The humanity of it all

My first post on Unleash the Wrath. Rather than explain the blogsite's title (it's rather boring, but I will do at some point), I wanted to start by telling the story of the point I truly 'got' why the customer voice mattered so much. Its a story I often tell when I get all 'arm-wavey' at people, but the fact it's being repeated here doesn't reduce it's value nor the impact it had upon me.

The Story

I was working for Berkshire libraries about 15 yrs ago, as a reference librarian. We always had to do a stint on the main enquiry desk and I used to love it. Firstly, the variety of questions. Secondly, the variety of people. You really didn't know what was coming next, and people were always grateful of the help you could give.

One day, an old chap (mid 80's, rheumy eyes, thinning white hair, rather frail but still with an obvious strength) asked me if we had a book. We didn't. But I checked and the British Library had a copy and I offered to get it. It would cost 65p, which he slowly counted out using loose change and I put the request in, informing him we'd contact him when we got it.

Time passed...

About 4 weeks later, I happened to be on the enquiry desk again when he arrived to collect it. I remember he always moved slowly, deliberately, and it was no difference when he reached forward and took the book from me, slowly opened it up onto the first page, then the next, and then started crying.

There was a brief moment of shock, I must admit, but I was quickly on the other side of the desk kneeling down next to him. I put an arm round him and led to a quieter area of the library, leaving him on a comfy chair whilst I fetched him a glass of water.

On my return, he was more composed, if still a little shaken. I asked him what had upset him, and shortly after I was the one with eyes misted by tears.

The book was in fact a diary, a diary from his Captain on the D-Day landings. He had not known it existed until very recently when he attended a funeral for one of his colleagues. The page that had upset him so was a photo, several dozen men in a boat on the journey across the Channel, which he had actually taken using the Captain's camera. The men were tightly packed, and even though there were various smiles and thumbs up, you could see in their eyes they knew the enormity of what they were about to endure.

He pointed out to me various people, naming them - many were drafted with him from his village, childhood friends whom he played with on green fields. I distinctly remember him pointing out to me one soldier and saying he used to go swimming with him in the local river in the height of summer.

Then he told me that 20mins after that photo was taken, he swam past his decapitated head as he struggled through the limbs of his comrades whilst bullets and explosions tore the sea apart around him.

Of the soldiers in the photo, only three survived that terrible day; his captain, himself and one other. The captain was the one who's funeral it had been a few months before, the 'one other' the colleague who had told him of the diary and the photo's existence.

As we talked, he couldn't thank me enough for finding this book for him. And when he left, I remember him saying that he'd be seeing them all soon, and smiling.

The Realisation

And now for the point of realisation.

When I returned to the enquiry desk, I added one tally to a five bar gate to indicate the customer was satisfied with the service they had received.

What the fuck? How could that little line, that count of one, in any way hope to capture what had occurred. That little line would join a lot of other little lines, which would become a number, which would go to some manager, who'd put it in a spreadsheet, where it would be sent to some faceless bureaucrat, who would publish some 'x% residents were satisfied with the library service' in some annual report which no-one would read.

Well, actually, someone would probably read - and look at the count of British Library loans completed and the amount we subsidised them and just see somewhere where they could make a cut to save a few pounds with just NO understanding of the impact that could have on the experiences of 100's of people.

Life changing experiences. Life affirming experiences. Life shaping experiences.

And I remember being very angry that the customer was not being heard. And there was nothing I could do about it.

And Now

And now, I find myself wrestling with the same problem. I've been looking at Voice of the Customer programmes, as part of my role at Talis Education, and I still don't feel I am any closer to understanding how to represent the true voice of the customer.

We have no VoC programme currently, not formally though we certainly have a culture where we try to listen (probably initiated by our Agile development philosophy, and driven in part by the people we employ). I'm keen, and so is the business, to listen more effectively to our customer's voice as we develop our products and services. To have the processes and procedures in place to capture, analyse and respond to our customer's true needs. To share their pain and joy with the business.

And I find myself looking at structured vs unstructured data, and that dull realisation that it's just so much easier to take structured data from whatever source, to generate a Net Promoter Figure, or C-SAT, or Emotional Preference Score or some other single value - to place that x% in some report. To base our customer voice decision flow on a single line, a tally of one...

And I don't accept it. I WON'T. We may start at that point, my business head tells me we have to, but we won't end there. Not if I have my way. I want to tell the true stories of our customers to our business.

I owe it to an old man, and a photo, and his smile.