You have to pity the presenter who gets the post-lunch spot, especially when the subject is the somewhat dry matter of process - rather than an exceptional case study or claim to NPS fame! But what James Young, EMEA Director of Consulting, outlined was that without the right approach and process all you'll get is "Infamy! Infamy! They all have it in for me!"

Interestingly, in the UK at least, there are reports appearing about an uplift in Service industry performance. Designing the service and support journey was the subject so this was a good place to start. In today's economic climate, the service provided to customers along their journey with you becomes a top driver of loyalty and is even more important where sales are in decline.

James outlined that you need to:

• Add value to the relationship through services
• Fulfil the promises you make
• Be aware that recession spending puts more focus on the service units of your organisation
• Engage your employees
• And, most importantly, be loyal to YOUR customers

To understand pain or pleasure points in the customer journey, you need to ensure that

• You design the right tools to solicit customer feedback
• You apply the right "diagnostics"
• You focus on turning insight into action, not navel-gazing analysis
• You drive a positive service culture

James did treat us to a couple of mini case studies, using Virgin and E.on to show the importance of mapping the journey correctly but mainly focused on the key requirements for gathering customer feedback, ascertain your drivers, understand your verbatims, apply your business knowledge and combine this to make a positive impact on the customer experience.

Get the process right, get the tools right, get the action focus right - you'll get the program right.

Definitely a dry subject, but fundamental to your success.