We were lucky to have David Speakman, chairman of Travel Counsellors, with us today to share his humor and his thoughts on how to succeed through trusted relationships.

Before I summarize some of David’s key points, it’s worth highlighting that his team of independent work-from-home travel counsellors earn some of the highest Net Promoter Scores in the world at more than 90% (94% based on their most recent data post-travel). At this level of performance, they have the travel counsellors call up any customers with a score of 8 or below, and their standard for excellence is the perfect 10.

David’s entertaining speech gave us a glimpse of how they accomplish this.

The Business Concept for Travel Counsellors

A serial entrepreneur, David started his career as a grocer, opened a couple of restaurants (one a great success, one not), and started another travel agency, all before the concept for Travel Counsellors was born.

When he decided to get back into the travel agency business, he designed the business model for Travel Counsellors from scratch. He didn’t want a big staff or lots of overhead and phone bills, but he DID want to inspire people and he wanted people to be their own bosses.

Their unique formula creates that autonomy for their independent travel counsellors to be successful, by getting the core support they need from a central team in the UK that provides training, systems, processes, and the other key business needs.

The company has grown from a start-up to a network of more than 700 independent counsellors that generate more than £310 million of sales turnover.

Hiring for the Right Traits

An opening video told the story of one travel counsellor who recounted her sense of pride in serving her clients. As David put it, “You have to spend the time to get the right people into the business.”

They have found that the best travel consultants are team players, they want to belong, and they are family-oriented. They learned through trial and error that the right profile was not someone who wanted to start their own business, but instead someone who is passionate about service and making a personal connection with the customer. What Travel Counsellors did was to remove all of the hassles of running a small business, and handle this overhead so that counsellors could do what they like best: build relationships.

Relationships Are More than Service – It’s about Emotion

David describing his philosophy for creating emotional connections that go beyond “transactional service” to the heart of what makes for a trusted relationship with the customer. In the age of our technology economy, David pointed out some of his favorite quotes, including:

“Emotion is the one human ability that cannot be automated.”

“Companies need to understand that their products are less important than their stories.”

They analysed what really makes the difference between the most successful travel counsellors and the average ones. From this, they developed a list of 13 Golden Habits. They have made these Golden habits part of the management software that is provided to every work-from-home counsellor, reinforcing behaviours that help them build and sustain strong relationships. The company also compiles a book of stories about the good work of its counsellors to further reinforce the Golden Habits.

But it’s not just about culture. Their management software also embeds and tracks the value of referrals. For each travel counsellor they keep track not only of the number of referrals they get, but also who those referred customers are, and the value of travel bookings from referred customers over time. This helps them to truly understand the network effect of word-of-mouth recommendations and referrals for their bottom line and for the travel counsellor’s personal business.

How to Differentiate: “Don’t super-transact, super-relate!”

David illustrated the difference between transactional vs. relational models of interaction with these comparisons:

• Shopper vs. Customer
• Demands customer service vs. Looks to trust someone
• Short-term customer vs. Long-term customer
• Fear of not getting the lowest price vs. Fear of making the wrong choice
• Looks for price vs. Looks for expertise
• Does not value your service vs. Pays what you are worth
• Does not want a relationship vs. Wants a trusted friend

The bottom line: you want to create a relationship so that people trust you. “It’s not about the money” was David’s big message. If you do the right thing, then the money comes to you. If you get the relationship right, then you will get the money right.

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Goodbye Dell Hell!

18 months ago was the point that Dell really moved away from servicing customers and started to focus on delighting customers. The concept that drives this is the demand from customers that Dell "deliver technology solutions that enable people everywhere to grow and thrive." Not products - but solutions.

In moving to delighting customers, Dell chose to use the Net Promoter metric and implement the discipline of ongoing improvement that is monitored by the central team but driven by the business. Net Promoter is simple and effective and today, the Net Promoter scores achieved by Dell are reported side by side with the share price.

The program at Dell is very encompassing. Covering not just B2C but also all of the B2B segments, the feedback gathered is very focused on the customer journey and the key touchpoints that impact customers. And this is not the internal view of the journey, but an external, customer perception of the experience.

Side by side with NPS, the central Customer Experience team have introduced the concept of a Net Satisfaction score. By drawing correlations between the scores, this actually helps the organisation to focus on the specific pain points that drive a customer towards a Detractor status. It enables the organisation to really focus on the areas that need most improvement.

Direct feedback from customers has driven the company towards providing the right choices to customers, to simplifying the products and to eliminating cost and complexity. This has been embraced across the organisation. Although 70% of the impact on NPS is driven by Product and Support, the other functions within the company are also cognisant of the need to improve. Change and improvement programs have been adopted throughout the Dell organisation, including in:

• Design
• Planning and Pricing
• Purchase and Delivery
• Service and Support

"Consumerization" is the key. Focusing on the consumer requirements, how they interact - and this includes a large focus on social media - is central to the transformation happening at Dell. Using a great example from the tech4mommies.com website, Gary was able to demonstrate how the organisation is working to turn detractors into promoters.

And it is working. The efforts led by Gary's team, with the direct support of the CEO, Michael Dell, are really changing the way in which the business sees their customers. One customer - one interaction - one promoter. And it's not just the direct business that's impacted. Dell give back to the world. From developing technical solutions for emerging countries, building learning classrooms in China and providing Breast Cancer detection support in the US - Dell is truly transformational.