On Friday 10 March, we held our first customer experience (CX) focus group sessions, with guest speaker Dr Brownell O’Connor, CX consultant. As many of you are aware, Brownell helped us ‘kick-off’ CX in December. Feedback from the December workshops was so positive, we invited Brownell back to help us shape the CX focus group sessions, and develop a realistic approach to delivering the programme without a CX team currently in place.
The purpose of CX focus groups is to gain an understanding of the emotional journey our customers have when using specific IT systems or services. By running these sessions, and other CX workshops, we will learn where the ‘pain points’ are, helping us to understand and empathise with our customers. However, this does not mean we need to change everything we do in order to please our customers! CX is about understanding the customer experience, in order to make an informed decision on where improvements are required. It is not about being perfect – it is about gaining insight into where the most important ‘moments of truth’ are along a customer journey. This means we can focus on what really matters to our customers, and what makes sense to improve from a business perspective.
During the March focus group sessions, a ‘current state’ and ‘future (ideal) state’ journey map of the student experience was created – one by our staff, the other by our customers. No examples or material was provided to participants in advance, it was important that no one had any preconceived notions prior to attending. At the end of each session, the groups compared results. It was very interesting – a real eye-opener!
Overall, feedback from the sessions has been positive. We still have a long way to go, but we are moving in the right direction.
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For more information about IT Services Customer Experience please email Kim Yeandle-Hignell, Customer Experience Manager.
ITS Customer Experience mission: To actively listen, connect and engage with customers to ensure they are receiving the systems and services they require, empowering them to achieve their goals and enabling them to stay connected from anywhere, anyplace and at anytime.