For our holiday this year, we wanted to do something different, so we decided to go to Belgium and Luxembourg, which, by the way, is an underrated holiday destination if you like castles and forests. Since we have a baby, we decided to drive there, to reduce the hassle. But how would this compare to our usual experience of taking the plane? I’ll use this case study to highlight some important components of the multi-channel customer experience as we crossed the channel.
The booking process was pretty simple, and pretty much matched the process for booking a flight. The best part, however, was when we arrived at the ferry terminal in Dover. This is a classic case of a “moment of truth” – the customer is under stress, and the way customers are dealt with at times like this makes or breaks a customer experience.
We pulled straight off the motorway, through a well-organised and signposted road system, a good example of how the customer experience before the customer arrives into your company’s property is important, so the Port Authority of Dover and the Highways Agency played their part in making this a good customer experience.
Next came the really clever bit. I’d like you to imagine the most efficient possible way you could process people onto a ferry, and I bet that the way P&O do it exceeds this.
We came to an arrangement of check-in booths with barriers, like motorway tollbooths, and as we pulled up to the barrier, the man in the booth said “Mr Raistrick, how many people are travelling with you today?”. I was shocked and delighted. This was like arriving at the Ritz.
A camera at the gate, connected to a car number plate recognition system had matched the plate to the booking record, and appeared on the screen in the booth within a few seconds. This is the most important aspect of the multichannel customer experience – touchpoints between channels, and what makes or breaks this is whether the channel you’re using (in this case face to face) knows about the last channel you used to interact with the company (in this case web).
We were processed extremely rapidly, which was good for us, and good for P&O – a great example of how customer experience and cost-saving can go hand-in-hand. We were then given a lane number, which we hung on our reversing mirror, and drove through a well-organised system of hundreds of lanes, until we found ours. A man checked the number on the mirror as we drove onto the ferry, increasing their efficiency and reducing delays.
Once on the ferry, the first thing which improved the customer experience was the usability of the navigation. We were on deck 5, and took the orange stairs, a fantastic cross-referencing system to allow us to find our car again.
The food and seating on ferry were, I must admit, nowhere near as good as what I’ve experienced on other ferries recently in Scotland, the Baltic and New Zealand, but then again, it was a lot cheaper too, so I didn’t necessarily expect this. A good example of how a company’s Customer Experience strategy can focus effort on those “moments of truth”, whilst not needing to improve the entire Customer Experience to maximise the RoI of Customer Experience investment.
Whilst on holiday, we decided to move our return date forward a day, so I logged onto the website, because this is much cheaper and easier than calling when you’re abroad. This was one moment of truth where I was disappointed – there was no way to change it online, and no information on how to do it either. I was wasting time – I wanted to be visiting castles, and here I was fishing around a website (or “some stupid website” as I no doubt referred to it at the time). At least the website had a phone number, so I called up, and they charged a nominal £10 fee to move the day. Stress over.
Customer service is often neglected as it is not seen as ‘critical path’, or is managed by a different team with a different budget. However, it is a key part of the customer experience, and relatively cheap improvements could make a lot of difference (and, in this case, reduce costs too, as channel shift from phone to web usually does).
When we returned from our holiday in Belgium, feeling suntanned (yes, suntanned!) and full of chocolate, we arrived at the port a bit early. Having driven quite a way, we were not in the mood for any hassle, but the same efficient booth greeted us, and we were booked onto the next available ferry hassle-free. The airlines could learn a thing or two from this high level of consistency between the way the customer is processed in different countries.
Not having to take the plane was a breath of fresh air. I didn’t have to stand in a line, take my shoes off, remove my laptop, deny myself access to liquids, have my retina scanned, or have my luggage rummaged. The airlines have no control over this, but it’s an important lesson in how third parties can make or break a customer experience. ‘Verified by Visa’ take note.
Although not perfect, my experience with P&O helped us to have the most relaxing holiday we’ve had in ages. A superb cross-channel customer experience.
Dean Carlton
/ July 23, 2011Excellent analysis of “cross-channel” (doh! only just ‘got’ that!) customer experience and how to do it right. Great to see a non-theoretical example.