TalkTalk has been spending a lot of time recently trying to understand what constitutes a great experience for our customers and then trying to make that happen for them, either by making changes to products or processes or introducing new ones. Luckily for my team, Consumer Insights, this requires a lot of dialogue with our customers to understand their needs.
In the telecoms market we have a habit of navel gazing, when striving to improve our performance. We all benchmark ourselves against our competitors or comparable companies, but in the main we don’t often look to other industries for inspiration.
Last week I attended a conference hosted by the Telecom Executive Network. One of the more interesting panel discussions on the agenda was one that focused on delivering a great customer experience.
Instead of a panel comprised of telecoms execs, the panel was made up of three people from non-telecoms companies. One of those was the Director of Sales and Marketing from Virgin Atlantic, Paul Dickinson. He talked about the customer insight used when Virgin Atlantic developed its popular “Drive Thru Check-In” service. With Drive Thru Check-In, customers of Virgin’s Upper Class service are picked up at their home by a chauffeur-driven car and dropped at a special check-in area away from the crowds usually associated with terminals such Heathrow Terminal 3. From there the customer is whisked through security and can be sitting in the Virgin Atlantic lounge in under 10 minutes.
What struck me about the service, other than the fact that I would love to be able to use it, was that it was developed off of a very simple customer insight – business customers want a fast and consistent check-in experience. From that simple insight Virgin Atlantic has been able to develop a service that provides them with competitive advantage and is a service that customers are willing to pay for.
Now I am not saying that the airline business is the easiest business to be in at the moment, but it’s insights like these that make Virgin Atlantic such an innovative and admired business. It’s a model for customer insight we’re looking to replicate at TalkTalk.
So, with that in mind, what are your customer insights? Aside from phone and broadband businesses, which companies impress you most with an innovative approach to service delivery, and why?
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TalkTalk Blog Team