James Dodkins, the Customer Experience Rockstar, is a high energy, entertaining, and musical keynote speaker who uses his experience as a real-life rockstar to help companies understand and improve their customer experience and company culture. The UK’s #1 CX Influencer, James shares his mindset and framework with Modern Insurance Magazine as he explains how to deliver a Rockstar Customer Experience.

Q. Firstly, how do you define customer experience?

A. A customer experience is the sum of the thoughts, feelings, and interactions a customer has about and with different products and services on the journey towards achieving a goal or outcome. This is a slightly different definition than you would usually see in the Customer Experience world, but I don’t look at the customer experience as just the interactions with one company, I see it as interactions with many different companies as that is what the customer actually experiences. 

Q. Secondly, what is a Rockstar Customer Experience? 

A. Rockstars do things differently. They stand out from the crowd. They don’t have customers, they have fans. They don’t follow convention, they don’t comply to the norm, and they don’t follow the rules. They don’t ask for permission, they thrill, they excite, and they inspire. They’re empowered, they’re confident and they are unforgettable.
A Rockstar Customer Experience is one that makes your customer feel like the person at the front row watching their favourite band play.

Q. How did you come up with the concept?

A. I used to have a music career, playing guitar in a rock touring band, and when I entered the Customer Experience world I started to see how many similarities there are between putting on a show for your fans and delivering an experience to your customers.

 Q. Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, many businesses have been forced to work remotely, meaning that there has been an increase in digital customer support and a decrease in face-to-face appointments. How can companies continue to deliver a Rockstar customer experience through predominately digital platforms?

A. If you treat your employees like rockstars, that will turn your customers into fans. That doesn’t change just because there is a pandemic. 

 Q. Do you think customer expectations have changed during the Covid-19 crisis? Do companies now need to be more honest with their customers and set proactive expectations during such an uncertain time?

A. Most definitely. Customers’ expectations are constantly changing and evolving, and the pandemic has onlysped this up. Making sure to set honest and realistic expectations with your customers is one of the best things a company can do right now.

Q. The last seven months has been testing, how can companies regain trust and loyalty that may have been lost during that time?

A. I think this will be a make or break period for a lot of companies, many havefailed, and I don’t know if that can ever be repaired. If you can’t be there for your customers in the bad times, don’t expect them to be there for you in the good times. 

Q. How can companies ensure their employees feel empowered and valued, and is the significance of this sometimes underestimated?

A. The first step to making an employee feel empowered is to empower them. The first step to making an employee feel valued is to value them. It’s not about platitudes, it’s about actions.

Q. Can you explain what the 4 Step Framework to Proactive Experience Recovery is?

1. Identify the things that cause dissatisfaction in your experiences (you probably already know this).
2. Monitor the experience in real-time to notice when one of these things happens.
3. When you notice one of these things has happened – communicate to the customer that you know something isn’t right or something has gone wrong (even if they haven’t noticed it themself yet).
4. Compensate, or sometimes just correcting the mistake can be enough. It doesn’t have to be a monetary compensation, but a gesture can go a long way to change how a customer feels about a situation, especially when they haven’t had to ask for it. 

Q. What are your top pieces of advice for the insurance industry when managing their customer experience strategy?

A. Understand your customers, understand their needs, and design experiences that deliver them. 

James Dodkins is the Customer Experience Rockstar, the UK’s #1 CX Influencer, a Global Keynote Speaker, Host of Amazon Prime’s ‘This Week in CX’, an accidental #1 best-selling Author, and CX Trainer. 

https://www.rockstar.cx/