Margot McComb

WhatMatters

Margot McComb has a number of years experience in the IT and customer services industry. Having recently completed an extensive MBA research report on customer experience practice, Margot continues her research to expand CEM models and work as a customer experience consultant providing CEM assessments and strategy design.

Defining CEM through principles

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Posted on 2010-08-31

During my research I found that many of my interviewees defined Customer Experience Management in their organizations using principles….. and so I began collating and grouping CEM principles and over a few months had a list of over 800 CEM principles. I find that principles provide a great foundation for defining, explaining and operationalizing customer experience management. Below are my top 25 – let me know what you think and what you would add?
My top 25 CEM principles:
CEM Principle #1: Leadership should be actively and continually involved in CEM efforts
CEM Principle #2: Leadership should keep looking for new ways to maintain enthusiasm around CEM efforts
CEM Principle #3: Make CEM one of the companies top priorities
CEM Principle #4: Have a clear and well communicated strategy...

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Importance of building trust relationships

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Posted on 2010-07-15

Mr. Company how can I trust you when you lie to me?
I recently had a scheduled appointment with a representative from one of my service providers. Further – it was an initial assessment and I hadn’t even handed over any money yet. After waiting for 20 mins (too long) in the waiting area I decided to call him and find out where he was. I was presented with a ridiculous lie. Details unimportant but if only he had told the truth and said “I got caught up” or “I’m so sorry I completely forgot how can I make this up to”.
This silly lie cost him and his company my trust and my business.
Having recently read the SAS Institute Inc’s ‘2009 Customer Experience Maturity Monitor’, this got me thinking about the importance of building trust relationships with customers. The SAS Institute Inc. sum up this concept nicely and say that “a customer’s trust is a belief that the company has her and his best...

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It really matters how you respond to customer feedback

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Posted on 2010-07-06

I use the term “customer feedback” which to me sometimes means “compliments” but most of the time this means “complaints”.

As a customer I often give feedback as I believe this is part of my role to play in having my expectations met. And I try to do it in a collaborative way. So this morning I gave some “customer feedback” to a well known local butcher where I often buy meat and also to a beauty spa where I recently had a treatment. Without providing you with the long winded tales here are some basic principles that I learned:

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Why is CEM so difficult?

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Posted on 2010-05-03

Few companies will deny the importance of CEM while many fail to deliver. Below I have discussed some of the reasons why I think companies continue to struggle with CEM.
Fuzzy definitions: CEM often means different things to different people inside companies. Perhaps companies need to have clearly defined customer principles which are well communicated and become part of the company ethos.
Visibility: Often there is nobody senior to oversee the entire companies CEM efforts which results in a loss of visibility, momentum and focus. Assigning a senior member of the company to guide the CEM strategy will surely ensure sufficient resource allocation, gain organisation wide support and provide continuous monitoring.
Lack of management approaches: This is the case of good intentions but no game plan. There seems to be a general lack of clear CEM approaches and management tools. Companies need simple and implementable CEM practices that work.
Not...

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What matters to customers has changed

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Posted on 2010-04-25

Another thought on why companies struggle to effectively manage customer experiences may be the massive changes in customer expectations…
Historically companies focused primarily on delivering products and product features to customers- which often met customer expectations. A typical sales process from the customer perspective would include gathering information about different product offerings, comparing features, maybe testing the products by speaking to others and then making the purchase. For companies this is a fairly easy process to understand and design.
What matters to customers now has however changed. Product features have become a given and purchase decisions now include a strong emotional and experiential factor- how the purchase makes the customer feel. This emotional factor drastically increases the complexity of managing customer experiences. Furthermore while customer experiences could previously be managed in silos by single functional areas such as...

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Three Must-Haves of Customer Experience (CE)

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Posted on 2010-04-23

Defining CE appears to have created mass confusion and disagreement among academics and business professionals alike. These definitions are often defined from different functional perspectives or in the pursuit of specific business objectives. Furthermore it can easily be argued that a common problem of Customer Experience Management (CEM) is that CE means different things to different people across and within organizations. Therefore without structured definitions- clear CEM strategies and the implementation thereof become highly challenging.

While it is difficult to define CE in a way that makes sense to companies and customers alike, I do believe that there are three undeniable key elements to customer experience.

1. Firstly, CE must be the customer’s interpretation of the experience. This means that companies cannot assume to guess how customer’s experiences must consider the customers perspective regardless of whether there is agreement. This explains some of the...

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Margot McComb

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