Rich insights, real wins: Customer feedback into frontline action

Full episode transcript

[00:01:00]

Khalipha: Please welcome to the podcast Steve Nussbaum and Rupert Bonning-Lover. Welcome, both of you, to the podcast.

Steve: Hey, thanks for having us. Been looking forward to it.

Rupert: Thanks for having us. I think we've wanted to come on and talk to you for a while. So, like Rupert said, thanks for making the time to speak to us.

Khalipha: Of course. As one of this year's Xcellence Award winners, I think it absolutely made sense to talk to you about how you've set the standard for success when it comes to what works across BX, CX and EX. You're clearly doing something right as award winners, so thank you again so much for taking the time.

I'm looking forward to a really cool conversation with both of you.

Steve: Likewise. It’ll be good to explain what we've done, what we've learned, how we started, where we're currently at and where we plan to go.

Khalipha: Amazing. Let's take a step back, and I'll start off with you, Rupert.

[00:02:00]

Businesses today are collecting a lot more customer feedback than ever before. So why do you think so many businesses still struggle to turn those customer insights into meaningful action?

Rupert: Just speaking from our experiences, one of the most important things is being able to step back and understand: do we need to collect some of this customer feedback?

If we're going to collect customer feedback and it's not being used or it's not actionable, that's probably the wrong place to be going. It's actually better not to ask the question than to ask it and potentially waste the customer's time or create a false sense that something's actually going to happen with their feedback.

Ultimately, the key thing is to get the data that you actually want to receive and analyse.

One of the key things we've done here at HMV is split customer feedback into what areas are actionable in terms of service delivery on the shop floor, and what areas we want to monitor but need some head-office eyes on as well.

[00:03:00]

That's probably the first thing. The second thing is that some of the richest areas of insight in terms of customer feedback are actually within the verbatim comments rather than some of the survey questions.

So one of the most important things is using data analytics to get to the good stuff and understand what customers are saying. Otherwise, you could spend a very long time reading comments.

Steve: That's a great point. You can ask 100 questions, but you're never going to be able to act on 100 questions. So when you're looking at what you're getting back and what your insight is, you need to make sure you're asking the right questions to be able to take the right actions forward.

Khalipha: That makes absolute sense. Steve, at HMV, one of the approaches you've taken is focusing the customer experience into a specific set of core priorities through what you call the Super Six initiative.

[00:04:00]

Why was this approach so important for you at HMV?

Steve: I think it's important to state that it took us a while to get to the Super Six. For the first five to six years, we were focusing on different areas.

When we first started, we were looking at likelihood to recommend and likelihood to return as our priorities. Then you start getting into it and learning more about your business through your insights.

We wanted a set of actions that we could see as being store-measurable. Store managers don't have any control over what HMV charges, but what they do have control over is the actual customer experience in the store from start to finish.

From the moment the customer walks into a store, what is the offer like? What is the service like?

Off the back of what we were asking in the survey, we created what we called the Super Six.

[00:05:00]

These are all areas that store management teams can control from, literally, walk-in to walk-out.

We looked at assistance — whether there'll be assistance on the shop floor for customers. We had to modify that question to make sure what we were asking was relevant, because not all customers would need assistance.

Then friendliness. Staff can be responsible for their own friendliness, right? You employ the right people, give them the right tools and have the right personalities on your shop floor.

Knowledge is all about the tools we have to use, and these days we have so many tools within the business. Then we talk about products, speed at the till — all things that you can react to and control from a store perspective — right through to the last part of the Super Six around being exceptional.

That's essentially what we encourage and what we want all customers to experience, whether you're going to one of our smaller stores at 9:00 AM on opening or coming to where we are today, Oxford Street, at 8:00 PM late in the evening.

[00:06:00]

We want all customers to have a great — what we call an exceptional — experience.

We thought about how you do that. We've given store colleagues a set of objectives. Within the Super Six, they have a set of objectives and benchmarks to achieve them.

Then the second part is: how do you engage colleagues? How do you go from having a list of Super Six to actually implementing it in-store?

We've had a really concise key message through what we do as a business back-of-house, and we've tried to make it fun by producing mouse mats, posters and mugs to really engage people, as well as other things.

So we created the Super Six, and from then on we've really pushed on in terms of the programme and what we've learned.

Rupert: Just to carry on from what Steve said there, there are two things. We want staff to bring out their personalities at work and give exceptional service.

But equally, we want to see a level of consistency in terms of service delivery in stores.

[00:07:00]

One of the things we've focused on, as well as looking at the overall numbers, is: what is our best-performing store? What's our worst-performing store? And can we reduce the gap between the top and bottom each year?

That's probably almost more important than the overall performance.

Khalipha: As a customer and consumer, what sticks with me is what you're saying about a person's personality and how, when that's served, it really does make a difference in the shopping experience.

At least for me, when someone is friendly the moment I step in — they greet me, ask me how I am, ask whether I need assistance — just seeing their personality shine really makes a difference in the overall experience I have with the brand.

I find myself more often than not returning. Yes, because the product is great. Yes, because I had an easy process from taking the item to leaving with it in hand. But the big value for me is: how was I treated?

[00:08:00]

What was the experience? Sometimes it really hinges on how friendly somebody can be.

The fact that you're bringing that out is something I completely resonate with.

For both of you, where do you think the biggest disconnect usually happens between customer insight, especially at leadership level, and what teams are able to execute day-to-day on the frontline?

Rupert: There are probably two sides to that.

Firstly, it's very important to understand what it's actually like working in stores, which you can't necessarily get the answer to from sitting at a screen in head office.

It's about understanding what barriers are actually in place on a given day that prevent frontline colleagues from delivering exceptional service.

[00:09:00]

They could be workload-related — there's too much stuff for them to do — or systems-related. Some could be really simple things that could get fixed in 10 minutes if someone actually understood there was a problem.

Nothing really beats getting out to some stores, standing on the shop floor and speaking to colleagues to understand some of those issues.

It's also making sure our field management — we've got regional managers out there on a day-to-day basis — are keeping an open dialogue to understand what's going on and what we can do to assist them.

From a leadership point of view, when looking at insights, the key thing is that ultimately the customer experience in our stores is everyone's job.

It's not just an operations department, marketing or commercial team responsibility. It's making sure you've got the right people in the room and are actually taking actions from that at the same time.

[00:10:00]

Khalipha: Steve, what are some of the key practices that HMV uses to drive meaningful behavioural change across teams and stores?

Like Rupert was saying, this isn't something that's siloed. It's also got to work within operations, marketing and frontline teams.

Steve: We keep customer service and Hear My Voice on the agenda at all times, and there are various tools we use to do that.

We have a daily email that goes out to all stores, and within that it includes all the previous day's results on Hear My Voice.

It has all your figures — not only a previous-day number, but a week number, month-to-date number, quarter number and year-to-date number.

On a daily scale, every time a colleague gets an exceptional service mention, they are sent an email.

[00:11:00]

Different stores use that in different ways. Some have notice boards in their back-of-house areas and pin those up to encourage more colleagues to go for it. They'll also use that as a tool to praise colleagues.

So we have our daily things that are always happening.

Within the business, we have a weekly newsletter and put the Hear My Voice detail within the first page. We praise colleagues who have had multiple exceptional service mentions.

They're getting exposure not only in their own stores and regions, but across the business as well.

Once a week on our internal intranet, one of the ops team will go through all the customer comments and pull out the 10 best comments of the week. That's always rotating on our intranet like a carousel, so anyone in the business can see these comments coming through.

[00:12:00]

In terms of monthly calls, we have a monthly call with the regional managers. We give them feedback on how they're doing, and they can feed anything back to us that they want to shout about.

Two things have really worked well for us over the last 18 months in driving the service offer.

We've always done incentives in the business around Hear My Voice. They used to be individual incentives, where one of us would run a report and give the reward to the top-performing colleagues.

That changed a couple of years back. It was still an individual prize, but we let the regional managers choose who won based on what we were feeding back.

Then, about 18 months ago, we took a different stance and created a regional incentive, so the regions pulled together.

Sometimes, as most people will know, you have your really good stores and then stores that struggle a bit. As soon as an incentive starts, the stores that are struggling might not really drive anything, while the stores already doing well stay at the top.

[00:13:00]

With a regional incentive, you need everyone in that region to deliver to get yourselves over the line.

We created regional incentives and they've worked really well.

We've also introduced what we call customer service workshops with a third-party company. We get two colleagues per store, normally five stores in a room, and spend a whole day talking about different service approaches, how you can tailor the experience and how you can really make it exceptional.

That seems to have worked really well.

Rupert: What's gone quite well with the customer service workshops is that the facilitator from the third-party company isn't from HMV.

He hasn't got all of the preconceptions about what we think good might look like or what we might think is a barrier.

It's worked really well because we've got a lot of colleagues who've worked here for a very long time.

[00:14:00]

Getting people looking at things from a different perspective can sometimes be a challenge when you've worked in the same place for a long time. So that's reinvigorated things quite well.

It's always interesting in these workshops when you ask the people in the room to give examples of exceptional service they've seen. They'll name anything from their local newsagent to big companies.

Then you're engaging them and getting their feedback, and it's always interesting to ask, "Okay, well, where is exceptional service happening in your store?"

You see them thinking about what that looks like in their own store.

Those have been really good, and we've picked a sporadic set of stores. It wasn't only the stores that were struggling. We had stores around the middle, but also really big stores, because they can make a big difference to the service offer.

Steve: Through our POS, we've got new materials that we refresh every couple of years to keep it fresh and on the agenda.

We also have a great learning and development tool where we went out to the business.

[00:15:00]

There's no point in me and Rupert speaking about exceptional service that we give to customers because, like Rupe said earlier, we're not on the frontline.

So we went out to the people who were getting lots of exceptional service mentions and got video content from them. We had them speaking to camera, telling us about what they do.

We used their videos and made compilations to really drive the Super Six and the whole programme, which again saw some really great results.

It's key that we keep doing that, keep refreshing it and keep hearing what's working out there. The content coming from people actually serving customers is a lot more useful than it coming from me and Rupert.

Rupert: One of the really interesting things when looking at service statistics is that when you get to peak, it normally struggles a little bit more simply because of the sheer number of customers coming into stores. You've also got a few more staff who may be less familiar with processes.

[00:16:00]

But what has actually happened since we've put a lot of these things in place is our service improved versus the rest of the year in Q4.

That was very unexpected. Comparing that with some of the other benchmark retailers as well, we really shot up off the back of some of those activities.

Steve: I think the other key change for us has been the introduction of e-receipts.

We've always had a fairly good response rate, but now with e-receipts, the insight we're getting is so useful because previously stores could cherry-pick the customers they were talking to.

If you knew your customer was happy, you could say, "Sign the receipt, give us your feedback," and you could cherry-pick.

With e-receipts, the message is there first and foremost, right at the top of the e-receipt. So now, if it hasn't gone as well, there's no hiding from what you're getting.

We're getting a huge level of insight every year, which gives us more resource to go back to R&D, our marketing manager and our commercial director and say, "Look, this is what's being pulled out of Hear My Voice."

[00:17:00]

"Let's use it and take the company forward."

Rupert: That's also given us more rounded feedback and probably slightly more robust feedback as well.

It's actually what's going on, as opposed to giving out a little card with the receipt. If you're going to give fairly average service, you might forget to do that.

So it's made the data richer, but equally made the data a lot more robust.

[00:19:00]

Khalipha: I'm curious — is there any piece of feedback that has really stood out to you over the past year that made you think, "Yep, this is exactly what we're about. You can absolutely tell we're doing exactly what we set out to do"?

Any piece of feedback that comes to mind that really stuck out for both of you?

Steve: We get about 2,000 to 2,500 comments a week, so it's quite a lot to digest.

We can get anything from the standard "Love HMV." We're lucky that we tap into so many different fandoms.

At the moment, we're seeing some K-pop fans who are really passionate about the products giving us feedback on big release days.

We've had comments about album release events where customers have gone in, got some added value, met other K-pop fans and had a great day.

[00:20:00]

Pokémon is huge in the UK at the moment — I'm sure it probably is all over the world. When customers get their Pokémon cards or products, we see some really lovely comments come back.

It's always a pleasure to read the love and emotion that HMV gets, whether you're in a small store or a big store.

It's very rare that you'd get a comment with one sentence. You get huge paragraphs telling you about their experience.

The thing that I really enjoy is when a store may have closed a couple of years ago and reappears — somewhere like Canterbury — and you get customers saying, "I'm so glad HMV's back."

Or when we opened in Dublin, people said, "I was so sad when you closed. It's great to have you back. Great store. Love HMV. Will frequent your shop every week."

Those comments from loyal customers are really nice and tug at the heartstrings because customers feel an emotional attachment.

[00:21:00]

Rupert: As well as the feedback, probably one of the best things we ever did was set up the exceptional service mentions.

Colleagues get called out by name: "This person did an amazing job," as opposed to it being generic feedback about the store.

It really personalises it and gives them some accountability, but at the same time it's a real motivator as well.

Khalipha: Would HMV ever open here in South Africa? I feel like we as South Africans would absolutely love a brand like HMV.

Any plans to expand? I'm not saying South Africa should be first, but...

Steve: We've got about 120 stores here in the UK. What we have done over the last two or three years is step outside of the UK.

We reopened in the Republic of Ireland in 2023.

[00:22:00]

We've now got three stores out there. Then we went back to mainland Europe for the first time in about 25 years later in 2023.

We've now got two stores in Belgium and two stores in the Netherlands, with the latest one being Amsterdam, which opened earlier this year.

It's been a real learning experience because there are obviously different fandoms, different customer bases and different customer needs.

It's still very early days on that project, but one of the key things is understanding what those customers are saying as well, because some of that may be quite different to what we're seeing in the UK. Some of it will probably be exactly the same.

Khalipha: That makes sense. Let's stick to employee engagement and team culture, because that seems to be something that really stands out.

It's not just what made HMV one of our Xcellence Award winners; clearly, there's something you're doing right when it comes to the customer experience people get when they interact with the brand.

[00:23:00]

Rupert, how important are employee engagement and team culture in delivering a consistently strong customer experience?

Rupert: Absolutely very important.

One of the things we're quite lucky with is ultimately the product we sell. Starting at recruitment, it's about recruiting people who are into that product.

You're not necessarily going to be into everything we sell, but you'll be into some aspect of it and be passionate about it.

That does make the job a little easier.

In terms of employee engagement, keeping our colleagues informed of what's going on, what's coming out and what they need to know is vitally important.

We've done some work on that in the last year or so where we've worked with one of our partners to make a lot of that mobile-first.

[00:24:00]

The information they need is getting to them, as opposed to having to walk off the shop floor and look something up on an intranet.

There's a piece in that around keeping people informed and giving them the tools to provide great service.

There's also a piece around having great store managers who can really get that culture into stores and keep service on the agenda.

Ultimately, happy people give great service. Great service equals more customers coming back, which equals more money in the till.

Steve: We've also got a very competitive culture at HMV.

If you're in one region, especially with the incentives, and you can see another region overtaking you, it's very much, "Come on, let's go for it."

Great performance breeds great performance.

The last couple of incentives, which we run quarterly over the course of three months, have gone down to the final days between two or three regions.

[00:25:00]

It's been so tight between regions, and you can see the regional managers really gearing up their regions, saying, "Come on, you've got two days left. We really have to go for it to be first place."

It's always great for us to watch from the sidelines and see who's going to win our regional incentives because everyone's so competitive.

It all makes for a great atmosphere.

Khalipha: This has been such an insightful conversation. We've really just been scratching the surface on this topic and understanding why you're so worthy of being one of our Xcellence Award winners.

It's so clear from listening to both of you and understanding the process and journey — from taking in customer feedback and really listening to it, to turning it into something meaningful that you can act on, all the way through to the feedback you receive and the love that HMV gets.

[00:26:00]

It's so clear that you're doing something right.

We could absolutely keep talking, but I know we don't have that much time.

So, as we close the episode, for both of you, Rupert and Steve: what do you think brands need to rethink when it comes to customer experience if they really want to stay relevant and connected to their customers in an increasingly data-heavy world?

Steve: I think it's all about the experience.

These days, customer expectation is so high and you really do need to go above and beyond. Working with a lot of the products that we stock gives us the capability to do that.

At Christmas time, for example, we always think about the atmosphere.

We're lucky. We have decent footfall all year round, but if you go into an HMV store in November or December, you're going to walk into a store that's busy, hopefully as vibrant as possible, playing the right music with the right mood in the store.

[00:27:00]

I think store atmosphere is huge.

We're very lucky with the product we sell. We appeal to audiences from very young to much older, so we've got a really interesting demographic of customers.

You've got to make sure your product is right and your value is right. In these times, you don't want to price anyone out of the market.

But above and beyond, it's all about the service, the culture of the stores and driving the right behaviours.

It's something we've always had at HMV, even when we both started in 1998.

The differentiator was always: why would you go to HMV when you can buy records just down the road?

We're in Oxford Street now, where we had a Virgin store. It was always the level of service and the staff you would talk to.

That hasn't changed.

[00:28:00]

That's one thing that will always be consistent in HMV. You walk in and you're met with someone who knows what they're talking about, someone who's happy to talk to you, and you walk away from that interaction — whether you buy something or you don't — thinking, "Actually, that was a great experience. I want to come back and do that again."

Rupert: The other thing is that, while we've talked a lot about service in-store today, increasingly the vast majority of our customers shop in our stores and on our website.

It's about making sure we're delivering in both, in different ways, and making sure they're getting the experience they need.

That could be coming into a store when we haven't got something, and we can order it for them there and then and get it delivered to their house.

Or it could be the other way around, where they come into the store to collect a website order or have a query about a website order.

[00:29:00]

It's about making sure we're empowering teams to give customers the right information, because it can be very easy for these things to become siloed.

Khalipha: Amazing. Steve, Rupert, thank you so much for joining us. It's a real honour to be able to talk to you.

Hopefully I'll see you in the UK. I will fly if I have to, just to experience what everyone keeps talking about with HMV and all the love.

You've totally convinced me to go just for the HMV experience. I will find a store on Oxford Street.

And I will give you some feedback too and tell you all about the love I've got for you guys as a brand.

Thank you so much, and until the next one.

Steve: Thanks for having us.

Rupert: Yeah, thanks for having us.