make their way to baggage claim to collect their over-sized and over-priced bags – sent passengers on their way with a minimum of fuss.

I couldn’t help but think back to the lady in the airport, welling up as she spoke to us about the abuse she receives every day, and the contrast between the two experiences.

Where should a company start and end its journey with customers? Where is it important to be consistent? When should it stand up and take responsibility, rather than leaving others to take the flack?

These questions can be quite hard to answer without good customer understanding and a clear strategy. But I reckon if your customers are regularly shouting and screaming due to a situation you’ve created, the answer might need a bit more thought – regardless of how good Theresa is.

Thanks for reading this article, I really hope you enjoyed it. You can subscribe to my monthly newsletter below, and find me in tweet form @johnjsills, in picture form on Instagram @CX_Stories, or in work mode at The Foundation

A few weeks ago, I had to buy some theatre tickets over the phone rather than online. In doing so, I remembered what organisations sometimes miss by forcing customers online in the search of a lower cost to serve.

I had some of those paper theatre vouchers to use up. The ones with the complex 15-digit number and scratch-off PIN (that, for those of us from the first scratch card generation, still hold a sense of excitement.)

A quick search online showed that they could only be used over the phone, so I called the number, and prepared for a long wait.

Five seconds went by. Then Samantha answered.

Clearly taken aback by an organisation actually answering the phone promptly when I called, I mumbled something about tickets to see Moulin Rouge.

From there, she took over.

‘I’ve seen it three times, it’s wonderful, and perfect for a birthday treat’

‘The stage is quite high, and there’s a lot of moving parts and props, so I’d suggest going for these seats for the best experience’

‘There are more expensive ones, but in my opinion these will give just as good a view’

‘Do you know the area? I can recommend a few restaurants nearby if you need them?’

She sorted the payment, summarised everything, and even sent a follow-up email:

Hello John,

I was very happy to be able to help you purchase your seats for Moulin Rouge today.

Enjoy the show! – It’s SPECTACULAR!!! ️ ️

Thank you for contacting us

Samantha

Sounds great, doesn’t it? And all in all, it took just over five minutes.

Compare that to if I’d tried to do that online:

Find the right website (there’s a lot to choose from), work out the best seats from those 1980s Amstrad viewfinder graphics, head to Tripadvisor for advice from a complete stranger (who could be anywhere from four feet to seven feet tall and have very viewing different requirements), probably go for the most expensive I can afford as a proxy for quality, buy the tickets, and hope for the best.

Doing it online, in comparison to the phone, would have meant:

Time taken: Maybe the same, maybe more

Certainty: Much, much less

Stressfulness of the experience: Far greater

Lovely smile when coming off the call thanks to the genuine, human warmth in the conversation: Absent

I call this the illusion of efficiency. Organisations believing that by encouraging people online and making it hard to phone, everything will be quicker, easier, and – for the organisation – cheaper.

I recently had a very ill relative and had to get to the hospital quickly to see them before an operation. I phoned my insurance company to see if I was covered to drive her car. Ten minutes of guessing options and being told by an automated voice ‘You can do this on our website, goodbye!’. Then, finally getting the magic combination of numbers, through to a human.

‘You know this information is in your policy booklet?’

‘Yes, but as a normal human I don’t carry that around with me everywhere I go’.

Then a two-second answer of: ‘Yes, you can drive it’.

A five-second call that took ten minutes. I missed seeing them going into the operating theatre by two minutes. These actions have consequences.

Similarly, Lauren Currie told me of a tale of trying to get the CEO of a website she uses to host her (brilliant) community to answer a few simple questions. He refused to speak on the phone, leading to a painfully long email back and forth, comprising several responses from him saying ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand your point’ leading to Lauren’s excellent reply of ‘That’s because you’ve chosen to email about complex nuanced things.’

Clearly many experiences are quicker and easier online. And my theatre experience – whilst better for me – was seemingly more costly for the organisation.

However, in our rush to go digital, we’ve forgotten all the extra benefits real people bring – and the time they can save – and fallen into the illusion of efficiency.

For those experiences with a slightly complex decision, talking to someone with genuine knowledge is still likely to be quicker than doing it online, even if all the information we need is at our fingertips. And crucially, customers are likely to have a better experience, feeling confident, reassured, and more likely to buy from that company again – as well as genuinely recommending the organisation to their friends, family, and followers, too.

Just like I’m telling you about The Ambassador Theatre Group now. Check them out, they’re great. And if you speak to Samantha, say hello from me.

For years, he and his Dad have run the local butcher’s shop in my village. They’re both fairly quiet chaps who clearly have a strong relationship, and really care about what they do.

In 2020, Neil’s father passed away from Covid. A small ‘closed’ sign appeared on the door, and we didn’t hear anything more.

It’s a slightly ramshackle, slightly rundown place. The posters are old, the signs are handwritten. You never really know what meat they have available, as the displays haven’t been ‘visually merchandised’ by a marketing expert. I think it might even be cash only.

And everyone loves it.

Every now and then, someone would post on the local Facebook group asking if anyone had heard any news about Neil, or if the shop was going to reopen. There were a few rumours, but nothing definite.

And then, small signs started to appear in the doorway. Nearly two years later, Neil felt ready to try and reopen the shop on his own.

The notes he wrote were always of thanks to the people who had given him support, for the cards people had put through the door, for the offers of help to get him back in the shop.

He started running test days, opening one or two days a week to see if he could manage it ok and if customers would come back, always writing a new note to update everyone with the progress.

Then at the end of August, he announced the shop was reopening on set days each week. Customers came flocking back.

There’s a lot I love about this story.

I love the real, visceral human emotion, with Neil being open and transparent about his feelings and struggles.

I love the simple, clear communication. No branded letters, no printed materials, no mass-email campaigns to customers whose details he’s collected via covert methods. Just hand-written notes on the back of old envelopes put in the window of the shop.

And I love the customer reaction. We often talk about companies supporting customers when they’re in need, but it’s rare you see a situation where customers are supporting the company. (For all the sadness about the demise of Woolworths, I don’t remember people queueing outside to stock up on pix n’mix in an attempt to save the business.)

More than anything, this story shows the impact of individuals

It’s very hard to be truly loyal to a company – my views on the myth of loyalty are well known – but it’s far easier to be loyal to a person, an individual you feel a deep connection with.  

That’s why when most people are asked to talk about a great recent customer experience, they nearly always still mention one that involves a person. This week alone I’ve heard about a consultant in a beauty shop who really took the time to listen, a helpful banker who stayed on the phone to sort out a complex Mortgage issue, and a customer service rep who gave great advice (with great enthusiasm) on which theatre tickets to buy.

Despite this, many organisations have spent the last twenty years stripping away their human USPs, hiding them from sight, making them near-impossible to speak to, and tying them in a procedural straitjacket, so if a customer should somehow find a way to speak to them, they’re only allowed to respond in a robotic, scripted way.

In doing this, organisations have commoditised themselves at a time when it’s easier than ever to switch providers, alienating customers and colleagues alike, and often leaving their staff to face the wrath of increasingly infuriated customers. The role of the Social Media Manager, once vaunted as new and exciting, is now simply a battering ram put in place to protect senior leaders, acting as a cathartic echo-chamber for customers at a loss with the service they’re being given.

Whilst it’s right to use all the technology we have available to create simpler, more efficient experiences, we shouldn’t forget the role that real people can play in creating special moments, forming genuine relationships, and building trust.

Great customer experience doesn’t rely on polished emails or perfect processes (no one is recommending a company because their monthly newsletter looks nice). As Neil’s story shows, it depends on humanity, honesty and authenticity.

And a tiny model shepherd doesn’t hurt, either.

Then Covid arrived.

I tried to avoid it for as long as possible, telling myself and everybody in earshot that it was an over-reaction, that people queueing were the ones causing the problem.

Then I walked past our local Tesco, saw a sign saying ‘only one toilet roll per customer!!’, and watched two grown men fight over a four-pack of Andrex.

So later that day, I found myself in the local Garden Centre where they had some novelty ‘Warning! Contaminated Area!’ toilet roll for sale, in bright yellow and black diagonal stripes, for four pounds a roll.

I bought the lot.

It was during this time that I started to hear more about Who Gives A Crap, a subscription toilet roll service. They’re a B Corp that donates 50% of their profits to build toilets around the world, whilst meeting the highest standards of social and environmental impact.

But it turns out, that not only are they good for the world, but they also give a great customer experience. And it’s an experience cleverly designed to make things better for customers whilst also making money for the business.

The website is easy to use, the offer is simple to understand, and it’s no problem to cancel if you need to. But the thing I really loved was their packaging.

The box on your doorstep makes neighbours tut and stare:

The delivery driver gets a nice thank you:

The main message is shared in a fun and friendly way:

Premium subscribers even get a ‘Where’s the Loo Roll’ game to play:

Via Alison Johnstone

My sons were overjoyed when we opened the box to find so many bright colours bursting out.

And they were even more excited when they followed the instructions on the box and spent the afternoon driving around in their new batmobile.

There was even a clever touch at the bottom of the box, with three rolls made to stand out as a reminder that it’s time to reorder.

Serendipitously, in the same week my first delivery arrived, I came across an article in HBR called ‘What You’re Getting Wrong About Customer Journeys’ . It lays out four types of journey that customers make:

• A routine is effortless and predictable.

• A joyride is effortless and unpredictable.

• A trek is effortful and predictable.

• An odyssey is effortful and unpredictable.

and suggests – not wrongly – that organisations need to take a different approach to designing for all four, with routine journeys needing to focus on streamlining and consistency. 

Yet Who Gives A Crap has challenged this notion that a routine purchase can only ever be mundane. They’ve taken possibly the most functional, boring purchase that’s ever existed, and given it a personality, made it fun and created a human experience worth talking about.

But more than that, they’ve also demonstrated how making small, low-cost tweaks can not only vastly improve the customer experience but be a smart way of increasing revenue, too.

The simplest business case to sign off would be to send the product in a plain cardboard box, to wrap the rolls in cheap white paper, to keep the final three the same to save on printing costs. It’s the option most companies would go for – and the option that would miss some great money-making opportunities.

The box is brilliant marketing that the customer, the neighbours, and the delivery driver all see. The premium wrap-around makes customers feel special from the very first second. The emergency rolls are a great nudge to re-purchase, and far more fun than just receiving another email.

So, the next time you’re working on a routine journey, imagine what it could be, not just what it is. Think about the small tweaks that could have a big impact on your customers, and on your business. And remember, it’s ok to not be serious all of the time – just maybe avoid any unnecessary toilet humour along the way.

Having spent a few months digging up the roads, a new local Fibre provider popped a flyer through the door promising a good price, great service, and Broadband so fast that I’d be able to watch the latest Netflix series before it’s even been made.

I signed up immediately, relishing the phone call with my unnamed British telecoms provider to tell them I was off. (Annoyingly, the leaving experience was quite good. They didn’t even try to beg me to stay, which felt like the ultimate ‘we don’t want you anyway’ power-play in our tumultuous relationship.)

However, my initial excitement – if you can call getting a new wire attached to your house exciting – was slightly tempered when, a few days after it was installed, I got a text telling me my mobile phone data was running low.

A little bit of investigation made me realise the Wi-Fi signal wasn’t reaching the upstairs of the house – and gave me nightmares that I was going to have to go back, tail between legs, to my customer experience nemesis, laughing as they trebled my price, throttled my speed, and locked me in to an inescapable contract.

With slight trepidation I emailed Swish, expecting the usual holding pattern and delayed reply.

Enter Chris.

Not all heroes wear capes. In fact, I have no idea what Chris wore as I never saw him. But cape or not, he was bloody good.

He called me the next morning to hear about the issue, and over the next week we went back and forth trying different things. No automated replies, no ‘I need to take a few details to verify I can speak to you’, no having to re-explain the issue to multiple people over multiple days.

One person taking ownership, one conversation between us to work out a solution.

Eventually, we realised the hub needed to be just slightly higher. Rather than get an engineer out to re-install the whole thing, I asked whether he’d be ok with paying for an extension lead, but a quite nice-looking one as it would be ‘on display’, around £40.

‘Yes that makes sense. It’s not our usual process, but I can see how that will be better for you, and it will be cheaper for us than sending an engineer out, too. Just buy whichever one you like, send me the receipt, and I’ll credit your account with the amount’

This kind of common-sense reply shouldn’t really be worthy of writing about (you may well be reading this thinking it isn’t…). However, straightforward, flexible thinking by employees empowered to make decisions seems to have gone missing from so many organisations, hidden behind stringent processes and phrases such as ‘I would if I could but I can’t’.

If you ask people to name a recent great customer experience they’ve had, most will still name a time when a real person stepped in and stepped up.

Like the time our kitchen supplier, unhappy with the mess the floor-fitting contractors had made, took the time out of his weekend to come round and take away the rubbish they’d said they would pick up ‘sometime next week’.

Or the time our new patio doors kept breaking, so one of the Regional Managers, seeing the repeated emails, decided to circumnavigate the process and arrange for a specialist to drop what they were doing and come and fix the issue.

Or the brilliant Chiltern Railways train driver who likes to ad-lib his station announcements, breaking the usual commuting mundanity and putting a smile on everybody’s face.

For many experiences, an online-only, functionally perfect experience is a great aim to have. But things will go wrong, situations won’t fit neatly into a box, people will need a bit of extra reassurance.

That’s where your people come in, with common sense to make decisions that work for the customer and the company. And often, it’s those little moments that have a lasting effect, that build real trust in an organisation, and that make customers think twice about heading elsewhere.

Cape or no cape.

As the world winds down its pandemic restrictions and we commemorate two years since the first UK lockdown, this seems like a good time to reflect on what we've learned over those two years, and look at how we might apply these lessons to the next big crisis of our time: the climate crisis.

In the spring of 2020, we conducted a research panel, interacting with a diverse group of people over 4 weeks to get a real sense of how they were experiencing lockdown. What emerged were some fascinating insights about how people responded to rapid change, what customers expected from businesses, and their reactions to the political intrusion into their everyday lives.

Many of the things we learned about how people act in times of crisis, as well as their expectations of businesses and brands, can be applied to public behaviour in the context of the climate crisis.

1. We need clarity and relatability to motivate behaviour change  

Throughout the pandemic, the threat of Covid was clear and well understood by most, once the initial phase of denial was over with. As that threat moved closer, with family, friends or colleagues falling ill, individuals readily accepted what needed to happen. The daily death counts were a constant and grim reminder of what was happening and the numbers were relevant to people because it was happening in the UK. They helped the nation understand how grave the situation was and also the extent to which their actions were impacting that situation. What we were fighting against and why was clear.

Unlike Covid, there is not a universally accepted 'villain' in the war against climate change. 'Carbon emissions' are understood as something we need to reduce, but the impact they have, what causes them, and therefore how best individuals can intervene, is confusing. In addition, for many living in the UK and the rest of the Global North, geographical distance from those who are experiencing the worst effects of climate change means it’s difficult to relate to the suffering, and inhibits peoples’ motivation to change their behaviours.

2. We need a better understanding of how best to tackle the threat

People are unsure of where to start and what they can do to make the biggest difference. Just as we sought advice from the government during the pandemic, individuals want to be educated about how to do their bit for the environment - the sea of advice and recommendations can be overwhelming and baffling. This complexity means we stick to the things we feel most confident doing, often the things that have received the most media attention, such as recycling and reducing single use plastic. A clear and universal understanding of the threat, its impact, and how best to tackle it is needed, and companies have a responsibility to help customers get there.

3. Customers need businesses to help them through times of crisis, not confuse them

We found in our research that during the pandemic, customers’ expectations of companies were very high. Whilst there's been some acceptance of how hard it has been for businesses, there's very little tolerance for those that don't meet customer's needs. The expectation was that companies should have the ability to innovate and adapt to not only keep colleagues safe but to keep serving customers as normal.

Comparatively, similar standards should be, and are starting to be applied to big businesses in the context of climate action. Over the last two years, we’ve seen businesses publish clear and encouraging responses to the Covid crisis. In comparison, many descriptions of what companies are doing in regard to sustainability are vague and misleading, so people find it difficult to assess who they should shop with, and why, if they want to make a greener choice. Take H&M’s sustainable ‘Conscious Collection’, which has been criticised for using more synthetic materials than in its main collection, with one in five items analysed found to be made from 100% fossil fuel-derived synthetic materials.  

Overall, despite multiple iterations of 3-part government slogans, the Covid threat and the action needed to tackle it was, and is, easy to understand. Even if we've relaxed our rules now, we knew that the villain was the virus and the aim was to reduce social contact to contain the spread. The outrage following ‘party-gate’ reinforces this sense that the general public were really clear about what they were expected to do.

In comparison, there is a multitude of recommendations, suggestions, rules, experts, academic papers and advice coming from various directions on how best to tackle the climate crisis. This is expected – the climate situation is infinitely more complex. However, companies bombarding customers with promises of eco-collections, sustainable production, carbon offsetting and net zero pledges, isn’t helping.

Customers are overwhelmed, they’re confused, and they don’t know which brands to trust.

At The Foundation, we help brands and businesses pioneer on behalf of customers. We are always thinking about how to help solve customer problems by understanding what people really value, and then trailblazing on their behalf. This often involves looking at future trends, which, in this day and age, often involves tech.

NFTs, the newest tech trend on the block, can appear a bit crazy to the rational mind. My close friend told me he bought an NFT and then proceeded to send me what can only be described as a stick drawing, before making my jaw drop when he said he spent the equivalent of £600 on it. But he isn’t the only one. People have spent a lot more on a lot less. This got me thinking. Surely, underneath the millions of pounds worth of digital monkey pictures, there is something more?

The answer is particularly interesting because NFTs have great benefits beyond just pixel art images, and they are a fantastic technological solution. But to what problem? What current issues that customers face can they help to solve? Put simply, can the lives of customers be improved by NFTs? And if so, how?

Firstly, what is an NFT? 

An NFT is a unique token linked to digital (and sometimes physical) content, such as works of art or collectibles. They are non-fungible because each token has its own unique properties. NFTs are securely recorded on a blockchain, which is a digital record of transactions that is duplicated and distributed across an entire network of computer systems. This provides a secure and decentralised record of transactions by utilising the same technology that plays a crucial role in many cryptocurrencies. This allows the assignment of ownership of digital data meaning an NFT can have an official owner at a time as secured by the blockchain, and no one can modify the record of ownership.

So, one capability of NFTs is indisputable ownership. Authenticity.

So far, this has given the world indisputable ownership of digital monkey images. But for NFTs to be more than another tech fad - they need to help solve genuine customer problems. The question is - where do customers face problems caused by an inability to prove ownership and/or uncertainty over a lack of authenticity?

Ticketing is one such area. Research shows that more than 5 million fake tickets are sold every year, with as many as 12% of people buying concert tickets getting scammed. These victims are, on average, losing £365 each.

Yes, you read that correctly, £365.

Clearly, authenticity with ticketing is a massive unsolved customer problem.

Here, NFTs can provide a solution to an otherwise unsolved problem. Smart tickets in the form of NFTs would be verifiable. They would have clear ownership. Blockchain technology allows the validation of the authenticity of the ticket with absolute certainty because each token has a verifiable data and transaction log that can help prove the history of ownership. Alternatively, the reselling of a ticket can be equally forbidden as NFTs can be made non-transferable or even price limited in computer code, preventing the transfer of extortionate scalp tickets. Therefore, by utilising NFTs, event organisers and businesses can provide customers with something they truly value, trust that the ticket they have paid for is real.

NFTs can also provide customers with fairness and trust. For example, the cynic in me is always wary when something says ‘10% of all profits go to charity’. After all, once that purchase is made, I can’t track where my hard-earned (or hardly earned) cash is going.

I am not the only one. Research has shown 33% of people don’t trust charities. Moreover, 79% of people said that the most important factor in trusting a charity is that the money donated reaches its intended targets. This is compared to only 52% of people who said that it was if the charity was operating to high ethical standards and 50% who said that it’s if they are making an impact. 

Here lies a clear customer problem. Many people don’t trust charities, and their biggest concern preventing them from trusting them is whether the money they donate will reach the right people.

NFTs have the potential to allow greater transparency and reassurance to customers supporting good causes or concerned about how their contributions will be used. This can be done through ‘smart contracts’. This is a part of the blockchain technology which allows someone or multiple people to receive a cut every time an NFT is sold. These are also known as royalties. While in practice royalties are often used to reward the original creator, they can be used to ensure a percentage is donated to a certain person or entity, such as a charity. It wouldn’t matter when or how an item is bought or sold, customers can have trust that a percentage of the sale is always given to a particularly good cause, not just towards the CEO’s new superyacht.  

In fact, it’s not just NFTs that benefit from these smart contracts. They are a feature of blockchain technology more broadly. This could open up a whole host of uses.

For example, charities could move to 'impact-based donations' where public donations, in the form of digital currency, could include clauses that mean funds are only transferred when specific conditions are met. This can increase trust among customers that their donations will and have been used for what was intended.

NFTs can also provide customers with better control, particularly over their data.

Data control is a growing concern for customers. Recent research has shown 51% of customers are worried about their data being sold. They worry about whose hands their data may end up in. Despite sensitive health data information being a highly sought commodity, in its current capacity, it is bought, sold, and exchanged with little knowledge or consent from its actual owner.

NFTs can facilitate the shift of ownership of health data back to customers. Customers could have their own NFTs which would act as a controlled copy of their anonymised, health-related information. Companies such as Aimedis are doing exactly this. Allowing this medical data to be bought and sold, as NFTs, by pharmaceutical companies or other businesses. They can be held accountable as the data is only visible to the provider of the information and whoever has purchased it. Should it then be sold to a new owner, the customer who originally provided the data can track who bought it and how it is being used.

NFTs can therefore give back control to customers by empowering them to own their personal data, whilst giving them the choice to monetise that data if they wish to. This means customers can finally make their own decisions about what happens to their data.  

These are only a few of the areas in which customer problems could be solved using NFTs. NFTs can provide customers with better authenticity, greater trust, and the opportunity to take back control of their own data. Moreover, the value of features associated more broadly with the blockchain offers further unearthed advantages.

There are also those who have concerns about NFTs. Their impact on the environment, difficulties integrating into existing tech, and even security concerns. All of which would need to be ironed out before there is an NFT revolution. And it’s worth noting that these concerns apply to a wide range of products and services associated with the blockchain, not just NFTs. 

But this shouldn’t discourage a pioneer. If NFTs can really solve problems that customers care about, then these hurdles will be well worth overcoming.

So, it would appear we may be at the start of a potential tech revolution. NFTs are a solution in need of a customer problem to solve. And there are customer problems worth solving that NFTs can help with. Areas of customers’ lives that require greater authenticity, ownership, and control are just a few examples. But what’s needed is someone to bring these together – using NFTs as a new and better way to create value for customers. The stage is set for a customer-led pioneer to bring NFTs to the mainstream.

We’re living in an epidemic of feedback requests.

It’s become impossible for a customer to call, make a purchase, or visit a website without an automated email appearing to ask for their opinion.

Of course, this comes from a good place. A place of organisations wanting to be closer to their customers, to understand the experience they’re providing.

Except, in most cases, it doesn’t do that. 

Instead, it creates a mountain of data focussed on averages not actuals, giving the impression that the experience is broadly fine whilst hiding the extreme experiences that have a deep impact on customers. An average call waiting time of five minutes is less interesting than knowing 5% of customers waited for half an hour.

Secondly, this slew of surveys gives the impression of being close to customers, but actually shields senior leaders from reality. People are reduced to numbers and pictures on a PowerPoint, the emotion in their customers’ experience stripped away and replaced with binary opinions on what matters to the business. Any unappealing results are often put down to the wrong sample size or a mistaken methodology. 

And thirdly, these endless surveys create extra work for customers when they’d really rather be spending time with friends, family, or fooling around online. Organisations are outsourcing their insight gathering responsibility, asking customers to give them the answers instead of interrogating the data they already have available within the organisation. 

Broadly, these feedback surveys can be categorised into five groups: the pointless; the self-important; the immoral; the demanding; and the downright weird:

The Pointless

The Self-important

The Immoral

The Demanding

The Weird

Understanding the experience being provided to customers is crucial to creating a customer-led organisation, and asking for feedback is an important part of that. But it needs to be done in a way that isn’t intrusive or time-consuming, and in a way that creates action within the organisation.

So start by using the data you already have available – the dropout rates, error rates, call waiting times, actual referrals and more – and only ask customers for what you can’t work out.

Focus on actuals, not just averages, bringing to life the most extreme experiences that cause people to love you or leave you.

And make time to understand customers at the thick end of the wedge, talking to them directly about what matters to them in their life, not just to your business.

Doing that will help you understand the real human impact of the customer experience you create, as well as giving customers time back to see their friends, have a conversation, and maybe recommend you for real.

*Credits for all photos can be found on the CX Stories Instagram page @CX_stories *

The Foundation Forum. Wednesday 24th November. Written up with the help of Simon Caulkin.

Click here for a PDF version

It is available to view via a video of the evening (90 minutes long) here and we have clips showing each speaker’s 10-or-so minute section too – Neil Patel here, Anabel Hoult here and Vernon Everitt here.

We heard three powerful stories from three very different not-for-profit organisations, The Neonatal Unit at the Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow, the consumer protection and advice charity Which?, and the organisation running all of London’s public transport, Transport for London (TfL).

We also had a chance to celebrate the publication of our first book, The Customer Copernicus, with co-author Sean Meehan having travelled over from Switzerland to join Charlie Dawson in presenting the evening.

Our three main speakers were a great mix:

• Dr Neil Patel, Consultant Neonatologist at The Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow. He and his team have found new and better ways to take care of premature and sick babies. It’s a field centred on keeping fragile newborns alive so is traditionally technology-led. But they gradually found benefits in parents being much more involved, an idea that superficially looks like introducing untrained carers into the middle of a high-risk situation. But being led by parents, the customers they could speak to, also led to much better outcomes for immediate health and growth and created better long term conditions for the family by reducing trauma and tension in their baby’s earliest days. Remarkably, even in this medical field, customer-led principles we’d uncovered in businesses translate well

• Anabel Hoult, CEO at Which?, the self-funded charity looking out for the UK’s consumers. Despite its reason for being, it had become inside-out and detached from its customers. The team are 3 years into a turnaround, returning to a purpose they believe in, making life simpler, safer and fairer for all UK consumers. They have reinvented the membership proposition and business model so they are in tune with these values, and made sure the offer is genuinely attractive to long term subscribers and supporters so the organisation can grow healthily and as the true customer-led example that it should be.

•  Vernon Everitt, Managing Director for Customers, Communication and Technology at TfL. Their goal is to keep London moving which means providing public transport that’s easy, crucially more attractive than using a car. If they fail then an intense, fast-moving city becomes a more intense slower moving city in gridlock. He has steered through growth in population, in digital technology, in payments, in pollution and in safety threats from terrorists while negotiating with unions and navigating the Olympics and then Covid. All has been done as a true customer pioneer

Each had a powerful story in its own right, but each story beautifully illustrated what we’d learned matters in creating customer-led success in any organisation.

It’s a rare thing, but SO valuable – valuable to us all as users of services and citizens of a nation, and to the organisations who do it, becoming hugely successful by conventional definitions and in ways that tend to be more balanced and human than most.

Here is a summary of the evening’s three customer pioneer stories as viewed by distinguished management writer Simon Caulkin.

Customer-centricity is usually presented as something for commercial organisations to aim for. But non-profit outfits arguably have at least an equal need to take the ‘outside-in’ perspective, an idea described by Charlie Dawson and Sean Meehan in their new book, The Customer Copernicus, copies of which were signed for the first time by both authors at this 24th November Foundation Forum. It meant a dual celebration: both book launch and the first in-person Foundation event in two years.

A confident and effective public sector is an essential component of a functioning society – not just a cost centre but potentially a powerful source of wellbeing and social cohesion. As in health. A striking example of the benefits was outlined by Dr Neil Patel, the Forum’s first speaker, a consultant neonatologist at Glasgow’s Royal Hospital for Children.

Caring for premature and sick babies is traditionally a technology-driven, tightly structured process offering little scope for staff initiative – let alone that of parents – in care. Wanting to engage both staff and parents, and taking inspiration from practice developed in global settings with limited access to technology and medics, Patel’s group cautiously moved to a model inviting families to share responsibility for the care of their babies. That was a shock to some staff who had grown up in the previous regime. Despite proven benefits on the ground – better outcomes than in conventional settings – ‘it was a challenge: we got a lot of resistance,’ acknowledges Patel.

Fears were gradually overcome by listening to both staff, many long-serving, and to parents. The views of the latter, previously unheard, went a long way to creating the ‘burningness’ needed to kickstart the customer-centric journey: Patel says: ‘Once we heard from families what their challenges were, we all just wanted to rush out of the room and solve them straight away. It’s been a huge motivator ever since.’

The team quickly cottoned on that what families needed most was proper guidance on caring for their unusually fragile new-borns. From then, it became a matter of harnessing ideas and giving the team permission to take them forward. That triggered a wave of engagement – a revelation for managers, seeing hidden talents brought into play – and a flood of initiatives, from instituting daily baby-care sessions to activity classes encouraging parents to form self-help groups, such as a knitting group enthusiastically joined by previously uncommunicative fathers.

One suggestion came from a parent who took inspiration from his workplace repairing cars. He described how they now made simple videos to show customers explaining what was wrong and what the technician did. He wondered whether the idea from this parallel setting could transfer to the ward – he wanted videos of his long-stay infant from when he wasn’t around to see things himself. This was a challenge – but when short videos of babies with a parent unable to visit went up in the cloud the venture took off in a way that took everyone by surprise.

Another idea came from the team – a simple whiteboard by each baby where parents could ask questions and share their concerns, and staff could update them on how their baby was doing at hours when parents weren’t present, as well as reassure and share whatever else seemed like it might help.

Now the Unit could communicate with families remotely, and families with their babies. Two previously sceptical nurses said the introduction of video was the greatest advance in care they had seen in their lives. The idea has been taken up by 200 sites in the UK and overseas, to the benefit of over 50,000 families. ’All from just one patient's family who raised the idea in the unit’, marvels Patel.

At Which?, Anabel Hoult faced a very different situation. When she took over as CEO in 2018, the venerable consumer rights organisation was under fire from a section of members over governance issues. It turned out they screened a more fundamental operating problem: ironically, the iconic brand had lost sight of its customers and its role as consumer champion.

Yet in the subsequent turnaround, Hoult drew on exactly the same processes as Patel at the Glasgow hospital: reflecting on purpose, listening to what customers really value – and then allowing the energy generated by intrinsic motivation to take effect.

The Which? purpose, says Hoult, ‘is to make life simpler, fairer and safer for consumers’. But clarity had become diffused in a blizzard of unproductive activity.

This has been stopped and focus has switched to four priority areas where Which? can be more useful to the people it serves, the areas being; consumer rights, money, the new digital life, and scams. Covid provided early confirmation of both the need in the world for a strong consumer voice and the correctness of the priority choices: thousands of people have been helped to get their money back on cancelled events and holidays, says Hoult. Meanwhile, prompted by the proliferation of online scams, 300,000 people have signed up for the Which? scams alert service.

That feeds into Hoult’s second concern, creating value for consumers. An unsubsidised, self-funded charity, Which? needs a steady and reliable income stream. But its scattergun work programme, neglecting its respected reviews and advice business in favour of activities intended to be directly money-making, and was paralleled by a high-churn subscription business model requiring a huge advertising spend to replace the thousands of members a year who were opting out because the service ‘had lost its relevance’.

Now with a business model based on retention rather than churn and solid value in beefed-up reviews and easy digital access, the good news is that Which?’s membership has returned to growth as retention figures move upwards. ‘At some point you have to be brave,’ notes Hoult. ‘Even if it is a bit scary’.

The third element in the Which? story is diversity and inclusion alongside sustainability. Practically this meant taking note of a gap in addressing the needs of those in lower income households, numbers of whom have rocketed during Covid, and helping people make sense of confusing offers and choices around sustainability. What seemed like lofty initiatives were found to be pushing at an open door: ‘On reflection, [sustainability in all its forms] is something our employees really pulled from us. As soon as we gave people the framework and the permission to work on those things, they just ran with it, because they really care about them.’

As an organisation with 27,000 direct employees operating the capital’s sprawling public transport system, Transport for London (TfL) unsurprisingly took a longer route to becoming customer focused. As Vernon Everitt, TfL’s MD for customers, communications and technology, tells it, it wasn’t that there was resistance from anyone so much as mild scepticism about the need. After all, TfL was a monopoly with a captive population – so why bother? No one’s going to get on a competitor’s tube train.

The reason for bothering (aka ‘burningness’) emerged naturally out of the iterations of purpose that ended up with the idea that ‘we're about moving London forward safely, inclusively and sustainably. And with a vision of a strong green heartbeat for London,’ as Everitt puts it.

Taking this perspective, it was obvious that TfL does face competition, not to mention a stubborn roadblock to the achievement of its purpose in the shape of the private car. Hence the ambitious goal of the mayoralty that 80% of London journeys should take place on public transport, bike or foot.

‘To engineer that shift (pre-pandemic we were at 63% and we’re a bit behind that now) we had to give people better options, actually to treat them like customers,’ says Everitt. At the same, the route to the destination also became obvious. ‘If we work together to put an integrated front end on our organisation and make it easier to access, make it easier to pay for, won't we be more successful?’ he reasons. In a phrase now understood by everyone, ‘Every journey matters’.

Other milestones quickly followed. Using information it already possessed in the form of complaints, research and incident reports from staff, TfL put together a simple customer model that remains a constant thread. ‘People wanted to know who we were and what we stood for, a safe and reliable transport service, value for money, making progress with innovation so that they could deal with us as easily as with Amazon’, Everitt sums up. Next came work on pain points – payment, how to avoid crowded stations and understanding how demand was managed – which, lo and behold, turned out to be exactly the same issues as those that bothered staff.

So in turn, ‘we learned that it was important to harness all of the thoughts, insight and personality of our people – again, something we'd failed to recognise before’, and which fully came into its own with the London Olympics in 2012. ‘That was terrifying,’ admits Everitt. ‘The athletes were ready, the stadiums were gleaming, everything else was stripped down and it was, “You're on!”' We were the only ones who could screw it up.’ With London's reputation on the line, everything learned about staff and customer  care suddenly came together. There was no option but to work as a team. The customer care score went through the roof – and has stayed there and even increased since as TfL has taken the lessons of the games to heart.

The most recent big breakthrough followed much sucking of teeth, as TfL opened up its trove of data for free, making it available to external organisations including Google and Apple on the basis that they were best at turning it into useful tools for TfL’s customers who would then benefit from better-informed journeys. ‘This plethora of new products and services wouldn’t exist if we hadn’t opened our data up’. Latterly, and only to plug a gap, TfL also developed its own app because the market wasn’t delivering for disabled travellers.

Most recently TfL has had to use all of this learning and more to confront, in the pandemic, the opposite crisis to the Olympics: a dearth of passengers. ‘It doesn’t stop’’, says Everitt. ‘You have to keep going’.

Public and third-sector leaders are often represented as a plodding version of management 1.0, contrasting unfavourably with the disruptive innovation emerging from places like Silicon Valley.

Yet the three remarkable stories above suggest that the clichéd view is at the very least an oversimplification. What the public sector lacks in a guiding ‘rudder of profit’, it gains in the priceless advantage of a built-in purpose, which when properly identified and shared (as in the Forum examples) generates huge motivational energy and engagement. It is rarely matched by purely financial incentives with their ever-present risks of gaming and purpose-sapping unintended consequences (perhaps not uncoincidentally, a controversial incentive scheme for top executives seems to have been a contributor to the historical troubles at Which?).

Is it too much to suggest that in the three examples, different as they are, lurks the tantalising outline of a purpose-driven management model that is at last fit for the times?

As Dawson notes, customer-led organisations are almost by definition human-centred, and it has been shown over and over that trust and engagement are a more durable basis for effective and efficient organisation than extensive rulebooks and monitoring bureaucracy.

They also offer something to nourish the spirit.

Patel: ‘For me, it's been a journey of discovery. I’ve changed from someone who was command and control, focused on the technical aspects, to valuing even more the importance of family involvement. And the value of the team and the skills that can just be unlocked by giving them the opportunity’.

Hoult: ‘We're making life simpler, fairer and safer for consumers. Expect to see and hear more as we modernise Which? to be the UK consumer champion for the next 60 years.’

Everitt: ‘Every now and again when you step out you think, “Actually, that was all right.” You can demonstrate what it is you're doing for London, and why you are the strong green heartbeat of the city as well’.

Speaking for them all he adds: And you know you must always keep at it, always be ready to go again – because nothing's ever fixed’.

The Foundation’s view

As an event, this was a milestone – a first Forum held in person since 12th March 2020. What a relief. Maybe temporary…

The way we heard the conversation, having spent a good while writing the book and understanding the territory, led to four big points standing out.

1.     It is remarkably rare yet unerringly powerful to simply listen attentively to your customers. Often leaders and their teams believe they’re too busy and they already have a function that looks after market research. But there are two problems with this way of doing things.

• One is the framing of the questions. What customers are asked in surveys reflects what the team internally already thinks – if you’re asked to rate the pricing of the product you’ll give marks out of ten, but you have no opportunity to say more, maybe that it doesn’t really solve the problem it was bought for. So the business gets superficially reassuring feedback that’s like anesthetic – it makes teams sleepy, satisfied with their status quo.

• The other issue is that it lacks emotion. A market research report is an abstraction of what real people feel out there – it’s become words and numbers on a chart. Neil put it well when he described his parent and colleague groups. Parents told the team they wanted to know what the rules were – but there weren’t any so the team would never have thought this could be an imagined problem. And they desperately wanted to be involved in the care of their tiny children, something that when heard directly by the team, gave them the ‘burningness’ (as we call it in the book) that they needed to embrace changing how they did things. Hearing it in person had the impact needed to dramatically shift motivation – from wanting to keep parents away, to finding good, safe ways to bring them in. It started an innovation journey that led to multiple changes in approach, big steps forward in outcomes for the families concerned and growing belief that this parent-led approach was a better way to do things.

2.     Organisations that are customer-led are, more broadly, human – they intrinsically believe in and trust people’s potential. We have been struck by the way so many customer-led successes are interested in people. This means the people they serve and colleagues that work for the organisation too.

• The people they serve we describe in short-hand as their customers although that term sounds a little transactional and narrow – these organisations recognise them as people with wider lives and concerns that might give clues to how to do a better job for them.

• With colleagues what we commonly see is a high degree of empowerment all the way to the front-line, people dealing with customers directly. There’s a rational reason – the person in front of a customer is most likely to fully understand what they want and if they’re able to respond immediately with freedom then they’ve got the best chance of helping fully and fast. There’s also a deeper reason – that if you believe that everyone’s very capable and intrinsically wants to do a good job, then what they need is freedom and support to work within a framework that gives just enough guidance to be useful. This has been fundamental to the Neonatal story and to TfL where Vernon described the white boards at tube stations now used for colleagues to share ‘thoughts for the day’ or poems, adding welcome warmth and humanity for all involved. He said that just occasionally it goes a bit wrong, but when it does you need to accept, support and encourage so learning comes with reinforcement of the freedom not a return to the more expected command and control.

3.     The nature of the journey to customer-led success always needs bravery, courage and conviction at crucial points – it’s what makes it so rare. Customer-led initiatives are always ideas to make things better for customers. They always come with definite costs for the organisation and the costs are usually incurred soon. The problem is that the benefits to the organisation are both uncertain and usually later on, after cost is committed. That’s a tough combination to make a case for or to feel good about when you have responsibility for people’s livelihoods and possibly a great deal more at stake.

• Anabel described the challenge to get the Which? organisation away from chasing numbers of subscribers through huge recruitment drives and high drop-out rates, to constructing offers that would be initially attractive to far fewer people but in ways that meant they would find value in their experience and want to stay on. Making the change meant the immediate loss of reassuring volume and initial income and then having to wait… wait to find out whether the assumptions about retention turned out to be true

• Vernon talked about the big picture burning challenge of realising Tf’L’s competition was the car because car-led growth for London would lead to a capital grinding to a halt and massive health and sustainability issues. Later on, the 2012 Olympics was a crisis for TfL the moment it was won. They were one of the only bodies who could go on to screw things up. It was enough to get people out of silos and into focused outcome-led working together.

• Neil found ambition from learning about the ways premature babies were cared for in low resource settings like Cambodia and Vietnam – low tech, high parental involvement – and found pain in the immediate feedback he heard in person from parents struggling and upset but hiding it well as they dealt with the early life of their newborn. He also got confidence and ideas from seeing Timpson’s first-hand, with their human and empowering approach with colleagues a great model to learn from.

4.     Overall what’s remarkable are the commonalities – the learning from commercial organisations is reinforced by not-for-profits. Although financial success is less obviously the motivation, chasing the numbers can affect non-profits too. It was a problem for Which? in days gone by. The nature of the journey from the way things have always been done to something that works a whole step better for customers of one kind or another is NEVER easy. It always needs Burningness and then grows through Moments of Belief – the full framework from the book is explained here. What non-profits often bring is a closer connection for all involved with the human purpose of the organisation – but while that might seem helpful initially, it can be another way for colleagues to feel committed to current ways of doing things because the risk of getting it wrong is not just a financial hit but an emotional one that goes to the heart of their identity.

The stories from this evening will live long in the memory – we hope the learning encourages more people to do the same. If they do then life will get better for lots more people out there as organisations do something similar, whatever context they’re in.

If you’re keen to read more, here are some useful links…

• A long read story about Transport for London showing in depth how the organisation has been a customer-led success, using the framework from the book to tell their story https://www.thecustomercopernicus.com/post/transport-for-london

• The similar but different story about The Glasgow Neonatal Baby Unit that we published in the summer showing how they achieved their version of customer-led success https://www.thecustomercopernicus.com/post/the-glasgow-neonatal-unit

• The book’s website home page including links to buy https://www.thecustomercopernicus.com/

Most organisations like to believe that they are customer-led or customer centric. At the very least, they aspire to be so, even if they acknowledge that there is some way to go before that aspiration is met and sustained.  

But the ‘customer’ that brands and organisations have in mind tends to have a narrow socio-demographic profile. Typically, this is men (and sometimes women), preferably ABC1, who are white British, straight, middle-aged and not disabled.  

This ‘placeholder’ is a partial, and impoverished, version of who real consumers are. It misses out on the fact that only 60% of the population belong to ABC1 groups, leaving 40% of the nation out of the picture. It does not grapple with the fact that only 82% of England’s population is white British, which ignores 18% of the population. It has little to say about the 18% of England’s population who are disabled and the growing number of people who identify as LGBQT+. And, of course, it only partially reflects the needs of the female half of the population.  

That’s many, many people who are not often part of the image of the ‘customer’ that organisations say and think they are ‘centred’ around.  

The problem is that just about every product and service we consume has been designed around that ‘placeholder’ 2-D image of the customer or citizen. Indeed, a lot of the basic infrastructure of everyday life – things like the internet, the healthcare system, education, the transport network and energy supply – has not been created in an inclusive way, with proper consideration given to the specific needs, aspirations and experiences of different groups of people.  

Thanks to Caroline Criado Perez’s superb book, Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed For Men, we all know that seat belts were tested using crash test dummies with sizes and weights representing the average male and that this led to women being 47%  more likely to be seriously injured than men in car crashes.  

We also know that, after a heavy snow, local councils in Sweden used to remove snow first from the main city roads, which reflected the priorities of (mostly) men driving to work. When they decided to begin by clearing the pavements and side roads used (mostly) by women and children, the number of injuries and hospital admissions went down significantly, saving both lives and money.  

More recently, we have learned that people from ethnic minority backgrounds are more likely to get and are more likely to die from COVID -19 than their white British counterparts. It may well be – though we simply don’t know for sure – that the vaccines are not quite as effective with people from different ethnic groups in comparison with those who took part in the clinical trials. It’s great to see that, a few weeks ago, AstraZeneca decided to pilot clinical trials in people’s homes to address this issue and improve the diversity of their evidence base.  

Of course, the same reasoning applies to just about all aspects of society and it is as relevant to commercial businesses and their brands as it is to charities or statutory bodies. For instance, a while back, I did some work for Estée Lauder, Clinique and Mac. The work focussed on understanding the skincare and beauty regimes of black, Asian and Chinese women in the UK. This might seem quite a small target market. But understanding the skincare and makeup needs of these women triggered a wave of simple product innovations, including a wide array of new foundation shades that established DoubleWear as the bestselling foundation in the UK. It also meant that, attracted to the brands, these women’s spend on a range of their other products increased significantly. A simple, but hugely lucrative approach.   

I could multiply examples, having worked to understand the experiences and needs of women and minority groups – including people from ethnic minority and faith backgrounds, disabled people, LGBTQI+ people, poor and digitally excluded people – for some 25 years, creating opportunities for organisations to get things right for a wider range of people.  

My experience has taught me that these design flaws and missed opportunities are never deliberate. It’s not that individuals and organisations want to exclude some people and make life difficult for others. It’s just that, in the inside-out world of the organisation, where most senior decision-makers are themselves not very diverse and where management tools reinforce the status quo, people rarely take time to pause and ask questions about those they don’t know much about. And that’s the biggest barrier to change and growth. 

It is a helpful – and very important - habit of mind to ask, systematically, as part of the routine ways of working in an organisation, whether there could be some groups of customers and service users that are less likely to be included in standard ways of doing business. Who might they be? What do we know (or don’t know) about them? What different needs, perceptions or experiences might they have which we could aim to address? 

Ultimately, brands and organisations that ask these questions and provide tailored solutions outperform those that don’t. In the language of The Customer Copernicus, they step out of themselves - they escape the gravity of their internal pressures and priorities - and see the world through the eyes of different kinds of people be they customers, potential customers, citizens or just people around them in their communities. In doing so, they get a whole new view of the world. They discover new needs, new opportunities, new customers and, often, a renewed sense of energy and purpose.  

As life has returned to normal, I’ve been reminded me of the importance of companies focusing on customer outcomes, rather than functional tasks.

Going back into London means rekindling my relationship with train companies. It’s a little like being apart from someone where absence makes the heart grow fonder. Then, when you do meet again, you get reminded of all the little irritations and major annoyances that your brain had cleverly blanked out.

One evening my train home was delayed, delayed, delayed… until right at the last moment, it was cancelled. This had a big real-world impact on me. It was parent’s evening and I had to be at home, so I jumped in a taxi to just make it home in time.

As you’d expect of me, I wrote to give some ‘feedback’. I suggested that it would be better to announce the inevitable cancellation earlier, so I could have jumped into the cab with more time to spare.

The reply was interesting:

‘If you had arrived at your destination more than 15 minutes late via one of our trains, you could have applied for Delay Repay’ (a refund on my ticket).

I didn’t want my money back; I wanted to be home in time for my child’s parents evening. Whilst I had a human, emotional problem, they were giving me a robotic, functional solution. (It reminded me of my Swiss Rail experience, where a refund was never an option; their focus was entirely on fulfilling their commitment.)

Along the same lines was a letter my wife received out-of-the-blue from her bank a few weeks ago:

‘Dear Mrs Sills, We’re writing to let you know that we’ve recently reviewed the overdraft on your joint account, and have decided to reduce it’.

Nothing wholly unusual about that. Banks are well within their rights to change these things.

It was slightly confusing though, as she’d had this overdraft for fifteen years, and never once gone over the limit. 

Once again, I put pen (fingers) to paper (laptop) to find out why.

In the middle of a very polite letter back, one line stood out.

‘It’s because you don’t use it’.

This is another great example of focusing on the functional experience at the expense of the emotional; of focusing on the task itself, not the overall outcome the customer wants.

Functionally, we don’t use the overdraft. So from the bank’s perspective, it of course makes sense to reduce it and reduce their lending exposure (albeit ironically she did then receive an email offer of a low-rate personal loan a week later).

However, emotionally, we use the overdraft all the time. That account has our salary going into it and, more importantly, all our bills going out. Each month, the magical mystical Direct Debit machine whirs into life and seamlessly sends money flying all around the financial system to keep our lights on, our home insured, and our car on the road. 

If, one month, there was a delay on my salary, the whole thing would completely collapse. Payments would be missed, Direct Debits cancelled, and a whole sea of red-headed letters would arrive on my doorstep with cautions and charges to contend with.

But we don’t need to worry about this because we have that overdraft. Every month, we mentally use it to relax, to remove any potential stress or concern of something going wrong.

Removing an ‘unused’ overdraft because it’s in the T&Cs is functionally fine. But doing so without consideration for the real reason a customer might use it, and the emotional impact such a decision might have, removes the humanness from the relationship.

Similarly, whilst offering refunds for disrupted travel is useful and needed, too often it’s used as a get-out-of-jail card for companies who fail to deliver what they promised. 

It makes it acceptable to not deliver, with a satisfactory outcome being that no-one is out of pocket – rather than the customer having achieved the outcome they wanted.  

Although now we don’t have an overdraft, maybe that train ticket refund will come in handy after all…