S3 EP. 02 - Lessons from a broken-down train and why it became one of the best experiences ever?
In this episode, we’re joined by John Sills, managing partner at The Foundation and author of The Human Experience. John shares an incredible story of how a broken train in Switzerland became one of the most memorable customer experiences he’s ever had—and not because it went wrong, but because of how it was handled.
Together, we dive into the heart of what makes customer experiences truly remarkable: human connection, ownership, and care. We explore why so many business leaders feel disconnected from their customers, the role technology plays in both enhancing and damaging experiences, and how companies can cultivate human traits like empathy, respect, and responsibility in everything they do.
S3 EP. 02 Transcription
[00:00:00] Steve: Why hello everybody. My name is Steve Usher and a warm welcome to the experience designers podcast.
So I want you to imagine you're on a train in the heart of Switzerland, looking over those pristine lakes, beautiful mountains, and all of a sudden, it breaks down. Most of us would feel the frustration building and settling in. But what if that breakdown turned into one of the best customer experiences you've ever had?
And on today's episode, John Sills shares how Swiss rail transformed a moment of inconvenience into a memorable journey. Not through perfection, but through human connection and ownership. And John, a managing partner at the foundation and author of the human experience takes us deep into the heart of what truly makes experiences remarkable and will explore stories that showcase the power of empathy, ambition, and yes, even AI, but more importantly, how businesses succeed when they put humans first.
From the gap between leadership and frontline staff to the evolution of customer service. This episode is a powerful reminder of why human touch can never be replaced. So without further ado, let's dive in. All right. So John Welcome to the Experienced Designers.
[00:01:33] John: Thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks. I'm loving this, I'm loving the statue over your shoulder as well.
I meant to say the kind of mini Buddha. My laughing Buddha. It's my laughing
[00:01:41] Steve: Buddha. Yeah, it's yeah, very I also have an a Ganesha as well, an Indian, one of my favorite Indian gods, the removal of blockers. Yeah, it's good. Yeah. So just a quick as you are joining the experience designers and you are, I've seen some of your LinkedIn posts and you're similar to me actually with this is when you're working in this field of experiences, you tend to have experience goggles on quite a lot, particularly the day to day.
I drive my wife mad with it. So I'll be curious to see how it works on your side. But I I'm A question for you what's your favorite, have you come across like a favorite experience that you'd like to share or an experience that you've come across recently that really popped and what was it about it that really popped and what was the situation?
[00:02:27] John: Yeah, no I've got, luckily I've got quite a few and it's really easy isn't it in our world to focus on the negatives and you're right, I'm exactly the same as you, like my wife just gets sick of me, she knows, like she knows we, do you know what, this is a completely different answer to your question, I'll come, I will come back to that bit.
We went away for for my birthday a few years ago, a couple of years ago, actually it was after COVID and she booked a really nice hotel for us and it was in Stratford. It was really great trip. Hotel was really good. And as we went to check out the the receptionist said, Oh, can I, just before you go, can I just ask you?
What would you rate this day out of 10? And you could feel my wife just clench up and I go, Oh no. And I straight away, because she knows I've got this kind of real hatred of like feedback requests.
And
[00:03:14] John: I was just like, I'm not going to take what a question to ask. Cause if I say anything other than 10, we're going to get into a really awkward conversation then about what can we done differently, but straight away, I could feel like clench my hand and just be like, come on, it's been a really nice trip. Just yeah, just come along and don't do anything. Obviously I did say something.
But that wasn't what you asked. Yeah, my, so my favorite ever experience was on Swiss railways. It was just before COVID. I was on a I was working with a company called Great Rail Journeys. And they run railway holidays across Europe. Big tour groups, and mainly septuagenarians, it's more older people that go on these kinds of trips.
And I was lucky enough to be going on the first two days of a 10 day tour with them to Switzerland to spend time with the customers, understand what the experience was like, what they could do to improve. And so there was like 30 of us piled on the train at St. Pancras. The plan was go down to Geneva.
Yeah. Get the train, change it to Zurich, and then go on to our final destination. And that was all fine. Got on the train in Geneva, train pulls away. And about ten minutes after it pulled away, the train broke down. And I was delighted, actually, because one of my colleagues was Swiss, and she'd been boasting about how brilliantly efficient Swiss rail were.
So I was straight on WhatsApp typical Swiss inefficiency, et cetera, et cetera. But then something strange happened, right? After about two or three minutes after it had broken down and stopped, the train manager came down to speak to us. And he said he said I know you're a big tour group traveling through our country and the train's broken down.
And I'm really sorry about that. You might miss your onward connection. We don't know what the problem with the train is yet, but as soon as I know, and if I know it's going to have any impact on your journey, I'm going to come back, I'm going to let you know I'm going to look after you. So I'll let you know as soon as I know.
And I think again, please accept the apologies for the inconvenience and off he goes. And then two minutes later we get a phone call from the head of operations at Swiss Rail. And they say I know you're a big group traveling through our country. I know the train's broken down. I'm really sorry about that.
Your train manager is going to look after you. If you need anything at all, here's my direct number. Just give me a call. I'll help you work it out. So about 15 minutes after that, the train starts moving again. True to his word, the train manager comes back down, says this is what the problem was.
This is how we fixed it. We're not expecting any more delays between now and Zurich, but you are going to miss your connection. I'm really sorry about that. This is the next train you need to get. This is the platform it's going to go from, but it's a big complex station. So when you get there, I'm going to have a member of staff.
And that member of staff's going to help make sure you get to the train. Again, please accept my apologies for the inconvenience. We get into Zurich Station. True to his word, the door opens. There is a member of platform staff with an umbrella. We follow around from platform 1 to platform 14, where the new train's already waiting for us.
They've reserved us a carriage on the new train already, because we have one reserved on the old train. And as we got on, they gave us all tea and coffee vouchers to apologize for the inconvenience. Now we ended up getting into our final destination about 25 minutes late. I'll be honest with you, Steve.
If I get into London 25 minutes late on a Monday morning, I'm high fiving the other commuters. Like I'm hugging everyone. We don't know what to do with all the extra time we've got in our day. And the difference to me was one of ambition, but it was a brilliant experience where you saw real ownership
and,
[00:06:21] John: essentially saying we've made a promise.
And we're not going to be able to deliver that promise. So we're going to do everything we can to help you get there as easily as possible. So it's a long answer to your question. But that's an amazing,
[00:06:32] Steve: no, I love that. And as you were, as you were sharing that story, I, these are the words I wrote down was human ownership empowerment.
Reaction, action personal outcome, explanation, support, next steps, promise guidance. Yeah, that's a lovely but interestingly, I think what's inherent in there is inherently human, right? It's the it's that train manager who took ownership, had the autonomy to make decisions, clearly escalated it to that senior manager who then proactively reached out.
[00:07:04] John: Yeah, and
[00:07:05] Steve: it starts
[00:07:06] John: It starts right from the point of them caring, even of them recognizing that this isn't okay. And wanting to be willing to care enough to do something about it rather than just saying nothing I can do, the train's broken down. So all of those things you've said, that's right.
And they're all the things that, I believe that we're lacking quite a lot in experience at the moment. But when it comes together like that, I'm not even ever thinking about the fact that the train broke down and we were slightly late. It's not even a consideration, it's not even, you could ask me about that experience of going to Switzerland a thousand times.
I'm never going to mention the fact we were 25 minutes late. It just didn't matter in the end. And that's what it's really all about, I think.
[00:07:44] Steve: So if we use this story, how would this story encapsulate your passion and the work that you do? And has perhaps how it's given those goggles in which, the way in which you see the world and the services and experiences that we encounter every day.
[00:07:59] John: Yeah, I think that's yeah, I think it's one of those things isn't it where it's I think we're quite similar It's a natural thing. You don't necessarily choose it in a way. You just have a passion for it I don't know about your background. I started on a market stall in Essex When I was 14, you know when I was a teenager I had Two or three jobs at the same time, working in shops Burton's and W8 Smiths and all the kind of classics.
I did the same at university while I was studying there. I was still working at Burton. Those quite formative years, almost all of my working was frontline, working with real customers, real people. And I loved it. Like I really loved it. And that's not to say there aren't annoying customers sometimes, but just that kind of back and forward with people, understanding people, being able to help people, it's that kind of real passion for it.
And then when I started my career in HSBC, again, my first few years there were frontline being a bank manager during the financial crisis and not a good time, but a time where again, you realize you can really help people, but you also see what this means to people when it matters to people. And so I think for me, I've always naturally got quite annoyed, pleased when I see it done well, but quite annoyed with organizations that don't seem to care.
About their customers. And I think that's for two reasons. One is because I feel it's taking people for granted, but the bigger reason is the quality of the experience we have affects the quality of our lives. It dictates the quality of our lives. And for me, we're all spending far too much time at the moment.
Having emails ignored, not having phone calls answered, it being very difficult to contact organizations. There's some brilliant customer experiences happening as well at the moment. And it's important to recognize those.
But the
[00:09:31] John: reality is, if you look at something like HMRC in the UK recently, I think they, they worked out.
It was something like what was it? So 800 years, was that right? Something like that. of human time have been spent on hold to them in that year. The amount of time, the amount of phone calls that people have been on hold and then just hung up because the average waiting time to have your call answers was over an hour.
It's just an incredible amount of human time being wasted. And our life is so precious. So I think that's where the kind of passion comes from to want to create great experiences for people
[00:10:03] Steve: Okay, just repeat that statistic for a minute 800 human years I
[00:10:09] John: think it was 800 years of human time had been spent It was something like it was something like 17 million hours or something like that I can send you the article afterwards to fact check it.
It was an unbelievable amount of time
[00:10:21] Steve: Yes.
[00:10:21] John: And half of those calls were never answered. And that's just real people's real lives. When you could be playing with your kids, going for a run, watching Netflix, doing whatever you want that's been spent. Whereas when you see organizations that really an organization's purpose in my mind should be to make the world better for people, not in a grand purpose way, but just.
Let's build a business that does something that makes other people's lives a bit easier. If you do that, you've got a good business. And it feels like the opposite of that at the moment.
[00:10:49] Steve: Yeah. Time is the is the factor, isn't it? It's our time well saved or time well spent from an experience point of view.
And I think that's the privilege of the work, right? Is that you're encoding and designing moments in time. For people and it's you want to make it a good one, of course, but it's that intentionality around that I think is really really important. So John, we discussed some topics and some areas that we wanted to dive into as part of our prep for this podcast.
And one of the, one of the things that I. I was really curious on because you've done, there's some research that you've been, you guys have been doing which was centered around state of nation or state of the nation in relation to customer service experience. What is that? What drove the company to do this report?
What was the kind of the background to the work and the focus? Yeah.
[00:11:35] John: Yeah, that's right. So we've had in the last few years, we've had a couple of books came out. My business partner had a book come out a couple of years ago, three years ago called the customer Copernicus, which was top down how you build custom made organizations from the top and then my book came out last year, which was a human experience, which is how you create that.
Human experience in organizations. And through both of those books, he's got us into lots of different conversations with lots of different people like yourself about what's really going on here. And it wasn't just customers. It was business leaders as well, that we were starting to get into these interesting conversations with that everyone gets this sense that something's a bit broken.
Everyone knows that it's a little bit broken at the moment. And we felt that the traditional way of looking at this of just customer satisfaction doesn't really work, even if you look at the Institute of customer services, by annual report, it just bounces between 74 percent and 78%.
It doesn't really tell the whole story. So we did this thing called a state of the nation report on eventually being customer led across the UK at the moment. And it gave us some really interesting findings. We got people to rank. Their experiences at the moment from being enragingly awful to wonderfully brilliant.
And we saw that, one in five people had an enragingly awful experience in the last three months. And even more than that, I think it was 15 percent of people had an enragingly awful experience in at least six areas of life. Over the last three to six months.
So you're looking at all kinds of different industries. We do. It's cost 44 different industries for that. And you won't be surprised about the industries that were better or worse. It was interesting in the UK, how bad the public services were currently being seen as well as transport as well.
Actually banks were improved somewhere they might've been before. But I suppose. As well as that picture, the interesting thing for us was we went and spoke to 250 business leaders, CEOs and CMOs from across all of these different industries. And only one in 10 of those business leaders believes that their industry was currently delivering a great experience to customers.
And that was a really shocking statistic for me. So you've got the people that are in charge of those businesses, Almost entirely 90 percent of them believe in their industry doesn't give a good experience, a great experience for their customers at the moment. And that was really interesting to us because then you've got that disconnect because they're all people that want to give a great experience.
Even if it's not their absolute priority, they want to give a great experience. So what's the disconnect, what's happening, what's not working. And I think there's a lot in here that we can dive into about this disconnect between leadership and the frontline. And what's really getting in the way because something is happening.
Everyone feels it. Everyone knows it, but it's not translating into customer decisions in the way that businesses are being run.
[00:14:15] Steve: Oh my God. So much to unpack. Something getting in the way. That's really interesting. I'm seeing like a sandwich for some reason and the kind of this middle gooey middle that's going completely.
I don't know what something's gone wrong. What's what are the indicators to that? Have you seen any kind of themes or threads to that just to see where those disconnects emerging? Is it more? Is it a technology thing? Is it a process? Is it a strategy? Like where's all the Yeah, the normal words we would use, of course.
But is there anything else?
[00:14:43] John: Yeah, I think that's a few things. And I think you have to unpeel a few layers to get there. And we're still trying to work out the answer. I guess we've got a best hypothesis at the moment. So I think if you look back over the last 20 years, we've had all this incredible new technology come about that's allowed us to create some amazing experiences for customers.
But. It feels like over that last 20 years, we've used that technology to perfect or try and perfect the functional experience over the emotional experience. So trying to do more things in more ways, more quickly, more cheaply than ever before. And that last one is what really matters there because a lot of organizations have seen, all of this great technology coming through as a way to deliver service to customers at a much lower cost.
I put it on an app, put it on a website, stop people phoning up, stop people going into the branches, close down stores, put it all online. Now there's an argument of convenience and function around that works, but I think the reality is in doing that we've stripped away. There's two things.
We've stripped away all of that emotional connection with customers. So customers no longer feel they've got relationships with, organization. Imagine if you had a relationship with your partner and they said, okay, but from now on, you can only text when you can't call me, you can't see me. Okay.
Not a great relationship for most people. Some people might be okay with that. But the second thing is it's built this disconnect between leaders. And I think the reality of what their customers are really experiencing, because I think we've got this with technology. We have this kind of inherent belief that it's perfect.
We believe we're going to design this app. We're going to design this process and it's going to work. Because it's not human. So it just works. you get to the post office scandal in the UK at the moment, putting in a new system, believe and then refusing to believe. And in fact, actually as part of the justice system until recently, the law was you presume the technology works unless you can prove otherwise.
That was the law in the UK. You presume the technology works. So this is quite inherent in it. And so what happens is customers fall into this pit of despair because the technology doesn't quite work. They try and phone up. They can't get ahold of anyone. Becomes impossible to connect the organizations.
And this is then, this is probably a whole other question, but this is then where this disconnect appears with leaders. Because so many more experiences are digital, they're a lot more faceless. It's a lot harder for leaders to really connect with the experiences their customers are having because they can't just go and hang out in a store like they used to.
They can't just go and hang out in the shop like they used to or in the branch like they used to because it's not where the action's happening now. So the challenge for leaders in organizations is how do they really connect with what matters to their customers and the experience that's really being given.
And which isn't just a load of data that comes in from a load of surveys that gets tagged them to the end of every experience. So I think that's the kind of flow, which gets you to the heart of the problem we've got at the moment, which is a disconnect. between leaders and organizations and the experience their customers are having.
[00:17:35] Steve: Yeah, I agree. I also just came back to, I'm going to go all the way back a little bit to you talking about custom satisfaction around how we're measuring some of this stuff as well, and interestingly on the employee side there was the latest, everybody hotly anticipates it, but then it comes out, which is the Gallup report around employee engagement and you read that.
And I, and for me I don't know. I. I almost wrote an half angry post on it because I was like surely We need to just stop measuring this stuff because it's been the same for two decades. If you had a metric in your business that remained the same for you for two decades, you would be questioning whether is that actually the right thing we need to be measuring anyway?
And are there other aspects we could be measuring that will serve us a little bit better?
[00:18:20] John: Exactly that, like that, that, the ICS, the ICS do a lot of good work, but the ICS, the Institute of Customer Services Survey, Binding Survey for the last, since 2012, I think the lowest it's been is 73 and the highest it's been, I think it's 78.
So even when they talk about dramatic rises and falls, it's always in there and it's always in there because it shifts with expectations. Customers are always roughly 7 happy, right? Because their expectations rise. So it doesn't, it's not useful. It's not useful information really. It doesn't get to the heart of it, but what it does, but then it becomes a, the challenge is in businesses.
It's a logical way to measure, it's a bit like that. No one gets fired for hiring IBM. Someone says we want to understand our customers. And someone else says let's survey them and say, you're happy. Yeah, kinda makes sense, but it doesn't make sense because it doesn't you, the subtle differences, and in the books they were talking about the thin end of the wedge and the thick end of the wedge and how, the problem is if you imagine your customer's life as its wedge shape at one end, you've got the thick end.
You've got their real world, their real life, all the things that really matter to them. Friends', family, job, home, dreams, ambitions, all the things they wanna achieve. Then you've got the challenges, the things that get in the way, the services they use to help. And then right at the very thin end of the wedge.
You've got the organization, you and your organization, a very tiny part of their overall consciousness. All of these surveys in this epidemic of feedback requests, all of these surveys are at the thin end of the wedge. What do you think about us? What do you think about our products? What do you think about our service?
Would you recommend us? They're all very inside out. And the danger with this deluge of information coming in is that it convinces leaders they're close to what matters to their customers. Whereas in truth, they're only close to what matters to what they're only close to customers opinions of their business.
It's very, It's a very subtle but significant difference as to whether you really understand the customers or whether you just understand what they think of you. And it's an overwhelming amount of data and it makes sense so people just go along with it. And everyone measures it so it feels like the right thing to do.
[00:20:19] Steve: Yeah, I love that. That's a very important learning for any listeners there or any kind of perspective. Just a small shift can make a huge difference in, in, in those insights. John, can I just ask as well? So I've lived away from the UK now eight years now and I Grew up around the customer contact customer service industry in the UK entered into it like late nineties.
And then into the 2000. So I I saw that evolution from that customer service reaction, typical even through postal stuff, dare I say customer complaints then into kind of that, that more Oh, custom experience, that fluffy word of custom experience and how it can bring value into the organization and it actually evolve as a discipline in itself.
So I can I relate to this in terms of the journey in which the industry, particularly in the UK, is on and no doubt globally. And I do also remember, now again, I'd love to just, get your thoughts on this. Back then we had First Direct and First Direct was like the mecca of Customer service, how they delivered, the way in which they engage their customer.
It was much more on that emotional level. Virgin was a classic. Virgin, all of its brands, they all were always different. They were always that one step above their tonality. The way they engage customers were on a different level. Some beautiful stories of, I think it was an engineer that fitted. I think some broadband or something of an old an elderly individual near Christmas and actually went back on Christmas day because he was living on his own with a TV for him because his TV broke and bought it himself.
So there's all these are beautiful examples. But has that been eroded? Cause that, this is a number of years ago now, are we seeing erosion in some of those brands generally that we used to hold up as this kind of poster companies that deliver great service and experiences? How has it evolved?
[00:22:08] John: Yeah, it's a really, it's a really interesting question, actually. I think the world shifts around all of these businesses, doesn't it? And there's probably every business can only exist. But for a while being a kind of challenger, I think FirstDirect HSBC previously, their original ethos of pioneering great experiences, great customer experiences, and they're still hugely customer led, and they still do an incredible amount of good work.
However, where FirstDirect has found its challenges in much of the rest of the banking industry, It's trying to be the best of the other banks. And it managed to be best in the other banks for a very long time. And then because it was looking over there to the left. Over on the right, all of a sudden you've got Monzo and Starling and Revolut just coming out of nowhere because they weren't looking at how to be the best bank.
They were looking at how to be the best tech company. So they completely changed their frame of reference. So first director is still doing very well, still very high customer satisfaction and customer experience. But there's a really interesting challenge, I think for any organization in any industry of how do you keep your perspective broad enough Transcribed that you can keep challenging yourself and not just focus on being the best in your industry because the real disruption always comes outside of that.
The likes of virgin I think have fallen away. But with virgin is very difficult because they've got so many brands. Yes. It's across so many virgin media is Regularly sent to me as an example of giving a terrible experience, but Virgin airways is still pretty good. Sadly for me, Virgin records, I don't think exist anywhere.
That's where I bought most of my CDs when I was younger. So you start to get that brand stretch, but then you get. Every industry has this kind of recycling, like octopus energy and my current favorite,
Customer experience organization where. They've gone into an industry that just said we can't really do any better.
This is just what it is. Our hands are tied. What do you expect? We used to be nationalized. Prices are going out. We can do what we can do. And Octopus Energy came in and said, which is not good enough. And actually their story is fascinating. From the start, they co authored an investigation with the BBC on unfair trading practices in the energy industry.
That was their kind of opening shot to welcome them into the energy industry because they were just saying. They just had that passion and that ambition to say, it's just not good enough. People are being ripped off. Yeah. And now they're the biggest energy provider in the UK. They are the highest satisfaction.
They've won the witch awards. I think seven years in a row, they've built a great technology platform to build on, but they do some really nice things like the the whole music. And if you know about this, if you phone up octopus energy, song that plays will be a song that was number one when you were 14 years of age.
This is
[00:24:45] John: Really lovely story of how it came about. They do this thing called Friday night dinner. And everyone in the company jumps on a slack call at the same time. And they just talk, there's no hierarchy. They just talk. Someone on the front line said look, people are really fed up with our whole music.
I've had so many complaints about it this week. They're fed up. Is there anything we can do? Someone else said can't we like personalize it somehow or do something that will make it a bit better. And an engineer was on the call and he said, yeah, we can do that actually. We can do like an API through from Spotify.
We can probably do some kind of personalization, but what are we going to personalize and someone else just piked up and said, Oh, I read this magazine article last week that said people most connect with music when they're about 14 years of age and we've got people's dates of birth, right? We have to have people's dates of birth.
Within a week, they'd spun it up. Within two weeks, it was live. And the thing is, you might, so mine would be the Fugees Killing Me Softly, if I'd been born a year later, it would have been Spice Girl with Wannabe, so I'm secretly gutted about that. And the thing is, you might not like the song.
You might not necessarily like the song, but you will recognize it. And what I love about it is it shows. Yeah. You may say, I know what I love is it shows respect.
It shows
[00:25:51] John: respect that if you're going to phone us up and you're going to have to be on hold because we can't answer the phone quick enough.
We're
[00:25:57] John: at least going to play you a song that resonates with you. And maybe, hopefully you might like, and in the very least, it's going to be different to some kind of God awful lift music. It shows respect rather than taking for granted people's time. That they're going to show up and just be on hold.
And that's just the way that's just the way it is. So there's some new players coming through now that are starting to challenge, but normally it's outside of the industry. You have to look to know if you're still being as good as you can be.
[00:26:22] Steve: Yeah. Love that. Love that. Just with this case in point with octopus and perhaps some others that you might be aware of.
What some of those kind of characteristics or. because you've looked at the, there are some distinct behaviors and are there any that resonate with octopus? Maybe we can pull out or others that show what makes a great experience for customers. Are there any? Yeah,
[00:26:45] John: that's right. I'm quite, even though I'm a consultant, so I'm You know, the foundation and we work with organizations, but on, on their experience and their strategy.
But even though I'm a consultant, I'm not a big fan of frameworks. I don't, so even when it comes to customer experience, I don't really believe there's one perfect set of features. It's the same for every company in every industry around the world. But having said that, cause I was writing the book, I did go and study a whole load of companies like Octopus that I think do this really well and they did all have these kinds of same human traits in common.
In terms of the experience that they delivered for customers. And they were, I won't name them all, but they were things like being very accessible, very easy to contact, being very flexible, they were very proactive when they spotted something was going wrong. They were very respectful.
They were very responsible if something happened, that kind of ownership we talked about earlier, and they were really straightforward. They used straightforward human language in the way that they, in the way that they spoke. And what kind of struck me is I was it's time to spot these traits and write about them because actually, it's not different from a human relationship.
Again, if you think about relationship with a partner. Would you want them to be accessible? Would you want to be able to contact them? Yeah, you wouldn't have a great relationship with someone if they refuse to answer the phone all the time. Would you want them to be responsible and take responsibility for the stuff they haven't done?
Like the washing up? Yeah. Would you want them to be respectful of you? As a human. Absolutely. Would you want them to be flexible with, you had a bad day at work or you wanted to change some plans? Yeah, you would. Would you want them to speak to you, down to a straightforward way?
Yeah, absolutely. And consistently it's one of the other ones. Would you want, do you want a partner that's consistent so that. When you get home every day, the kind of conversations you're going to have, or would you want someone that's wildly erratic and, speaks an entirely different way to you on text to the phone or promises one thing, and then it's completely different, of course not.
So when you start, if you start to think about our organizations, our relationships with organizations, like a real relationship. You start to realize how so many of the behaviors we're seeing at the moment just don't make sense because you just wouldn't accept them. You wouldn't accept them in a real relationship with someone.
Yeah, it's those kind of human traits that kind of kept coming out and it's not a framework necessarily. But I do believe that if you organizations exhibit those kind of human traits and human behaviors, the experience naturally becomes much better for everybody involved, including colleagues.
[00:29:04] Steve: Yeah, that's amazing. As you were sharing those, flexible, accessible, proactive, respectful, responsible, straightforward, consistent, I'm fairly hard pressed to actually say, ah, this company lives up to that, or up. Having a few challenges there with that. And I think that reinforces your point around the emotional element of with customers.
So I think it's what can companies do to move the needle on this? I know there's a million and one ways of course, and there's the complexity, very contextual to the organizations. But are there maybe. Some key elements around the difference between an organization that's more customer led versus one that's not, and are there elements like embedded into that business that really translate well into those kinds of outcomes?
[00:29:57] John: Yeah, I think there are, there's a longer answer than the shorter answer. The short answer is what's interesting, I think, about a lot of these things is those human traits. These are all things that we learn from the day we're born how to be a human. And actually, a lot of organizations, they've these are learned behaviors to not be this way.
Just as a small example, if you think about straightforward and, Talking to human language. That's what we do. That's what we do. Like me and you. Now we're talking in normal words. If we went to the pub, we'd talk in normal words, but all of a sudden, if you were working in a contact center and I was your customer, you'd start talking to me in a different way because you've been taught.
To talk to me in a non human way, it's a bit like you open up your laptop in the morning and you start emailing people and you email in a different language. Dear so and I hope this email finds you well. Who says that? I hope this email finds you well. What does that even, that's my least favourite, what does that even mean?
It's a, how can an email find what are you on, kind regards kindness regards, we just we all do it.
Yeah. We just
[00:30:55] John: start writing in this language So so there is a broader point Which is we all just need to unlearn these corporate behaviors and just be human like just be the people we are So that's the short answer yeah, and I think I just do want to reinforce that because it's Even though I wrote the book about it, I do try and stress it's, I don't think it's rocket science.
It's hard because of the way organizations have learned to be, but it's not really, I'm not suggesting anything massively radical. I'm just suggesting to be human, be the human you spent your life to be, but there are things that get in the way. So to your point, I also looked at the culture of these organizations that do it well.
And again, they did have these things in common. As an overarching thing, they're all very good at seeing the world from the outside in, escaping that kind of natural inside out pool of being inside your own organization and that, that manifests in a few ways. So they're very connected with their customers.
So the likes of city mapper, for example, if they're going to open up in a new city, they'll take a cross section of their team and they'll go and live in that city for a month and they'll move Airbnb every two days. So they get to experience what life is really like traveling through the city, not just what, the data tells them.
So they're very good. Same as children's railways. They get all of their senior leaders to live somewhere on the children's railways rail line. So they have to use their own service every day. So real connection to customers. They all have a real focus on moments that matter. They all have real freedom in their teams.
This is the, one of the biggest things is empowerment. To let their people be human and then deal with any mistakes they make afterwards, rather than restrict them with scripts and processes and force them to behave in a way that frankly is frustrating to customers and for colleagues, we've all been in those conversations where both people on the phone know what the common sense answer is, but they're just not allowed to do it.
So real kind of empowerment in their teams to go and do. The things that are right. And then there's all kinds of great stories around things that people have done with that. But do you know what the, there's perspective as well, looking outside your own industry, like we talked about before, but do you know, the biggest thing I found really interesting was just ambition.
This is such an obvious thing to say. The companies that give the great. Greatest experiences are the companies that care the most about giving the greatest experiences. They've got a real burning ambition. And one of the things I probably enjoyed most about when I was interviewing these CEOs of these organizations I studied was how, when I started asking them about what their customer experience strategy was, how nearly all of them just looked at me in a really quizzical way as what do you mean?
Like, why would you need a customer experience strategy? Like obviously. That's the most important thing. You just want to be brilliant for customers. Like I don't need a customer experience team. It was really interesting actually. And then Guy Singh Watson, who heads up Riverford, he got quite animated about it in a brilliant way.
And he said, If leaders aren't spending at least a day a week with their customers, what on earth are they doing that they think is more important to the future of their business? And I just love the simplicity of it because it sums up to me everything that we've got wrong at the moment that we have to have back to the floor days or set up sessions for CEOs to grab an hour a week to speak to customers.
Like your business only survives by earning customer decisions in your favor. So what on earth are you doing? That's not more important. So there was this really nice connection with all these leaders of really caring about it and being ambitious about it, but not understanding the mindset that it wouldn't matter because of course it matters.
Of course it matters. And yeah, so a few things. I love that.
[00:34:27] Steve: Yeah. Cause there's examples. I think is it, was it Sainsbury's that used to do that? I think with managers, they had to spend time. I think it was Christmas or certain periods. Morrison's do the same. Yeah, or Morrison, yeah, out on the retail, on the floor, stacking shelves.
I think closing that gap is really important. I just want to also loop back to this word as well. Because I think you touched on it around the perception of surveys because surveys, don't get me wrong Companies, there are companies doing great surveys and there's, they're definitely a good way and not so good way of engaging customers with surveys, of course, but they're also perceived as this, Oh we are getting close to our customer because to your point, we're asking, how was the experience?
What's the, how do you shift that? Because we've got it into more of a transactional way of engaging customers because it's easy and it's quick and we just get some data on a screen and we can make some assumptions. Yeah. Whereas rather than go and spend the time there with them and actually immerse yourself in that moment of the customer experience.
Where's that? There's two, two very different distinct ends, aren't they?
[00:35:29] John: Yeah, I think that's right. I think in a way there's three bits actually. So if you think about the kind of, What we focus on at the moment is transactions, getting people's opinions of transactions and actually the other two elements of that are about relationships and real lives.
You need to understand people's transactions with you. That's at the thin end of the wedge. That's important to understand. Albeit from my mind, you can understand most of that with the data that you've got. So you shouldn't need to ask people, how easy was it to cancel a standing order, for example.
You can just see from the online data, have they done it or not? If someone spent five minutes on that website, they've not done it. Or if you've got people hanging out on the phone, cause you're not answering, you don't need to ask them if they're happy. You can tell. So transactions at one end
in the middle,
[00:36:10] John: you need to understand relationships.
How do they feel about you? How do they feel about the industry? How do they feel about other organizations that they work with? So what are the relationships they've got with services that they use to help them and what do those relationships mean? And what does a good relationship look like? Then the thick end of the wedge, you need to understand their real lives.
And this is where innovation comes from. Understanding real people's real lives, what's challenging them every day, jobs they're trying to achieve. And what can you do to help now to do that? We think that's all about real customer immersion. And this is really what we do as an organization. We take leaders and CEOs and CMOs and we get them to go and spend real time with real customers in their homes, go shopping with them, go cooking with them, all kinds of things, go and experience do online diaries, video diaries.
Track them for a month, see how they spend their money, spend real time understanding people's real lives and constantly bring that information back into the organization, expose people to that information, because that's where that, then if you've got that, you can have the surveys and you can have the relationships part.
It's fine to have those, but they need to be part of an overall suite of information that's coming together to help you build the picture. Partly to give you a great experience, a better experience, but like I say, partly it's about innovation. Great ideas don't come from asking people, what do you think about our service?
Great ideas come from understanding people's lives and spotting the areas where you can help that they're not currently being helped.
[00:37:34] Steve: Yeah, I agree. Agree. I think also there's a, an added context into this, and this is also an employee experience as well as customer is also like generational and, in the workspace or in the workplace environment.
I did a piece on actually the keynote recently around Generation Z and I'm not a big one on the labels, but I did stand on, I did stand on stage and I said, this group deserve our attention more than probably many others before, just because the sheer number of them and. I think it's something like 50 percent of the workforce will be Gen Z by I think the next three, four years, something like that.
It's huge. And it's like a tidal wave. So if you're thinking of, our customers are changing that, rapidly. And if you're not on top of that you're going to fall behind very quickly.
[00:38:23] John: This is actually, and it's, it's I suppose it's always been this way, hasn't it?
That leaders, the irony is, by the time you become a leader, you're so inside the organization, both away from your customers, but also your time is just taken up, spent with your own business decisions with the regulator. So the point where you have the most influence on your customers is the point where you're furthest.
away from your customers. I really like your point. So what I'm really interested in actually is the overall picture of demographics over the next 10, 20 years, because you're right, we've got this tidal wave coming through at one end. But at the other end, we've got a massive group of people that aren't going anywhere.
That's still going to be working for a long time. I've still got a huge amount of wealth and I've always been a bit, I remember when I was in the bank, it always used to be focused on millennials. And there'd be one hand and go up at the back of the room and go hang on, what about the over fifties?
Cause they've got all the money and we're the bank, so shouldn't we be helping them, but it's just not cool. So that's going to be, I think, It's a really interesting challenge for organizations, and this kind of approach I suppose a lot of organizations have had of trying to be all things to all people.
I think it's got to go. I think we are just going to start to see more niche organizations, maybe there's more than I'm giving credit for, but, where's the bank just for the over 50s?
Yeah.
[00:39:41] John: And where it just goes, do you know what? Don't come to us till you're over 50, but when you do, we're the bank for you.
Or vice versa, where's the bank for the under 30s? Maybe it's Monzo, who knows? But where you go, we're with you till 30, and then we're going to hand you off to another organization that does this better for you. And you're going to see it in all kinds of different areas. It's 30s travel versus retirement holiday travel.
Saga, yeah, that's exactly it. Actually, there's an article in that, isn't there? I might write that. But 18 to 30 and saga, that kind of, that's going to be on steroids over the next 20, 20
years.
[00:40:14] John: So how does that look across all these other industries? Because it's going to need to happen. It's going to need to happen.
Otherwise, you can't, everyone's going to fail.
[00:40:23] Steve: Yeah, and we have I think the biggest transfer of wealth happening gonna happen over the next 10 years I think it was especially in the US. It's trillion. It's insane amount of money So that none So it's a we can set up a fund you never know There was just two, a thing also I just wanted to mention, and this thing around ambition, just want to come back to that.
And this kind of core burning ambition. And it's really interesting because to, to, to your point, and yes, there's a lot of good stuff going on. And we don't I'm definitely, that's why I asked you at the beginning. What's a good experience. So there are really good examples. However, it is amongst a sea of very ordinary experiences as well, particularly where you've got the one in 10 stat with the leaders, et cetera, believing that their industry's delivering great experience.
So surely if you are, a smart individual spotting a business opportunity. If everybody's over there or majority is over there with a very average ordinary C over there just bobbing away and there's an opportunity to go in completely the other direction and create a business that excels in this area and puts this very much at the heart, surely It's common sense to be you are going to reap the business and performance and outcome results results as a part of that, whilst also fixing some stuff that needs fixing and delivering great experience for customers.
Yeah,
[00:41:46] Steve: that's what I'm hearing as well. Surely we should be seeing more people investing in this.
[00:41:51] John: It should be obvious question, but
Yeah, this is what, so one of the things in the book I talk about these myths and one of those is the myth of return on investment. And I find this really interesting because it seems obvious, but it's not necessarily obvious because what happens at the moment is organizations broadly still ask for business cases of why we should do things that's going to make life better for customers.
And actually sometimes that can be hard to quantify, but you don't know. Sometimes you have to take risks. There's a great story of Tesco and Sainsbury's back in the day. And when Tesco decided to do one in front queuing, so if you have more than one person in front of you on the till, they'd open another till that was like their big grand statement, but they didn't know that's going to mean people are going to buy more for them.
People might buy exactly the same amount, but they just need more people on the till and it could just be cost. But what they did know was if they had to do it. If they did it, Sainsbury's will copy them. So net, they'd be the same again, Sainsbury's. So it worked out, but sometimes you have to have these moments of belief.
It's my colleague, Charlie calls them. You have to have these leaps of faith where you just believe that those things are going to make you going to make you more money, however. Whilst that's an argument for doing it for me, there's a much bigger argument for why you should focus on improving customer experience.
And that is that bad customer experience is very expensive to provide.
So the most efficient organizations are also the ones that provide the best customer experience. And that is, constantly in the same way that those are with the happiest employees give the best customer experience is almost a universal truth and that's because they reduce failure demand.
They produce all of those repeat phone calls, all of those letters, all of those complaints, all of the rework, all of the stuff that comes with giving a bad experience. I worked with one energy company a while ago and the 33 percent of all the calls coming into their contact center were repeat phone calls from people that had phoned up the day before and weren't happy with the answer they'd been given.
So actually, improving your customer experience. dramatically reduces the cost on your business because you get rid of all of that failure demand. And that's the business case I don't see made often enough while we're all trying to show how this is going to make us money. Forget that. Just show how it's going to save your money.
And then an added effect is more people buy more stuff from you as well.
[00:44:04] Steve: Yeah. Amazing. Amazing. So I'm going to bring up this word. It's pretty, you might've heard of it. It's pretty prominent out there right now. Artificial intelligence, AI. I've purposely left it towards the end of our discussion.
Cause I'm not a skeptic. I'm not overly positive either. I'm on the fence observing and testing as we all should be. There are some use cases coming out, which are interesting. But of course, I do look at those with a little bit of a pinch of salt, even if the metrics and all the data's there and the savings and all this stuff because we are in this early stage adoption area.
What's your sense? Let's just dive in and see your perspective on AI, particularly in service sector yeah, some interesting,
[00:44:42] John: Yeah, I'd say it's fascinating. We've had versions of it around in the past and brilliant in the future. And I'm really. Positive and excited about the possibilities of it.
I still think it's a long way away from being there. I think, if you're going to use it, it needs to be foolproof. And it's nowhere near that. For me, it's going to be most useful supporting people to give a better experience. So there's been some quite interesting studies done already that show that, if you use AI to support a call center advisor that's new in the role, it will help improve their performance and customer satisfaction by 30 or 40%, really big impact because it's saving them time in trying to find the right answer and more likely to get the right answer.
If you if that AI support is used for someone that's been in the role for several years, No difference at all, because the person is already upskilled enough to know what they're doing. So there's I think for me, it's a really interesting way it's going to be used, which is in supporting people to give a better experience.
I don't see a world where people are phoning up, happy to speak to AI voice on the phone or be, I know some people listening would say that's naive of me to say that. So it's not really what it's about. So really big, that's for, I can definitely see it making a massive improvement to chatbots.
Let's be honest, never. Never been a quality where they should be used. No, it's a great example of
[00:45:58] Steve: never really took off, but they took off, but never really punched, I thought it's,
[00:46:03] John: it's a great example where organization have just seen the pound signs and the cost savings and decided to go for it. And it's just terrible.
I've had plenty where I've been trying to join an organization and the chatbots made it hard for me to join as well. So I do think we'll see a big improvement in chatbots. That can be pretty much AI driven. That will really help. I think we'll see a big improvement in support for people having customer conversations.
Where I think you'd always need a human is where people aren't happy, or there's something complex and they need explaining, there's a great article. I read about this the other day which is, I think I've forgotten the name, it's bio something I'll send you it afterwards, this theory, but it's essentially this human nature, this innate need to know you've been heard by another living thing.
By another human. And I think there's real value in that. In that if you want to If I want to complain, I want to know another person's heard me. Even if they then use AI to help them sort it out, it doesn't matter. When you phone up a company, you've got a problem. You've got that 30 second script in your head that you've been rehearsing because you're angry.
Yes. I just want someone to hear it and then to go, got it. Really? Sorry. Heard it. Let me help you sort it. The rest of that can be dealt with AI, but you need that moment. And when people are like that, they're not going to be happy dealing with a an automated intelligence, particularly when they.
So particularly when they feel like they're unique as well. Everyone thinks their problem is unique. So they're like mine can't be dealt with by that because it's different. Of course, it's not different. So I think these different areas mean that AI means these automated procedures.
It's not going to quite work. I think AI is going to be used in very good ways, but there's going to be some specific things you're still going to want that contact.
[00:47:44] Steve: Yeah. I think there's just to build on that. I think there's an area around. Particularly in contact centers, where you've got layered systems, particularly if there's been mergers, acquisitions, multi layer systems different interfaces for the agent, for an example, or just how to get a data, how to get access to data quickly, I think it will move through that a lot quicker.
I think that's one. One thing I have heard in terms of it being able to be this kind of GUI or at least connector to the data, bring it together in a much more efficient and quicker fashion. I think Klarna released something recently. They did a test run. I've actually got two, so it had 2.
3 million conversations, two thirds of Klarna's customer service chats. Yeah, and they actually saw a a leading to a 25 percent drop in repeat inquiries across multiple languages. Yeah, that's
[00:48:30] John: exactly the kind of thing. Did you see the thing about SoftBank last week?
[00:48:34] Steve: That's the counter.
[00:48:36] John: So the counterpoint or the counter use is SoftBank have released an AI.
They're testing an AI that will change the tone of a customer's voice if the customer is angry. So that the agent, so the agent won't have to deal with. Hearing people be angry at them and the abuse. It will soften the soften the tones that the customers are using. Now there's a couple of things in this.
Firstly, it's interesting. They're investing in AI to make people sound as angry rather than investing to actually improve the experience. So that people aren't angry in the first place. Secondly, I get it because, it's really not good for agents at the moment to have angry customers, to respond in the right way.
You need to know how a customer feels. You need to know where
[00:49:20] Steve: they are. Meet them where they are. Yeah.
[00:49:21] John: Yeah. And thirdly, I think the third weird thing is actually, I don't think that's better. I think there's probably nothing more sinister than someone that's being very angry but saying in a very calm, cool voice.
I think that'd be almost psychotic. It'd be horrible, wouldn't it? So I think, I'm not sure it actually helps the problem at all. But that's where you get that balance, right? That's where Klarna doing it brilliantly, SoftBank. You're like, is that the answer to the problem? I'm not sure it is.
[00:49:44] Steve: Is it not going to challenge the customers to see just how irate they can behave, to see just how much it can be filtered or how can they become so irate that it filters through something at the top?
Yeah the customer,
[00:49:56] John: the customers. The customers will start using an AI that understands AI and they'll be having an argument with each other. Yeah,
[00:50:03] Steve: amazing. John just some thoughts just to close off. Just how do people connect into you? Also just a quick, Again, just your book. Yeah, just a little bit about the book and where people can, I can put links in the show notes and stuff like that as well.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, happy
[00:50:18] John: to, happy to self promote. So yeah. So like a managing partner at the managing part of the foundation, we were. customer growth consultancy in London, but we work around the world helping organizations to yeah, customer experience, customer strategy, innovation work, helping them build customer led organizations, do customer led things.
The book, the human experience came out last year. It's available pretty much everywhere, good bookshops. And if I've got a stack here, I can send out to people online. Again, I'm pretty much everywhere, but mainly most active on LinkedIn. I find that the most. Where I have the most interesting conversations.
So I'm John J. Seals on LinkedIn. And I have a Substack newsletter that's also on LinkedIn. Oh, cool. That's CX stories. And that's my Instagram handle as well, where I post stuff. But yeah, if you go to My LinkedIn, all the links to the book, the Instagram, all on there. So yeah, John J.
Seals is the thing to Google.
[00:51:08] Steve: And I'll put all the links in the show notes as per usual. And actually I think that was, it was a, actually somebody that we know in Amsterdam who connected us. But I think Yeah. As soon as I saw the book, human, human experience, I was like, yeah, John, it definitely needs to come on the show.
Given the podcast is about human experiences. But but no, I really enjoyed the perspective. It's nice to it's nice to connect to back into the UK for for a morning and have a conversation, which always feels good, gives me a little bit of a home feel. I think I've taken a lot from it.
I think it's it's super interesting. I think for me still human is at the core. And I think, anyone listening and I think the work that we do, it will be it in. Respectively different areas still anchors. We have to be this kind of anchor and this counterbalance to AI. I think AI and tech is really important.
I've never, I'm not negative towards it, but but I am also here to argue the human, and I think in order for us to get the best out of this stuff, we've got a ground so much deeper in the human, what we want to be and and what our customers or employees want. Yeah, I feel so much alignment. Even if the word.
Customer, employee, just swap that round, but principally mindset wise very similar. It's all, it's
[00:52:14] John: all people. It's all humans. Brilliant. Thanks for having me on Steve. I really
[00:52:18] Steve: enjoyed it. John, thanks so much. And great to connect with you. And thanks again for joining.
[00:52:23] John: Great, thanks.
[00:52:24] Steve: And there we have it.
Another episode of the Experience Designers podcast. In this one, we've journeyed through broken trains, Swiss efficiency, and even dabbled in ai, all to uncover what really makes a great experience. Massive thanks to John Sills for reminding us that in a world of tech and automation. Being human is still the ultimate super power.
And if you loved what you heard, don't forget to subscribe, leave us a review, and maybe even share your own crazy customer experience story. We know there's plenty out there to choose from. So until the next time, keep designing those unforgettable moments, and stay curious.