 In this episode, we'll be talking about what's needed to close the gap between execution and design. We'll be talking about how do you design a great customer experience that spans across different cultures. And finally, how do you rate customer experience and why do companies get it so wrong a lot of the times? And here's the guest for this episode. I am Rianne and this is the Service Design Show. Hi all, my name is Mark van Tijn and welcome to the Service Design Show. If you're trying to design services that have a positive impact on people's lives and are good for business, then you've come to the right place. Because here on this channel, you get the chance to learn why some services fail and others succeed. For that, we go beyond the usual tools and methods and dig deeper into topics like design thinking, customer experience, organizational change and creative leadership. So if you want to take your service design skills to the next level, now that we bring a new video every week and if you don't want to miss anything, be sure to subscribe to the channel. My guest in this episode is Rianne van der Eijk. Rianne is the former Chief Experience Officer at Kailam Airlines where she was responsible for the customer experience across all the touchpoints. Currently, she's the Executive Vice President Customer Service Delivery at Dubai Airports. In the next 30 minutes, Rianne and I will be talking about what's needed to close the gap between design and execution. We'll be talking about how do you design a great customer experience that spans across different cultures and finally, how do you rate customer experience and why do companies get it so wrong a lot of the times. So that was it for the introduction and now let's jump straight into the interview with Rianne. Welcome to the show, Rianne. Thank you. I'm happy to be here. Yeah, awesome to have you. We go back a long time. We haven't been in touch that much lately, so really cool to have you on the show. Rianne, you do a lot of things with customer experience, but I'm also wondering the term service design. Is that something that's quite common in your field and do you actually remember when you got in touch with that term, service design specifically? Yes, I do. I think when I got in touch with that, it was with you. So before starting in my position, I worked for KLM. I was having passenger service at the airport and one of the things we wanted to do is how do we involve our staff in becoming much more customer focused than they already were. And that's how I met you and you helped me and the whole team on how can we use service design by designing but also by involving staff and having them realizing how important it is to design processes which do really meet the needs of our customers. That period felt really like pioneering, right? I don't know, 2010, something like that. We were really pioneering back then. Yeah, it was a real great period because I think as we all agreed and the feedback we also got from the people working in the passenger service team, we did manage to really create this spirit and enthusiasm on one hand including them but also work is not just about including people but in the end really about delivering something which our customers experienced to be different and really meet the needs. It was indeed a great time. Rianna, you've gave me three topics that are on your mind that are dear to your heart and I gave you some question starters and we'll co-create the conversation. So are you ready? Yes, I am. Alright, so I'll pick the first topic here and I think this is a super relevant topic because a lot of people struggle with this and this topic is called the link between design and execution and do you have a question starter that goes along with this one and can you show it up to the people? Yeah, I think you can do it. You can make different questions but I would like to use this. Alright. So how can we improve the link between execution and service design and what is needed for that? And as I just said before and when you asked me the first question I really think service design is an art or you really need experts and it's not someone not everyone can. At the same time I think delivery is also a specialism so it's those who are good at one are not per definition good at the other and because of that I think it's of the utmost importance that you create a working atmosphere and you create a climate where service design people recognize the strength and the value of those who deliver and those who deliver are aware of the need to have service design and it's easy to say that those two parties need each other but I think in practice again you have to bring them together and it's a kind of iterative process so you have an issue from a customer perspective you brief your service design people and then you should have some kind of a brainstorm with those who need to deliver to prevent you design something which is as I think we always say in office designed in this planet isolation of a headquarter environment so how can you secure that those two parties really work closely together try in practice how the service the first prototype or whatever you want to call it from service design works in practice bring it back to the service design and continues until you have such a product that delivery says yes this is what we really need it and customers really recognize the value of the product and because of that your process and your customer experience ends up being much better than before the process started so why do you think there's such a big gap currently between design and execution why is it so hard to bring those two worlds together yeah it's kind of funny if you say that there's such a big gap I think in some companies there is I don't want to say that where I work there's not but I think as you experienced as well this is I really believe in a model where people work in kind of matrix organizations or whatever you want to call it together but unfortunately in many in many many companies you still have silos with different KPIs with different drivers and I think what really helps and that's not very it should be very clear at companies but it isn't my experience in my past few roles is if you're able to put the customer above everything you want then all of a sudden the KPIs of the underlying department become less relevant because it's not about your KPI anymore can I deliver something which is on theory great or on paper or can I implement something with you know it goes quickly or as easy no you both serve the same goal is in the end the customer experience going to be better and again there are still a lot of companies for whatever reasons whether it's a goes whether it's the lack of a joint customer purpose whether it's people who don't work together people who have never experienced that why I think a lot of beautiful designs great ideas never face reality because those parties are not able to find each other yeah and I think what you said it really strikes me that and this is what we also see in the daily practice that people who have different KPIs within the same organization will do different things they are motivated and driven to do different things and they don't necessarily align with each other right no and the word I didn't mention yet but when I was thinking just thinking as well I think it's really about leadership it's really about you know leadership should do nothing else than facilitate those experts to come together and design whatever they need to do and by lack of good leadership you know those things very often don't happen and in that the only KPI should be the customer experience of course a company also should look in the end that is financial stuff and that but I personally believe if your customer experience increases that's when customers are either willing to pay more and or are coming back so they will contribute to your financial KPIs as well but it all starts with customers one final question regarding this topic is you have tons of experience with this and you just started a new job you know if you would have to do things over again with the knowledge that you have today specifically regarding this topic on linking these two fields what is your most important lesson what would you do differently of I think what I would do differently is that if the subject I think sometimes I can be too pushy on it and I think you have to find the balance between having your beliefs and trying to share them or sell them or whatever how you want to call it and give people time space to find out to really want to do it themselves in the end it's almost much better if people are pushing themselves than I have to push them you have to invite them into the conversation I'm sorry you have to invite them into the conversation yeah but it's not just inviting yes it's inviting but it's also after you invite them give them the time to digest and to follow up along their own rules or experiences and it's you know I can be sometimes a bit impatient someone once said to me slow down to speed up I think that's a very good example give them the time to embrace it and then move on so that's what I think would do differently next time talking about moving on let's move on to topic 2 yes the second topic is called different cultures and again an invitation for you to come up with a question starting and make an interesting question for yourself yeah let me see I don't know I think I will use the same one it's a bit boring but I will still say how can we best design the most memorable, greatest, I don't know how you want to call it custom experience knowing that in my current role working at Dubai Airports I have a work force with many different cultures from all over the world and my passengers are coming from all over the world and so how can you combine those two and still get the best custom experience and I know if if I think about it custom experience according to me is very much about studies have proven that 95% of the people take decisions based on emotions in a good custom experience you somehow have to touch the emotions which means your basics need to be in place because you can never I think touch people in their emotions if the queues are too long or the seats are dirty or broken or security lines are too long or whatever but that's not going to make the custom experience that personal feeling that personal chat that eye contact that special question reach out to your child to the person in a wheelchair the person who didn't look too happy the ones who just got married and have something to celebrate so how can you recognize all those individual needs and serve them and then I come back to a different workforce I think many people have the intention to say when it comes to different cultures it's very difficult and I really believe that you have to explain to your workforce how should that custom experience look like but if you want to touch the emotions of your customers it has to be authentic so within the set frame of how you create a custom experience it's really up to the individual to make it personal it doesn't matter my custom experience being touch I might touch you by being very open or frank but if I'm a Filipino I might touch you by being very service minded or very modest so I think the challenge is it's all about the experience how should that experience look like and then empower your staff to deliver from their own beliefs and their own authentic attitude on how can they really make that experience different and that's not easy because you have to explain to all your staff how that is not in all cultures people are feel free enough or empowered enough or are used to the fact that they are empowered or that they make those differences but my experience is as soon as people have experience that they can make the difference in an interaction they love it and they will just want to do more and do different and really contribute to all those interactions so is one of the pitfalls or the common mistakes when thinking about customer experience that you define the end goal but also define the path towards that customer experience try to script everything try to eliminate all the humanness I think happily we all are programmed differently and some people are much better in processes and in structures and some are more emotional it's the famous left and right discussion but I really believe when it comes indeed to customer experience it's the frame within should be clear because everyone should be able to talk the same language we have agreed that within our customer experience we want our customers to feel like A, B, C and D so that's defined but how you deliver on that that should be your own individual authentic approach and delivery isn't that quite exciting for companies to empower their staff that much yes and no as I said before empowering stuff sounds easy because you can just say to your staff you're allowed to do this but some staff who are empowered also take decisions which were wrong or which were out of their remit or which were whatever so it's asked a lot of management intention to explain what it is to support them in how they should do it and not to hit them or punish them if they make a mistake so you also have to coach them in development and development them in getting to the right level personally I think it's very rewarding but personally I also know it's asking a lot for my time and effort to really empower staff and of course some will pick it up quicker than others it's quite easy to say this is what you're allowed to do and what you're not allowed to do so everything above this decision you have to bring to the next level in the end I think that I'm always going to be busy and they are only going to be escalating so I think it's you know we should the productivity of a team increases if everyone is able to contribute more and better and not everything has to go via my desk but I also know managers and companies where that's still the case have you seen something in your practice that works especially well in getting staff to actually take action to actually shift their mindset is there something I don't know a training and experience or how do you get them over that step that they actually take ownership of that customer experience yeah it's I think in my previous job at KLM we managed very well because I think we as a as KLM so not myself or whoever we designed the purpose of KLM and we designed what the desired customer experience would be and then we involved all the different units to decide themselves how they should deliver on that customer experience which is different for pilots than it is for a luggage colleague or someone working at the IT department and you know I'm not amazed anymore but I know quite a lot of people by then were quite amazed to see how many brilliant ideas came up from those groups on how they would translate that desired customer experience into their own departments and what they needed to do to make it alive and committed and you know if people designing themselves you know it's a little bit the first question we talked about when you have this joint process if you're part of how are you going to do it you're committed to make it a success and it was amazing to see what kind of ownership and ideas I would have never come up with they came up with and implemented into the units so it's really fun to see and it's also giving people the excuse to actually think about this because it might not feel as part of their daily job so you need to give them an excuse to actually take a moment and digest and just think about what this means for them I don't know if I would use the word excuse but I think it's indeed good that you mentioned it because we would have discussions in KLM again where a luggage employee would say I don't contribute to the customer experience and we would say if you don't bring that trolley or that suitcase with that very important present or to the right aircraft it would and a ground engineer who wouldn't deliver the technical solution within the set time he would be the reason why we would delay a flight so if you explain it to them that all of a sudden realize I don't think we can blame anyone for what we've never told them so we have the time to explain to them how they contribute and then give them the space and the freedom again and the empowerment to decide how they can contribute to improving their own processes so it's really as I said wherever I've worked in the past five, six years I wasn't that empowerful or whatever when I started so let's be very open about that but since I've found it it's a great way of working maybe it's also something that you have to experience you have to have to experience what happens when you actually empower people what kind of magic happens definitely let's move on to the third topic and this is also I know this is a quite hot topic and I've written it down as rating customer experience made it a bit difficult for you I think to make a question out of this but give it a try I think it's quite easy my question would be the area of the why why do companies rate their own customer experience often better than customers do the classic example I think everybody knows the chart from Bain and Company where it's 80 versus 8% or something like that yeah and I think why that is very much again has to do again with the fact have we as management explain to our staff that the customer experience is a journey it's not a touch point and as an employee of a company we very much have the intention to rate our own process which is again a very small part of the journey so if I would be serving a passenger at check-in or on board and my part was great I would assume this customer is going to rate my journey is going to rate the journey as great but I never am aware or being informed that he might have been mishandled at another touch point being the lounge when he called for a complaint when he didn't get his luggage and it took 3 or 5 days to deliver to them so as management again we really and again it sounds I think very easy or stupid almost but we have to explain to our staff that they are a part of a journey and that we are as good as the weakest chain it's also you cannot you have to own problems in your own touch points so if you if I would sell a ticket to someone and would say when I sold the ticket I've looked at the flight I couldn't seat you together but I'm sure they will solve it at the gate I raise expectations with the passengers that they will be seated together forward in the journey and as soon as the passengers get to the gate the person at the gate might have to say the flight is full I cannot seat you together which again we've raised expectations and we have to disappoint them so it's very much about realizing that again it's a journey I have to take ownership of my own touch point I cannot promise anything which I'm not sure about another touch point can deliver on and again we as employees or companies very often look at individual touch points and I guess that's also my assumption is that caused by the fact that internal KPIs or ratings are touch point based so we don't judge the journey experience we judge the experience in a touch point I think very valid observation so if you take again an airline or an airport which is my field we do rate waiting time for check in or waiting time for boarding or throughput time at the security or all those kind of things and in the end you have to rate the whole journey and give it back to all those involved in that journey on how that journey was for that specific passenger and how they've contributed to that maybe what the role was I think one of the things we were talking about at a different moment was the evolution that you have people like customer journey managers or people within our organization that are responsible for the whole journey right? Is that something you still believe in or is that something that helps to Yeah again I've just started in this position and I haven't been able to have that specific role in my current team yet but I did introduce the customer journey manager director in the KLM organization and I've left so of course I have not the latest information but when I was still there it was different it wasn't easy but it really helped by changing the mindset of every single individual and department because we made together with the customer journey manager the representatives of the different departments responsible for a journey and again if you make it joint responsibility again not individual KPIs but the total journey and that you all need to contribute to the weakest part in that journey in order to make the journey better it does change the way people think and act so I'm a big fan of customer journey managers responsibilities into an organization Yes What was the roadblock or hurdle you had to overcome to get people to believe you and I think this is especially on senior management level or maybe I don't know the mid level is maybe even harder but what have you found that people always challenge you on I think there are two things which are extremely important and the if it's about customers customer journey, customer focus whatever you want to call it it has to start at the top especially if companies are by origin or definition more operational focused or ROE focused or safety focused or whatever and you need to change it that change really need to be supported by the top so that's one thing the second thing is that you have to prove that it's serious so it's not just a talk you have to walk the talk and walk the talk means that you might have to set some examples where you do make an investment which might not be ROE wise the best one but proves that it's really about customers and it's not just about investments it's also if we want to be customer focused it means that I also am customer focused in my role I also have to walk the talk so I have to face customers I have to treat my staff like I want them to treat the customers so it's all about again it's not just about the commitment in the top but it's how consistent are you and translate that into your organization your processes, your leadership your decision making and everything what sticks with it you're setting the example I'm sorry? you're setting the example if you're not credible the rest of the organization won't follow no and again if you are in my current role at Dubai airport but also in KLM if I am appointed to represent the customer because otherwise people are not stupid so they I can have those beautiful and great presentations and slides and whatever but if I don't act upon and deliver upon it by real proof in the choices I make it will always remain a paper story and it will never fly and that's also the feedback I get from people when things become a success it's because they really see it's honest it's what we need to do and we all contribute to so those small small success stories are super crucial in the beginning to show people that it is making impact yeah and I'm always surprised to hear back how those small stories travel fast as an example to the organization so don't underestimate if you do set 3 or 5 or 8 of those examples a lot of people will hear about it because people do share and do say it seriously so that's nice but on the contrary if you do something that isn't in line it goes fast as well maybe even faster that's why I say you have to be very honest in everything you do yeah as all the guests on the show I'm giving you the opportunity to ask the people who are watching or listening to this episode a question is there something you would like to ask us yeah I do go ahead we were just talking about the customer journey and you raised the point of how do you measure that um we're very good at measuring throughput times at touch points as I said waiting times all those kind of things um and the only your waiting time can be 2 minutes but your experience can be horrible and the only measurement I have seen until now is those smiley faces after you went through a touch point to push the button and smile or not and I'm really looking for someone uh or a company or whatever who could help me in how can I measure the whole journey it's always difficult and because you can only measure the whole journey when they leave so when how I'm gonna measure it when they leave of them they're in the aircraft or they've left the airport already but I also want to have their last touch point of the curbs either when they're in the taxi I don't all have their contact details and whatever so who can help me on how do I measure the service site of the experience customer experience over my journey in a good consistent and quick way hmm interesting really curious to what people come up with because I think measuring is is a really under discussed and under developed topic still within our field right and it's quite difficult so so I could really need some help with that good challenge good challenge let's see what people come up with Rihanna we've blasted through all the topics you had a great question so the only thing that remains for me to do is to say thank you for sharing your ideas your thoughts what's really interesting to hear what you're doing right now so again thanks you're welcome I think for me it was hard to be on the on the show every time I talk about it I'm like you know this is really something it's my passion and you know so the more people we can infect the more people who have this view I think the better the customer experience will be so spreading the belief yeah yeah thanks thanks for the invitation so what tools and methods do you use to effectively measure customer experience share your thoughts and ideas down below in the comments if you enjoyed this episode please give a thumbs up I'd really appreciate that and if you know someone who might benefit from what we've just discussed in this episode go ahead and share this video with them if you'd like to learn more check out some of the past episodes or head over to the service design show university at learn.servicedesignshow.com where you'll find courses by leading service design experts to dig deeper into the topics we talk about on the show thanks again for watching and I look forward to see you in the next video