Ubong Nkanta: Is Your CX Strategy Mature Enough? | #87
do you have any like funny stories about a really awful customer experience that you had so there's this Airline right hey everyone welcome back to the CX Insider podcast with me your host Marcell today we gain Insight on the importance of truly understanding your customers can we unpack the idea of CX maturity finding out what maturity can mean for customer experience professionals today especially in banking now we're joined by the head of customer experience governance for one of Africa's leading Banks ubong kanta whose views are his own and not affiliated with the bank itself but if you'd like to learn more about ubong you can connect with him on LinkedIn now enjoy the episode and if you do why not subscribe to our YouTube channel for CX Insider's best content or share the episode and leave a comment down below by the way this podcast is brought to you by ACF technology now let's jump in we usually kick off with an introduction of our guests so would you like to tell us a bit about yourself what you do and who you are alright thank you myself thanks Alex for having me what a great privilege for being hosted by you all right first and foremost um it's a great privilege to be on the sets Ubong Nkanta is my name and currently I am oversee customer experience governance in one of the top four banks in Nigeria here Nigeria is um one of the largest economy in Africa today right in that position I'm responsible for setting the customer experience strategy managing the customer Insight program for the organization and I'm also responsible for service Recovery Service level management and also I oversee the customer experience functions across the other subsidiaries which comes across other African countries wow yes you have a lot of responsibility then thank you and uh there's obviously quite a tumultuous time going on in Nigeria with a lot of different uh issues like the new introduction of the banknotes with the new currency post covid and also the government trying to move to cashless what kind of problems does this create in the landscape of banking in Nigeria you know we all know the impact of kovid on the economy globally yeah right for in Nigeria one of the some of the things that impacted the Nigerian economy was reduction in lending and we also saw an increase in adoption of digital by customers and we also see an emerging of new players right in the banking space then so those are the things that came with post covet because of that the regulatory body also had to stiffen the regulations around the policies around to ensure that they stabilized all right that sector now in terms of the country today as you are aware the um the CBN being the um the regulatory body financially for the country all right but based on their empowerment they are actually the currency managers so the marriage they manage the currency for the country yeah they decided to to redesign the Nigerian currency so some of the currencies like the notes like a thousand error notes and the five so we have the 100 naira notes 200 naira notes 500 and 1000 so they decided to redesign it why were they trying to do that number one to check counterfeiting right okay then number two to reduce the expenditure on them cash management all right moving cash and all that it has actually been a heavily cash economy right transactions are done with cash mostly so they're also trying to move to the cashless economy but this came with its own challenges the intent is very positive however the impact of it the process of it has actually brought pains right to our customers and now this brings to the fact of say how do we do things like this to ensure that the experience right by their customers is optimal is excellent at all times so those are the things that we are facing currently recently could you maybe share some insight into what similarities or differences you perceive between customer behavior in those uh two different markets well you know every um I would say location they have their own nuances they have their own preferences and they have what drives their day-to-day transactions all right over here in the UK the mode of transaction is not as cash based compared to Nigeria today even though we are getting over there as well and then also there is the level of organization all right and also this infrastructure but in Nigeria today we are progressing we are getting there especially with the Advent of this um the the narrow redesign there's been an increase in transaction velocity that means the banks are being forced to either step up their game in the infrastructure right and also we've seen new entrants right the fintechs and the new banks are coming on board you know which are things that are already been happening over here but I think customer expectations are Universal banking they want to be able to get their banking transactions done on time all right and seamlessly so I think that is basic but however you could have the changes because of the economies there are different economies the level of growth might be different determine organizations in those economies should be able to domesticate their customer experience to meet the needs of their customers you meet them where they are years ago when I was developing the compliance management process I actually learned from one of the big Banks here in the UK right I understood their process and I was able to adapt it domesticated that meets the needs of the Nigerian I mean banking space right then adopt same customers behaviors are actually impacted based on the environments right what's going on what is happening around the economy and and a lot of other things has there been any like specific pain points with these changes absolutely there is no change that doesn't come with them with some level of pain you know pains along the line but it's gonna be in the long run it's going to be for the growth for the benefits of the citizens now so one of the key things today will be limited amount of cash right they would because it has been a cash-based economy mostly we have people especially those in the rural areas right they were basically carrying out a transaction based on cash but now Financial inclusion those people that there's a there's a bit of penetration of the digitals in those areas which is going to be much easier right to transact let's say you think in the long run it will be beneficial absolutely absolutely absolutely on the note of stuff being beneficial have you heard about ACF Technologies a global leader in customer experience Solutions provides tailored software that can exceed the expectations of any business from appointment booking to queue management and event scheduling ACF creates the tools you need to set your customer experience to the next level want to find out more check the link in the description or head over to ACF technologies.com obviously with with having this wide variety of problems especially in a market that is so large with so many different types of customers everyone is different and they all have their own types of different problems especially in that kind of environment what do you think is the main benefit or value that can be found in truly understanding your customers on a deeper level basically what is customer understanding it's actually the intentional approach of organizations to understand the preferences the behaviors the needs and the expectations of their customers and this can be done by you leveraging on data leveraging on their activities now in Nigeria today what are the benefits of any organization investing in customer understanding one improve customer experience when you know me and you know what I need and you know how I want it when I need it you will serve me right and by saving me right I am satisfied customer experience has to do with emotional connection or right of customers based on the interactions with the services and products offered by organizations if you know me very well and you offered my the things I need and how I wanted and where I needed you will actually I'll be connected to you yeah all right emotionally and I'll be Satisfied then the next one is competitive Advantage if you know me right you will make sure that consistently you are rendering services that meets my needs and that will give you an age over your competition right and also I it's also about increasing the customer lifetime value if you know what I need if you understand what my expectations are this likely that I'm going to buy more from you you know get get to know more about your services and that's opportunity for you to upsell and to cross sell and then another thing is innovation when you know your customers you have the opportunity of constantly ideating innovating right to make sure that you meet their needs and these positions any company only organizations that innovate to write above others now finally but not the list is cost saving when you are able to know your customers you're able to know okay what are the ways in in your in Your Service delivery right even reduction of course in that and also operational efficiency this enables you to cut your cost in the long run it boosts your revenue and also boosts your growth because you know the customers right when customers are satisfied right they are going to keep on being loyal customers they're going to buy more from you and I like saying that customer retention is a new acquisition if you return the customer all right you're going to get much more from me that means an increase in my lifetime value and of course you know there's that old saying that um it costs what like seven six times more to acquire a new customer than retain a new one and that sorry retain an old one and that's absolutely resonates here as well yeah sure do you think that Banks especially don't spend enough time or resources trying to truly understand their customers do you think customer understanding is something that should be looked at more yes absolutely in as much as where you are making your money from where you're generating your income and revenue Right comes from the customers you need to know them so take for instance now in other sectors like the Netflix like telcos they spend time to understand the needs of their customers and they are constantly offering bringing new offerings and services to match the needs of their customers so likewise Banks the same way now the banking customers don't expect you to treat them because only banking they want they're actually measuring you based on the experiences in other sectors right you're not competing against Banks anymore you're competing against other organizations in other sectors that are also offering Services now you're competing against the hotels you're coming against the travel agencies the um the Airlines and all that so that's the I that's the approach that Banks should also look at today knowing fully well that you're dealing with customers with diverse expectations I'm measuring you the impact you had on them not only on your own Services better than all run a total service that they may have I mean an online experience to round up hubong has unpacked the contrast between the world of CX and the banking of Nigeria and the UK whilst exploring the need for better practices in understanding the consumers in those environments but how can organizations achieve this sense of understanding more effectively are there any specific methods which Reign Superior over others [Music] today we sell we are in the experience economy right and that means you need to understand everybody is whatever they're doing is how they feel right the connectedness they've had with you and with your services so number one I think organizations should actually invest more in advanced analytics why am I saying that predictive analysis is very important making use of AI machine learning to know your customers to know their preferences so for instance in one of the organizations so today we are able to predict the likelihood of this customer's Journey likely this customer buying this so the things that is being used by other sectors also is the voice of the customer programs surveys but the thing is that it shouldn't be the conventional out women approach of getting of surveying customers and just saying okay how satisfied were you it's being able to leverage on the feedback that they're giving so the so today you ask customers some basic metrics or how satisfied satisfaction ratings NPS customer effort score also you ask them for verbatim comments inside the insight you're looking for lies you know about them coming that's what they're really telling you the experience and you should be able to mine the data in that verbatim comment not only that are you mining the data but you should be able to close the loop so are you for instance now a customer would have scored you let's say six right in your net promoter score that six means that that customer is a detractor right it's not enough for you to just go and work on it it's for you to get back to the customer identify what was the problem because therein lies we could gain more insights on why the customer rated you that way and with that you're unable you're able to identify with the problems are and get it done now inverse of the customer program it's not enough to just carry out a vanilla survey right you need to carry a service I mean across the customer Journeys right from onboarding to support to every aspect of the customer Journey you should be able to check and to read and to find out what it is you'll be surprised that just at the onboarding you're going to lose a customer the customer might have dropped off in trying to onboard into a new channel into a new product but if you actually find out what was the satisfaction or what was the customer experience there at that particular Journey point you will know what exactly what needs to be be fixed and then the stakeholders that are responsible for that particular Journey Point can bring them in that's why stakeholder management is very important and so okay guys this is where we're having a problem here we are unable to this customer unable to get on board on our services because of one two three thing and you're responsible for it what are you going to do about it so it's it's good that organizations actually pay attention not just as an activity but as a strategic role all right function for them then second and thirdly is social listening we are all on social media today but we need to listen intentionally so it's not enough for you to say I have I have my I have a Facebook account an Instagram account or a Twitter account is what are you doing with it the data are you listening to your customers conversations all right what are their preferences what are they saying you know you're able to mind you write what they're saying that you could see their their sentiments whether positive negative or neutral and then you can deep dive on it now some organizations today have so listen across different channels so they're listening on what customers are saying about for instance in the banking sector their mobile I mean their mobile apps right their your branch Services they're also listening across maybe their online banking their loans products that enables you to know exactly what you should do so by listening into their conversations they could be having questions with their friends but in as much as they tag you you should listen you should get to find out what's going on also is customer Journey mapping they need to pay attention to because by that you really understand and know exactly where the problem lies what you need to change you know organization also needs to be able to know that while we're talking about agile environment agile and Enterprises same thing with customer experience same thing within big Banks they need to get on the agile I mean process to be able to iterate as things are changing so you could at this journey you may need to change something change it immediately right see the way how you're going to improve because that customer is looking forward to getting what he or she's looking for in another bank Alex you've been quite quiet there I don't know if you had any follow-up questions like there is no there's no in banking there's different other industries that when customer will start banking with One bank they stay with them for life do you think that is changing over the years yes it is so the question should ask yourself right now is how many accounts do you have I'm very rare before you see anyone have only one account yeah I mean I do that's probably because I'm young I haven't really got into that state okay let's see what happens in the next one or two years you know and so Banks should be a One-Stop shop for customers that should be the purpose and the aim of banks today we're also offering other businesses like pensions insurance right so that I can start my banking transaction with you I need to pay my insurance there's a sister company there that I can do all those interactions with but if you stop transacting for two three weeks there's something wrong that means you're doing it elsewhere so inactivity is not long it's not for those people because they are using data and they're intentional about their customers they want to know what's going on that comes to that customer understanding that we're talking about earlier on muscle and so that means you use data right to to measure your customer Health this person should be carrying out transactions at least once in a week or once in two weeks but in three weeks nothing is happening do you know about it so you need to leverage on your data analytics to be able to see okay what is the activity level of my customers especially your your customers that are giving you higher lifetime value before taking this conversation to the next stage and discussing the elusive idea of CX maturity we must first understand what drives CX competence because to be mature you have to be competent first now let's hear how ubong approaches the five core CX competencies which you can also find as a link in the description below Bruce demken is he's actually an expert a subject matter expert so I respect him a lot so I want to look at it from his own perspective one is purposeful leadership right that means the leadership must operate with a clear and consistent value all right and he also defines it in like the five piece of leadership in leading in customers you have to be passionate you have to be persistent right there has to be that level of that I am invested in it personally invested in this thing you know as a leader right you have to be persistent you're consider saying the same thing at every point in time also you have to be propelling leadership has to be propelling to make sure others are interested in what you're doing there is a buy-in from your staff and from your customers and also purposeful and then positive that's number one purposeful leadership that's one of the competencies then number two is compelling brand values what does your brand say what are you doing to deliver on your brand promises to your customers what are your promises to your customers you know that's why it's advised that every organization should have their customer apart from your vision and your mission statements you should also be able to have what is your customer experience Vision what are your brand values what are your service promises now so This Promise is you have to be able to make sure that you make the promises right and it's very clear let the customers know this is what you're going to offer right this is how you're going to offer it and then you have to ensure that those promises are embraced by your staff they have to embrace that promise so they have to own that promise it's not enough for management token for you to I mean write out and put out your your mission statement values and core values and all that someone has to take it and go to market with it right and then you have to be intentional about keeping those promises now number three we have Employee Engagement you cannot serve today's customers without I mean your employees being engaged rightly engaged so that means that they have to align with the goals of the organization they have to they are the ones that are going to manifest what you have promised to do that the ones to actually execute it for you so that means you need to ensure that they are well informed right they are well inspired by what you said you're going to do now it's going to be also are they properly instructed are they properly educated right are they are they well informed to know exactly what to do and how to serve their customers I'm then incentivization are they being incentivized are they being rewarded don't just make decisions right from management you need to involve the staff because they have they are the ones carrying out the day-to-day interactions with your customers now the last but not the least customer connectedness you need to connect with your customers and how are you doing this you need to infuse your customer insights all right across the organization everyone in the organization every Department you have to infuse your customers information your customer data your findings the insights you're getting across the organization continuously listening and acting on your customer feedback it also involves focusing on your customer Journey they have to be clear they have to be distinct they have to be seamless everybody knows what is going to happen everybody have their role and their and their responsibilities now that's just the um the principles as defined by Bruce temkin but also you could see other people talked about things like customer understanding or Riders are also competencies for CX management design thinking and I've talked about Employee Engagement all right and also Innovation you have to be you have to be intentional about Innovation from the data you're getting from your custom instruction you need to constantly innovate and also governance and stock and culture you have to have a properly Divine governance all right structure it has to be able to your culture how are we doing things here what are we known for you could see some big Brands today they are known for certain things right that that means they have been consistent they have been intentional about maintaining those things those are things that actually sets you apart as a leader in customer experience so what actually is CX maturity what do we mean by that can it really be defined and categorized as a ladder companies can climb how can you tell which stage of maturity your customer experience is at does it all even matter or should we just be striving to deliver some form of glorified customer service it's likewise in life you know we were talking about earlier on about when you were boy you were you know you become a man and all the students laughs so likewise in CX we have those levels of maturity all right those are intentional steps and levels that organizations are in their journey to serve their customers basically you would see that about five levels but in recently there's one that has been added so before now there was one that was not that was called ignore that means they were not interested that's the recently added one so the enormous that they are not interested in it all right you know they are not they don't have focus on CX as a matter of fact you know they're not even though they said they are customers hear them say I am a customer central organization but right they are not focused on it now you could also have the explore stage right that means they recognize that customer experience is important maybe to just take a look at it they're just exploring the benefits all right the principles of customer experience then you also have the mobilize mobilize means that you've set up a team a manager someone to be responsible for your customer experience strategy and that also enables you to um develop the customer experience roadmap your strategies and how you want to do fifth now is a line aligning means that to write that the metrics have been integrated into your operations and customer experience metrics is actually part of their Performance Management it's not only the business metrics alone so you could see departments being appraised staff being appraised on their customer satisfaction levels and they likely good for customers to recommend so but when you infuse that right into your Performance Management everybody knows that whatever I'm doing even if I'm in admin is going to affect the customer it's going to affect our bottom line and it's going to affect the bonus I'm going to get at the end of the day and the last but not the list is um embedded embedded means that you're no longer looking at oh this department is involved with customer experience everybody is responsible for customer experience I guess that's the dream yeah absolutely absolutely and now it's good to know that today only about only four percent of organizations are in the um fifth and sixth level or whatever what you would normally say the fourth and the fifth level then you will have about 42 percent in the um second and third level so that means there's a lot of water needs to be done there are a lot of challenges there but it has to be an intentional approach and just so what you don't measure you don't improve so you need to measure to know where you are and they and these principles have outlined what you need to do there's a roadmap you have to assess yourself right you have to gain Clarity and there's a systematic approach for you to move that it's just about you being intentional of getting to know your customers serving them right and also positioning yourself to be a market leader what do you think the risks are of neglecting CX maturity within your let's say strategy I would say it's it's just with you number one is decrease customer satisfaction if customers if you're not doing if you're not if you don't know what you're doing and you're not intentional about growing also you're going to talk about your decrease in employee engagement right you're going to have also I mean limited customer insights because you're not intentional about it there's a level that you should be gaming I mean mining information and data from your customer activity that's also a level of bonus a level of it that's a certain level of that you are attending your MCX maturity process that you should be doing that if you're not doing that you're not getting those data how would you um innovate how would you be able to serve your customers if you're not doing some certain things and also you're going to have decreased revenue and profit if you have a decrease I mean in your customer satisfaction and then your customer base is dropping that is going to affect how much money you're going to make right and also your cost is going to go high so the risk is actually outweighs the benefits and do you think the current banking environment has CX maturity as a large enough priority yeah I would say in recent years the Nigerian banks have actually um recognized the importance of customer experience if you look around all the banks they have have customer experience departments some have added into divisions now some are even like a directorate and then focusing on customer experience they are doing this because they want to maintain and return the market share they tell challenge is doing it right despite the progress made by these Banks today all right they sell ample opportunity for improvement I think it's also for the banks today to make sure that the intention about improving their digital capabilities everything has gone digital they have to make sure that they they look at their infrastructure their platforms and the ecosystem has changed so you need to be able to make the appropriate investment in making sure that you are able to serve your customers the same way other sectors are doing the same thing the expressions are changing every day what I needed yesterday might be different and how I want it might be different today before now you could if you buy something you're going to wait for some days before it arrives you could order for something today and it gets delivered within 24 hours so customers want the same thing in the banking space how do they want to be served people don't want to walk into the banking or to do some certain transactions have you optimized those things have you digitalized those services do you even know why you should visualize them right what are you focusing on the space is evolving as a matter of fact it's just that they have to be committed right we need to stop paying lip services to customer experience instead of making it to be a glorified customer service it should actually be intentional there are certain things you need to do we talk about the maturity so the things you need to do at each level where you are today first thing is you know where you are and then what are the gaps that you need to um I mean address because that differentiates you from your competitors and that's what makes you to be a leader in the market and then makes you to get more customers more customers means more money and like you said obviously with Neo Banks and these digital Banks coming along as well it's this new breed of competition that you have to adapt to as well so it all forces you to keep up and that kind of absolutely and those new guys are very Nimble they're very agile now it's difficult it's a challenge for not difficult it's a challenge for these bigger ones because they have they have to go through different processes every this one has to check this check this check that I guess these new banks have also been built stripped of the silos yeah sure sure and that's one of the things that CX enables so Miracle look at CX as a department said no CX is actually a unifier so it brings everybody together because it's not about my work it's about the customer so if everybody is okay do what I'm doing today in admin in Administration in marketing in technology in support is because of that customer out there they will be intentional and it will be a clear difference in your operations and also in your bottom line thank you for listening we hope you enjoyed the podcast and if you did why not subscribe to our YouTube channel for access to full length videos and YouTube shorts you can also like share and comment on the episode to keep the conversation going if you want to join our growing community of thought leaders head over to LinkedIn and follow us at cxinsider podcast to stay updated thanks again I've been Marcel and I'll see you in two weeks but for now enjoy our rapid fire questions and by the way this podcast has been brought to you by ACF Technologies the global leaders in customer experience Management Solutions my first question would you ever go skydiving I think I made attempts yeah attempt if all the factors all right the safety factors I'm assured that they are all in place yeah if you could have any job in the world what would it be helping people I guess you're in the right right position I just want to let you know so whatever I'm doing are my so I love nurturing building and empowering people empowering businesses every time I wanted this how do I help you to be a better person how do I help women to be a better organization how do I help you to realize your purpose and to fulfill your purpose that's what I love doing that's great do you prefer films or TV shows both both yeah depend on the on the context yeah yeah what do you have like a favorite film or show sometimes um SciFi and then also um a bit of documentary okay you know I also love to know why things are being done the way they're being done you know so I'd love to really so so so my wife will tell you that when we were watching movies she lost to to fast forward whereas I want to in understand the details like each of the scenes all right the preceding scene what led to this so I'm asking in case you ask me tomorrow what happened here I would give you you know continuous Improvement why why why why you know okay yeah great and then my final question do you have any like funny stories about a really awful customer experience that you had okay yes so there's this Airline right I'm not going to mention them yeah because right so there is one that has been like the main airline in a particular location but they came to disrupt ride the Monopoly okay so if you're coming to the shop the Monopoly you should be much better than them right so so so this is this airline that the earliest flight was about I think um into the city was about 10 a.m and then they now came in and said they were flying at 7 00 am so I'm here I have a meeting at nine o'clock it's just a one hour flight and your and your takeoff times happens to be 17 and I'm here remember that day I woke up quite early I was on the checking counter an hour before the flight time you can see the queue so at the end of the day the fighter we're meant to take off at seven we took off at eight and then what you missed the meeting well I was lucky enough I just got in when the meeting was just about to get started which is wrong which is not right you know like you know we have to make sure that you're getting early on time get yourself prepared right relax and get settled so I think organization businesses should if you want to go into something get something you want to make a change do it properly okay be intentional about it disrupt properly be mature absolutely [Laughter] [Music]
2023-04-18 00:06
