A lively and entertaining session, from Colin Shaw, CEO of Beyond Philosophy, kicking off with a 'spot the gorilla' film clip - the issue being we spend so much time obsessing over detail that we can miss the big things. That's when the silly things can creep in, in times like this, and before you know here you are..charging 'bad profits'!

He also told the story of the racing driver, who when interviewed, was asked 'when you saw the accident, did you slow down?' To which he replied, no i didn't, I knew everyone else would slow down so I speeded up!

He asked, what is the experience we are trying to deliver? Most companies don't know! We need to step back and recognise that customers are human beings, and driven by emotions, and are not transactions to be processed!

So, what are the emotions we are trying to evoke in our customers? Most customer experiences today are NOT deliberate or thought through, they are consequences of many decisions the organsation has taken, So, they can come about by accident. So, is our customer experience deliberate?

Colin told a story about something my own company, Aviva, did, in the General Insurance field, a couple of years ago. There are lots of subconscious signals that companies give to customers but if you ask them to articulate them, they may not be able to do so but which do have an impact on the customers. Like pens on chains in banks!

So, we need to find ways to surface the subconscious, In the case study, a car was crashed, and then Colin's team had to go through the whole claims process. Little things then started to happen..... the first question the contact centre asked was, what is your policy number, and of course they did not know, as he was not at home! When the recovery vehicle arrived, the customer was told, we have to take you home, but the customer said I would rather be taken 5 miles down the road to my office than 100 miles to my home, but told, no we can't do that, we need to take you home, thats what the policy says!

The point is, there is an emotional journey that customers go through as well as a 'process' or physical or rational thing.

We then switched to audience voting, based on how we felt during a story Colin told us about his airline experience at the airport, involving coaches to different airports, fighting for places on the coach, having to load own luggage into coach, being counted in "there are 31 of THEM", queuing, only to be told you are in the wrong queue.

So, a very entertaining presentation, that also illustrated to me the power of stories - I guess quite a few of us will remember Colin's terrible airport experience for some time, and who knows, even tell others about it!

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Great presentation from Suhail Khan, VP Customer Experience, Phillips International, focusing on promoters - a nice angle, as it is always to easy to just focus on detractors.

Over the last 5 months, Suhail did the 'world tour' and found that while the desire to do the right thing is there, the challenge is to really get this into 'how we do business round here' .

Don't forget that every dialogue you have with a customer is an opportunity to sell. It's not good enough to stop talking to people after you learn that they would promote you - if you can arm them with the right things at the right time, to spread the word, then that is even more powerful.

Need to create the same sense of urgency that there is around dealing with detractors, for dealing with  promoters  - they are just as important!

It is great to focus on the employees too - if you dont have a powerful promoter employee base, then it is harder to create customer advocates. But don't forget that if your delighted customers can recommend you to others who have not had a great experience, then it illustrates to that 'passive' person that you can get it right for others, and maybe they'll give you a second chance?

Phillips Include the promoter feedback in tenders for business now - very powerful! Suhail says that if you include a reference into a proposal, the likelihood of getting to the next round goes up 3%, but if that person is willing to speak on your behalf to others, it goes up 20%!  Imagine having a whole database of these people!

They have now formalized the process by creating a Reference Programme, a database of promoters willing to talk on Phillip's behalf, and also creates a knowledge base among staff, searching for promoters

Employees really need to be empowered to take action on your behalf, NPS is a behaviour - people need to be educated that all roles have a clear impact on customers, whatever their role. He has done lots of work to 'map' roles and what they do, and back to how it helps the customer.

Also, created internal network of champions, the face of Phillips, to spread the word, and delight internal employees to make it a great place to work. You need passionate people! The Face of Phillips is a great internal programme to create ambassadors, and spread the word, on customer and employee centricity. In a year, they had 300 ambassadors, who then started to host ambassador days, with customers in there too, hosted by regional CEOs, and then invited employees to come in and talk to the customers too - all maintained on company intranet, with access to all

On top management, he says, we want our executives to be promoters, but just approvers of budget! If they are your advocates, then it is so much more powerful, in Board and senior level discussions - it makes for less theoretical and more real and practical discussions.

Great stuff.