Author: Mark Atterby

Providing citizens with fast and efficient access to information and government services is seen as a priority for most federal and state departments as well as local governments across Australia. But most public sector organisations and government institutions, due to their size and complexity, face enormous challenges in improving the citizen experience. Australians now expect the same level of service and quality of experiences as citizens as they do as customers. This is prompting governments to adopt citizen-centric service delivery models which will improve customers’ experience. Jamie Romanin, Director, Webex Customer Experience Practice APJC, Cisco, says, “If the past two…

Mark Atterby interviews Tom Scantlebury, CEO and Founder of Sky Blue, about the importance of connecting with customers as humans and exceeding their expectations. Mark Atterby (MA): Can you please provide a background to your career and why you founded Blue Sky? Tom Scantlebury (TM): My background was actually originally in hotels. I was in hotel management for about twenty years. In my opinion, hospitality is really where customer experience started. Companies in the hotel industry and hospitality are inherently customer-focused businesses. They have led the development and growing maturity of customer experience and have been early adopters in the use…

Mark Atterby interviews Rik Johnson, Head of Solutions at Curious Thing, about the importance of challenging assumptions when it comes to designing customer experiences and conversational AI. Mark Atterby (MA): Please explain your current position and provide a background to your career? Rik Johnson (RJ): I have the best job in the world! As Head of Solutions, I get to work with our customers and partners, to uncover their customer engagement problems and design conversational AI solutions that fit. It was a pretty haphazard journey to get to this role. I started my working life as a front line call…

In a career spanning 25 years, Jasmine Gray, Customer Success Team Manager APAC at cloud based telephony company Aircall, has applied her formula for customer success and experience to a wide variety of roles across multiple organisations. Mark Atterby talks to Jasmine Gray, about her career and what she has learnt about helping customers succeed. Mark Atterby (MA): Jasmine can you please provide an overview of your current role at Aircall? Jasmine Gray (JG): I’m the Customer Success Team Manager for APAC at global cloud phone solution company Aircall. In my current role, I oversee a team of customer success…

Being able to connect and work with other people is critical to successful customer experience and change management. Jane Tyzack, founding Director of Change Playbook, has built her long and successful career on her ability to collaborate and work with other people. Mark Atterby recently interviewed Jane about her approach to managing large-scale CX and change management projects. Mark Atterby (MA): Jane can you please provide a background to your career and why you founded the Change Playbook? Jane Tyzack (JT): I’ve been fortunate to have built my career within customer-facing roles. Starting from the frontline, in a contact centre, through…

Delivering a great customer experience is hard. There are so many factors that go into creating a great customer experience including strategy, culture, processes, technology and organisational structure. Customer expectations are constantly rising – and what’s seen as exceptional service today, may not be the exceptional service of tomorrow. Businesses need to keep innovating and improving their service, or risk being left behind. Ecosystm’s recent Digital CX Study found 41% of customers want better integration of digital and physical experiences and 37% have a continuous desire for a better customer experience. The same survey highlighted that 60% of businesses reported using design thinking…

Many CX leaders and executives have diverse backgrounds that encompass a variety of job roles across multiple industries. Such leaders have a deep understanding of how CX impacts or connects with all areas of the business. Mark Atterby, CXFocus Editor, speaks to one such CX leader, Jodie Fielding who is currently Chief Delivery Officer at Influx. Jodie is also a Director at Humind. Humind is a CX design and consultancy collective, helping organisations to discover, design, and deliver experiences with the human in mind. This interview is part of a series of interviews where CX executives and leaders share the…

Organisations are using conversational AI to relieve the pressure on their contact centres while at the same time aiming to improve productivity and service levels. In the past, the performance of chatbots has been somewhat poor and the results disappointing. In recent years, however, AI technology has come a long way and some organisations at least have started to mature in their understanding of its potential use and application. When we talk about Conversation AI the focus tends to be on chatbots and virtual assistants, but as Tim Sheedy, Principal Adviser at research and analyst firm Ecosystm, points out, it…

It has become accepted wisdom in the CX community for brands to delight or ‘wow’ their customers. But the truth is, delighting your customers may not necessarily build loyalty or raise revenue. That’s not to say that the effort to delight is useless but you need to get a few things right first. David Lucy, Director of Customer Relations at Aplo, acknowledges the benefits of delighting customers but strongly advises that before you delight you need to be consistent. “In terms of customer experience, there is effectively a base level that needs to be met before you start to delight.…

Providing customers with a connected and frictionless experience requires a full understanding of the end-to-end customer journey. Where does it start, where does it end, and what happens along the way? What are the customers’ goals, needs, and pain points at each stage of that journey? The customer journey is the complete sum of experiences that customers go through when interacting with your company and brand. Instead of looking at just a part of a transaction or experience, the customer journey documents the full experience of being a customer. The barriers to understanding this journey can include a lack of data…