The Account Experience Podcast

Solving the CPG Experience Paradox

Nigel Tordoff is the former Chief Customer Officer USA  for the brewer Molson Corrs. Now semi-retired he continues his passion for customers, in particular the independent trade, and is now chair of the industry group Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) Experience Council.
Nigel talks about what he learned in a 4 am discussion on the brewery product line - using the concept of positively framing a seemingly unsolvable paradox. 
And with more than 2% of the global working population involved in the CPG value chain, he talks about how it’s more important than ever to spread best practices of customer experiences. He’s a passionate believer that companies can pool resources to go beyond the capabilities of today - and that’s for the greater good of all the employees in the traditional trade. 
Nigel Tordoff can be contacted via https://www.cpgexperiencecouncil.org/
 

The Untapped Potential for CX in the Caribbean w/Roger Nicholas

Today Adam Dorrell chats with Roger Nicholas of Caribbean Based Cite-Up, which is a leading regional distribution and promotion company, giving  real-time feedback on in-store product performance. The company covers 20 territories in the Caribbean, representing 180+ brands, in nearly 1000 outlets with nearly 6000 visits a month. 
Roger is based in San Fernando, Trinidad & Tobago. He calls himself “the hunting dog” because of his deep experience in companies large and small. He is also a certified Net Promoter professional. 
Adam is fascinated to learn the cultural differences - and Roger talks at length about how customer service in the Caribbean is different to the US or Europe. According to him,  it’s initially less urgent - but way more friendly. There is an opportunity to deliver even better service, and with the mineral wealth of the country, and the highly educated workforce, he says this is a new frontier of growth. 
And now Roger is starting a “Customer Experience movement” in Trinidad and Tobago - his vision is to bring the untapped potential of the country for happy business relations, and make the connection to sustainable revenue. His  goal is to get the Caribbean to better CX as soon as possible. 

The Prospect Experience Needs Disarming Honesty w/ Adam Clay @Tomorrow.io

Today Adam Dorrell speaks with Adam Clay, who takes us to upper stages of the sales funnel and talks about the prospect experience. Two Adams on a podcast is obviously better than one! 
Adam Clay is Chief Revenue Officer for Tomorrow.io, where he leads the global sales and channels teams. He brings experience scaling revenue teams for growth-oriented SaaS organizations - Beyond Identity, Logz.io. Black Duck Software (acquired by Synopsys), Mendix (acquired by Siemens)
We often talk about Account Experience - which for most people sits in the post-sales stage. Adam encourages us to think about  what happens before you even close a deal. Adam is passionate about this - he contends that most selling is NOT customer centric. In fact it can be an off-putting and terrible experience.
To make it work he talks about using Disarming Honesty and Self Deprecation. And this can be hard for salespeople. Few companies are disciplined in this. 
Adam Clay maintains its better to qualify out opportunities that are not a good fit - it makes better use of everyone’s time. And that’s equally useful as an experience carrier. 
If you are in sales or account management there is a lot to unpack in this episode. Adam Clays approach is calm and measured - it’s not just his content but his style that is good to learn from.
 
Don't forget to join us in Amsterdam September 13th-15th for Europe's biggest and most exciting VoC conference of the year! Fred Reichheld (inventor of NPS) will be headlining with a great supporting cast of brands with Heineken, Coca-Cola, SuperOffice, Briggs, WAJAX, etc. 
 

The Resident Experience w/ Russell Markou of Quintain

In today’s podcast Russell Markou of Quintain Living talks to host Adam Dorrell about the growing area of CX - that of asking Resident Experience for private individuals and companies that rent living and working space. 
He talks about “Home is where the heart is” - and how important the personal touch is to making sure residents are content - this impacts retaining the renter and making referrals. 
Russell is Head of Operations at Quintain Living, the management and operations platform of Quintain’s Build to Rent business, effectively a platform that designs, manages, owns and operates homes for renters. Capturing Resident feedback based on Net Promoter is essential to the ongoing success of the brand.
He joined the Quintain business in 2015 as Head of Operations to support the growth of Quintain Living, the management and operations platform of Quintain’s Build to Rent business, effectively a platform that designs, manages, owns and operates homes for renters – BTR is a relatively new sector in UK, renters benefit from an elevated level of customer service along with well thought out designed homes with additional amenity spaces exclusively for Residents to enjoy.  
Russell talks about how his previous roles in Radisson Blu and Hilton Hotels helped shape the service expectations for joining Quintain.
At Quintain, Russell oversees the operations for a portfolio of over 3,000 apartments across nine developments at Wembley Park. His original remit of 141 apartments in 2016 demonstrates the growth the business has achieved.
 This is an interview that has a lot of insight into the new and growing business of build to rent, and shows how Account Experience is becoming mainstream in a number of segments. 
Find out more about Quintain living. https://www.quintain.co.uk/quintainliving

In the Crisis of Disconnection, the solution is Customer Love with Maureen Burns

Today on the Account Experience Podcast (the intersection of b2b Account Management and Customer Experience) host Adam Dorrell talks with Maureen Burns, Senior Partner in Bain & Company's Boston office. She is a leader in Bain's Customer Strategy and Marketing Practice, advising clients on a range of issues including corporate strategy, customer experience transformation, especially with digital channels. And of course, implementing the Net Promoter System - in both b2c and b2c contexts. 
Most interesting to listeners of this Podcast, she is a co-author of our book of the year, “Winning in purpose” together with Fred Reichheld. 
She talks about how the book came about - how she was initially skeptical about “customer love”. Find out how she becomes a convert.
She gives her view on Earned Growth, and how it may (or may not) become an accounting standard. The difference in b2b vs b2c Net Promoter programs. And talks about how in the race to provide digital experience, companies can find themselves in a Crisis of Disconnection. The solution? Love. 
Not only is Maureen a leader in the Net Promoter movement, but she is also entertaining to listen to - in fact, we need to get her back when we do our deep dive into Winning on Purpose!

Breaking Glass: Getting from 6 to 60 NPS in Two Years With Martin Troughton, Safestyle

On this episode, Adam Dorrell’s guest is Martin Troughton, Marketing Director, of Safestyle PLC, the UK market leader in replacement windows and doors. 
Martin describes his career as “triple-glazed” - and his story is impressive - from starting measuring NPS consistently just over two years ago in the business they have worked on improving customer experiences and improving their score. The rise is from NPS of 6 to where it’s hovering now in the 50s and 60s. 
The learnings were sometimes simple: Martin explains that even where the installers park their vans has an impact on the score. And providing extra sets of keys was also an improvement point. 
The most powerful section is when he opens up about a recent cyber attack. The Net Promoter score was sensitive enough to  track the outage time period - and after they recovered, the NPS bounced back in a short period. 
And for trivia fans, you get to find out which company is the biggest buyer of dust sheets in the UK. 
As an ex-ad-man, Martin is a hugely entertaining guest. And it’s a wonderful story of how the small things make a difference to the experience. 
 
Postscript: 
Martin made some Book Recommendations (titles published in the last year) and we list them here: 
Business:
 ‘Can’t sell won’t sell’ by Steve Harrison. Subtitled “why adland has stopped selling and started saving the world”
‘Go Luck Yourself’ by Andy Nairn. The book points to lessons in luck and really how to make your own. Well written, practical and insightful.
 
Pleasure:
‘The Curious Rise of Alex Lazarus’ by Adam Leigh (a credible candidate for the nicest man in advertising). It’s the story of a 90’s dotcom start up and the behind the scenes rivalry when money and success are involved.
The Bombman’ by Andy Green - written as a tribute to his father who was in bomb disposal in Ireland during the troubles. A great adventure story with genuine insight into the personality and rivalry of bomb maker vs bomb disposal technician.

“Your NPS has gone up—So Freakin’ what?” with Jamie Thorpe of IPSOS

Today host Adam Dorrell talks to the outspoken recent winner of a CX Star award, which recognises excellence in industry professionals. He’s the guy that coined the phrase “the So-What of CX”.
His name is Jamie Thorpe, and he’s been in CX for more than 20 years.  The majority of his career has been spent in Client Success/Service previously holding two board-level positions and is now Head of Experience Management at Ipsos.  Jamie’s expertise spans Offer, Marketing, CX Platforms, Professional Services, and Delivery.  He is an industry-recognized CX leader in the UK.  His in-depth CX knowledge combined with a commercial and pragmatic/action-oriented style has seen Jamie deliver success with many clients across sectors and geographies.
Jamie talks on the podcast about the 4 key things a CX program needs to do: 
Communicate
Educate
Measure
Reward (as in “what’s in it for me?”)
 And if you can’t do that, you have that “So What?” moment. 
A key stat from Jamie is that 86% of people will pay more for a better experience - 20 to 25% more. Jamie explains how this is built into the Ipsos Roxy Model  - the Return on CX Measurement.
Crucially Jamie talks about how democratizing is critical - “Show me a 50 slide deck that's thrown out to 1000 senior leaders and then wonder why no one reads it -  because you've got to tell stories, think about videos, infographics, create creative ways that are going to grab people's attention.” 
 
This episode contains some strong language. And two Brits, so it’s quite fruity. You have been warned!

How a Sentiment Sandwich Satisfies Executive Hunger w/ Jim Tincher

On the Account Experience podcast today Adam Dorrell’s guest is Jim Tincher - a man who sees the world through the eyes of customers. 
 
 Jim is a customer experience expert, speaker, and author of  “How Hard Is It to Be Your Customer? Using Journey Mapping to Drive Customer-Focused Change”. He’s a fully certified CCXP. 
Heart of the Customer, his innovative customer experience consulting firm, has helped both start-ups and Fortune 500 companies boost revenue and loyalty by harnessing the voice of the customer.
 
Jim talks about how his work with clients and hundreds of interviews have shown him that b2b sales are usually driven by emotions. This is counterintuitive to the common narrative that b2b is all about rationality and decision-making units. Instead, Fear and Trust are two major drivers, with referrals counting for major parts of the decision. Later, rationality kicks in, but until then, b2b owners can explore the emotional side, even creating “enjoyment paths through complaints”. He highlights a story on how to get executives engaged with CX - using the “Sentiment Sandwich” technique on dashboards. 
 
And with other great concepts like the “Affect Heuristic” and the ADKAR change management technique - well, there was almost too much to talk about in the 30 minutes we had. If you care about b2b experience, this is a must-listen. 
 
Jim’s new book Do B2B Better, Drive Growth Through a Game-Changing Customer Experience will be out in the fall. You can reach him on LinkedIn “Jim Tincher CCXP”

How Zip Water Improved Their NPS by 58 Points in a Short 4 Years

Amanda Graham leads Customer Experience for Zip Water in the UK. She shares the incredible story of taking Zip from NPS 2 to 60 in four years. 
In this episode of the Account Experience Podcast, we dive into this journey, and learn what it takes to get such a big improvement in NPS. Amanda tells us how the biggest impacts came from improving First Contact Resolution and a focus on after sales communication. A key link in the chain is also to measure employee engagement - and Amanda explains how important eNPS is to Zip. 
She also passes on a great tip for culture - “Guess the score from the customer comment.” Hint: most employees believe the Net Promoter Score is lower than the one the customer gave. 
Listen to this free flowing and unfiltered discussion, with an outpouring of ideas on how to run a practical and successful Account Experience program. 
 
About Zip Water: 
Zip Water provides sustainable drinking water systems for homes and offices and is well known for it’s HydroTap which is a multi-function tap which delivers filtered, boiling, chilled and sparkling water on tap, instantly.  
https://specify.zipwater.co.uk/
 
Host: Adam Dorrell, CEO & Co-Founder of CustomerGauge
 
#B2B  #industrials #water #sustainable  #ZipWater
 

“Experience is the Future” CPG Industry Roundtable with Coca Cola HBC, Heineken, and Anheuser Busch

In this very special episode host Adam Dorrell is joined by three mega-brands in the FMCG business, all working hard on improving their Account Experience. 
Three senior executives discuss how they have accelerated their business transformation journey: Stuart Ward, head of Sales Capability Coca-Cola HBC; David Aynat, Senior Director of BEES and Head of B2B for Anheuser Busch (USA) and Roderik Rosenbaum, Global Director, Route to Consumer and Sales Capability of Heineken.
Learn how COVID accelerated change in their business, with the digital agenda becoming the number one priority. Acting fast was essential, and voice of customer has driven that.. 
Customer Experience is becoming the new FMCG area of advantage. What’s interesting is how it has become vital in each of these businesses to listen to ALL customers continually, not just sampling a small selection once a year. The challenge is how to deliver Voice of Customer to the front-line staff, not just a central team. 
The panel discuss their current metrics: Engagement coverage (how many accounts give feedback, already at 50% in some countries), speed of close-loop, and Net Promoter (NPS)  
The three companies are committed to driving the customer experience of all customers, across all touchpoints of the business. Listening, acting on feedback and empowering sales teams with the right insights and support they need to close loop with customers. 
So settle back, open the soda or refreshment of your choice and listen to these industry luminaries give insights into the evolving frontline Account Experience.