employee engagement at goodwood · presentation skills 16th april 2020 11:00-11:30am presenting...

www.tlfresearch.com | Spring 2020

EMPLOYEEENGAGEMENT AT GOODWOODALSO INSIDE… Igloo EnergyHouseMark’s new STAR frameworkSwearing for RobotsA new Index of Consumer SentimentThe Chief Insights Officer

THE ONE PAGE RESULTS SUMMARY...HOW TO DO IT? 2nd June 2020 11:00-11:30am

Sharing the results of customer research can be challenging. As researchers we love detailed presentations, with lots of charts and graphs, but this view of the results would not work for everyone. When it comes to sharing the

right results to the right people; one size does not fit all.

HOW SERVICE BLUEPRINTS CONNECT THE CUSTOMER & INTERNAL VIEW22nd April 2020 11:00-11:30am

Service Blueprints can take Customer Journey Mapping to the next level. Corresponding to a specific customer journey, which could involve multiple channels, touchpoints and business functions, Service Blueprints can help ensure a consistent customer focused experience. In this webinar, Stephen will be discussing how Service Blueprints can help you connect the

customer experience with the views of your internal teams and business functions.

PRESENTATION SKILLS16th April 2020 11:00-11:30am

Presenting effectively, particularly if your material is technical, requires a tricky mix of storytelling, design, and technical know-how. In this webinar we look at some practical tips to help you create the perfect slides and deliver a presentation which brings your story to life and makes your

message more memorable.

HYBRID METHODOLOGY, GETTING THE BEST OF QUANT AND QUAL20th May 2020 11:00-11:30am

Often B2B has a much smaller number of key accounts to focus on. An opportunity to capture feedback needs to maximise the richness from comments with the score to track. A hybrid

methodology ensures you don't lose the best of both. This webinar looks at how to use a mix of methodologies to maximise the actionable insight from your customer research. We investigate the

opportunities to capture rich feedback from comments and how to combine these with headline scores to track. A well designed hybrid methodology ensures you don’t lose the best of both.

KNOWING WHAT RESULTS TO FEEDBACK TO CUSTOMERS 15th April 2020 11:00-11:30am

We are often asked by clients for advice on what survey results and planned actions should be shared back with customers; organisations often worry about sharing too much confidential information and customers are often suspicious that the detail is missing. This webinar provides practical

suggestions on how to effectively share information.

BEST PRACTICE PANEL RESEARCH29th April 2020 11:00-11:30am

Panel research can be an effective way to access the views and opinions of consumers. Used correctly, it’s a flexible research solution with a range of uses. Whether you’re looking for fast facts and figures or regularly tracking consumer

behaviour, usage and attitudes (U&A), panel research could be the perfect option.In this webinar we discuss best practice, the potential pitfalls and a range of

approaches for getting the most out of panel research.

FREE WEBINARS

Our range of free 30 minute webinars is designed to give you an introduction to key customer research subjects.

From how to guides & what to focus on, through to best

practice & the analysis of your results, our webinars will give you lots of hints & tips to help you get the most out of research.

Sign up today at tlfresearch.com/webinars

HOUSING: GETTING THE MOST FROM STAR 6th May 2020 11:00-11:30am

The STAR methodology continues to be the dominant framework for collecting customer satisfaction data in the housing sector. However, asking the same questions each year with little new insight can make it difficult to engage colleagues and even harder to take action.

This webinar provides some practical ideas for how to get more from STAR. The last 12 months have seen TLF Research team up with HouseMark to undertake a comprehensive

review of the STAR methodology. We'll also go through the key outcomes of the review and make sure you're up to date with everything you need to know.

Stephen Hampshire

Editor

ForesightC

ON

TAC

TS

EDITORIALEditorStephen Hampshire

ADVERTISINGMarketing ManagerRichard Crowther

DESIGN & PRODUCTIONCreative DirectorRob Ward

DesignersBecka CrozierJordan GillespieRob Egan

PRINTERAB Print Group Ltd

Customer Insight is the magazine for people who want to deliver results to employees, customers and any other stakeholders as part of a coherent strategy to create value for shareholders. We publish serious articles designed to inform, stimulate debate and sometimes to provoke. We aim to be thought leaders in the field of managing relationships with all stakeholder groups.

[email protected]

Customer Insight C/O TLF ResearchTaylor Hill Mill Huddersfield HD4 6JA

NB: Customer Insight does not accept responsibility for omissions or errors. The points of view expressed in the articles by contributing writers and/or in advertisements included in this magazine do not necessarily represent those of the publisher. Whilst every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of the information contained within this magazine, no legal responsibility will be accepted by the publishers for loss arising from use of information published. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or stored in a retrievable system or transmitted in any form

or by any means without prior written consent of the publisher. © CUSTOMER INSIGHT 2020

ISSN 1749-088X

This is all a bit strange and frightening isn’t it?

We put the bulk of this issue together before the

full impact of Covid-19 was apparent (although

perhaps, in retrospect, we were all a bit slow to

pay proper attention to it). There’s no question

that the world is a very different place now

than we thought it was going to be, and anyone

pretending to know what the next year will bring

is making it up.

We considered pulling the article about our new

Index of Consumer Sentiment (page 14), but in

the end we’ve decided to leave it as it was. The

point of the index is to capture how customers

are feeling at a point in time, and it does that

accurately. We’ll keep tracking sentiment through

the year, and it will provide a good indication of

how people in general feel about the impact of the

pandemic on the economy and their finances. As

Nigel comments (page 34) confidence is important,

but tricky to predict.

Our cover article (page 6) is an interview with

Goodwood about their work to measure and

improve employee engagement. It’s easy to forget

that exotic businesses such as Goodwood have the

same challenges in terms of attracting and keeping

good people that the rest of us do, and fascinating

to read about how they are approaching it.

We’ve also got a great story from Rebecca Smith

of Igloo Energy (page 21) about building an energy

provider with a focus on retention rather than

acquisition. Regular readers will know that we

believe a “loyalty strategy” is the best way to do

business in pretty much any market.

On page 12 is the second in our series from

ContactEngine about the challenges of training AI

to deal appropriately with swearing. This time it’s

focused on the importance, and complicated ethics,

of using context to understand people.

Those of you who work in social housing will

know that HouseMark has recently relaunched its

STAR framework. On page 27 we take a look at the

changes, and ask what they have to teach us about

benchmarking more generally.

Elsewhere we have articles on the role of the

Chief Insights Officer (page 16), why world class

customer experience is harder than you might

expect (page 30), a great list of free marketing tools

from Andrew Davies (page 18), and a review of The

Pocket Universal Principles of Design (page 32).

Enjoy the articles, and please drop us a line

if you’ve got an interesting story to share for a

future issue.

E D I T O R I A L

www.tlfresearch.com | Spring 2020 Customer Insight 3

Customer satisfaction evangelist, author and lover of the outdoors

Rachel Allen

Conference speaker, book-lover and occasional climber

Stephen Hampshire

C O N T E N T S - S P R I N G 2 0 2 0

06 12

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Wine-lover, Munroist and customer satisfaction guru

Nigel Hill

Goodwood: An English Estate Like No OtherEmployee engagement at a quintessentially English estate

Swearing In ContextPart 2 of our series on training AI to deal with profanity

14 How Do You Think Customers Are Feeling?We launch a new Index of Consumer Sentiment for the UK 16 The Chief Insights Officer: It's About Way More Than Data

What is the role of a Chief Insights Officer?

Panel wrangler, banana lover and chinchilla owner

Tom Kiralfy

4 Customer Insight Spring 2020 | www.tlfresearch.com

Rob Egan

Beer drinker, pixel pusher and dour Yorkshireman

DE

SIG

NE

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Creative magus, genuine tyke and 20ft wave rider

Jordan GillespieBecka Crozier

Right brain mastermind, musicenthusiast and have I told you I’m vegan?

William Lidwell Kritina Holden Jill Butler

Will

iam

Lid

well

Kriti

na Hold

en

Jill

Butle

r



27

32

18

30

34

HouseMark’s New STAR Framework

Published by

EMPLOYEEGoodwood: An English Estate Like No Other 06

DIGITALSwearing In Context 12

RESEARCHHow Do You Think Customers Are Feeling? 14

GUEST FEATUREThe Chief Insights Officer:It's About Way More Than Data 16

DIGITAL10 Free Marketing Tools to Help You in the Digital World 18

GUEST FEATUREIgloo: In It for the Long Term 21

RESEARCHHouseMark's New STAR Framework 27

RESEARCHWhy World Class Customer Satisfaction Is Harder Than You Think 30

BOOK REVIEWThe Universal Pocket Principlesof Design 32

HOW HARD CAN IT BE?Is Consumer Confidence Rational? 34

10 Free MarketingTools to Help You inthe Digital World

Why World Class Customer Satisfaction Is Harder Than You Think

How Hard Can It Be?Is consumer confidencerational?

Book ReviewThe Universal Pocket Principles of Design

Swearing In ContextPart 2 of our series on training AI to deal with profanity 21 Igloo Energy: a loyalty strategy

for the energy sector


C O N T E N T S


E M P L O Y E E


E M P L O Y E E

Based on a recommendation, Goodwood

approached TLF in 2019 to talk to us about

conducting an employee survey. It was, of

course, fabulous to be recommended. We are

always delighted when our clients spread the

word.

It was clear that Goodwood had a definite

and clear vision of what they were looking for

and how the results would be used to drive

change. However, within that framework

they were very open to new ideas. TLF knew

it was important to understand exactly what

Goodwood needed and Goodwood were keen

to ensure TLF could deliver.

We were both aware that for an employee

survey to be successful it has to be trusted

both by those who are expected to take

part and those who are going to plan and

implement change based on the findings.

After discussions, we agreed to conduct our

first survey together.

Demonstrating that success is ‘driven from

the top’, in this interview, we find out more

from Chris and David who were very actively

involved from day one in ensuring the survey

was a success; from planning an enthusiastic

and effective warm up campaign to secure

buy-in and drive response, to sharing the

results with divisions, departments and

managers.

Goodwood’s Chief Executive Officer, Chris

Woodgate, started his career in Corporate

Finance, working for several of the biggest

consulting firms including KPMG and

PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Chris was approached by Goodwood in 2010

and offered the role as Group Head of Finance.

Over the past decade Chris has risen through

the ranks, becoming CEO just over a year ago.

Chris, please tell us about Goodwood for anyone who isn’t familiar…

Goodwood is a quintessentially English

estate, set in 12,000 acres in West Sussex,

which has been in The Duke of Richmond’s

family for more than 300 years. The family

has always shared their sporting passions

with the public. Rooted in our heritage,

we deliver extraordinary and engaging

experiences in modern and authentic ways.

Our flagship events include the Festival of

Speed, Qatar Goodwood Festival and the

Goodwood Revival.

But what really sets us apart is our

people. It is their passion, enthusiasm and

belief in the many things we do that makes

Goodwood such a unique place.

We have a diverse portfolio of more

than 20 different businesses including our

organic farm, hotel, forestry, The Kennels –

an exclusive members’ clubhouse, a private

consultancy arm, and a luxury 10-bedroom

sporting retreat. Next year we are launching

an all new dog event celebrating everything

we love about our canine friends called

Goodwoof.

GoodwoodAn English Estate like no other

Chris & David


Tell us about the Goodwood philosophy and how this extends to employees…

Goodwood remains the home of the

Duke and Duchess of Richmond and their

family,who live in the Grade 1 listed

Goodwood House, a building characterised by

its four distinctive copper domes. The family

are hugely passionate about the estate and

ensuring it is maintained and enhanced; they

are very much the custodians of Goodwood.

Our vision is to create a truly sustainable

estate which is able to look after itself

and one in which the natural capital of

the estate is enhanced. We are seeking

to do this through managing a healthy

group of businesses that are based around

the family's sporting passion and work

sympathetically with the estate.

Our aspiration is to become ‘The Home

of Exceptional Experiences’. There are now

750 people employed across the estate. We

champion creative, collaborative, determined

and passionate people who are team players

with a ‘derring do’ attitude to create the

best possible experiences for our customers.

People with these attributes always succeed

here and Goodwood is such a fun place to

work.

David Macey is Goodwood’s Talent Acquisition Manager.

David, you’re reasonably new to Goodwood. What attracted you? What did you want to bring to your position? What were your first impressions?

I joined Goodwood three years ago and the

time has gone really fast, because there are

always so many amazing things happening

here and no two days are the same. My first

impression of Goodwood was just how warm

and welcoming everyone was and how as a

diverse estate we work collaboratively to get

the job done. I love the creativity here and

I am part of the People and Development

team where we attract, recruit, develop and

nurture the talented teams who make up

Goodwood.

One of our main focus areas is to build

our employer brand, sharing what it is like

to work on the Goodwood Estate so we

can really illustrate the joy of working for

Goodwood and therefore helping to attract

the next generation of our people.

How do you recruit and train managers and employees? What do you look for?

We first have good conversations

internally before going out to market, so we

are very clear about what specific skills and

behaviours we are looking to attract. Our

Goodwood values are the foundation of our

strategy and purpose, which are:-

• The Real Thing - Authenticity

• Derring-Do – The Wow

• Obsession for Perfection – Quality

• Sheer Love of Life – Infectious Enthusiasm

We are an innovative, design-led business

and our managers are crucial, they need

to inspire their teams through living the

values, encouraging creativity and making

life at Goodwood fun! Development scored

highly in the importance scale in last

year’s TLF survey and our Learning &

Development Advisor, Chloe, has developed

an invigorating suite of sessions, which is

available to all staff.

E M P L O Y E E


Chris, you recently conducted an employee survey with TLF. What did you want to find out? What did you want to use the results for?

Goodwood is a customer focused business

and our people are crucial to what we deliver.

We wanted to conduct a comprehensive

employee satisfaction survey so that we could

understand our people, see if they understood

our strategy, had what they needed to succeed

in their role, and if they were happy. We

wanted to find out what we can improve on,

and the results gave us a good view of what

we need to do to improve things.

What have you learnt from the survey… What has it confirmed [things you already knew or suspected]? What have you learnt that is new or surprising?

We were very fortunate – we had an

excellent response rate with over 600

people (83%) completing the survey. We

found that we have an incredibly engaged

workforce, with over 80% of our people

being classed as engaged. Overall our

employee Net Promoter Score was 37.8%

and we found that our employees were

really satisfied with working at Goodwood.

One of the things that surprised us was

that we were clearly not communicating

internal opportunities well: we had over 80

internal moves in 2019 but there appeared to

be limited awareness of such opportunities.

However, on a more positive note, TLF

created a brilliant word cloud page to show

what four words our employees would use to

describe Goodwood as a place to work. The

four words most commonly used were…..

“fun”, “unique”, “exciting” and “friendly”.

This was good to hear.

You’ve done surveys before, successfully, how does the latest survey dovetail with what you already know? What is Goodwood’s history when it comes to measuring employee satisfaction?

We had run surveys with another provider

for three years previously before we turned

to TLF after a recommendation. We liked

E M P L O Y E E


TLF’s ability to tailor questions, the depth of

their analysis and the personal commitment

and interest in Goodwood that Rachel, who

subsequently managed our relationship

and survey, had shown. The survey that we

undertook with TLF is different to other

surveys and so not directly comparable.

However, going forward we have decided

to include benchmarking questions in all

our surveys so that we have a clear view on

employee engagement.

Any good surprises from the results?

Yes, the top five areas of importance for

our employees included: ‘working to deliver

a level of quality that exceeds customer

expectations’, ‘working hard to increase

customer satisfaction’, and ‘going beyond

what is expected to help make Goodwood

successful’. These are all incredibly

reassuring in a customer-focused business.

In addition, the other areas of importance

were: ‘[our employees’] ideas are listened to

and valued’, ‘[our employees’] roles make

good use of their skills’, and ‘knowledge

and abilities’.

It was really positive to hear that our

employees gave the highest satisfaction

score to ‘working hard to increase customer

satisfaction’ followed by ‘able to see the

link between their work and Goodwood’s

business objectives’.

Any challenges or conundrums from the results?

A number of employees wanted Goodwood

to improve communication and engagement

between departments; have better staff

facilities – i.e. break-out rooms; and increase

support for progression and development;

along with developing our staff ‘Wellbeing

Programme’. We have created an internal

application portal for jobs and an internal

talent pool.

One of the themes that employees felt most

strongly about in the engagement survey

was that we needed to improve our internal

communication. As a result we held detailed,

follow-up focus groups. We listened and

are now investing in an employee internal

communication platform called My Goodwood.

We are transforming areas across the estate into

break-out rooms to meet the need for better

staff facilities. Finally, we have extensively

refurbished one of the old architecturally

significant buildings of the estate to create a

beautiful smart modern office space.

How do you share your results?

TLF was really helpful and great at

presenting the key findings to our Directors

and then it was communicated to employees

at one of our estate-wide ‘State of the

Nation’ meetings. After the ‘State of the

Nation’ meeting we spoke directly to people

in smaller groups. We also followed up by

sending out a communication with the key

findings to all employees.

[email protected]

Rachel Allen

Client Manager

TLF Research

E M P L O Y E E


What are you stopping, starting and continuing to do based on the results?

This year we have a plan to focus on our

‘Wellbeing Programme’ as the previous topic

in the 2019 employee satisfaction survey was

our ‘State of the Nation’ meeting.

We have used the results to develop an

internal talent pool (an internal job application

portal). We are also supporting the need for

staff development and learning by introducing

new internal courses. Importantly, we spent

a lot of time launching our new vision to all

of our people: following the survey we were

clear that we wanted everyone to have a good

understanding of our plan for the estate.

Any top tips for other organisations about to embark on an employee survey? You’re just about to run your second survey; is there anything you are doing differently this time round?

Be clear about what you want to achieve

at the outset. Take time to design the

questions and work with TLF who can

use their expertise to help guide your

approach.

We were really pleased with how the

survey went and the help provided by TLF.

The only things we are doing differently

this year is to make some tweaks to the

questions in our survey and focus on a new

topic, which is our ‘Wellbeing Programme’.

E M P L O Y E E

If you were given a pink card with the

message to the left a hundred years ago, it

meant the Anti-Profanity League has been

alerted to your vulgar language. This pious

and impractical band, founded in 1901 by

Arthur Samuel Colborne of 185 East Seventy-

sixth, distributed these cards to further their

goal of totally eradicating all swearing – the

very epitome of pissing in the wind.1

Nowadays, you are unlikely to receive a

printed card, but your social media posts may

be flagged if they contain offensive or hateful

speech. The scale and instant reach of social

networks mean that moderating language is no

longer the job of a handful of eccentrics, but

the task of the latest AI technology for flagging

harmful content, and tens of thousands of

contract workers across the globe.

For sure, unlike with the Anti-Profanity

League, moderating Facebook, Twitter and

YouTube are not motivated by linguistic

squeamishness: online speech can have

real-world consequences. However, the Anti-

Profanity League exemplifies the pitfalls of an

broad-brush approach to recognising harmful

content.

Firstly, what should be censored? Colborne

took an expansive approach to this, wanting

to prohibit not only swear words, but also

‘leaders-on’, such as hell, devil take it, dad

burn it, gee whiz, and doggone, for fear such

words would act as gateway drugs to the truly

filthy ones.

However, as we pointed out in the previous

instalment of our profanities series, swearing

is not always intended to offend, and the same

swearword can have multiple meanings.

“They found examples of tweets where this was

used to verbally abuse another user (you are an

ass), to emphasise a feeling (a good ass day) and

express emotion (pain in the ass). It was also used

as an auxiliary (really need someone to save my

ass), as a marker of identity (now this is a group of

ass-kickers) and in a non-vulgar way, given the

context (Kick-Ass 2 – what a movie).”

We used our profanity filter (a list of

common swearwords) to extract several

thousand profanity-containing responses from

customers with faulty internet service. We

then applied our best judgment as to whether

we should continue to communicate with

this customer, pause the conversation for a

while, or stop the conversation altogether. We

found that for 30% of responses we should

just continue as usual. In a less contentious

and more social setting than talking to

your internet service provider, a far greater

proportion of swearwords would be indicative

of something other than abusive intent.

So, what was in this 30% that triggered

the profanity filter? A proportion were milder

swearwords, perhaps the equivalents of

Colborne’s ‘leaders-on’ such as crap or bloody.

But the most obscene words can be repurposed:

‘The tech was fucking brilliant’ one happy

customer opined.

"NEW HOPE FOR THE WORLD. GOD BLESS

AMERICA AND OUR HOMES. HAVE

NO SWEARING, BOYCOTT

PROFANITY! PLEASE DO NOT SWEAR,

NOR USE OBSCENE OR PROFANE

LANGUAGE. THESE CARDS ARE FOR DISTRIBUTION.

SEND FOR SOME - THEY ARE FREE."

185 E 76 st New York, N.Y.

SWEARINGIN CONTEXT

1https://stronglang.wordpress.com/2017/02/26/joseph-mitchell-a-s-colborne-and-the-anti-profanity-league/2https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/07/twitter-lgbt-search-block-explanation/3https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/4/17424472/youtube-lgbt-demonetization-ads-algorithm4https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/05/facebook-declaration-of-independence-hate-speech

5https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-use-irony-on-the-internet-115654096606https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/C16-1231.pdf7https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/N19-1221.pdf


WARNING: PLEASE SKIP THIS ARTICLE IF YOU’RE EASILY OFFENDED BY PROFANITY

D I G I T A L

These examples demonstrate some of the

challenges facing any AI algorithm to identify

offensive comments. An algorithm that

over-indexes on the presence of particular

words ignores the nuances of how language

is used. Twitter ran into this problem when it

inadvertently censored tweets containing the

words bisexual or gay, because its algorithm

mistook such words as indicating adult-

content2; YouTube has also been accused

of demonetising LGBT content based on

particular words such as trans3. Algorithms

also struggle to recognise the difference

between words used in quotation versus in

anger: last year Facebook’s algorithm censored

the Declaration of Independence due to a

passage describing indigenous Americans as

“merciless Indian savages.”4

The issue here is that the meaning of a

sentence is not just a function of its words.

It's informed also by context, which can come

in many forms: the intention of the author,

background knowledge, the surrounding text,

and the intended audience.

We need algorithms that

can incorporate the

full history of

user’s posts, social connections, and a wealth

of background and historical knowledge.

This, unsurprisingly, is extremely difficult.

AI researchers are working on incorporating

contextual information into its algorithms

by directly learning profiles of authors of

text. This authorship information has already

been shown to benefit sarcasm detection,

a similar task to profanity detection. Like

swearing, sarcasm is often an example of

what internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch

calls a ‘trust fall’ – a linguistic test used to

engender trust between interlocuters akin to

falling backwards trusting your friend to catch

you.5 In a 2016 paper6, researchers showed

that including context of a user’s previous

tweets could dramatically improve the ability

of an AI model to judge whether a future

tweet was sarcastic or not. A Facebook paper7

on content moderation shown at NAACL (an

NLP conference) this year also uses author

features to improve model accuracy – in

this case the features are learnt using an

effect called homophily: the tendency for

similar people to be connected in a social

network. Using a technique

called graph convolutions, user

representations can be learnt both

from a user’s posts and the online

communities in which he or she

interacts, helping the model

better differentiate between, say,

homophobic

abuse and gay

self-expression. This approach, however, comes

with its own problem: the risk of finding people

guilty merely by their association with others.

Knowing where context is relevant (and

when not) is beyond current AI, meaning

human moderators are going to be greatly

needed for a long time. Currently, just 16% of

bullying and harassment posts are proactively

detected by Facebook’s technology before they

are reported by users. Of course, moderating

the posts of 2 billion Facebook users is much

harder than customer responses, but the

following lesson still applies: we need to use a

combination of technology and human empathy

to understand how best to treat customers –

particularly when they start swearing.

contactengine.com

Euan Matthews

Director of AI and Innovation

Contact Engine


D I G I T A L

G U E S T F E A T U R E


It’s sometimes hard to have faith in the

“wisdom of the crowd”, but there is one

thing that people are reliably good at—telling

you how they feel. They’re not always very

good at explaining why they feel like that,

which can be frustrating, but knowing how

they feel means that we can come closer to

understanding their behaviour, and make

better decisions as a result.

That’s the rationale behind the idea

of measuring consumer sentiment and

confidence—even though they may not be

great macroeconomic thinkers, the way

ordinary people feel about their finances

and the prospects for the country has a big

impact on their behaviour. That, in turn,

has implications for the economy and for

business.

In 2018 TLF Research launched a new

measure of consumer sentiment on our online

panel, modelled on the University of Michigan’s

Index of Consumer Sentiment, and we’ve

tracking it quarterly ever since. In this article

we’ll explain how the index works, look at how

it’s changed in that time, and suggest some

ways in which it could be used in the future.

Measuring consumer sentiment

Like the University of Michigan index that it’s

based on, our index aims to measure 3 things:

• How people feel about their own financial

situation

• How people feel about the general economy

in the short term

• How people feel about the general economy

in the longer term

And it addresses those topics with 5 questions:

Those 5 questions together make up the Index of Consumer Sentiment. The first 2 are also

used to create the Index of Current Economic Conditions, and the other 3 form the Index of

Consumer Expectations.

How are UK consumers feeling?

As you can see in the chart below, all three indices have increased since we started measuring

them in October 2018. In particular there was a big step up in January 2020, which it’s hard to

read as anything other than an endorsement from UK consumers for Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal.

84

82

80

78

76

74

72

70

68

66

Index of Current Economic Conditions Index of Consumer Sentiment Index of Consumer Expectations

Oct-

18

No

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Dec-1

8

Jan

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Feb

-19

Mar

-19

Ap

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May

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Jun

-19

Jul-

19

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9

Sep

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Oct-

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Dec-1

9

Jan

-20

Would you say that you and your family are better o or worse o financially than you were a year ago?

Thinking about the big things people have to spend money on such as their car, a new television, furniture and things like that, do you think now is a good or a bad time to buy major items?

Looking ahead, do you think that a year from now you and your family will be better o financially, or worse o , or just about the same as now?

Now turning to business conditions in the country as a whole, do you think that during the next 12 months we'll have good times financially, or bad times?

Looking further ahead over the next five years or so, would you say that in the country as a whole we'll have good times financially or that things will not be so good financially?



It’s important to position that carefully.

First of all, we can assume that the prospect

of Brexit is likely to have been having a

negative effect on consumer confidence for

some time. One piece of evidence to support

that is the fact that these scores are still low

when compared to the figures for the USA.

endorsement for Johnson’s leadership may

be going too far, but it is certainly the case

that this is by far the most positive outlook

that UK consumers have had for the economy

since October 2018. There are still plenty

of people who feel pessimistic, but for the

first time there are as many optimists as

pessimists.

What next?

We’re looking forward to maintaining the

index of consumer sentiment as an ongoing

insight into how UK consumers are feeling,

and we’ll be releasing the results once a

quarter. Is January 2020 a peak, or is it the

beginning of a long-term recovery from the

gloom of Brexit uncertainty? Only time will

tell.

Get in touch if you have any questions

about the index, or if you’d like more details

about the data and methodology, and keep

your eyes open for April’s results coming

soon.

[email protected]

Tom Kiralfy

Panel Manager

TLF Panel

Definitely good times

Probably good times

Not sure

Probably bad times

Definitely bad times

11%9%

27%

29%

25%

When we look at the scores for specific

questions, such as whether the country will

have good or bad times in the next year,

consumers are revealed to be as divided as

they seem to have been on almost everything

since 2016.

In other words, reading this as a ringing

USA: 99.8UK: 81.5

USA: 114.4UK: 82.2

USA: 90.5UK: 81.0

Current Economic Conditions

Index of Consumer Sentiment

January 2020

Index of Consumer Expectations

Now turning to business conditions in the country as a whole, do you think that during the next 12 months we'll have good times financially, or bad times?

Many companies now have data

dependence baked into their DNA. They

collect and mine vast amounts of information

on customers and prospects to uncover

trends, patterns, and opportunities to

sell products and services across multiple

touchpoints. “Data obsession” is a thing.

Google the term and the search engine

returns page after page.

All of this increased reliance on customer

data has led many organizations to add

a new position to the C-suite focused on

understanding the customer. Often coined the

Chief Customer Officer, 35 of the Fortune 500

companies have one1. The role means many

things to many people, but it often majors

on data-driven insights. I believe that’s too

narrow a definition and misses a key point:

data alone isn’t enough to create great customer

experiences.

Bring the Voice of Your Customer Into the C-Suite

To create great experiences, you need

human insights to build empathy and deeply

understand what customers think, feel,

say, do, and want. That means creating

opportunities to do this first-hand. This often

requires a culture shift at companies that

have grown accustomed to examining reams

of data and then pumping out new products

or services as quickly as possible to stay

competitive.

That’s why I’ve approached my job a

bit differently since I was named Chief

Insights Officer at my company a year ago.

My responsibility is to guide our customers

in using data to shed light on their own

customers, with a major focus on how human

insight can feed into decisions that drive

outstanding customer experiences. These

recommendations are based on best practices

we see in the industry.

Regardless of the title — Chief Insights

Officer, Customer Experience Officer, Chief

Customer Officer, or Chief Empathy Officer (a

title my company had considered for my role)

— it is critical to create a role in the C-suite

to be the voice of the customer, personify

their needs, and build a culture of empathy.

Isn't the C-Suite Crowded Enough?

Is it really necessary to add yet another

executive to the increasingly crowded C-suite?

“If your organization happens to be one

of the few with customer satisfaction and

experience woven deeply into its culture, the

answer is no,” a McKinsey report2 said. “For

most companies, though, this is not the case.

While nearly every organization claims to be

customer-centric, few really are.”

In a nutshell, this executive role focused on

building institutional knowledge of customers

should have a dedicated focus on the human

side to drive stellar customer experience.

It’s impossible to feel what a customer

experiences merely by analysing data.

Empathy doesn’t come from reading a screen,

but by finding ways to get inside customers’

heads and truly understand how products or

service thrill or frustrate them.

What could be more important? As a

Gartner report3 put it, customer experience

(CX) is the new battlefront, with the vast

majority of companies saying they compete

mostly or completely on the basis of CX.

Business leaders agree as well. A survey by

consulting firm Walker4 found 39% of CEOs

consider customer experience to be the most

effective way to create competitive advantage

— a number higher than talent, product,

efficiency, brand and pricing.

The fact is, most companies don’t do a

good job deeply understanding the customer,

the market opportunity, and how they can

deliver products that truly rise to the occasion.

They just go into build mode without enough

research (human insights as well as data).

Data Is a Commodity. Empathy Is the Differentiator

One of my most important responsibilities

as Chief Insights Officer is to help companies

understand how building customer empathy

needs to be in the job responsibilities of

everyone across the organization who touches

the customer in any way, and what processes

they can put in place to execute this way of

thinking.

Lastly, but most importantly, it is the Chief

Insights Officer’s job to help organizations

understand that data is a commodity while

empathy is a true differentiator. A company’s

competitors have access to the same types

of data. If they don’t, they can purchase it.

Competitors have access to the same AI and

machine learning technologies. They have

access to the same CRM and automated

marketing systems.

The race to combine technologies to collect,

process, mine, and analyze all this data is

important in a data-driven world. But data

only gets you so far, especially if it is looked

to as a proxy for customer understanding.

Building customer empathy is the way to win

in today’s business environment, and it should

be the Chief Insights Officer’s primary job to

show how that’s done.

1https://www.inmoment.com/blog/what-does-chief-customer-officer-need-be-successful/

2https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/why-your-company-needs-a-chief-customer-officer-cco\

3https://www.gartner.com/en/marketing/insights/articles/key-findings-from-the-gartner-customer-experience-survey

4https://www.walkerinfo.com/Portals/0/Documents/Knowledge Center/Featured Reports/WALKER-Customer-focused-CEO.pdf

Janelle Estes

Chief Insights Officer

UserTesting

Janelle is an expert research practitioner

fascinated by human behaviour and intrigued

by data insight. She brings over 15 years’

experience conducting large-scale customer

research initiatives for both B2C and B2B

companies across a variety of industries to

help them transform their customer, user, and

brand experiences. Janelle is responsible for

stewarding the future of Human Insight and

translating that into opportunities to evolve the

UserTesting platform.

https://www.usertesting.com/



D I G I T A L


Whenever I am doing any training

workshops, regardless of the industry or skill

level, everyone loves it when I talk about the

tools that are available. Finding digital tools

that can help you with your job or even your

life is great, especially when they’re free!

I love finding good free tools. In fact, I put

together a guide on my website with over 500

free tools that I update every few months.

You can find it at andrewmilesdavis.com/

marketing-tools

Anyway, here are 10 free tools that provide

you with a lot of value.

Answer The Publicwww.Answerthepublic.com

Whenever I start a campaign, I always

like to do some brainstorming. However,

sometimes I don’t want to ‘think’ and use

tools instead. One tool I always turn to is

Answer The Public because this tool lets you

find out what questions and queries your

consumers have by displaying what they're

searching for in Google.

Portent Idea Generatorwww.portent.com/tools/title-maker

Another tool that helps with ideas but

also gives you great headlines is Portent Idea

Generator. If you ever struggle to come up

with concepts or titles then enter a keyword

and give it a spin.

Google Trendswww.google.co.uk/trends

One of my favourite tools comes from

Google and it is their trends tool. This tool

lets you explore how Google’s data can be

used to tell stories including search demand

of a particular word over a period of time in

any region and also compares 2 similar words

so you can spot trends, peaks, and troughs.

Ubersuggesthttps://neilpatel.com/ubersuggest/

If you are into keyword research,

competitor analysis, idea generation and

overall online performance then this free

tool by Neil Patel should be on your list of

tools to use frequently. Ubersuggest helps

you generate so many important factors for

your content marketing strategy, production,

promotion, and conversion.

Evernotewww.evernote.com

One of the most popular free tools on

this list and there is a good reason for it.

Evernote is a note-taking app that helps

you capture and prioritise ideas, projects

and to-do lists, so you don’t miss anything.

Also, unlike other note apps, it allows you

to add images, share with others and syncs

seamlessly with your phone.

Hootsuitewww.hootsuite.com

If you are looking after a number of social

media accounts across multiple platforms

then using a social media management tool

is important. This is why Hootsuite is known

as the daddy of them all. It allows you to

manage, schedule, create and measure your

social media all in one platform.

Canvawww.canva.com

If you are like me and cannot get your

head around Photoshop then Canva is the

tool for you. Canva is a simplified graphic-

design tool that uses a drag-and-drop format

and provides access to photographs, vector

images, graphics, videos, and fonts. It is used

by non-designers as well as professionals

and has grown considerably over the last few

years. Most designs you see on social media

use tools like Canva now and they have a

great mobile app.

Lumen5www.lumen5.com

It’s no secret that video content is being

shown more and more in people’s timelines

but creating video can be difficult. Lumen5

is a video creation platform powered by A.I.

that enables anyone without training or

10 FREEMARKETING TOOLS TO HELP YOU INTHE DIGITAL WORLD

experience to easily create engaging video

content within minutes. Once you explore

this tool, you will have so many ‘a-ha’

moments.

Smartsupphttps://www.smartsupp.com/

A website without a chat is like a brick-

and-mortar store without a shop assistant. To

offer a better customer experience and to help

with conversions, most businesses now have

some bot on their site to answer questions

immediately. This is why if your website gets

a lot of traffic, you should make sure you

have an easy way for people to contact you

and Smartsupp helps you with that.

Trellowww.trello.com

If you are working on many projects, then

you need a way to stay on top of things and

Trello helps with just that. Trello keeps track

of everything, from the big picture to the

minute details. Also it can help you stay up to

date with all the free tools I have shown you.

So there you have it! 10 free tools that can

help grow your business and I am sure you

can use some of these in your personal lives

as well. If you liked these then please visit

my guide for plenty more free tools:

andrewmilesdavis.com/marketing-tools

Good luck!

[email protected]

www.thinkingoutsidetheblog.com

Andrew Davis

Digital Consultant &Workshop Leader

R E S E A R C H

TLF GEMSNEWSLETTERMONTHLY CX INSIGHTS FROMTLF RESEARCH

Our monthly newsletter shares our favourite Customer Experience, Insight, and Service Design highlights.

TLF GEMSPODCASTA MONTHLY PODCAST FROM TLF RESEARCH ON CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE AND INSIGHT

If you’re reading this and you like podcasts, you should definitely check out the TLF Gems podcast. Each episode Stephen and Greg talk about a different topic related to Customer Experience research and insight.

Sign up to receive our newsletter atwww.tlfresearch.com/customer-insight-subscription

Search “TLF Gems” in iTunes or subscribe directly using the feedhttp://feeds.feedburner.com/tlfgemspodcast

MONTHLTLF RESE

Our monCustomeDesign h

Energy companies don’t have

a great reputation for customer

experience. The Utilities sector performs

poorly in benchmarks such as the

Institute of Customer Service’s UKCSI, and

most people would tell you that companies

prioritise acquisition over retention, tempting

customers in with attractive tariffs while taking

advantage of existing customers.

Igloo, a relatively new provider which has

seen rapid growth, aims to be different. We

caught up with Rebecca Smith, Director

of Service and Culture, to find out more

about their long-term view of customer

relationships, and how their focus on

the customer feeds into a strategy for

sustainable growth.

Building from the ground up

Rebecca was Igloo’s

first hire, which must

be a good sign that the

organisation takes

customer service

seriously. Her

background was

in other sectors,

which meant that she was able to bring a

fresh perspective, in keeping with their values

of ‘Don’t think like a utility’ and ‘Don’t act

like a utility’. As Rebecca says,

“My initial perceptions were ‘customer service

isn’t great in this industry, but I love a challenge.

Let’s see how we can make it great’.”

For 5 months Rebecca was Igloo’s

customer service, balancing answering the

phone with creating customer journeys and

learning about the industry, but over the last

3 years she has been able to build a team

and systems around her from the ground up

(something which many customer service

leaders would be very envious of!)

It may be a luxury to start with a blank

slate, but it brings challenges of its own.

Everything, from processes to forms, has to

be invented. I asked Rebecca how she has

approached developing processes which are

fit for the customer-focused business that

Igloo wants to be:

“What I’ve tried not to do is build process for

process’ sake. As and when we have a need for

something, we build it.”

In the early days processes were developed

by the team as a whole, working together to

process map and conduct root cause analysis.

That has changed as the customer service

TLF GEMSNEWSLETTERMONTHLY CX INSIGHTS FROMTLF RESEARCH

Our monthly newsletter shares our favourite Customer Experience, Insight, and Service Design highlights.

TLF GEMSPODCASTA MONTHLY PODCAST FROM TLF RESEARCH ON CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE AND INSIGHT

If you’re reading this and you like podcasts, you should definitely check out the TLF Gems podcast. Each episode Stephen and Greg talk about a different topic related to Customer Experience research and insight.

Sign up to receive our newsletter atwww.tlfresearch.com/customer-insight-subscription

Search “TLF Gems” in iTunes or subscribe directly using the feedhttp://feeds.feedburner.com/tlfgemspodcast

MONTHLTLF RESE

Our monCustomeDesign h




team has grown, but

collaboration is still a key part of

it. As Rebecca says,

“My role in the business is to protect that as

we grow.”

In the customer service team there are two

forums (a customer experience forum and

an industry operations forum). Their job is

to pick up any roadblocks for the customer,

decide what should be a priority, and

then bring the product team in to develop

solutions. It’s clear from talking to Rebecca

that she sees customer service as something

which should be embedded in the culture of a

business, not as an add-on:

“In so many businesses Customer Service is a

department, but it’s not. Customer service is an

attitude, and we’ve really made sure we’ve built

that, and that makes continuous improvement so

much easier because we’re all on the same page.”

Understanding customers

Aiming to create great customer service

is one thing, but actually doing it is another.

Many

organisations

make the mistake of

assuming that customers all want

the same thing. Rebecca comments,

“There’s a common phrase ‘treat the customer

how you’d want to be treated’. I’ve always

thought you should treat the customer how they

want to be treated, and that’s not necessarily how

you want to be treated yourself.”

This is a really important point—if we

make the mistake of assuming that customers

want the same things as us, then, with the

best of intentions, we often end up creating a

frustrating experience for them. It’s a mental

trap that’s easy for all of us to fall into,

unless we do something to guard against

it. At Igloo they use a colour-based model,

which many readers will be familiar with, to

understand different personalities amongst

both staff and customers, and to help predict

what kind of experience will work best for

each customer.

“We’ve done loads of training around customer

profiling and profiling

ourselves, understanding our personalities

better. That’s been a key ingredient in what we’ve

created so far.”

All this work in onboarding and training

means that staff are better able to anticipate

that a “red” customer may want a quick and

efficient service, while a “green” customer

would be more concerned with detail, and

might want a written follow-up. It also

features in their approach to complaint

handling, understanding that different

customers may want different things.

“Customer service exists, ultimately, because

something’s gone wrong. We’ve got all the

technology in the world now that allows

customers to self-serve. But people need to

know that there is a real person there, a human.

Maybe some of our customers want that human



interaction,

and others don’t.

Customer service of the

future is tailoring for both of

those things.”

Getting this kind of personalised

experience right demands a mixture of

systems that support it (e.g. CRM accurately

logging contact preferences) and staff with

the emotional intelligence to spot clues to a

customer’s personality (and to understand

their own personality).

Growth

New entrants in most markets,

particularly ones as competitive as the

energy sector, often find it difficult to

grow. We asked Rebecca if that was true

for Igloo, and the answer was…yes and no!

Although it’s a huge marketplace, 48% of

customers don’t regularly switch suppliers.

The other 52% are (to quote Martin Lewis)

“tariff tarts” who switch regularly to get the

cheapest deal. As a

customer this means

that you either have

to settle for a poorer

deal, or you have to

live with the hassle

of switching supplier

all the time.

“Taking on new

customers in this industry

is almost too easy. With

comparison sites you

can quite easily take on

thousands of new customers

overnight. What it’s about is

customer loyalty.”

Growth is important

because of the relatively small

margins available in the industry,

and Igloo see a niche for themselves

positioned to appeal to customers

who want a good deal without the need

for regular switching:

“The issue is ‘how do I keep my costs low

without the hassle of switching’. We’ve come

into the marketplace to tackle that issue. We’ve

got one simple variable tariff, so we have to

keep it competitive. We don’t have exit fees or a

minimum term, because we don’t want to tie our

customers in – we want them to be loyal.”

That proposition has been successful in

acquiring customers (Igloo now has 85,000,

and has ambitious plans for further growth

over the next few years). More importantly,

those customers are extremely loyal—77%

of customers who joined Igloo in its first 6

months are still there. We asked Rebecca

where they expected to be in terms of

customer numbers in 5 years. Her reply is

revealing:

“We’re cautious to set targets on numbers. For

us a better measure is how loyal are our customers,

and how happy are our customers.”

Helping customers reduce their energy use

Being a successful energy

supplier is one thing, but

Igloo wants to be more

than that, they also want

to be known for the home services arm

of the company, which ties together

the benefits of building a

loyal customer base with

the potential to help

customers reduce

their bills.

“There’s a

common phrase

‘treat the customer

how you’d want

to be treated’. I’ve

always thought

you should treat

the customer

how they want

to be treated,

and that’s not

necessarily how

you want to be

treated yourself.”


Rebecca Smith

Director of Service and

Culture at Igloo

Rebecca was Igloo Energy’s first employee,

joining to set up the brand’s customer

service function in January 2017. She heads

up a team of 56 people and looks after all

elements of customer service including social

media, web chat, and customer care. Prior to

joining, Rebecca had spent 10 years working

in contact centres across legal and social

housing. Now, at Igloo Energy, she’s using this

experience to design, implement, and deliver

excellent customer service to its 92,000

customers.

https://igloo.energy/


“The second thing is we’ve got technology

that means we can understand how you’re using

energy in your home. We can profile your home,

and we can suggest to you products and services

that are going to help you manage your energy

and reduce your costs.”

There’s a crucial battle to win in

customers’ minds to help them realise that

their energy bill is not simply about price,

but should be thought of as a combination

of price and consumption. This gives Igloo,

at least in theory, the opportunity to work

with cost-conscious customers to reduce

their bill through a better understanding

of energy use, rather than switching to a

cheaper tariff. If customers are using more

than their profile would predict, Igloo would

prefer to start

a conversation about that

rather than immediately putting up the

customer’s direct debit.

“We want to help our customers to consume

less energy. From the customer’s perspective

that’s making their home more efficient, it’s

reducing their bills, it’s also helping them to save

the environment, and for us to help cut carbon

emissions.”

Loyalty based on experience

The energy sector, as we’ve seen, is

known for relatively low levels of customer

satisfaction. This is one place in which

Rebecca’s experience in other industries may

have allowed her to bring fresh ideas.

“Traditionally you could afford to be lazy,

because it’s so easy to take customers from a

comparison site, it’s easy to think you don’t

need to care for those customers or provide a

great experience for them.”

Igloo has an excellent average

customer satisfaction score of around

96%, based on a transactional

survey that goes out after every

interaction. It also regularly tops

the CAB’s table of complaints

performance within the sector,

and over 95% of complaints are

resolved within one working

day. The results, though, are less

important than how the feedback

is used:

“What’s important is that we

don’t just focus on the numbers. My

emphasis is to focus on the people, to

make sure they’re engaged.”

Rebecca is a keen proponent of

instilling what she calls “a feedback

culture” throughout the business,

starting

with asking for

honest feedback on her

own performance and approach

to things. Feedback is a word that

sometimes carries negative connotations,

but it’s clear that what Rebecca is talking

about is a very healthy, open, culture:

“You’ve got to be careful not to demonise

mistakes, as long as we learn from them. And

don’t profess to know all the answers. There are

a lot of things we’re going to have to work out

together.”

Easy, honest, communication in all

directions is the key. Once installed in a

culture, it naturally makes people very

open to listening to customers and

reacting to what they say

as a positive, rather

than being

defensive.



“That trickles down to

our customer service as well. When

we’re open about having conversations with

each other in the office to say ‘How am I doing,

give me some feedback?’, we’re open with the

customer to say ‘How are we doing, give us some

feedback?’, and we’re not defensive in receiving

that feedback because it’s something which is

normal to us.”

Complaints are seen as a gift. That’s

something that many organisations say,

but few have the ability to reliably act as if

it’s true. The secret lies in that culture of

openness and continuous improvement.

“If they don’t tell us, they’re just going to

walk straight out the door. We won’t know

we’ve done something wrong, and we might

never learn from it, it might never get fixed.”

Summary

As regular readers will know, we believe

that a loyalty strategy is the key

to building an

seems to be doing, and there’s

no question that puts them out

ahead of most in the energy sector when

it comes to their ability to think long term

about the power of retaining customers and

strengthening relationships with them.

“Unless you truly understand your customers

and what they want to get from their energy

provider, you’re never going to get there.”

Three pillars seem to support the building

of those relationships: excellent service, an

attractive proposition based around ease

(we’ll give you one simple, competitive,

tariff, without the need to switch all the

time), and a focus on education that will help

customers to reduce their bills while also

contributing to a more sustainable energy

future.

“We’re in the marketplace to educate. We

want to drive engagement, and that’s a long-

term battle, we’re not going to resolve that

overnight.”

It would be impossible to deliver that

without the right people, and the right culture

to support them.

“There’s still lots of work we need to do, but

I think as long as we continue to focus on the

people, the rest of it will happen. That’s what I

want to preserve as we scale.”

We’re looking forward to seeing that

strategy pay off over the next few years.

“You’ve got to

be careful not

to demonise

mistakes, as long

as we learn from

them. And don’t

profess to know

all the answers.

There are a lot of

things we’re going

to have to work

out together.”

organisation which is sustainably

profitable in the long term.

That’s precisely

what Igloo

Are you looking to bring your team up to speed, build skills, or start a conversation about the customer experience?

Prices start from just £500

£200

We can develop a bespoke 30 or 60 minute webinar for up to 500 of your staff.

Or, if you prefer, commission one of our existing webinars exclusively for your staff at a date and time convenient to you,

complete with Q&A.

Find out more about our existing webinars at tlfresearch.com/webinarsor contact [email protected] to discuss your requirement

R E S E A R C H

Are you looking to bring your team up to speed, build skills, or start a conversation about the customer experience?

Prices start from just £500

£200

We can develop a bespoke 30 or 60 minute webinar for up to 500 of your staff.

Or, if you prefer, commission one of our existing webinars exclusively for your staff at a date and time convenient to you,

complete with Q&A.

Find out more about our existing webinars at tlfresearch.com/webinarsor contact [email protected] to discuss your requirement

In January HouseMark published its

decisions on a new framework for STAR,

based on extensive consultation and

review involving 300 landlords and over

13,000 tenants and leaseholders. STAR,

for those who are not familiar with the

sector, is a framework which allows social

landlords to benchmark their customer

satisfaction against other landlords.

While not totally prescriptive, it

sets out requirements and a core set

of questions, so that benchmarking

results are consistent. Whether

or not you work in social housing, it’s

worth taking a look at the approach

that HouseMark has taken in its review

of STAR, and reflecting on what it has

to teach us about benchmarking more

generally.

R E S E A R C H


An objective benchmark

Organisations in many sectors crave

benchmarking information on customer

satisfaction, as well as other key business

metrics, so that they can objectively

evaluate their performance. Metrics such

as Net Promoter Score (NPS), Satisfaction

Index, and Customer Effort are widely

used in this way, and various providers

provide the ability to benchmark against

other organisations.

In practice, though, differences in

survey methodology, sample selection,

or question wording can mean that these

benchmarks are not as objective as they

may first appear. HouseMark’s STAR

framework aims to provide a framework

which is flexible enough to meet the needs

of different organisations, but consistent

enough to ensure a fair and objective

benchmark.

To make sure that it remains fit

for purpose, HouseMark worked with

representatives from the National Housing

Federation (NHF), the Chartered Institute

of Housing (CIH), Tpas, the National

Federation of ALMOs (NFA), Association of

Retained Council Housing (ARCH), Taroe

Trust, and Councils with ALMOs Group

(CWAG). HouseMark also commissioned

specialist research agencies Acuity and

TLF Research to support the review and

secure out-of-sector innovation and best

practice, and held extensive consultations

with landlords and residents to review

ideas for improvement and evolution of

the STAR framework.

Talking about the launch, HouseMark Chief

Executive Laurice Ponting said: “I am delighted

with the level of engagement

seen in our review of STAR.

This shows how serious the

sector is about listening to and

acting on feedback to deliver better

services. Improving

performance

requires consistent,

robust data that gets to

the heart of what matters

to tenants and leaseholders,

and provides meaningful insights to

drive action. Using the new framework

will ensure that landlords are capturing

customer feedback in line with in and

out-of-sector best practice.”

R E S E A R C H


Core Areas for Comparison

STAR consists of five core areas,

four “perception measures”:

• Quality of home

• Health and safety

• Ease of dealing with

• Overall satisfaction

and one transactional measure:

performance on responsive repairs

(the single most important moment

of truth for most landlords in their

relationship with customers). There’s

also a library of additional questions

which landlords can choose from

as appropriate to align with their

needs as an organisation, including

15 recommended questions.

Methodology

STAR specifies acceptable approaches

to customer satisfaction measurement in

order to be accepted into the benchmark,

with requirements and recommendations

covering sample size, collection method,

survey frequency, and scale.

The framework requires consistency in

response scales (either five or ten point),

but is open to new options in terms of

how those ratings can be given, including

emojis and star ratings in addition to

more traditional ways of indicating

satisfaction. There is also flexibility in

terms of research methodology, with

online and SMS options allowed where

appropriate.

Combining perceptual and

transactional measures may seem

unusual, but it is a pragmatic approach

to the challenge that the customer

experience in social housing is a

complex mixture of broad ongoing

concerns such as safety alongside high

volume transactional events, of which

repairs is the most significant.

Results

Under the new framework, landlords

will be given a star rating (from 1 to 5),

launching in June 2020. This will make

it easy to communicate both within the

organisation and with residents how

customer satisfaction compares to other

landlords. This star rating will take

account of the context that can

impact results, so that landlords

receive a fair overall assessment

of the services

they provide.

R E S E A R C H

Consumer Insight

Visit tlfpanel.com

60,000 UK consumers

Fast turnaround2,000 responses

within 48hrs

Targeted surveysWe can find the

people you need

Range ofquestion typesIncluding open

comment and media

In depth reportingand analysis

Demographic splitsas standard

The data for the Sentiment Index article came from TLF’s panel.

The TLF Panel o�ers you an easy way to access the views and opinions of UK consumers. It’s a flexible research solution with a range of uses, including:

Insight into consumer behaviour, attitudes and usageFacts and figures for compelling content and PR storiesBrand awareness and competitor surveysTesting advertising and product conceptsRecruitment for focus groups and interviews

Want to try us out?We’ll give you 2 free questions (worth £375) – email [email protected] for details


People sometimes say (in fact I have said) that satisfying customers

is simple—all you have to do is consistently give customers what they

say they want.

Simple isn't the same as easy. Meeting customers' requirements

flawlessly every time is a task beyond most of us. Still, perhaps good

companies achieve it almost all the time—shall we say 90% of the time?

What happens when you give customers what they expected? They

are satisfied. But satisfied is a relatively lukewarm word isn't it? A

solid 8 out of 10. Good, but not great. How often do we create really

high levels of satisfaction, giving customers a sense of delight with

their experience, a 9 or 10 out of 10?

Let's take an illustrative example of a company that is doing a

basically good job for its customers. As you can see in the histogram

on the right, it's dissatisfying only 8% of its customers. The bulk of

customers score 8, 9, or 10. Sounds like a company doing pretty well?

Stop for a second and guess what the average score is.

It works out to an average of 7.96. As a satisfaction index of 79.6 that

would be just below halfway up our league table. What that shows you is

that, for all the hand-wringing about the state of customer service, the

typical performance of organisations we deal with is actually pretty good.

WHY WORLD CLASS CUSTOMER SATISFACTION IS HARDER THAN YOU THINKFirst published on https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/tlf-insight-unlocked

What would it take to move our fictional company up towards the

top of the league table, let's say a satisfaction index of 90?

Play with the numbers and you'll find you need an awful lot of 9s and

10s to outweigh even a small amount of dissatisfaction. To the left is a

distribution that would give you an index of 90.

So what point am I trying to make? In a nutshell, companies who

have satisfaction indexes in the high 80s or 90s are very, very, good.

They get to the top of the league table because the majority of their

customers are scoring them 9 or 10 out of 10 for nearly everything.

Being that good takes commitment and drive that verge on obsession.

Organisations in the middle of the league table, understandably,

like to focus on the positives: few customers are dissatisfied, most

customers are scoring us 8 or over. That's true, but if you want to

move from good to great it's going to take radical change.

A score of 80 sounds like it's nearly as good as 90. The truth is

it's a completely different level of performance, and you'll need to

completely reimagine your customer experience to make the step up.

1% 1% 1%2%

3%5%

14%

33%

25%

15%

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

0% 0% 0% 1% 2% 2%5%

9%

43%

38%

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Consumer Insight

Visit tlfpanel.com

60,000 UK consumers

Fast turnaround2,000 responses

within 48hrs

Targeted surveysWe can find the

people you need

Range ofquestion typesIncluding open

comment and media

In depth reportingand analysis

Demographic splitsas standard

The data for the Sentiment Index article came from TLF’s panel.

The TLF Panel o�ers you an easy way to access the views and opinions of UK consumers. It’s a flexible research solution with a range of uses, including:

Insight into consumer behaviour, attitudes and usageFacts and figures for compelling content and PR storiesBrand awareness and competitor surveysTesting advertising and product conceptsRecruitment for focus groups and interviews

Want to try us out?We’ll give you 2 free questions (worth £375) – email [email protected] for details

B O O K R E V I E WB O O K R E V I E W



Will

iam

Lid

well

Kriti

na Hold

en

Jill

Butle

r



B O O K R E V I E W


This little book (it genuinely does fit

in the back pocket of a pair of jeans) has

a permanent place on my desk, and I’m

going to suggest that you should think

about putting it on yours as well. It’s

one of those books that you can read

from cover to cover (pretty quickly), flick

through for inspiration, or turn to when

you need to remind yourself of something

half-remembered.

Who’s it for? One of the things that I

admire is that it defines its audience widely,

as “designers of all types”. Even then,

many of our readers might be a bit shy of

describing themselves as designers. Is it for

you? Well, if you ever think about how to

make things work effectively for customers

or employees, or if you’re interested in how

the way in which things are presented affects

people’s behaviour, then you’ll benefit from

this book. That’s got to include pretty much

everyone, hasn’t it?

The book is a list of 150 “principles”,

drawn from a mixture of psychological

theory and design experience, which may

help you to understand how to design things

which work more effectively. Each is defined

and explained briefly (in no more than a

couple of hundred words), and illustrated

with an example or diagram.

I’ll quote principle number 5 verbatim to

give you an example.

Aesthetic-Usability Effect

Aesthetic things are perceived to be easier

to use than ugly things.

• Aesthetic things are often subjectively rated

as easier to use, even when no usability

advantage can be objectively measured.

• Aesthetic things are more effective at

fostering positive attitudes than ugly things,

making people more tolerant when problems

are encountered.

• Aesthetic things are more likely to be tried,

accepted, displayed, and repeatedly used than

ugly things.

• Aspire to create aesthetically pleasing designs.

It is more than ornamentation—it is an

investment in user acceptance, forgiveness,

and satisfaction.

See Also Attractiveness Bias • Cognitive

Dissonance • Form Follows Function • IKEA

Effect

The illustration is a photo of the HomeHero

fire extinguisher, the design of which makes

people more likely to display it, therefore making

it more accessible in an emergency.

Principles of Design

If you’d ever wondered why Apple

products have a persistent reputation for

being easy to use, then this entry goes a

long way to explaining why. It’s also the

best short argument I’ve ever seen for the

existence of design as a discipline. That last

sentence “It is more than ornamentation—it is

an investment in user acceptance, forgiveness,

and satisfaction” should be put on t-shirts

and badges the world over.

Scattered throughout the book are the

effects of colour (Black Effects, Green

Effects, White Effects, etc.), which also

emphasise the impact that these apparently

aesthetic choices have on people’s feelings

and behaviour. For instance, “Consider

green interiors to reduce stress and promote

creativity.”

Principles of Communication

Other principles have important

consequences for the way we communicate,

for example the Five Hat Racks, which gives

a framework for organising information in

different ways—by category, time, location,

alphabet, and continuum. This is a good

example of the way these principles can

invite us to review and examine the choices

we have made when designing the customer

experience. Have we organised information

in the best way for customers? Would a

different way be clearer for some customers?

Principles of Measurement

We also need to examine our own ways

of working. One of my favourites is the

Abbe Principle, which says that you should

measure things as close to their action as

possible, because errors of measurement

tend to increase with distance. This is

literally true with mechanical measurement

(say a pair of callipers), and metaphorically

true when it comes to transactional customer

satisfaction surveys or other sources of MI.

As you can tell, I’m a huge fan of this

book. If you’ve found any of the principles

we’ve quoted interesting, then I guarantee

you’ll find it useful too. Perhaps you should

buy your boss [email protected]

Stephen Hampshire

Client Manager

TLF Research

H O W H A R D C A N I T B E ?

IS CONSUMER CONFIDENCE RATIONAL?

As reported earlier in Customer Insight the

TLF Sentiment Index showed a big increase

in January especially for business conditions

and the overall UK economy, but also, to a

slightly lesser extent, for people’s own personal

finances. This is confirmed by other polls

especially the post-election business polls

from the IoD and the CBI which both showed

big increases as well as the PwC consumer

confidence survey released on January 28th.

If we look at this rationally, how much

better were the prospects for the UK economy

and the average person’s personal finances on

1st January 2020 compared with 1st December

2019? On the plus side we had a stable

Government that would be able to make and,

more importantly, implement its decisions.

Those worried about the outlook for the

economy in the Labour Party’s hands would

be breathing a big sigh of relief. On the other

hand, there was a significant percentage of the

population that felt it would be better off with

Labour policies and most of the big economic

unknowns before the election hadn’t

changed. Most obviously, the details of a

trade deal with the EU (if there is one

at all) and the impact of that on UK

businesses had not changed. Any

rational, objective forecaster would

have to conclude that the volume

of trade with the EU post-deal

was very unlikely to be as high

as it is now. Since trade with any

other country is lower than with

the EU and it is inconceivable that

the benefits of any new trade deals

with other countries would

be flowing

until well after the end of the transition period,

the only rational conclusion is that GDP,

and therefore the average person’s financial

prospects, will be less good.

But people often base their judgements more

on perception and gut feel than on hard facts,

thoroughly analysed. It doesn’t matter whether

they are thinking about the performance of

their Government, a recent experience visiting

their local supermarket, or the process of

making an insurance claim. All that matters is

the customer’s perception, not whether their

views are right or wrong.

It is also vital not to confuse this method of

arriving at judgements with conclusions about

human intelligence. People are not stupid. (As

an aside it wouldn’t make any difference if they

are. If you want your customers to be satisfied

and loyal, the perceptions of those “stupid”

customers are still more important than your

understanding of the “hard facts”. And to take

this aside a step further, if people are stupid,

you probably are too, so your understanding

of the “hard facts” will be equally suspect.)

In reality, human beings’ proclivity to short

cut most judgements is completely rational.

There isn’t time to adopt any other stance.

There never has been, but with the constantly

accelerating volume of information that we are

presented with, using gut feel to short cut most

judgements and decisions has never been more

rational. It’s not emotional; it’s sensible.

There are some human feelings and

behaviours that are emotionally driven

but peoples’ perceptions /

judgements about their

customer experiences

do not come

into that

category.

34 Customer Insight Winter 2019/20 | www.tlfresearch.com

Nigel Hill

Chairman

TLF Research

Customer Insight Magazine is createdand published in house by TLF Research.

The magazine is our way of sharing features and latest thinking on creating an outstanding customer experience. We hope you enjoy reading the magazine as

much as we enjoy creating it.

If you’ve got an interesting customer experience story to tell and would like to feature in the magazine, we’d love to hear from you. Please contact our editor

Stephen Hampshire for more information.

Email Stephen at [email protected] give him a call on 01484 467014

ABOUT TLF RESEARCHWe are a full service customer research agency. Specialists in customer insight,

we help our clients understand and improve their customer experience.

Get in touch to find out more about what we do.Visit us online at tlfresearch.com or call 01484 517575

MEASURING COMPLAINTS: FINDING THE PAIN POINTS15th July 2020 11:00-11:30am

Complaint Handling can provide an opportunity to reignite customer confidence and even save unhappy customers. This webinar will help

you understand how to quantify the impact of behaviours that will antagonise or reassure customers.

CUSTOMER SATISFACTION INDEX: HOW & WHY TO USE IT 24th June 2020 11:00-11:30am

A Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) can take your Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores to another level. Combining and weighting CSAT scores for individual interactions, product or services, will give you a much more accurate view of how satisfied your customers are with your business overall. This webinar will give you an overview of

how to calculate CSI, examples of how to measure it and how it can be used to add an extra layer of detail to your CSAT scores.

MEASURING THE INTERNAL CUSTOMER16th June 2020 11:00-11:30am

I’m sure you’ll agree it is essential to manage and measure your external customer experience, but what about the internal customer experience? Your employees and stakeholders rely on one another every day to deliver your products or services. Understanding how different departments interact and identifying pain points can help you streamline your internal processes, which in turn should benefit

your external customers. Greg will take you through why he thinks it is important to measure the internal customer experience and how it should form part of a successful employee engagement strategy. He’ll

also share some practical examples on where this can have a positive impact.

FINDING & TELLING YOUR CUSTOMER INSIGHT STORY8th July 2020 11:00-11:30am

Do you struggle to find the key pieces of customer insight from your research? We’ve all been there with really detailed presentations that provide a wealth of useful information, but the key takeaways can be lost. In this webinar we talk

through techniques for finding the insight that really matters and how to share this information effectively to make a positive impact.

UNDERSTANDING STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE AND CONFIDENCE INTERVALS3rd June 2020 11:00–11.30am

Statistical significance can seem like a complicated and arcane world, but it’s vital to understand the basics if you want to make decisions with data.

We’ll cover what you can and can’t do with survey data, why confidence intervals may make more sense than significance testing, and how to

explain it all to your boss.

SEMIOTICS & CX25th June 2020 11:00-11:30am

Semiotics is a technique that helps you to make sense of the way meaning is created. We believe that taking a semiotic view of the customer experience can be enormously valuable, and considering

whether the whole customer experience is aligned can open up new ways to differentiate your business from competitors. In this webinar we give a quick introduction to the field of semiotics, and then explain how it can be used to make sense of details in the customer experience. Thinking about all the messages we’re sending to customers and how they may be received, will make a big impact

to how customers feel and how well the journey works for them.

FREE WEBINARS

Our range of free 30 minute webinars is designed to giveyou an introduction to key customer research subjects.

From how to guides & what to focus on, through to best

practice & the analysis of your results, our webinars will give you lots of hints & tips to help you get the most out of research.

Sign up today at tlfresearch.com/webinars

RELATIONSHIP & EVENT DRIVEN RESEARCH 1st July 2020 11:00-11:30am

Relationship and event driven surveys are both vital tools in customer research. Organisations often make the mistake of committing to one or the other, or attempt the bad compromise of doing both in a single survey. A well designed research programme, including a mix of both survey types, gives more actionability at an event level and richer behavioural insights at a

relationship level. In this webinar we look at the pros and cons of each survey type, when to use them, and how to blend them together into an effective customer insight programme.