A recipe for success: 4 quick-fire questions with Sure International

You may remember our in-depth interview with Charlotte Dunsterville – Chief Customer Officer of Sure International – where she discussed the most effective ways of gauging customer and employee feedback.

Dunsterville, who is responsible for revenue performance, consumer sales, customer experience and operational performance at Sure International is back in the hot seat to answer 4 quick-fire CX questions! 

Zarina de Ruiter (ZDR): Thank you for joining us again, Charlotte. First of all, what is the best customer experience that you have ever received?

Charlotte Dunsterville (CD): Luckily for me, my husband took me to the Fat Duck for my last birthday. It was an amazing experience and a surprise as well, so I didn’t know until the day that we were going. 

In advance they phoned him and they’d asked him all kinds of questions about what we liked, what we didn’t like, what our favourite brands were, what our interests were, and that was kind of woven into the story of the meal.

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Some of it would have been the same experience that other customers got in terms of the actual courses; however, the personalisation of the meals, the welcome, the atmosphere and the way we were treated was absolutely amazing.

ZDR: That sounds fantastic! That level of personalisation is possible because they have quite a small set of customers at any given time. Do you think personalisation like that is possible at all within a much larger business?

CD: We have talked a lot about using the data and that is what it comes down to. You probably couldn’t get to that level of personalisation every hour of every day but I think we can use the data that we hold about customers much more effectively to personalise the service.

I think everyone at the conference [CEM in Telecoms Global Summit] is talking about how we do that and what the next steps are, so it’s certainly an aspiration.

ZDR: What has been the biggest customer experience learning for you coming into 2018?

CD: The biggest lesson is getting people to share a vision, to understand the purpose and the directions, and making sure that they’re on board with all the changes. All the feedback we get about the customer experience tells us that the people make the difference, particularly the customer-facing staff.

I think that for me has been the biggest learning. You can’t develop initiatives and try and do them in isolation. You have to have your people on board with you.

Check out this podcast on customer-centric thinking and how it should extend to all corners of your organization

ZDR: Absolutely. And sometimes that can be quite tricky for businesses. Can you give one top tip to get those people on board if they aren’t really bought into the customer-centric strategy just yet?

CD: I think it’s always about communication. You have to explain what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, and I’ve also used customer journeys quite effectively to do that.

It’s important to get people to sit down look at the journey from a customer perspective rather than an internal perspective and get them to put themselves in the shoes of the customer and what they’re going through.

It is important to have perspective on the customer journey, such as how long processes take. I’ve found this has been really effective.

Want to hear more customer experience strategies? Check out this free webinar: The customer experience tipping point