AMEX on Customer Experience: How to Make Service Your "Biggest Competitive Advantage"

In 2012, few in the business world would dare dismiss the importance of the customer experience. Though some might debate the significance of certain trends and channels, when it comes to the overall question of delivering a satisfactory service level for customers, relevance is beyond question.

But as professionals talk about "competing on the customer experience" and delivering elite customer service, they often forget that the pivotal word is "customer." They devote thousands of employees and billions of dollars to creating what they believe, theoretically, represents a great customer experience, but they forget that the main recipient of that investment—and the only party qualified to determine its greatness—is the customer itself.

For American Express, which maintains a customer experience so glowing it can actually trace the success of its initiatives to dollars-and-cents business results, defining the customer experience in a manner not dictated by the customer is recognized for the unintuitive, absurd concept that it is. As a result, the financial powerhouse can point to service as its "biggest competitive advantage."

The groundwork for delivering an experience that comes from what the customer wants—not what books on management "best practices" say all organizations should be doing—comes from cherishing the relationship element of calls.

"By implementing a Relationship Care philosophy we moved from the robotic scripts and let our customers decide how much time they wanted to spend on the phone with us," explains Russell Nickson, senior vice president, American Express, and a speaker at the 5^thCustomer Experience Management conference in Australia. "Our frontline employees – we call them Customer Care Professionals (CCPs) - seek to…understand the customer’s situation and all of their relationships with American Express."

American Express’ CCPs focus on offering "tailored information" to each customer demonstrates that the relationship goes beyond the specific, transactional nature of the call. Interactions are not simply about solving the short-term, singular problem at-hand but instead creating a meaningful rapport that helps maximize the value the customer gets out of its card.

Clearly the right philosophy in theory—anyone who thinks the metrics and strategies should be determined independently of the customer’s voice does not get customer management—AMEX’s strategy also yields tangible business results.

"Since we’ve integrated Relationship Care into our culture, we have found that a customer is far more likely to say they would recommend American Express to a friend," says Nickson. "We are seeing increased performance and, in turn, profitability, as we continue to invest in our front line.

"In fact, Cardmember attrition is significantly lower among our ‘promoters’ and they rate us highly on recommend to a friend. At the same time, our Cardmember spending is higher among those who are ‘promoters’ and rate us highly on recommend to a friend. Clearly, [this] unique service ethos or philosophy…works."

A (sadly) unique philosophy indeed, AMEX’s customer care template is about more than a way of thinking. It requires the implementation of specific metrics and agent engagement strategies that facilitate the introduction of a customer-first culture.

"We shifted away from ‘internal quality monitoring’ and launched Recommend to a Friend," explains Nickson. "RTF is a new metric based on Net Promoter scores, where we tie a customer’s satisfaction with a specific call back to the actual representative that took that call. Our Customer Care Professionals are no longer rated on what they say or how fast they complete the transaction. Now, it’s about what the customer says."

The philosophical shift towards acting on the "voice of the customer" is certainly not exclusive to AMEX, but when it comes to achievement of that objective, success is far less common.

What is the hold-up? No matter how much rhetoric companies and their leaders put forth about customer-centricity, few have taken the necessary steps to ensure frontline agents—the key drivers of valuable customer interactions—view themselves as accountable to the customer rather than simply to the orders of a fat cat boss sitting behind a closed door in his office.

AMEX succeeds by not falling into that trap. In addition to giving agents an incentive to prioritize customer satisfaction, it also demonstrates an organizational commitment to managing on the voice of the customer rather than the whim of the supervisor.

"Our CCPs earn variable compensation based on their ability to drive customer satisfaction on every call – we ensure that our top performing Customer Care Professionals have additional opportunities to increase their total compensation," clarifies Nickson. "Our direct customer feedback also drives coaching on how to continually improve the customer experience. We believe there is no better way to improve the customer experience than by acting on each and every point of customer feedback."

What drives your customer experience? An empty pledge to care more about the customer…or full acceptance of the notion that every metric, every agent coaching strategy and every interaction at every customer touch point must recognize customer satisfaction as the primary objective?

Russell Nickson, AMEX, will be speaking at the 5^thCustomer Experience Management 2012 event in Sydney, Australia. Download the agenda to get a deeper look at this unparalleled program:

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