“Your NPS has gone up—So Freakin’ what?” with Jamie Thorpe of IPSOS

Hello, my name is Adam Durrell. I'm the host of the Account Experience podcast. You know, on this podcast we sit at the interaction of B2B account management and customer experience. That's really why we call it Account Experience. And every week I talk to an industry leader to share best practices and tips to help you develop your program. And today's no exception because, you know, many times people say, well, really, what CX all about, what value does it add to the business? We've got quite a controversial guest today who's really going to hammer some of those points home. Now remember, if you, if you do like the Account Experience podcast, don't forget to review it and share it. Really helps spread the word and get this sort of like open source knowledge out there. Hi, Adam Durrell here. Today I'm talking to the recent winner of the CX Star Award, which recognizes excellence in CX industries professionals. His name's Jamie Thorpe and he's been in CX for more than 20 years. The majority of his career has been spent in client success service and he's been pretty high up. He's held board positions and he's now head of experience management at Ipsos. His experience covers things like marketing and CX platforms. Well, in a way, it's better to let Jamie talk about it himself. Welcome, Jamie. Hello. Welcome to the Account Experience podcast.

Hey, Adam. Hey, thanks for having me. Good to see you.

I'm so excited to speak to you. You've really had a, a fantastic career. By the way, congratulations on the recent win professionals. I'm delighted to have such an esteemed person on today. What made you think you win, what was it that made you win the award, do you think?

I mean, you know, the flippant answer is votes. I think, you know, it's such a great accolade and so many good people and you know, we've been doing, I've been doing a lot in, in CX over the years, so hopefully quite a few people know the good work I've done with and for them and obviously the work that we're doing under the IPSOS banner in, in CX as well. So many people very kindly thought, hey, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna support this guy and, and you know, as I said, it was a great list and great to be in such good company.

Well, I've had a chance to read quite a few of your articles and they're always entertaining and to the point, so it's really good to get to.

Know you a bit better.

Here, but why don't we, why don't we turn the clock back a bit? Because I've also been doing what I've been doing for getting on for 20 years. So we probably, we share some of the same, the same scar tissue from these. But why don't you tell me a little bit about how you got into it and how you built your knowledge out.

No problem. So I mean, it's funny really. I was hosted in an IPSOS event recently and it was a question similar to the panel of people I was interviewing. I don't know anyone that sort of came out of their education and said, hey, I really want to get into either research or customer experience. Probably didn't even exist when I first started. But I mean, the answer is by accident really. I got into a business that focused on mystery shopping and customer satisfaction. So customer satisfaction work was the sort of route that I took. And it was funny. I was talking to a client recently, a large grocery retail client. I said, hey, you guys are one of my first clients in, back in the 90s. And you know, it's in the 1990s, that is, and. And I said, you know, it was a customer satisfaction program where people would write some cards in store and post them in and we collect them in, we data capture them, interpret the results and said, it was called, it was called this, I don't know if you remember it. And the lady looked at me, paused for drama. It was magic. And she said, no, I don't. I was four. So. But that's how I got into it. You know, that's how we started. You know, we were using comment cards, we were asking people for customer feedback via telephone. Predates any of the tech that you'll have now. And I just got into it. I just loved it. It was back in the days when we would, you know, write our own questionnaires, we'd analyze our own data, we'd deal with the client, we present it back, we'd run it end to end. And I just, you know, it was pure accident that I got into. I was very lucky to have a very good mentor. And I just always found it interesting and yeah, just grown over the years. So that's how I got into it. But trust me, it wasn't by design.

I mean, if you classify that as sort of like market research, was there a time where you flipped over to something that you felt was customer experience?

Yeah, I think definitely when I was very customer sats focused and back in those days, you know, it was. We'd Write questionnaires or surveys. We'd conduct field work. We'd get the. We'd get the results in. We'd analyze them when we present them back to the client. And, you know, if you were doing well, you. Anytime between six and eight weeks after the customer originally told you what they thought and what really changed this space, if I'm honest, from what I've seen in the 25 years I've been doing it, is the introduction of the tech that took everything and just cut the time out of it and just made everything much more immediate and much more real time. And I think that because it got much closer to the feedback, got much closer to the actual experience the customer was having, it was sort of probably early to mid 2000s that it became customer experience, became part of the sort of vernacular of research and insights people. And then it flipped into experience, because the immediacy. You know, I remember when it first started, we were doing, you know, people were pinging results, and it was happening in 15 minutes, which nowadays is slow, but then was. You know, it was. It was. It was amazing. So. And people started to realize the importance of the experience, and I'm sure we'll come to that. But, yeah, I would say sort of early mid 2000s, maybe late 2000s, running up to sort of early 2000s, really, customer experience really took a hold, and CSAT or VoC or whatever you want to call it all sort of came in under the umbrella.

Yeah, I agree. There was this ability to really scale up the voice of customers and bring it into the business in real time. But that hasn't always been wonderful, has it? Probably you and I both agree on this. The fact that you've got this information coming into the business has the possibility of transforming organization, but too often it doesn't. So, you know, let's get into that. Let's get into what you think about, you know, why does customer experience is not always working in the businesses that are out there?

Yeah, interesting. You know, customer experience came into the. Into the world, and so did mps. And I think the answer to this question actually more typically resides with me. For mps, we had. I remember at the time, so many organizations that would come to us and say, hey, you know, we want a customer experience program. And I'd say, that's fantastic. Why? And they say, because the board told me to go and get one because I need an NPS measure. And I'd say, wrong answer. You know, this is. What you've done is basically you're rushing to fill A box on a scorecard that will go into the C suite and it won't penetrate the business. And the early programs really did that. It was actually will, you know, we will ask for feedback, we will get a rating and we'll use it as a metric that goes up to the board. And as Fred Reichelt himself has said, and you've seen in the more recent iterations of MPS that the metric has been abused. But it was a game changer and it's the reason why so many programs exist today.

It was a bit like people had a 40 questionnaire, 40 question survey and then they would add question 41 which would be, would you recommend us to a friend or a colleague?

Yeah, exactly. And there was all sorts of poor behavior, you know, around. Well, we want, you know, to take a minute of your time and then you present the customer with a 50 question questionnaire. I mean, and it still exists. I'll spare the blushes, but funny enough this morning talking to a well known brand who is saying actually this questionnaire that we've got is far too long and we get a halo effect because our customers love us. But actually, you know, it's bad. So there have been a number of things that some of those bad traits and bad behaviors still exist. But there is so much opportunity, the customer experience to be so much more.

I agree. So I want to focus on the positive about what this. But let's also recognize, let's pause for some of the reasons that CX sometimes doesn't work. You've coined this phrase, which I really love. It's like what it's the. So what of cx? Can you expand a bit on that and tell me what you mean by that?

Yeah, I think again, for something to work and have a real traction within an organization, it has to deliver a success outcome of some description. So in this instance we're talking about CX. So sometimes CSATs or research or Insight or whatever you want to call it can be construed as, you know, pink and fluffy. And yes, it's important that we listen to what customers are saying. But for me, if we think about nps, for example, mps, that measure of advocacy would you recommend to friends and family. If I'm a retailer, an automotive brand, financial services, whatever it might be, I actually don't care what people say they're going to do. I care what they actually do. And we've all researched over the years the delta between what people say they'll do and actually do as being huge. So when it comes to CX we can no longer live in the world of it's nice to know what people think and feel. And, and we generally feel that this is probably a good thing to do to speak to our customers. So what of CX is we use an awful lot within our organization is that people demand impact. Organizations demand impact, customers demand action. So CX has to be a active change agent that actually is driving impact back into the organization. And most at its most point is what we're doing. An awful lot of in ipsos is a model that we call Roxy, which is return on CX investment. So we are with organizations, telling them, informing them this is what your NPS is worth. Then through our program say these are the things that are driving your mps either up or down. If the NPS is your key metric, for example, and therefore you can see the true impact of when you drive customer experience to the heart of the organization. Because without that, what's the point? You know, someone, any CX professional should be able to say by delivering this program, this is where I'm delivering back into the business either by cost saving, reducing churn or increasing incremental revenue back into the organization. And for me that, so what is where it's so pointed? Because the world has changed, customers have changed. We're now in a world where people will pay more for a better experience. We all do it, we know it. I mean and it's that, that number in the research that we've done, Eclipse, eclipses, sort of 80% of people imagine going back 10 years and saying to people we will live in a world where people will pay more for a better experience and sometimes up to 25% more. I mean if there was ever a WTF moment, I mean, Jesus, is that right? You know, so, so in order to, in order to get that potential, your CX program has to drive change. And you have to know what are the things that you're doing and what are the return you're going to get back on the effort you as an organization are putting into drive, you'll see X agenda.

I mean you even quote the stat that I think 1% in experience for a global auto client led to a huge amount of annual sales.

Yeah. When you're. Yeah, it's massive. Because you think, if you think about auto, you know, autos are always a great example because it's quite linear. Right. You go into, into a car dealership, typically assuming that we're not buying online. This is a whole other world. You either like the salesman or you don't you like the car or you don't, you are like, you know, maybe you like the color, you don't. Maybe you like the features and functionality of the car or you don't. So it's. And then you will either you will potentially, if you don't like those things, one of those things you will walk out and typically you will walk 200 yards to another car dealer. You know, I live not too far from Milkings. I can think I could go to within, you know, 500 yards of each other about six car dealers. So if I don't like those things and when you think of the cost of a car and the value of a car, it doesn't take a huge amount to say actually these marginal gains of understanding before I go out and turn right and walk into the next dealer, what did I like, what did I not like? How can I fix it? You can see the incremental impact that heading the customer off will have before someone makes a decision further down the line. So car automotive is a great example because A, there's a high value to it, so it always comes with a nice high number in terms of what it can do. But B, there are a number of things you can influence to change the outcome of the experience to someone either buying that car or not. But yes, we've, you know, we've got some great examples of marginal gains. They don't need to be, you know, people that go in and say I want to improve, you know, something a business dramatically. On these large scale organizations, sometimes only 1% or 2% shift can result in millions of pounds of either savings or increased income. From a CX point of view.

Yeah, and I'm really interested in Jamie. What you've really done is you've linked the customer experience to revenue and that's what really has impacts on the organization. So we're going to just take a break for a moment and we're going to come back and talk about Roxy. See you over the break.

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And we're back with Jamie Thorpe. Jamie, let's expand on this theme about how you link CX to revenue. For me, that's the most powerful thing and I love to hear examples of how it's used in practice.

Yeah, the Roxy, as I mentioned, the return on CX investment, it, it is at a high level. If you think of the thing that normally a tweet if you like, that captures people's attention is within an organization, 1% of improved experience equals X in pounds, dollars, euros, whatever you work for. And there is no limit to what that application is. You know, we do a lot in, in B2B and B2C and B2B 2C and you know, B2B as I know is a passion of yours is one that is, is. Is growing massively.

And yeah, I think it's also really underserved.

I mean, this is. There's not great completely. And you know, the values that we Talk about in B2B is huge. And so that return of. It's really about understanding what are the levers to pull, what are the things to do that are going to drive change. And we spend an awful lot of time with clients who say, well, you know, we've been doing this for 20 years, so, you know, we know what it is for our customers. We've not been out to the market or we've not looked at what it is. And you will find that there are so many quick wins when you do a Roxy analysis or you do a proper professional review of the B2B customer experience. And sometimes people are focusing in the wrong places because they've not linked up what the customer expectation is, what the business is actually delivering, and then created the model that says, actually this is what that return is. And you'll find that there are efficiencies to be gained all over the place. And especially as, as the world evolves so rapidly, people's expectations, how they want to be served, how they choose to be served is, you know, huge. So that's. So what has to come back to. It's not always about, you know, the, the, the, the pounds, the euros, the dollars, as I mentioned. But normally that's the sort of tip of the iceberg, if you like. That's the, the thing that gets attention. And when you go next level down, there's all sorts of simulators and levers to pull to make sure that they're focusing in the right places.

Yeah. I think what I've always found is that the ROI is not the reason that people start the program. Often it comes from the C suite or somebody who's got a real passionate for customer experience says, we just got to do this. But you need that ROI to convince the layers of middle management and you might block it to make it work.

That's why I think, yeah, and, you know, there's value to it all the way across the board. I mean, the most successful programs we see are those that have that C suite buy in, that senior buy in, and some people just get it right. But frightening that some people still don't get it. They still don't see why they should invest. And sometimes people use a Roxy analysis to create a business case or talk about importance internally of why, what they could lose more often than what they could gain in that regard. But when you're engaging a front line, especially in a B2B environment, it's normally very, very simple. I mean, there's an awful lot of noise and an awful lot of BS in this space is when you actually, when you can go to the front line of an organization and say, if you do this, then you do that, you will get that. It's almost that simple sometimes.

Can I ask you if you're comfortable to lift the lid a little bit on the Roxy model? Without giving too much away, can you talk about how you might construct an ROI for a client?

Yeah, I'm happy to talk about it. It was developed within the Ipsos business by people far more clever than I. And what it is, it is a longitudinal study. We take data from multiple sources within the organization. There's a proprietary model that's been developed that gets used that links those data sources together with the values, the actions, the behaviors and the outcomes, if you like, of those customers and it derives a correlation between them and they're able to then model that back up to create the Roxy outcome and in doing so, able to create simulators along the way. Because there are often. It's never black and white, right. It's never straightforward, but you will get different profiles or different segments, different customer groups doing different things. And what people want to be able to do is say, if I make a small change here or a small change there, what does this mean? And the Roxy model, you know, the naysayers against something like that will say, well, it will never predict exact income. And to those people, I would say you're absolutely right.

Yeah.

But what it does is it gives you a very, very strong indication of improvement. And what we normally see is actually it normally surpasses what we expect to get in return. So they do factor that in, but that's, that's how it works. It's like I say, more people, much more clever than I, but, but a very, very cool and you know, and, and important should say, you know, proven methodology. It's been, it went through all of the peer review and all of the, you know, scientific validation that it needed before it went to, to market. So, yeah, it is a, it is a very, very powerful tool indeed.

Let's talk about how you've seen it operate in, you know, in companies you've put this in and you know, we spoke about the auto one. Anything else that springs to mind is a really good example Perhaps in the B2B sphere that you're really proud Of.

Yeah, I think one of the things that if you think about your theme that we've got here going, so. So what? So Roxy is part of it, right? This, the CX world moves so quickly. Clients, customers evolve at pace and especially, I mean let's not, let's not go too deep into, into pandemic, but obviously we've, you know, the last couple of years changed things significantly. So when it comes to the so what I would be saying, creating a roadmap for the future has to be critical for people. We're seeing three, three things at the moment that are really, really popular. The first is this is Roxy. It's the so what from a value point of view. The second is how mature is the organization and what is the roadmap going forward? And I'll drill a bit more into that in a minute. And the third is around closing the loop with the customer. We're now at a point where organizations realize they can no longer just take customer feedback and do nothing with it. So three really popular things at the moment are those three things. The roadmap piece is really important. So we use a maturity framework that we have as an organization. There are three levels of CX maturity and there are six competencies that exemplars exhibit when they're delivering excellent CX to their clients. So with the value as the sort of umbrella, if you like, this is the end game. The so what next level. So what is where do we drive CX within the organization? And we look through the lens of people, process and technology against our six competencies in our three levels of maturity. And what that does is it gives people a really clear set of actions against a proven and validated CX framework. And what is really powerful about that is that people will actually now start to be able to get things done, you know, and sometimes people just don't get enough things done. And you, you know, we'll always, we'll always put a, a lens on it that says do what you can because there are some things some people can't do. We have to remember some of the organizations in this country are, you know, if you think about big banking institutions been around for hundreds of years, it's easy to say change a process. It's easy to say change your technology. It's not possible to do it. So what can you do within your control and have a roadmap that is actually going to drive change within your organization and to the customer? Sounds basic to say out loud, right? No, it's a lot because I'M thinking.

Of a recent meeting I had with a financial institution in the uk and it was, it was like, oh, yeah, we need to think about it a lot more. And I can get this. I.

And I'm just do something.

What's there anything more direct? It's like actually get on and do it. You know, it's really. Is. Is. Yeah, it's. And I think that's. I also see this, is that the people who are really passionate about pushing CX and AX forward in their organizations and they struggle, they come up with the best of intents and they come up with like, you know, the blocks in the business. It's really.

Yeah, yeah. And they do, you know, some of those things are real and they have to face it. So I don't want people that are listening to this thinking, well, it's easy for him to say that. He's always been client side, but I challenge you. There is always things that you can do. Always been agency side. Sorry. And those client side will always say, look, we're faced with slightly different challenges. Work with some clients that have really big challenges, but some of those quick wins and some of those changes yield significant benefit back to the organization.

I agree. I mean, my thing is like, just communicate with your customers, tell them what you learned.

Yeah.

Oh, you know, we didn't think about that. You know, who needs to give you permission to do that? You're in charge of the experience anyway. That's my own. I'll be yours. Let's talk about, you know, we'll round up some tips in a minute. But you've seen the industry change a lot in the last three years. Have seen the most incredible change, technology Covid. You know, right now we're in all sorts of dire straits with supply chain and, you know, wars going on. Talk to me about how you've seen customer experience change in that time.

Yeah, I would summarize. Customer experience is underwritten by trust, it's underwritten by relationship. And I would encourage organizations to go back to some basics. I see many organizations saying, oh, we need to innovate, we need to bring AI and we need to do digital, we need to do this. And you put your core over here is so woefully underperforming, you're not building on a strong foundation. So I think where the world has changed and where CX has changed in the last three years and some of the wider geopolitical challenges that we face and that we see going on, it's almost for the clients that we're seeing that are driving the biggest impact. They've almost reset, they're taking stock and they're saying, okay, the things we were measuring three years ago, have we got the targets right? Are we using the right metrics? The actions that we were putting in, are they driving enough change? Have we got a strong enough plan for the future? Are we getting to. There's three trends I use a lot when we talk to clients about what customers want. I've used them a lot. But they want to be known, they want to be heard and they want to be valued. So we look through those lens and we say use the data. You've got to know your customers. We all know the brands hold a huge amount of information on us. Use that data. Don't ask me questions that you already know. Don't send me things that are out of context. So know who I am to your organization. Hear me. Open. Open up your channels. Get feedback from people in a way that they choose when they choose. Don't send that dreaded 40 question survey at a time that is right for you. Open up your channels, get feedback and then value customers, actually listen to them, actually bloody do something with it and go back to them if they're dissatisfied. Drive change properly. And in order to do that you need to understand what is your CX value, what is your CX currency, what is your CX credit and how do you create a roadmap around your business that can actually drive change for your customer and for your organization?

Yeah, that's so that's such a great answer, Jamie. I mean it's also, you know, it's how do you getting that value into the organization that this is, we really care about this. It's really hard to do. And you're right, maybe the pandemic and all these other things has really helped us press the reset button on it because, well, we went through some interesting times, didn't we?

Yeah. And we continue to do so. And you know, it's, I know it's cliche, the new normal and this and the other, but the world genuinely won't be the same. And the way we, the way we work, the way we shop, the way we, you know, bank, the way we buy things now, it's just very, very different. So people have to adapt and those clinging to, well, hang on, you know, we did this five years ago and therefore we've just got to keep pushing that. The world's changed since then. A lot of people go back to basics. I agree.

And I think, you know, we can Take some comfort because companies were nimble or at least the winners out there were really nimble. Yeah, yeah, really some, some experience that. So to sum up where, where we've come on this journey, it's about. There is this thing, it's just like the. So what of CX that some organization have. Maybe they, maybe they get tired of it. Maybe they like we've been doing the same thing and be measuring it. So what's your recipe for success for, for, in, for. For CX managers or experienced people in that situation?

Yeah, if we think about some of the things we talked about here. So if I were coming at this cold with a client or you know, you and me down the, down the pub as mate saying, hey, this is my business, what am I going to do? Number one is establish that value as we've talked about. Understand what it means to you and your business to improve your cx. The second is understand how mature. Be really honest about how mature your organization is. Really, really honest. Where are you good?

Where are you not?

Look around at other people. You know, we use exemplars and say, you know, you're not great at this, but here's some brands who are fantastic at it. Look at it. Have a really clear, actionable roadmap. Embrace the organization, bring people in, get them involved and create a roadmap that is something that will change, it will evolve, but at least you've got a plan. Otherwise these people are moving blindly into the night implementing CX and they don't know what their end game is. Think about those trends that I mentioned earlier and a big thing about opening up the channels for me in terms of feedback, people, customers are more fickle, they're more promiscuous, they have less time, they're less patient. They want to be able to tell you what they think, when they think it. Open up, be structured and getting feedback, but use unstructured data as well and think about how you get that back into the organization and make sense of it and how you. So unifying the data is important, but democratizing it is critical. And I still see people say, oh, we communicate our CX results out to the business and I say, show me. And they show me a. They show me a 50 slide deck that's gone out to a thousand senior leaders and they wonder why no one reads it. Because you've got to tell stories, think about videos, infographics, create creative ways that's going to grab people's attention. And then, you know, like I said to you earlier, get things Done. You know, buy off the quick wins, get them done and people can see the change. And you know, you don't get to be a large organization driving performance improvement unless you're doing a number of things. And we've not really gone into it here but communicate to people, tell people what it is you want from them, educate them in what it is they can expect or what they need to do, measure their performance and then reward their loyalty. So it's nice and simple, right? That's the plan. But it's all achievable. It's all achievable and it all comes into a well thought through CX strategy.

Yeah. Well listen, there you go folks. You heard it from a CX star. And if I can summarize it back to you Jamie, because I was taking notes seriously, right? Your three tips for making CX not a so what in the organization. So they're like establishing value. Number one, right, a clear plan number two and number three was get shit done. I knew I wanted to get you there. Listen, you are very entertaining to follow. Now people want to if we want to follow you online or how do they get in touch with you or find out more from what you're talking about.

Yeah you jamie.thorpe.com if you want to drop me a line, obviously I'm on, I'm on LinkedIn. I post quite a bit on LinkedIn so reach me through LinkedIn and always happy to share knowledge examples and we've got a lot of white papers and thought leadership and this sort of stuff and great examples. So very happy to talk to people. I consider myself a CX evangelist so why not come, come and talk to me.

Thank you Jamie for being a guest on the Account Experience podcast today. Really appreciate it and definitely see how you're a CX style with content like that. Thanks a lot.

You too, Kai. Thanks, bye.