Establishing a customer-centric culture

At MaritzCX’s CXForum in October we spoke to Anders Normann Director of Customer Experience (CX) at DSV about his journey on driving change and a new focus within the 40 year old global transport and logistics provider.

Can you tell us about your CX strategy at DSV?

“First and foremost, our CX strategy is about bringing facts to the table in our internal decisions. So to gain insights from customers and then have a fact based discussion on what we need to focus on in our global projects at country level and also on the frontlines with customers. That is how we want to establish a customer centric organisation.”

Do you agree with the stat in the last session claiming the logistics industry doesn’t have great customer experience? With that in mind what has been the biggest challenge for you at DSV to date to when it comes to providing a great service/customer experience?

“Well I absolutely agree with the stats. It is of course quite disappointing to see our industry ranked as the lowest industry.

“What is impacting the logistics industry today is that we are very old fashioned in our thinking. It’s about moving stuff from A to B, it’s very operationally focused and to a lesser extent about the customers. This means that when you work in a logistics company that’s the culture you can expect, and in some areas it is quite product oriented.

“So what we did in DSV was to establish a customer success programme where we collect feedback from the customers and feed it back to the organisation. This enables a better understanding of what our customers are saying and what they suggest for improvement. This drives a different focus in the organisation, but it is a challenge for people who are operationally focused to suddenly cater for the customers.

“But as I will show in my presentation later, after four years we are now beginning to prioritise those global efforts that will drive a bigger change. But it is a cultural journey. So all this ‘getting ROI from CX’, to me is a journey. I would also advise other organisations to carefully consider the ROI discussion in the early days because yes, you collect feedback from the customers and then what? - You then have insights and new information. Now it becomes a leadership decision to act on it and have the guts to make new decisions from a toolbox that you’re not used to. You’re up against many years of legacy basically.

“It’s difficult. It requires patience, you have to be very persistent.  I sometimes get asked the question: ‘When will this CX project stop?’ It’s is not a project, it’s a new way of working.”

As you touched on there a big industry change is the measurement of the voice of the customer. How do you ensure the data and insights gathered will lead to actionable business results

“In our CX programme we invite customers to give us feedback, just by random sampling two times a year using a very short survey

 “We get a bit of quantitative feedback and then quite a bit of open text feedback, which we categorise, put sentiment on and finally deliver insights – is there an intent to promote, is there an intent to leave? When you have this scale suddenly your insights become much more digestible. You can communicate it to other stakeholders and make recommendations on the insights.  So for instance we could say to our German organisation that they may need to look at customer service levels in a particular geographical area and hence advise them where to start.  

 “We run the same methodology at a global level, basically prioritising information and bringing it to the attention of global leaders. As we speak we are now getting the first initiative that came from customer insight.

So in essence: It takes time. It’s been a journey for us in DSV and am sure that is the case in most corporations. But actually it’s not about what we in the central CX team believe is the right thing to do. It is what the company believes-, accepts- and decides to prioritise as the right thing to do.

What’s the best customer experience you’ve ever received as a customer?

“The best customer experience I have ever received was when I had a delayed flight with British Airways. It was a case of being told ‘Please enjoy a free meal, don’t worry about your next flight, we will pick you up at the restaurant when the flight is ready for boarding.

“Amazing. I got delayed and I received an exceptional service recovery experience. I was left thinking this is really good despite being delayed.”

What’s been the biggest learning in your career to date?

“It’s all about behaviour, It’s doesn’t start with the NPS, nor the finances, It’s about people. It’s people who are delivering a better service to our customers. If you expect a better result for tomorrow, then today you need to get people to act differently. That will reflect in your NPS and in your financial results.”

Take a look MaritzCX's recent report with CX Network: The global state of customer experience 2018