My problem with the C-Word

Last October, I found myself on a couple of panels for the launch events for the BCO’s new paper; Towards Experience Utopia: Customer Experience Best Practice for the UK Office Sector (featuring a case study about our work with NatWest).

I’ve been joined on panels by people that represent the owner/developer community, design community, the ‘occupier community’ and then there was me. I decided to represent the voice of the employee, after all, that’s what we do.

And in each of these events, I spoke about my concern with the focus on the C-word.

Customers.  

For years now I’ve seen various parts of the workplace/FM/CRE community use a stack of different labels for different stakeholders – customers, clients, occupiers, colleagues, core business, end-users, tenants etc. and I’ve always thought whatever one they landed on said a lot about how they view their work and what their priorities were.

Now, I’m not bashing the use of ‘customer’ in the BCO report. Not least because I’ve written reports before and had people challenge me on the contents completely oblivious to the fact that they aren’t the intended/target audience. This BCO report, for instance, will have a large building owner/developer audience so perhaps ‘customer’ is the right C-word.

But even then, I made the case to think more about the CONSUMER experience.  

What’s the difference? Let me explain using an example that most parents can relate to. Children’s toys.

For simplicity, let’s look at two stakeholders in the transaction of the latest in-demand plastic plaything. You have the parent (customer) and the child (consumer). Whilst the subject in focus is the same they will be considering very different things when judging the quality of the toy.  

The child will be thinking about enjoyment, resulting social status, practicality etc. and the parent will be thinking about price, suitability, safety etc. as well as the experience feedback from their child (no one wants to see that new purchase consigned to the bottom of the toy box after only a few months of play!).

What does that mean in a workplace context? I’ve often made the argument that workplace professionals can learn loads from their marketing colleagues. When developing their next toy they will have workshopped stuff with parents for sure but they’d also test it out on their target audience, the children. That insight will help them shape the product knowing how important that will be to parents. In marketing lingo, we’d call that B2B2C. A way of framing the work you do for you client to help them with their activity aimed at their target market.  

Whatever your role in the CRE supply chain you must, I would argue, think about the ultimate employee experience because isn’t that what we’re all in it for? I once challenged a CRE Director who was responsible, exclusively, for the buildings that housed work on why he wasn’t the Workplace Director. His job title suggests the focus was on the building, the input. Not the people and their experience, the outcome.

By using employee experience as the ‘north star’ you can see how what you do is linked directly, or indirectly, to that. It should shape your conversations, your products, services, cost models, and PI’s.

Maybe one of the reasons that the sector has tended to focus on buildings or their immediate point in the supply chain is because it’s easier. Consumer experience is notoriously difficult. You have to observe behaviour, and understand all of the weird, odd decisions and opinions people form and why they formed it. Then develop plans that can combat, enhance or change those emotive responses.

That’s where qualitative feedback comes into its own. The rich, detailed feedback that can help professionals understand choices and attitudes and what we’re seeing now using the Audiem platform, is that we’ve got a previously untapped ability to see into those opinions.  

So, developers can see what they need to do to help the fit-out community to create the workspaces that are going to form a key part of the occupier's workplace experience approach that aims to support employees and help them do great work.

Simple, right?

Of course not (or maybe it is) but if we can start framing this supply chain in and around employee/workplace experience then we have a much better chance of creating good work, that’s the ‘consumer outcome’ but in turn, it can provide a huge boost to the commercial relationship. Good work environments create successful businesses, which make for good tenants right? At least I’m fairly sure that landlords don’t want tenants that are struggling.

Developing that consumer view and wrapping an excellent customer experience (price points, payment plans, service levels etc.) is the real magic formula. If we can crack that then we really will get to an experience utopia.

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