Mission RECONNECT! is a campaign to reconnect your employees and your customers. It's about capturing a huge opportunity – to release the extraordinary and memorable service unique to employees who truly ‘get’ their customers and feel trusted to do what they think is right.

1. Mission RECONNECT!
The campaign to reconnect your employees
and your customers.

2. Customers are getting more savvy
around service - whether it's at a
restaurant, over the phone or even as
they pass through security…
they expect an authentic
experience…and to be treated as an
individual
CUSTOMER

3. If every team member saw the world
through your customers’ eyes and felt
their own judgment was truly trusted,
what would they say and do that would
transform each customer’s experience?
EMPLOYEE

4. The opportunity is to CONNECT
CUSTOMER CUSTOMEREMPLOYEE EMPLOYEE EMPLOYEE

5. The journey so far – we’ve come a long
way, but we’ve veered off in the wrong
direction
• 5-7 years ago…..We wanted customer service to be
exceptional… every time. So we systematized it and
invested in awesome training to teach employees
how to ‘deliver’ the system – basically a set of rules.
• But that felt clunky and formulaic after a while…
• So we decided we needed to empower and inspire
employees to deliver a personal service (e.g. at Café
Nero, baristas are invited to “put their unique
personality and creativity into every cup “
• And though the principle is sound, we’re still
executing it using a voice and toolkit that controls
and disempowers rather than releases.

6. We’re missing a huge opportunity – to release the extraordinary
and memorable service unique to employees who truly ‘get’ their
customers and feel trusted to do what they think is right.
What’s more….
Service rules, delivered accurately, create ‘quality’
Employee-led service creates BRAND.
It’s unforgettable.

7. TWO IDEAS THAT HELP US
THINK DIFFERENTLY

8. BLINKERED
CUSTOMER

9. 1. Are you focused or blinkered?
Most companies only look for those parts of its customers’ lives that it has
some direct interest or control over.
PROBLEM: By framing its business, product, competitors so narrowly, it
discourages its employees from stepping out of the company arena to
understand what REALLY matters to customers, wherever it may appear.

10. PARENT CHILD
EMPLOYEE

11. child
adult
parent
child
adult
parent
2. Customer Service frameworks can easily feel like straitjackets
Few companies get beyond ‘parent / child mode’ – but an
organisation and its employees need to move to ‘adult to adult’
PROBLEM
The parent / child dynamic is amplified
by events, frameworks, shiny comms
which tell employees to ‘be themselves’
The outcome is employees who are told
to ‘be empowered’ but actually feel they
are not trusted to use their judgment – at
best they’ll comply, at worst they’ll find a
way round the rules.
The opposite – adult to adult – creates
an environment of strong trust – the
foundation for exceptional customer
experience.

12. Add to employees' own visibility
of customer needs, with insight
they don't otherwise get to see.
Show them “The Real Customer
Journey”.
Reconnect your employees to
what matters. Create an
environment of unexpectedly
high trust and de-risk this
through “Clean Communication”.
The new way we should be doing it:
EMPLOYEECUSTOMER

13. Find out the end-to-end
experience that really matters
to the customer “The Real
Customer Journey”
• Explore how customers feel about your
marketplace, competitors and brand – ALL the
touchpoints that matter ‘from long-before to long-
after a purchase is made’
• Get under the skin of the customer, and experience
all the joys and frustrations that they do – the
‘Lifeline’ of their experience (what they want to
happen vs. what actually happens)
• Pinpoint the things that will make a customer
‘faithful’ – the superior experience they value and
will come back for, again and again. This is “The
Real Customer Lifeline”
Reconnect your employees at
the heart of this experience
and show an unexpected
high level of trust
• Tap into the collective ‘front line employee’ wisdom
• Use the customer journey audit as an opportunity to
engage in its own right and enable as many employees as
possible to put some ‘skin in the game’
• Create energy and action, without screaming ‘I’m your
parent!’
• Use “Clean Communication” as your empowerment toolkit
and de-risk the rebalancing of control
• Catch people doing great things for customers and reward
them / thank them
• ‘Hardwire’ the Voice of the Customer, by using
• Senior Management
• Culture of stories
• Celebrating metrics
• Listen and act on feedback from employees who are
delivering actions for customers
In practice – what does this look like?
EMPLOYEECUSTOMER

14. Our vision is to reconnect a nation of
service employees to their customers.
World-class customer experiences are built on totally engaged,
empowered employees.
And that only happens by capturing quality customer insight,
providing it to employees in a compelling and applicable way, and
giving them permission to express themselves.

15. IN THE REAL WORLD

16. : just one rule
“Welcome to Nordstrom.
We're glad to have you with our Company. Our number one goal is to
provide outstanding customer service. Set both your personal and
professional goals high. We have great confidence in your ability to
achieve them.
Nordstrom Rules: Rule #1: Use best judgment in all situations.
There will be no additional rules.
Please feel free to ask your department manager, store manager, or
division general manager any question at any time.”
Case Study:

17. Loews Hotels created the YouFirst loyalty scheme:
a fast-track route through airport securityfor its
highest value customers
“We are dedicated to improving our guests'
complete travel experience from airport
security checkpoints to hotel check-ins.
To be the first hotel brand to offer this service
demonstrates that we understand the needs
of travelers, especially those who travel
frequently for business."
Paul Whetsell,
CEO & President of Loews Hotels & Resorts
Loews found that lengthy airport immigration and security procedures remain the
biggest single negative stage in their guest’s experience.
So Loews reached out to US Homeland Security, and provided its loyalty card
guest data to Airport Immigration, enabling pre-screening and fast-track entry.
Case Study:

18. PizzaExpress: stripping away the shackles
• Ignite – the major service
revolution
• Stripping back all the service
criteria
• Transformed recruitment
• Emphasized the history
• Very stylish, very forward
thinking,
• Took layers of operational rules
out and freed ops managers to
do the real work that really
mattered
• Still growing – new openings all
the time
Case Study:

19. LET’S TALK ABOUT HOW
TO TACKLE THIS

20. Conversations you might find
interesting to have with us
• The Real Customer Lifeline – how can you trace what’s truly
important to customers in their journey of experiencing your brand,
product and service? How can you go way beyond the narrow
framing most companies currently view their customer feedback?
• Employee / Customer engagement and reconnection – how
might you reframe and recreate some of your current initiatives out
of parent-child and into adult-to-adult space?
• Clean Communication – what is it and how does it rebalance
control whilst safeguarding performance in large organisations?

21. Mission RECONNECT!
The campaign to reconnect your employees
and your customers.
The Mission RECONNECT! campaign is led by two companies
passionate about engaging brands, employees and customers.
To find out more, contact either carrie@onefishtwofish.co.uk or
rick@customerfaithful.com
@MReconnect