The Art & Heart of CX
Dedicated to celebrating leaders shaping Customer Experience (CX) across a variety of dynamic industries, including events, community groups, venues, retail, travel, the arts and sport, The Art & Heart of CX welcomes a special guest each episode to chat all things CX.
Consumers and guests are more discerning than ever and we all have the power to enhance (or diminish) the Customer Experience.
Whether you’re seeking fresh ideas, a dose of inspiration or a peek into the latest trends, this podcast will be for you.
Each episode provides insightful stories, practical tips and a behind-the-scenes look at what’s driving exceptional customer experiences in different sectors.
The Art & Heart of CX
Neeta Lachmandas
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A coffee machine worth over $2,000 gets delivered upside down and balanced precariously on a gate, and nobody wants to own the problem. That one story opens up a bigger conversation about modern customer experience in the latest episode of The Art & Heart of CX.
In this episode, Georgie is joined by Neeta Lachmandas, founder of ConsciousService, to unpack what great CX looks like. What started as a chance meeting in Singapore earlier this year, continues in this conversation as they explore why customers tolerate self-service for most of the journey, yet feel abandoned when it’s impossible to reach support, and how blame-shifting between platforms, resellers and delivery partners destroys trust. They share real examples from call centres, retail and hospitality, and what AI could do well if it’s designed to support staff rather than replace care.
They go deeper than surface-level “empathy” and focus on trust, employee experience, and service recovery. Neeta explains why empowered teams solve problems faster, why complaints are free research (not a nuisance), and how broken feedback metrics can make frontline staff feel punished for system issues they didn’t create.
If you care about customer loyalty, customer service, customer journey mapping, and building a brand people actually want to come back to, this conversation is for you.
Subscribe to The Art and Heart of CX, share this with someone designing a CX or AI rollout, and leave a review with your biggest “automation gone wrong” story.
Georgie Stayches, host of The Art & Heart of CX, brings a human lens to how businesses design Customer Experience (CX). She explores how every little detail impacts how a customer interprets, experiences and recalls a situation - from our senses to the built and natural environments - and how this can impact brand loyalty, word of mouth marketing and revenue.
Each episode she invites a special guess from all works of life and industries to share what they consider the art and hear of CX.
Want to hear more from Georgie? Her keynote presentations inspire audiences with real-world strategies to elevate CX, understand human behaviour and build lasting audience loyalty.
Find out more at georgiestayches.com
Welcome And Guest Background
SPEAKER_00Hello and welcome to the latest episode of The Art and Heart of CX. I'm Georgie Statius and I'm thrilled to welcome Nita Lechmendes from Singapore. We are doing this via Zoom, although we met in Singapore in April this year. A big welcome to the podcast meter.
SPEAKER_01Lovely to be here.
SPEAKER_00Now we met at the PCMA conference in convening APAC, I think it was called, in April of this year, which feels like a lifetime ago. The year has zoomed on a lot. I don't know where it's gone.
SPEAKER_01Oh my gosh, almost coming to August. Can you believe that? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's crazy. And you presented on customer experience. And the well, let me before we dive into that, let me just talk about some of your experience and your career. You're the founder of Conscious Service, and I said you're based in Singapore. You've led major initiatives at the Singapore Tourism Board and the Institute of Service Excellence at Singapore Management University. You've worked across tourism, marketing, business transformation, service excellence. And what I love, and you could tell in your presentation, was you're passionate about putting people at the center of transformation and championing that idea that great customer service and sorry, great customer experience starts with empathy, trust, and employee experience.
SPEAKER_01Something that I especially in today's age, right? Well, actually, maybe not in today's age with AI, but even when we started to go very, very big into you know technology, I started to be very, very concerned that technology was making it seem like the human experience beyond convenience was was not not an important factor. And for me, I I felt that that was kind of under under understanding what humans are about anyway, and what
Automation Is Fine Until It Fails
SPEAKER_01humans are looking for, you know. And to my mind, for now at least, we are humans experiencing the customer experience. And if we don't understand that humans are actually very, very complicated, we have a very, very complicated makeup, we have very complicated psychology, and we uh reduce customer experience to one word, which is, I don't know, you know, convenience, seamlessness, whatever you may want to call it. I think that we may miss out on a lot of opportunities to actually build loyalty with your own customers.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yes. I was looking at some research recently around automation and efficiency in the use of technology. And it said that while customers obviously appreciate some convenience and automation, they want a human to be able to contact straight away when something goes wrong. And so if you think about sort of those self-checkouts at a supermarket or automation on the phone when you try and ring and pay a bill or query a bill, it's this all all this automation, and you actually just want to speak to a human.
SPEAKER_01I think we actually I think that for many of us, myself included, I suspect yourself too, we actually enjoy the automation process, right? We enjoy the convenience, we enjoy banking throughout apps. And I think organizations just need to understand that for 90, this is my belief anyway, for 90% of the customer journey, I feel that we are we are very, very happy to go through the automation process. Uh, and for organizations, it's about understanding the moment when something fails and when there is a failure, and then understanding what your response should be, where and at what point the human intervention becomes really, really important, right? For many of us, we feel like we're doing our part. We are using the apps, you know, we are going down the technology route. Yet when something goes wrong, it becomes really, really difficult to find somebody to help us solve the problem. And I think that's where the frustration starts to set in. And that's where I think we start to feel like, oh man, you know, sometimes I feel like you don't really care about, you know, you really don't care about me. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I was looking at a bank case study about a bank recently that did a whole lot of, I guess, an overhaul of their technology and automation, which reduced the wait times by eight, yeah, reduced the wait times by eight times eight. But at the same time, what they made sure was that for vulnerable customers they could speak to a human within seven seconds. Which that's fantastic. Yeah, so I think some get it and some don't. And I remember your your opening case study observation in your talk about your coffee machine. And I wondered if you might be happy to share that again because I think that was a perfect example of um when things go wrong. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01Okay, maybe I'll send you the picture so you can kind of you know place it so people can visually, you know, context what exactly happened. So my husband and me were in the market for a coffee machine, and we were looking to buy something. You know, we we enjoy making coffee at home, and and we were looking at something relatively uh a pretty complex machine. Don't ask me why I didn't go to Harvey Norman. Don't I I don't know, you know. But you know, I went online to one of the e-commerce stores in Singapore and I thought, hmm, wow, they're selling the machine. And guess what? It's like a couple of hundred bucks cheaper as well. It gets delivered to the house. Actually, that was a big thing for me. It gets delivered to the house because you know, if
The Coffee Machine Delivery Disaster
SPEAKER_01we went to Harvey Norman, we'd have to bring the machine back ourselves. It was an expensive machine, it was over $2,000. So, you know, make the purchase, and you know, it I still remember it was it was kind of early in the morning, and we just get this ring on our doorbell, and that's it, you know, like just one ring on our doorbell, and I come out, and the machine is placed now. The machine is 20 pounds, so I have no idea how this person placed the machine so precariously on the top of my gate. So precare, it was so precarious that I think if there was a gust of wind, like nobody was at home, whatever, you know, uh the whole machine would have fallen. And the machine was placed wrong side up. I don't know how the guy moved it to the top of my gate, but it took me and my helper. I mean, I was just I was in a state of shock when I saw the machine perched that way. My helper was like, you know, trying to touch it, making sure that it didn't fall. And I was like, hold on. And I went and got my camera and I took a picture because I was like, I have to, I have to get back to these people about this. I think the interesting thing is it by the way, it took me and my helper uh and a two-step ladder to bring the machine down. So I don't know how to use the machine up. It was really, really heavy. And what was more interesting for me was, you know, obviously they had absolutely no idea how to deliver a machine like this because they're so used, you know, uh delivery has become uh very it's ubiquitous, you know, but they're very used to just leaving packages at the top of our gate, you know, throwing a package in, doing all kinds of things. And it's fine if it's you know something that's not uh electrical, it's fine if it's not something that's expensive, you know. So that that perspective of understanding contextually what exactly this is was very lost. But what was more interesting for me, or really at that point more frustrating for me, was the whole process. Um, so I got in touch with the platform. The platform said, well, you know, you got the package, so you know, I don't care how you got it, but you got it, not my problem, contact the the reseller. The reseller said, You got the package, not my problem, contact the delivery company. And what did the delivery company say? Not my problem, contact the platform. You know, I'm just you know. And and that was when I think, and the more I went through the process, the more angry I was getting, you know, with and and the more I felt like, you know, how because you know, okay, it's fine. I was at home with my helper. We managed to get the package down. It was 20 pounds. If if there was a gust of wind and and it the box had dropped on somebody, you know, outside of my house, say a toddler walking, uh, you know, it could it could have been a terrible, terrible freak accident, you know. It could have dropped, it could have fallen on my dog, it could have fallen and the machine could have been uh, you know, squat. And I started to pose all these questions and I realized that nobody was interested in the what-ifs, you know. And I realized that this is the problem with journeys that journeys that only look at a very, very linear process and are only designed around, you know, convenience and nothing else. You know, the the the inability to understand why I was angry was actually very, very perplexing to me. These are supposed to be sophisticated organizations, you know.
SPEAKER_00And and I saw something recently, which I mean is no surprise, although I would almost think the stat was high, but it said four uh three out of four people said a bad customer experience or a bad experience with a brand will ruin their day. Who wants to be ruining anyone's day?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely, and actually when you think about it, right? I I really believe this. It's you know, products and services are going to be commoditized, you know, anything can be replicated. You know, when we spoke at PCME and we spoke about events, uh, even a great event can be replicated, can't it? Because the the nuts and bolts of it can be replicated. What can't be replicated is this feeling that you actually care for me and you care for my outcomes, you know, and you care that I have a great event, whether I'm the attendee or I'm the organizer. And if I feel that you care and you understand my needs, you make an attempt to understand my needs and my concerns, then I'm gonna come back to you. And I think in too many organizations now, because technology makes it very convenient, and where and when people think that all that matters is convenience, they forget that actually everything they're doing, everything they're offering can be replicated.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01You know, and what's the point then?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly. And you know, we've talked about, I know, sort of in conversations we've had before now, about that, you know, the importance of the passion. I don't want to say passion, but the the belief and the understanding and I guess the delegation to staff of how they can fix those friction points and and what power they have. I was on a panel recently at a hairdresser leadership summit with the CEO of the Australian Retail and Cafe Association, and they were asking him, you know, who does good customer experience and why? And he highlighted, you know, a couple of restaurants in Sydney, and he said the reason they are so good at it is that their staff are empowered to fix situations.
Empowered Staff And AI Anxiety
SPEAKER_00You know, so if something goes wrong, the staff member might have a delegation to give a free meal or you know, whatever. So the staff have that power to correct and rectify something, but when the staff aren't empowered with that, it's very hard to sort of get that cooperation from them.
SPEAKER_01And you know, when staff have that mindset that I'm just a pair of hands and legs, you know, which it which is what happens with a lot of restaurants here in Singapore, they're so short-staffed that you know they actually signal to staff that, you know, I you're just a pair of hands and legs, you know, I just need you to show up. And then you wonder how how are they supposed to actually deliver that when they feel, you know, because people internalize what you tell them, you know.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yes. And you know, there was a study years ago with Lego where they had two groups of people constructing amazing, elaborate structures with Lego. And what they did with the first group is that each time they finished one of these amazing structures, they sort of put them on the windowsill or, you know, the mantle in the room that they're on, so they're on display. And the second group, once they had built it, they then dismantled it and then would build the next one. And of course, the group that were constantly dismantling it put less and less effort into the structures because nothing came of them. They just were broken down again.
SPEAKER_01That makes perfect sense. And I I think you know, there is a wonderful, wonderful, very old academic model, which I just love. It's called the service profit chain. And the service profit chain, it was I can't uh I can't remember. Oh, I'll have to I'll have to let you know who who the model was built by, but it was such a simple model because what they did is they looked at the external customer experience and then they kind of tracked it backwards, you know, just go back steps. And eventually they identified through all the research and and everything that they did that it was the employee experience that determined the final customer experience. It wasn't the service the employees gave, it was the employee experience that then determined how they responded to customers, which then determined how the customers felt about the whole thing, right? And I think in in and look at look at look at today and look at all the the conversations that we're having today about AI, all the anxiety it's causing. Look at all these graduations where where you know people are walking out, when someone starts talking about AI, you can you can feel the palpable anxiety, right? That that you know uh people are feeling. And I think, you know, can you imagine it, especially in the space of customer experience? When we keep talking about customer experience being this area that's going to be completely subsumed by AI, how do you expect people to deliver a great customer experience when they are in a pretty anxious state of mind? You know, I think it's gonna be really, really hard. It's really interesting. About about two or three years ago, maybe about three years ago, I chaired a customer experience conference. And this was when AI was just starting, and you know, the conference was a lot of banks, a lot of telcos, very, very international organizations who were and and all the people there were very excited about the potential of AI, which I agree. I think there's a lot to feel excited about. But every conversation was around the idea of how the technology was going, you know, these conferences are sponsored by uh technology companies that building all these tools anyway, right? But every conversation was about how, you know, we we don't need people anymore, we don't need, you know, whatever anymore. And I was thinking myself, I feel like I'm in a very dystopian world because I'm in a customer experience conference and nobody's talking about what the customer needs, what the customer, it felt like those conversations were passe. You know, we don't need to have those like like we understand that already, you know. Now it's all about the productivity. And that that is very, very scared and and uh very scary for me because I felt like very fundamental conversations were being passed over for how do we get productivity, how do we get productivity? It was interesting because this year at that PCMA conference, I felt the conversation had turned a little bit at least to understand that you know humans are not as simplistic as we are making them out to be, and that human-machine partnership is gonna become much, much more important than just you know basic productivity. I suppose there are enough examples as well of organizations that have en masse, you know, let go of their customer experience teams or people or service staff or whatever to realize that actually the the uh technology is not at a level where we can just let people go. Yeah. Yes.
SPEAKER_00I um I had to ring a call center yesterday to about a fix up a toll e-tag that we've been having issues with accounts with our cars. And every time I rang, it wouldn't give me an option to speak to someone, you know, it would be, but I know that if you just say operator, you get throughput to so it said, you know, press one for this, press two for this. Neither of those options would were what I needed. So I just said into the phone operator, and next minute I got transferred. And I have learnt that. So here's a hot tip. If you're ever on a call centre and you do not like the automated options, just say operator, and often you will get transferred. But it just highlighted the frustration of nothing, and and in order to pay the bill,
Call Centre Pain And Better Handoffs
SPEAKER_00I had to log into the account. So usually with a bill, you get like a bill, a b pay code here in Australia, and then a reference number. So you can easily pay the bill. But to pay this bill, I had to be able to log into the account. We couldn't remember the password for the account to get into. So we had these whole issues. It was like $23 was all I was trying to pay. And it was it was like they were trying to put every barrier in front of me to make this process easy. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And when you think about it, you know, something like this, they are trying to build efficiency, but they create a process that becomes actually extremely inefficient.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01Um, because you know, they they I don't know. I wonder when I hear stories like this, I wonder or situations like this, I wonder who is designing these systems. Because you know, what why is it that they uh you know, they I don't know, maybe there's some hot 20-year-old, 25-year-old that assumes that everybody is a digital native. I don't know. But even with with, you know, I I I teach uh uh customer experience class to some master's students. And even with them, and I put I put them in situations, so these are younger people, right? And even with them, when I put them in situations where there is some emotion involved, even they tell me they'd rather speak to a person than speak to a machine, right? So, you know, a few days ago I was calling the bank, and you know, the fact of the matter is you could have all these systems, you could have the one, the two, the three. Not everybody's gonna have a question that fits into the one, the two, and three. And I faced the same issue again. It was like it was finite one for this, two for this, three for this. Yes, and then that's it. No, no opportunity to figure out how do I actually speak to somebody. And I had no choice because my request was urgent. I had no choice to dial the option for I've been scammed. I hadn't been scammed, but I needed to speak, I needed the guarantee that somebody was going to answer my call. And then when I spoke to that person and I said, Look, I'm so sorry, I don't want to jam up this line, but I desperately need to speak to somebody. This is really urgent and it's a very big amount of money. And she told me, Oh, okay, you have to wait. So after the press one for this, press two for this, there's music. And when the music ends, then there is an the voice operator comes back and says, if you want to speak to somebody. And I was like, Who designed this? How would anybody know? And in the process, I had I was now jamming a line that's meant for scams. You know, so it it it it becomes inflicting more pain on on you know this the entire system.
SPEAKER_00Oh, absolutely. And two things just out of that, I remember seeing a futurist say this at a conference years ago, which it's not groundbreaking. I mean, we all know it, but all these customers, uh all these customers, all these businesses that rave about being customer-centric, but try and find a phone number on their website to call them. It's like they're doing everything that you can't actually get um in touch with them. It's it's like um I posted a reel recently on my Instagram account about handoffs. So every time you ring like a helpline and you give your details and they say, okay, we'll need to transfer you to another department, you get transferred and then you have to say your details again. And each time you do it, it's called a handoff. And of course, each time it's breaking that trust with the brand in the customer experience. It's like I've I've been giving these details about five times now. Is no one passing them on when they transfer.
SPEAKER_01Well, I and I think this is where the the opportunities with AI, for example, come, right? Because I I really believe that a good AI system, you know, that you put in place will be able to aggregate, you know, because I was actually just talking to somebody about this a couple of days ago, and she was telling me, you know, on the back of a call center, you know, how how many different systems the call center agent actually needs to access to be able to get a holistic view of your problem, right? Because they're all it's it's all data that's sitting in different pockets, and it becomes really, really difficult for them. And you know, this is where I think AI will be wonderful because it'll be able to aggregate all the information, maybe pull out, you know, kind of the salient points of my relationship with you. But but the human at the other end of the line still plays such an important part, right? Such an important part in being the visible kind of face of yes, you know, of look, I'm I'm fellow human, I understand you're in distress, you know. Calm down, let's work through this together, and you know, you're safe in my hands. And I feel that that that training and that learning is really important.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yes. You just made me think about businesses that are adopting certain AI platforms that maybe aren't mature enough and ready. And one that springs to mind is a couple of months ago, a couple of weeks ago, whatever, my partner and I decided we wanted roast on a Sunday night. So, in you know, Melbourne pubs have Sunday night roast, and we wanted a particular roast, and so I had gone into well, we live in a in a city suburb where there's lots of pubs. So, as I was coming home from work, I'd walked into a few of the pubs. They didn't have the pub meats that we wanted. We wanted roast beef, everyone was doing roast pork, it seemed, this night. And so there was one pub I wanted to ring because I couldn't be bothered walking there in case they didn't have it. It was a bit of a hype. And so I rang the number, and the first thing that happened was the number on my phone
When AI Is Not Ready Yet
SPEAKER_00changed to a regional number in Victoria. I thought, oh, I've I've rung the wrong number. Anyway, I rang it again, it happened again. So this voice comes on the phone and says, Hello, you've called the such and such pub. And I said, Oh, hi, I'd like to know if you what your roast is tonight. And it was clearly an AI bot answer in the phone. And they said, Yes, we have roast on Sunday night. And I said, What type of roast do you have? Yes, we've got roast on Sunday night. And and anyway, I kept asking, but what type of roast? And it ended with them saying, You need to ring the pub. It's like, but I've run the pub. You are the pub, you know. But it just showed I could see what they, you know, I could see that this capability will help them, but it's not quite there yet. And then I got completely frustrated and have never even bothered to go back to that pub. Yeah. Have no idea what roast they actually had. But it just showed the adoption of AI before it was really ready in their instance. And now it just that pub just seems too much work for me to ever ring them and try and find something out.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, totally, totally. And I I feel a little bit concerned about some of the messaging that I'm seeing as well. So that PCMN conference, I actually saw an ad for AI. The productivity, right? The efficiency of AI. And it it was she she will always be at your back and call. She she will never say, she will never need to take a break. She, you know, and I I remember I took a picture of it and I sent it to someone, and I was like, I think this kind of messaging is going to actually turn people away as well, you know. So yes, AI is fantastic. I think all of us need to learn how how much value we can get out of it. But I don't know. Some of it, you know, some of the messaging is so disruptive. It's gonna be so disruptive, you know. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And and there's certainly a lot of research and and findings that people with all the sort of you know, AI, the automation, the AI videos, you can't tell if they're real or not. There is going to be this sort of not rebound, but this want for human interaction and more authentic connection, even more, because of because we're going to lose it in so many other ways. And that's where staff are so important. And in every episode of this podcast, whether it's a bookstore I've spoken to or an equestrian event or you know, an arts festival, when I've said to them what's you know been the success, what's caused the success of your customer experience, each time they've said it comes down to the humans, whether it's the retail staff, whether it's the actors helping with a virtual installation, whatever it is, it's the humans that are the power in customer experience because they've got that heart and they've got that authentic, most of them, and we'll talk about good and bad examples, but you know, you do get that connection from the human.
SPEAKER_01That's why, in all the research that we did, right, over the years. I mean, my team ran one of the biggest consumer research projects in the whole of Singapore because we were doing a national study, and we did it for many, many years. And it was really interesting the data that we were collecting. At one point, we were collecting over 50,000 data points each year. Uh, so we had very, very extensive, a very extensive database to compare. And what we saw was, you know, I hate the word empathy because I think the word empathy is overused, and I think it's misunderstood as well. I like to call it kind of a pragmatic kind of empathy. But what we saw was really, really clear that, you know, uh for me, where I went to was
Trust And The Power Of Noticing
SPEAKER_01actually at the end of the day, I think the distinction between a great customer experience and a poor customer experience is even it goes even deeper, it's about trust. Because if I don't trust you, I'm not even gonna have a great customer experience. So you know, understanding what trust means and how to build trust, and that empathy is a huge part of building trust. Or you know, that feeling that this person is making an attempt to understand my problem, my needs, goes so far to build trust. And when products and services are so commoditized, I feel trust is gonna become more and more important.
SPEAKER_00I yes, my brain's going in all sorts of directions around that. There's two things, and I'm gonna have to write them down because my things fly in and out of my brain very quickly. But one was Danny Meyer from Shake Shack. I was reading an interview with him recently around customer experience, particularly in sort of hospitality, and he talked about hiring staff who care about their job, you know, who care about the impact that they can make and the change that they can, or not the change, but you know, the impact that they have on customers. And he was talking about when you go to a restaurant and at the end of the service the waiter or waitress comes past and says, How was everything? And he said, It invites a dishonest answer because you're never going to say, Well, the broccoli was a bit crunchy, or you know, that was a bit spicy. So you end up saying, Oh no, it was fine, thank you. And he said, So you have this complete false conversation happening with the with the business because it's the staff member is just going through the motions rather than asking, you know, questions that could really understand how their experience was. And I thought that was so true because so many times we all say, Oh, yes, no, everything was fine. And as the as the staff member walks away, we all say at the table, but it wasn't really fine, but we just didn't want to say anything. Um, so that was my first thing.
SPEAKER_01Well, but why do you think we cannot be? I know I know why the the the wait person asks it. I guess it's part of their protocol of you know having to ask the question. But why is it do you feel we can't be honest at that point of time?
SPEAKER_00I think it's because the way the question is framed. It's too broad. And it's like, you know, you go into a shop and they say, How's your day going? How do I don't know how to answer that? And I remember I was walking through my local market and you get those same questions, how's your day going? Or you're out shopping. So very generic. And then I was walking past the person who was doing the cheese tastings, and she said, Is it still blowing a gale outside? And I and she it stopped me in my tracks and I said, Yes. I said, the weather is crazy out there. And her and I ended up having this great conversation because it wasn't just this generic conversation. It's and I've noticed it actually recently a little bit. I've had people, I've my for some reason my glasses case is is quite glittery and it's getting comments. If someone says, Oh, great glasses case, it's it strikes up a more authentic conversation than how's your day going? So I think it's that the question has to have be a lot more intentioned for it to really understand who you're serving. You know, if if they ordered a dish for the first time, you'd come back, you know, did you end up enjoying it? Would you go with it again? Or something that actually tailors the question to the table.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so that's so true. See, so that's based on observation, right? So, you know, the service staff or the person who's running the restaurant, whoever it is, whatever, is observing you. You know, he he comes back or she comes back, and and you know, that that little point of distinction tells you that, okay, you know, uh it's not just a cursory statement. They're actually observing what I'm doing, you know, observing how I'm having this meal. And that makes all the difference in the world because suddenly I'm valued, you know, you're looking you're valued, you know. And I I think those are the little things that become really, really important.
SPEAKER_00Oh, it's it's such the little things. I went to the hairdresser last week and the apprentice was putting the towers, you know, on my shoulder, and then they put the sort of the cape over. And she was, and I don't, I'll preface this by saying, I can't stand when people fuss. Like just put the apron on, put the towers on, be done with it. But she did it in a way that was, she didn't sort of faff, but she constantly said, is that too tight? Is that comfortable? And I said to her, gosh, you're so kind. And she said, I just want my customers to feel relaxed and calm.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Oh, okay. So, you know, you get it straight away. And interestingly, that there were three things that hairdresser did that told me they understood customer's roots. So, first of all, that one, because each staff member understood the role they played. You know, she wasn't cutting my hair, she wasn't washing my hair, she was just putting the towel on, but she knew the the impact she would have. The second thing was when I got to the basin and I I you know lay my head back, my head sat on this tiny, not this little, like about a fist-size platform in the basin, which meant the hairdresser could still wash my hair, but my head wasn't sort of hanging and uncomfortable. It was the most comfortable hair wash I've had. And then the third thing I was eavesdropping on another customer client next to me had had a very bad colouring experience at another salon. So she was telling this hairdresser about it, and to his credit, he didn't bag the other hairdresser. He said, Well, look, it could it can be difficult to change such sort of extreme colours with your hair. And she admitted, and she said, Look, it was a miscommunication around the colour, but but the other hairdresser had really, when she had complained, that that put all the blame on her. Anyway, so she was saying this to the hairdresser in my salon, and she said, But you know, it was a miscommunication. And my hairdresser said, Well, miscommunications happen, but as a business, I would want to be able to rectify and work with my customer. So he basically illustrated he understood that customer experience can be one in those friction points, and it was I sat there going, This is just this.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I'll I keep going back to this selling, because they just get it, and it's the little things, and but but that's such an important point that you raised because and I actually write, I actually uh talk about this extensively in my book because in Asia, in Singapore and in Asia, there is a very big fear about complaints, you know, or or so you know, I I always there there was a time when organizations used to measure as a as a metric complaints versus compliments. So can you imagine if you measure that as a metric, what kind of behavior are you going to signal, right?
Complaints As Gold And Broken Metrics
SPEAKER_01So every time there is a complaint, the complaint gets suppressed. Yes. Um and you know, so um in the consulting work that I started to do, I said I I really feel this needs to change, and we have to have a very, very healthy attitude to customers that are complaining. Customers who complain in the first place, you know, see them as being vested in you because if they don't care about you, you know, if they can go to the next, instead of seeing them as demanding, you know, how many times do we say, Oh, customers are demanding, customers getting more demanding, customers are getting more demanding. And I always stand up and I say, Well, I'm a customer, I don't feel I'm getting more demanding. I'm sorry. Yes, you know, I beg to defer. I think customers want to share with you feedback because they care, they care enough to share. See it as very see it as free research. You know, you guys pay us thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars to do research. Please want a system in your organization where you get some free research as well.
SPEAKER_00You know, do you know what I thought of you yesterday because I saw a statistic that said 56% of consumers rarely complain about a negative customer experience, they quietly switch to a competitor instead. And it made me think of you because I know you talk about you want people to care enough to complain. If they if they're not, they're just switching.
SPEAKER_01I feel that's such a powerful way of getting information that every organization needs about what the experience is on the ground that you can do better, right? But the way we have designed a lot of our performance metrics, they are designed to suppress what you consider bad feedback or whatever. And again, I find that to be so counterproductive, you know.
SPEAKER_00We see it in event debriefs because and and you do get some crazy feedback in. I mean, I remember running a conference years ago at a a Hyatt and it's a high-rise Hyatt hotel, and one of the complaints were they couldn't open their window to get fresh air. Now, look, I like fresh air in a hotel, but there's a reason some windows don't open. So, you know, there's some feedback that you can't do much with, but I do, you know, I've seen in my 30 years of working in events, people go, oh, that's such a ridiculous comment. And then they move on instead of actually saying, okay, what is this comment actually telling us? You know, not just the surface feedback, but what perhaps is deeper from this feedback. And we ran a festival, a French festival just the other weekend. We had 34,000 people come through this French festival and we had a team of volunteers. And at the start of the shift on the second day, because the volunteers are out and about, are telling me some of the you know random comments that were being made by people there, and some of them were quite random. And I said, Right, let's stop. Tell me them all, I'm writing them down. And you know, it could be as simple as there's not enough flags. Oh, okay, well, that's you know, let's have a look at that. You know, so whatever it was, I said, let's capture it now, because the feedback that they're being told as they're being walked as they're walking around is crucial. It's it might not come in the post-event surveys, but if you're getting that feedback on the ground, there's nuggets of gold in there.
SPEAKER_01But you see, that this the problem is how you design the system that elicits feedback and what you do with it, right? And how do you make getting feedback such an important part of your organization's mandate without making it threatening to people who are eliciting this feedback? So I'll give you an example. We had uh some issues with our home broadband system, and the issues that we were having was with the organization, the way they were setting up the broadband, what they were offering us, you know, the packages there. I can't remember what happened. But the the technician comes to set up, and you know, as you would expect, they had not sorted out the issues that we discussed, and he had a lot of problems. And the technician actually said to me, he said, Oh, by the way, at the end of this visit, and he was he was wonderful, he was very, he was great. He was trying to troubleshoot, you know, he was trying to be helpful. He and he said to me at the end of the visit, he said to me, he said, Oh, by the way, you will get from the company a message asking to rate my service, you know, and my I I just thought I wanted to let you know that my my bonus or whatever is dependent on on this, you know, and I'm really, really sorry that I wasn't able to help you. He was, you know, saying without coming right out, saying, please don't penalize me for what happened. And I thought to myself, and and you know, how many times do we see this? Because you know, you have the MPS system, right? You know, one to five or whatever, you know, rate the service you received. As if the last person to deliver the service is the only person that's responsible for the entire service chain, right? Which we know is absolutely incorrect because most of the time the process issues start far, far, far behind the last person that actually the person that you speak to or the person that delivers the service. So when I got the LPS, when I got the kind of the survey rate rate this one to five, I was thinking to myself, you know, so what do I do? I'm not gonna rate a five. You know, I so I think. Know what to do, and I ignored it. I didn't I didn't respond. And I was thinking that this is such a lost opportunity for you to understand that you have a process issue that customers are feeling, but because you penalize the person that delivers it now. I don't know, I don't know whether they do or they don't, but she definitely had that impression. Because that happens, you are not now getting feedback to actually help you solve that problem. Yeah. For further up the chain. Oh, god, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. But I yeah, I can think of a million times where I get that survey. How was our you know, how did we go? And it's like, well, the last person was good, but the 10 before them weren't.
SPEAKER_01Or how do you respond? Yeah, yeah. How do we respond? I I always wonder how do they read this kind of data, you know? Uh uh and why do they give their employees the impression that you know this has a huge impact on the other ones? You know, it's it's it's not healthy, it's just not healthy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's it's like I mean, I've been in Ubers where when I've hopped, and and you know, the Uber driver has not well, not that they really have to put any any too much effort in, they just need to drive well and get me to the location, but they've not tried to interact or anything. And then at the end, they've just said, can you give us five stars? It's like, well, maybe if you had you can't get five stars by just asking, you actually have to do the create the experience.
SPEAKER_01Well, so it's very similar. You see, that's so that's the mindset, and I think that's the mindset that we kind of need to address. It's very similar to the issue that I faced when I bought the coffee machine. The the the the belief is that, well, you know, you got the machine, so you know what are you complaining about, you know, so uh problem solved, you know. And I'm I'm like, no, not problem solved, you know. I I yes, you got me from point A to point B, or or yes, you solved my problem on the phone, but why does that warrant five stars when I felt that I was, you know, not handled well at all? You're making me feel bad. I felt like I was a pain, you know. So it feels like it feels like with a lot of the way the the the customer experience processes are designed, they they they cater to the I'm sorry to say this, but they they think we customers are like lowest common denominator. You know, the problem solved, why are you complaining? You know, nothing else should matter, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we um yeah, I had we had an outdoor setting delivered. So we ordered it earlier in the year over summer, and we live in a terrace house. You know, we have no front yard, now where this could be stored if it got delivered and we weren't home. Ordered it online through a for the listeners at home. I'm just my computer is uh needing to be plugged in. So I've just moved um location. This is the joy of oh, I'm just gonna pause for a moment. And so we had ordered this outdoor setting through, you know, a very reputable Australian retailer. And when it got ordered, you know, usually get something
Service Recovery That Builds Loyalty
SPEAKER_00to say it'll arrive between this and this date. We got nothing. We didn't get, so we didn't know when it was going to be delivered any times, whether we were going to be told it was on its way. So this is an outdoor setting that's seats six, so it's pretty big and it would need to be put together. So once we'd ordered it and I realized we weren't getting any updates, I emailed the retailer and they just said, Oh, you need to contact the delivery people. And so I could get the number and I could track it, but I still couldn't see when it was coming. And anyway, thankfully my partner was home when it arrived because it was so enormous, these you know, boxes of furniture, that I don't know what would have, I mean, they would have put it on our front doorstep and it would have been stolen, probably. So that was our first issue. Then the second issue was when it was opened, it it was damaged. The wood had split. And so we were so angry at the whole process that we'd been through. I said, Oh, I'm gonna complain. Anyway, so we took photos of it and sent it, emailed the retailer. The per they got back straight away, and I, you know, listed our grievances, got back straight away and they said, Do you have photos? I said, Yep, I sent the photos through. And they said, We're so sorry you've had this experience. Um, we can do two, one of two things. We can either replace the setting entirely, but we won't get another delivery for two weeks, so there'll be a delay, or I can give you a partial refund. And I said, Okay, I'll go with a partial refund. Yeah. I think the money was in my account within two days. And it was a person I was dealing with, you know, it wasn't a bot. And I would order through them simply because of the way they corrected the situation. You know, they were apologetic, even though it wasn't their fault. So it just made such a difference. But then it took me to another instance I had where we had ordered a couch and I was in the store finalizing some of the details. And while I was in there, there was a woman complaining because her couch had been delivered, it hadn't fit through the door, and then it had become this ongoing saga. And watching how the store treated her was eye-opening. It was absolutely appalling. A, that they were treating her like that, but they thought it was okay to treat her like that in front of other customers. And at one point they started to complain to me about her. And I said, please don't talk to me about another customer. And then I, as I was getting to the register to sort of finalise our purchase, she said to me, Don't order from here, they're terrible. And they ushered her, tried to usher her out of the store. I mean, it was like I was trying to silence her. And I said, I said to them, don't usher her out. You know, she's allowed to talk to me. And I said to her, you just want to sit on your couch, don't you? And she said, I do. And I thought that's all they needed to say to her at this point in the grievance. Whoever's fault it was, whether she said that her door would fit the couch, whether, you know, their measurements were wrong, didn't matter who was in the wrong. She just wanted someone to acknowledge that she didn't have a couch to sit on. And I thought that could have been so easy for them to do in that moment.
SPEAKER_01You know, I I I mean, this this you hear this all the time, right? And you know, I I feel that the one of the things that I really, really, and I do, you know, uh a fair amount of uh facilitation work. And when I do a facilitation work, I hear the organization's side of that story as well, right? So I'm not gonna suggest that customers are saints. We are not, you know, we get emotional, sometimes we get unfair, whatever, and we also should treat, you know, we we need to play our part as well, hundred percent. Absolutely with that. But I think what I try to move the conversation to in all this facilitation is uh, you know, at the end of the day, customer experience is a very, very simple concept about problem solving. You know, if we can change the label of customer experience, and if everybody, if I had to put the entire organization, because service customer experience means different things to different people, right? Yes, but if I had to put the entire organization, put them all in a straight line and say, let's all be on the same page, the one term I would use is problem solving. We are all problem solvers. Problems are going to happen. You are going to have, you know, we're not perfect, we're gonna have issues, and customers are not perfect, you know. Sometimes they they they can they don't understand, they can be mean, they can be rude, whatever. But the best way to win a customer over is if they feel that you are trying to solve their problem, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so I think it's your mistake. How can I help you? Okay, we have a problem. Now let's try and work towards solving that problem, you know.
SPEAKER_00Do you know there's one that stands out in my mind? I was the problem customer because I muddled up an accommodation booking and thought I was I had a I had a Thursday night booked, decided I'd stay the Wednesday night, Wednesday morning, booked the Wednesday night, got to the hotel. Turns out I'd booked the Thursday night twice. So completely my fault. And the person on reception, oh yeah, reception was so lovely, and he's like, Don't worry about it. And I was in a complete state. I can't believe I've done this. This is embarrassing, you know. I'm more organized than this. This is terrible. Oh my gosh. And he said, It's fine, these things happen. And he was so calm. And he not only was able to work the system, move one of the bookings to the Wednesday night, he managed to, you know, he could link the booking so I could stay in the same room. And I think he could see I was in such a state. He said, I've been able to get you an early check-in, and he actually upgraded me. And he was amazing. And I can remember his name, and I'll never forget how wonderful this young chap was in the whole response to an issue that I had created as the customer. And I was telling um someone who I know who's a director at this particular hotel, this property, and she said, We teach, you know, as part of our training, we talk that every customer has a story behind them and compassion before process. And it was just this like, oh, I could see that play out in how he helped me. And it wasn't that it was a five-star hotel, it was that they had, you know, their staff cared. And they're, you know, I've had amazing service at small star hotels, and I've had terrible service at five-star hotels. It's not about the star, it but they had, I guess, empowered their staff, but also taught them the why, you know, why customers can be a certain way.
SPEAKER_01Um absolutely. And it's not about you know, the defensive, oh, you made the mistake, I made the mistake. It's forget it. Okay, mistakes happen, let's now solve the problem. You know, too, too often we get fixated on whose fault it was, you know, why did the mistake happen, as opposed to it's fine, now let's solve the problem. Exactly. Yes. And and I think even the I think even the worst customers, even the worst customers, the meanest customers, the most angry customers, if they get a sense that you are trying to help them solve the problem, I actually think it's not difficult to move customers into a different frame of mind.
SPEAKER_00Exactly.
SPEAKER_01Instead of kind of entrenching them in. Yes, you know, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Actually, I w witnessed that in a Telstra shop earlier in the year when I was getting a new phone, and I was there were some people next door to me getting a new phone, and you know, they they were pretty, I won't say troublesome clients, but they they weren't the easiest customers for the the staff member to work with. And they and and I think for anyone, technology heightens our stress. None of us find swapping phones over relaxing. Um, but they were really, you know, these two particularly the the husband was really sort of going at the Telstra person. And so the team leader came out, and you know, this could have gone two one of two ways, like it could have really escalated, and and there was an aggression in the way the customer was talking to the um Telstra person. And so you could have either had the team leader come out and escal, you know, heightened it even more by being really sort of compatible, but he actually came out and he said, We're trying to just work with us, we're trying to solve, just work with us on this. And he was so calm in the way he said it. And it wasn't against the customer, it was just kind of let's work together, we're trying, you're trying. And it de-escalated straight away the aggression in this customer because, as you say, he could just see that you were trying they were trying. And I was talking with um Ryan Smith, who'll be the next episode to launch for this series. So, Ryan is a consultant around travel and tourism, but particularly accessibility. And you know, one thing he said is you're not always gonna get it right, but if they can see you're trying, that's key. Absolutely, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01I I really believe that. I believe that customers, you know, but we're all humans. We just we just want to we just want to feel that you care for us, you know, that that you val not even care for us. I think that's probably the wrong, that you value us, you know, and you know, when we are made to feel like I, you know, it's just self-help, do everything yourself, and when there's a problem, well, you know, so go sort it out, or it's your fault, or whatever. I don't know. We we start to then wonder, like, you know, okay, you know, are you taking advantage of my, you know, where's the value? I do not are you taking advantage, but do you value me? And more and more I think that that becomes the basis of trust. You know, there was there's actually been a lot of very, very interesting research done around this area, around the area of trust. There's a there's a model, and it's called ability, it's called ABI, sorry, ability, benevolence, and integrity. And benevolence is the most important part of the trust process. And what does benevolence mean? Benevolence means you demonstrate that you care about the my outcome as your customer. You know, that's really important. And then when you look at all the research that's done around service recovery, it says exactly the same thing that the most important things that customers are looking out for, besides fairness, besides whatever, but the model on service recovery
Ending Strong And Unreasonable Hospitality
SPEAKER_01is it's very sensory. For the customer, it is it's all about it's all about what I see, what I hear, what I feel. You know, those things take on extraordinary importance for the customer.
SPEAKER_00Yes, I filmed a video about this recently, about the difference between a check-in and a checkout process that I had at a hotel. So, and and it was the checkout was at 4:45 a.m. So it was the night team. Not saying that the night team are not as good as the day team, but I think they're trained differently. And so when I checked in, it was welcome, you know, thanks for your loyalty, because I was a member of this particular hotel chain. Thank you for your loyalty, and you know, where have you come from today? And you know, did all the right stuff and it was all great. And and this is a hotel where you can either do self-check-in and self-check out or go to the desk. And I always like to go to the desk. And then when I checked out at 4:45 a.m., the person barely looked up from the desk, certainly didn't make eye contact, certainly didn't say, Hope you had a great stay. He just said, Yeah, just put your key there. That was it. And it was so the contrast could not have been more between the two experiences. And it felt like, okay, you've stayed, get on, get out, you know, work for them, what you and you're done. And it was just it was jolting, actually, how bad that process was. But it just highlighted that you know, that trust can break, you know, it's fragile, and it doesn't take much to break that trust with the customer.
SPEAKER_01Because the research tells us that ending strong uh is a very, very important predictor of the next experience, right? So, you know, if if you end on a high, you're gonna want to come back to that same hotel again. Yes. I mean, you know, when we look at customer journey mapping, we kind of understand that there are certain points that have a huge impact on the customer. You know, our brain is like our brain is like a movie theater, and it and it just takes a few photographs and then we remember like highlights, right? And I was thinking to myself, how much is it gonna cost a hotel? I mean, when you come in, they have the welcome drink and and the whatever, the hot the hot towel. And then you think, okay, I've had a long journey, they recognize it, but how much does it cost a hotel when you leave to actually just say you're going on a long journey? You know, here's a here's a bottle of water, here's a drink. Yes, you know, here's a hot towel before you, you know. And I and I just I just don't understand. No, don't understand why hotels don't think it's worth it.
SPEAKER_00No, no, it's so true. There's an anecdote in the book 11 Unreasonable Hospitality, which Will Jadara has written about 11 Madison Avenue. So the restaurant that they got to number one in the world and how they did it by changing the hospitality. And he talks about it shouldn't just be reasonable hospitality, it should be unreasonable hospitality. And so, yeah, and and obviously this is a Michelin star restaurant. So, you know, I'm not saying everyone does this, but he took he tells about at the end of the meal, they used to give it a, I think it was a canalet, which is a French crack. And he said, in reality, people have sat through a degustation meal or, you know, three-course, four-course meal. They don't feel like a cake when they get home. So he said, what they realized were people were probably putting them on the kitchen bench, getting up the next morning. They're not going to feel like a cake in the morning, and then it's going to be dry by then. And so they flipped it. And what they started to do was give out jars of granola when people left. So that when they got home and they got up the next morning, they could continue the 11 Madison Avenue experience by having this little pot of granola. And he said, that's the photo that appeared on every Instagram carousel was that pot of granola. And I was I always think about that story, but the other one is it's it's not always hospitality. And I think of professional services. And I remember years ago, I was part of a tender process when I was on a board, and I remember our CEO rang to tell the companies that didn't win the tender process that they were unsuccessful. And one of them said, You've made the biggest mistake of your life, and really went to town. And she rang me in quite a panic and I said, A, we're not going to take their comments on board. They're just disgruntled, they didn't get it. And I said, But what a bad way to react. Wouldn't you say, Oh, look, we're disappointed we don't get to work with you. But if anything changes, come to us. Because at fetching events, if we don't get a contract or we don't win a tender, we always say, you know, we're obviously we're disappointed, but we're glad that you had a great group to choose from because it is great that you know the industry's so strong that there's lots of competitors. And we always say, if anything changes or your requirements change, or the scale changes, please don't hesitate to contact us. And what's happened? That's people have come back to us and said, you know what, the first person's fallen through. You know how you kindly offered we could come back. Are you still offering that? And we said, of course. And one of those clients we're working in our third year with now.
SPEAKER_01That's incredible. That's incredible. That's I mean, you just still not burn those bridges, right? It's just strange.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's so it never ceases to amaze me how people don't understand that that is still they might not be your customer, but that's still part of the experience because they could be your future customer.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I guess because customer experience at the heart of it is a pretty emotional journey. And I guess, you know, sometimes some people emotions get the better of them, and we don't, you know, it it we don't understand. We we we are not, you know, how how many people actually get customer experience training about the psychology of the entire process as opposed to the process part? You know, the psychology part is I think the it's the why behind it, which I think matters so much more than the actual process. The process can change when you have the psychology, right? I think you you you know you win, you you the you may not follow the process, but you know, if you have the psychology, right? Then I I I think that's wonderful, but I don't know. I don't know. I it's that's amazing. That's an incredible story.
SPEAKER_00I started my career in events in um media operations of of international events, so in the media center and the media room, and and this is sort of 30 years ago, so pre-24-hour news cycles, you know, there were very hard deadlines to for journals to file their pieces for their newspaper editors. And so, you know, there's a certain intensity in a media room to get their stories filed, and so the media would act in a certain way. And what we would always do when we had an event is talk to our volunteers or our staff around why journalists might behave the way they are. No, I mean, we don't excuse bad behaviour, but it was, you know, setting, giving context and I guess telling that story of the media behind
Emotional Journey Mapping And Final Takeaways
SPEAKER_00the sort of coming up to the help desk going, I need this now, you know, this is dropped, the Wi-Fi's dropped out or this, and just actually enabling our staff to understand where the media are coming from. Yeah, because then we could deliver more compassionate customer experience if we understood them.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. I don't think we do enough of that. I don't think enough people, we get too focused on the process and the process steps, and we don't so you know, even when we do customer journey mapping, for me, the most important part of customer journey mapping is actually mapping the emotional journey of the customer, you know, and understanding the emotion behind behind that part of the journey because that is what stays with the customer. It what they remember is the emotion they felt, you know, when they remember. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00My cousin recently had an awful experience at a an airport hotel and arriving late at night, that arranged a cot for one of the children. All this stuff that that arranged, none of it, not only did it not come through, but the response of the hotel was appalling. And you would think as an airport hotel, you would know that your customers have probably flown, and and if they're checking in at late at night, they've been on a long flight. So you would do a little bit of work to understand their emotions and their psyche, which might help you deliver better customer experience. Interestingly, she's complained and they've not even replied. So, I mean, there's some, it's not a hotel I would it's I said to her, why didn't you tell me I could have told you the best airport hotel to stay at? But it's just it highlights their complete un lack of understanding around the role their hotel plays as either the start of a journey where people might be excited but nervous, or the end of a journey where people are exhausted.
SPEAKER_01Because we have all been trained to just look at functional needs, right? Yeah. You just look at, you know, if if if it's an Uber, it's to get you from point A to point B, you know. Uh we don't understand that our customers have uh other needs as well, you know, that that and and granted, you know, those needs may not necessarily, you may not see the the need for those needs all the time. But I I that that's why, you know, even at that at that keynote that I did for PCMA, for me it was there are just certain points, you know, 90% of the time, just technology functional is gonna be fine, but you need to understand and you need to prepare for the points where there's gonna be some friction, where there are problems, where there are issues, and those points are also your biggest opportunities because if you get that correct, then you'll have a customer's life, yeah. You know, so yeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, a big thank you. It's been so lovely to chat today, and it was, as I said, so lovely to meet in Singapore in April. And I hope people enjoy this episode. And if they want to find out more, Nita, about conscious service, find you on LinkedIn.
SPEAKER_01Yes, under my name Nita Lachmandas, and I would love, I would love to take this conversation further and how we can advocate, you know, for everybody becoming problem solvers. Because honestly, I think that that will be if if we saw ourselves as problem solvers, I think that would be wonderful. I think the experience would be just wonderful for people. I love that.
SPEAKER_00Well, a big thank you again for joining me. Thank you. It
Where To Find Nita And Goodbye
SPEAKER_00was lovely to see you.