Author: Mark Atterby

At the beginning of 2020 New Zealand’s Contact Energy appointed Tighe Wall as Chief Digital Officer, to take charge of their digital transformation journey. CXFocus editor Mark Atterby, talks to Tighe about Contact Energy’s success in driving enterprise wide change and improving the end-to-end customer journey. Established some twenty years, Contact Energy has built an extensive network of renewable energy assets based on renewable hydro and geothermal energy sources. 80 -85 % of the electricity it produces is renewable. Contact has nearly 400,000 energy, gas, and broadband customers across New Zealand. Recently, the company decided to expand beyond its core…

The impact of COVID has made most organisations re-evaluate how they manage their employees. In response to lock down restrictions and the need to keep people safe companies had to move quickly, which meant mistakes were made but many positive lessons for the future were also learnt. The most important is likely to be the need to recognise employees as individuals by offering flexible working arrangements. In the last 12 months workplaces across Australia and the world have been compelled en masse to adopt remote working. Almost overnight, to enable their workforces to work remotely, organisations had to upgrade their…

There are three things that can make or break an online shopping experience for Australian consumers according to recent research. They are slow delivery times, poor protection of personal payment data and a poor returns policy. Those who get these things right, however, can benefit from increased customer loyalty, positive reviews and repeat business. The pandemic has initiated the move to all things digital and online. The demand for online services matched with increasing expectations for online shopping experiences has accelerated. Research produced by SOTI From Bricks to Clicks: State of Mobility in Retail 2021 Report, notes that 83% of Australian…

Trust is a critical component in the evolution of CX, particularly in a world and consumer landscape ravaged by the impact of COVID 19. Without trust, it’s almost impossible to build customer engagement and loyalty. Trust can make or break a business. Yet, in today’s digital world where things are constantly being disrupted, establishing trust is a significant challenge. These days, consumers have an increasing array of options available to them. Across multiple industries, digital technology has allowed new brands to quickly emerge and challenge established brands, thereby creating a multitude of new and competing offers. Today’s consumers are also…

Volkswagen Group Australia’s obsession with improving the customer experience and making life easier for customers, has placed the company in the top spot for brand loyalty in the Australian automotive industry. Jason Bradshaw, chief customer and marketing officer for Volkswagen Group Australia, talks about their customer experience journey. Back in in 2015, Volkswagen Group Australia knew the experience it provided customers was inconsistent at best. This impacted brand loyalty as well as generating significant inefficiencies, where substantial resources were spent on fixing preventable problems. Employee turnover was on the rise and customer satisfaction ranked lowest against all automotive brands in…

Yarra Valley Water won “Customer Experience Team of the Year” at the Ashton Media Customer Experience Awards 2020. In this interview, Dr Anna Lorenzetto talks about Yarra Valley Water’s CX journey and the initiatives they took to understand their customer needs. Yarra Valley Water is the largest water utility in Melbourne. Providing water and sanitation services to more than 1.8 million people and 50,000 businesses, its service area encompasses 4,000 square kilometres. Yarra Valley Water is a company owned by the Victorian government. In 2018 Yarra Valley Water made the strategic decision to become a customer centric organisation by creating…

These days marketing and customer experience are all about data. Having sufficient, accurate data to draw insights from and support critical decisions that help grow the business. Most organisations, however, have struggled to integrate and leverage their data in a way that’s easy for marketing to use. Are Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) the answer? Similar technologies and software has existed in the past, but the term customer data platform was first used in 2013. CDP grew into an industry by 2017 and by 2020 has reached mainstream popularity across businesses of all shapes and sizes[i]. Gartner defines a CDP as:…

Many local councils across Australia have started their CX and digital transformation journeys. They are all at different stages of their journey, have different objectives and have greatly differing requirements but they all share one key objective – to promote ‘trust’ between citizens and the local governments that are meant to serve them. Local governments in Australia are typically very complex organisations providing numerous services to a very diverse range of people and communities. Aside from services around property, waste management and roads, over 50% of council budgets are spent on community services that can include health care, parking, aged…

To have a successful CX team means bringing onboard and engaging the right people in the right roles. Who exactly those right people are, will depend on the organisation, where the team sits under the organisation’s structure and how broadly you scope the function and responsibilities of the CX team. The CX team for a large bank is unlikely to look the same as the CX team for a niche ecommerce provider. What do CX teams do? If a company is completely centred around the customer and improving the customer experience, theoretically everyone who works within that organisation could be…

Successful digital transformation can prove to be elusive for business leaders who do not have a holistic view of their business and the customer journey. This may prove to particularly critical for enterprises in the wake of the COVID pandemic as the move to all things digital accelerates. Digital transformation refers to the integration of digital technology into all areas of an organisation resulting in fundamental changes to how the business operates and how it delivers values to customers. All too frequently, however, it’s viewed narrowly as a means to improve operational efficiencies. Vicky Katsabaris, head of customer experience solution…