Global Business and Organizational Excellence Sep_Oct 2014

Delivering Loyalty Via CustomerExperience Management at DHLFreight K IM MACGILLAVRY

AND ALAN W ILSON

Creating a positive customer experience enables acompany to differentiate itself from the competi-tion. This is particularly true in the highly frag-mented road freight business, where the offeringhas become highly commoditized and price driven.DHL Freight, a leading provider of internationalroad transportation solutions, set out to enhancethe customer experience by bringing the voice ofthe customer into the organization, improving cus-tomer interactions, and developing an organization-wide customer-driven vision, common purpose, andvalue proposition. The need to engage the wholeorganization, across multiple locations and coun-tries, in delivering an excellent customer experiencewas critical to the success of the initiative. Within12 months of implementation, DHL Freight is see-ing a major change in the culture and operations ofthe company. Encouraged by this success, each coun-try in which DHL Freight operates is taking stepsto appoint a dedicated customer experience leaderin their respective senior management teams. Thecompany’s experiences point the way for implement-ing an effective customer management approach inother operations-driven businesses. C ⃝ 2014 WileyPeriodicals, Inc.

The importance of customer experience manage-ment (CEM) as a source of competitive advantagehas been well documented in many service indus-tries, including retailing, public transportation, hos-pitality, and vehicle repair (Clatworthy, 2012; John-ston & Kong, 2011; Rawson, Duncan, & Jones,2013; Verhoef et al., 2009; Wilson, Zeithaml, Bit-ner, & Gremler, 2012). In the road freight market,

however, there are a multitude of companies com-peting with limited differentiation, resulting in anextreme focus on price. Success and failure are of-ten determined by the ability of the road freightoperator to manage costs. These companies, there-fore, tend to be very operationally driven, with thecustomer relationship frequently reduced to that ofa simple discussion on price versus service deliverystandards.

Logistics is a highly complex undertaking. The pro-cess of comparing offers, making bookings, prepar-ing shipments, and getting goods to their recipientsat the right time is a daunting task, even for themost sophisticated and experienced shippers. Us-ing a customer-focused approach to make this end-to-end journey simple and effective should signif-icantly improve customers’ positive perceptions oftheir road freight operators and engender loyaltyto those that can consistently deliver not only theirfreight but also a positive business experience.

Customer Experience Management Defined

Walter, Edvardsson, and Ostrom (2010) defined cus-tomer experience as the customer’s direct and indi-rect exposure to the service process, including theorganization, its facilities, and interactions with theservice firm’s representatives and other customers.This focus on experience and interaction is also em-phasized by Biedenbach and Marell (2010), whodefine customer experience as being the result ofthe customer’s interpretation of his or her total in-teraction with the supplier and the perceived value

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C ⃝ 2014 Wiley Per iodicals , Inc .Publ ished onl ine in Wi ley Onl ine Library (wi leyonl inel ibrary.com)Global Business and Organizat ional Excel lence ● DOI : 10.1002/ joe .21569 ● September/October 2014

of each encounter. Managing these interactionsend-to-end over the telephone, online, in the depot,and with truck drivers to provide a seamless andconsistent experience is the ultimate objective of cus-tomer experience management in the road freightindustry.

All parts of the organization have a role in deliveringa satisfying customer experience; therefore, it can-not be seen as a task to be undertaken only by thecustomer service department.

Rawson et al. (2013) discuss managing the wholecustomer journey, from the initial inquiry to the finalbilling for the service. This means analyzing the vari-ous steps from the customer’s or shipper’s viewpointrather than from an internal operational perspective.Verhoef et al. (2009) suggest that a company needsto know what is important to customers at eachstage of the process and at each “touch point” thatthey experience. Therefore, identifying the key crite-ria and putting in place measurement tools to assesswhether these criteria are being delivered are criticalto the effective management of customer experienceand may offer suppliers a way to differentiate theirservices from those of the competition (Berry, Car-bone, & Haeckel, 2002).

Improving the customer experience is not a straight-forward task, however. Meyer and Schwager (2007)stress that it happens only when customer experi-ence becomes a top priority and an organization’swork processes, systems, and structure change to re-flect that. All parts of the organization have a role indelivering a satisfying customer experience; there-fore, it cannot be seen as a task to be undertakenonly by the customer service department. Nor canresponsibility for customer satisfaction be limitedto only those employees with front-line exposure tocustomers.

Finding Out What Customers Value Most at DHL

Freight

A leading provider of international road transporta-tion solutions in Europe and beyond, DHL Freightis the road freight arm of Deutsche Post DHL(DPDHL), a global market leader in the logisticsindustry. It offers a full range of transportationservices—less than truckload (LTL), part (PTL) andfull truckload (FTL), and intermodal (for example,a combination of rail and road transport)—customsservices, and a variety of special services, such astrade fair and event logistics and lead logistics pro-vision (LLP).

The road freight market is highly fragmented, withmany providers offering seemingly similar services.To determine which attributes were considered mostimportant, DHL Freight conducted a survey of 700customers in five countries: Germany, the Nether-lands, Poland, Sweden, and France. The results re-vealed that 70 percent of customers that use multi-ple providers are indifferent about them. The vari-ous organizations are perceived as offering more orless the same services and providing similar value.Unlike in many other consumer businesses, in theroad freight industry the level of emotional en-gagement between the customer and the provideris low, with the relationship primarily involvingnegotiations concerning operational service quality(for example, on-time delivery) and price. This re-sults in price competition and yield erosion for theroad freight provider. Customers do not feel a senseof loyalty and, therefore, tend to switch providerseasily.

As Exhibit 1 on page 8 shows, customers mostexpect their road freight provider to offer oper-ational quality at a good price, but many alsowished that it were easier to do business with theirprovider. The findings suggest that in the minds ofthe shippers, quality is not only about operationsbut also about service support. DHL Freight did notjudge its performance in the same way. Like most

Global Business and Organizat ional Excel lence September/October 2014 7DOI : 10.1002/ joe

Exhibit 1. Key Attributes Sought by Shippers

companies in the industry, DHL Freight uses func-tional scorecards to measure how well its variousfunctions perform in terms of such aspects as de-liveries made, invoice claims, invoice correctness,and number of complaints. But its ratings on thesemeasures did not correlate with customer survey re-sults relating to satisfaction, loyalty, or likelihood ofrecommending the road freight provider to others.Clearly, there was a need to further explore whatshippers really wanted.

As part of the customer survey, shippers were askedto rate the importance of various attributes on a10-point scale. As expected, quality and price wererated highly, but they were not the only characteris-tics that customers identified, or even the most im-portant. As Exhibit 2 shows, customers identifiedease of contact, quick action, and having a knowl-edgeable staff as equal to or more important thanquality and price. The survey results demonstratedthat the relationship between a company and its cus-tomers in road freight is more complex than widelyassumed.

DHL Freight was keen to address its level of cus-tomer relations along these dimensions so that ship-pers would be:

● Less likely to leave, reducing churn rates;● More likely to award their preferred supplier

more business, increasing up-trading;● Prone to spread positive word-of-mouth, attract-

ing new business; and● Easier to serve, reducing relationship maintenance

costs (for example, as a result of fewer claims andcomplaints).

Implementing Customer Experience Management

The survey results indicated that to manage the cus-tomer experience, DHL Freight needed to change itstraditional focus on operational management. Un-der the leadership of the Transformation Depart-ment, the management board jointly took the fol-lowing five steps to drive the necessary changes:

1. Define a clear, compelling vision, common pur-pose, and value proposition for DHL Freight.

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Exhibit 2. Detailed Attributes and Their Importance to a Shipper

2. Define the DHL Freight customer journeys anddetermine what matters most to customers.

3. Continuously improve the customer journeys.4. Engage the entire organization in providing high-

quality customer service.5. Create a performance management system with

defined metrics.

Defining Vision, Purpose, and Value

Before entering into dialogue with customers, it wasimportant to define how DHL Freight wanted to beseen as a company. The overall vision, common pur-pose, and value proposition needed to be clear toeveryone in the organization, from top managementto blue-collar employees, so they could focus theirdaily work on what needed to be done to achievecorporate objectives.

Companies go about defining their vision in vari-ous ways. All of them require intensive discussionsand alignment at the top management level. As Ex-

hibit 3 on page 10 shows, the DHL Freight manage-ment board used the business transformation man-agement methodology of Uhl and Gollenia (2013)to define the challenges it was facing, as well as itsaspirations in six key capabilities:

1. Innovation management,2. Transformation management,3. Effective knowledge worker development,4. Customer-centricity,5. Operational excellence, and6. IT excellence.

The outcome was a clear consensus on where thecompany wanted to be in the future, as well as whatsteps it needed to take to get there.

When it came to establishing a common purpose,DHL Freight found that getting the board to achieveconsensus on one sentence that describes what thecompany does, for whom, and how is not easy.


Exhibit 3. The BTM Digital Capability Framework

Everyone has their own perspective, which is en-trenched in their professional experiences and spe-cific functional or country views. Agreement on acommon purpose statement was considered essen-tial, however, to ensure that it would guide the be-havior of the employees and the decision-makingprocesses throughout the company. If customers de-scribed the company in a way that was similar inmeaning to the common purpose, that would be ev-idence that the company was consistently deliveringacross all touch points.

DHL Freight also established a value propositiondescribing the benefits the company promised toits customers, and that, when taken together, con-stituted the most desirable experience for them—thereby setting the company apart from its com-petitors. The value proposition needed to be as-pirational, but not such a stretch that the organi-zation would risk failing to deliver on it, which

would hurt its credibility with customers and itsability to inspire confidence among employees. Cus-tomer research provided a clear picture on what cus-tomers truly valued, and competitor research helpedto narrow down the attributes that would help setthe company apart from others. Once again, how-ever, the management board needed to determinehow the company should differentiate itself. Manydiscussions were held to figure out where DHLFreight aimed to be at market level, at peer level,or in terms of best-in-class performance. The resultsof the board members’ deliberations are shown inExhibit 4.

Determining What Matters Most to Customers

To improve the customer experience, it was neces-sary for DHL Freight to understand the various stepsthe shipper undertakes when doing business with aroad freight company, as well as the types of expe-riences the shipper typically encounters. A customer


Exhibit 4. DHL Freight: Common Purpose and Value Propositions

journey is a series of sequential interactions betweena customer and a provider that has a distinct ori-gin and end point (Rawson et al., 2013). A shipper’sinteraction with a road freight supplier usually in-volves several customer journeys.

It would have been a mistake to simply list the differ-ent touch points that the various functional depart-ments came up with as being relevant to them. Plentyof customer satisfaction surveys have done exactlythat, and yet failed to grasp the customers’ overallperception of a company, making it nearly impossi-ble to pinpoint loyalty drivers. Instead, DHL Freightconducted customer workshops in Germany, theNetherlands, Poland, Sweden, and France to mirrorthe quantitative research that was done. This pro-vided a much deeper understanding of customers’opinions. The company was able to not only iden-tify the different steps customers take while doingbusiness with DHL Freight, but also to determinewhere things go very well and where goodwill isdestroyed. These experiences were shared with em-ployees across all relevant functions of the organi-zation. This helped create an awareness of how cus-tomers perceive the organization when dealing withdifferent DHL Freight departments and how they

are related to each other. It also helped identify rootcauses for failures.

As Exhibit 5 on page 12 shows, three types of cus-tomer journeys were identified for DHL Freight:

1. Demand to Booking (D2B). This typically startswith the customer’s need to move goods, fol-lowed by the choice of shipping provider andbooking the service.

2. Pick-up to Pay (P2P). This entails the physicaltransportation of the goods and ends with thecustomer paying the invoice.

3. Seek to Solve (S2S). Along the way, the customermight contact the provider as questions or issuesarise.

The concept of customer journeys provided DHLFreight with comprehensive insights into customers’thoughts and feelings during each phase of their re-lationship with the company. The insights gained viathis approach made it possible to craft the ideal cus-tomer journey and, as a result, the ideal customer ex-perience. This then allowed DHL Freight to pinpointthe departments and employees within the organi-zation that influence customers’ perception at eachstep.


Exhibit 5. The Three Customer Journeys in the Road Freight Market

Continuously Improving the Customer Journeys

DHL Freight management recognized the need tocapture the voice of the customer on a continuousbasis and to respond to shippers’ changing expec-tations. This had to happen in every part of thecompany: across the entire front line that interactedwith customers directly (customer service, billing,operations, sales), as well as at all the other lev-els in the organization, from the senior manage-ment teams down to the shop floor. Typically, com-panies conduct customer research to capture theircustomers’ opinions and use the information theycollect to design their improvement initiatives. Al-though customer satisfaction studies are plentiful,DHL Freight found that they do not make employ-ees more customer oriented, and they rarely leadto any sustainable improvements for customers. Al-though some top-down guidance and role-modelingis necessary to create awareness in an organization,change needs to happen from the bottom up. DHL

Freight put in place two simple customer dialogueplatforms to address this. One was the Net PromoterApproach based on the net promoter score; the otherwas Straight to the Top.

The Net Promoter Approach (NPA). DHL Freightadopted the NPA to engage employees while creat-ing tangible improvements for customers. It involvespolling a sample of shippers who had recently inter-acted with the company to not only get their opinionabout their experience, but also to identify potentialareas for improvement.

● Step 1. In this first call, no reference is made tothe nature of the interaction. The conversationstarts with questions about overall satisfactionwith DHL Freight over the past 12 months. Thecaller then asks about the likelihood of recom-mending DHL Freight to a friend, colleague, orbusiness partner (on a scale of 0 to 10), basedon recent interactions. This is the Net Promoter


Score. The customer is also asked to rate DHLFreight against the four value propositions shownin Exhibit 4. The responses indicate how well thecompany is delivering against its brand promiseover time. Finally, customers are given the op-portunity to comment. Although it is importantto keep the conversation short in this first call,experience has shown that when customers areasked only to rate their experience (in order togenerate a Net Promoter Score), they may feel asthough they are merely being rushed to provide anumber to satisfy the market research departmentrather than genuinely valued for their opinion ofthe company. Some companies prefer to use anagency to make these calls. DHL Freight, however,used its own staff members in the belief that theywould make the calls more personal and mean-ingful and that the company stood to gain fromhaving employees engage with customers and gettheir feedback firsthand.

● Step 2. Here, the focus was “detractors”—customers that gave a score below 7. A super-visor or line manager called them back to delveinto root causes and work out a solution. In mostcases, the senior management team responsiblefor the country was also trained to make thesesecond calls so that they could also directly cap-ture customer feedback and take responsibility forproviding the customers with a satisfactory re-sponse. This involvement of high-level staff hashad an important effect on the rest of the organi-zation, as workers at all levels can see their lead-ership team walking the talk. During this step,“promoters”—customers who gave a score above8—also got a call to clarify what had been doneparticularly well. These calls proved motivatingfor employees who got to hear from satisfied ship-pers.

● Step 3. Typically, the NPA ends with Step 2. Thethird step added at DHL Freight calls for havingthe person who made the second call to providethe customer with specific feedback on what hasbeen done to resolve the issue and what improve-ments have been made. Getting to that point re-

quires some effort, as the person making the callnormally cannot provide a resolution without thehelp of others in the company. This last step isneeded for two reasons. First, the aim of the NPAis not just to listen to the customer but also tomake the customer happier. Ending the process af-ter the second call would fall short of satisfyingcustomers. Second, involving others in the solu-tion helps to make the whole organization morecustomer-centric. Without this last step, the NPAmight influence only the callers.

Typical comments from detractors at the beginningof the NPA process included:

● “You should realize you are making mistakes. Youdon’t listen.”

● “Whenever something goes wrong with deliveries,you should be more helpful in solving the prob-lem.”

● “Complaints management is too complicated andcumbersome. It does not look as if you want to becustomer-friendly.”

Typical customer comments from these detractorcustomers at the end of the process included:

● “I was very happy with my contact. I feel that youlisten to your customers.”

● “I am happy with the response and have had avisit from a representative of your company. Wehave discussed the problems.”

● “You take your customers seriously.”

DHL Freight found that this methodology was sim-ple to implement and had a positive impact on bothcustomer perception and employee engagement.

Straight to the Top (STTT). The STTT initiative allowscustomers to get directly in touch with the CEO orcountry manager via an e-mail address posted onthe DHL Freight website and included in customercommunications. This puts the leadership teamdirectly in front of the customer and demonstrates


Exhibit 6. Straight to the Top (STTT) Process

DHL Freight’s commitment to the customer expe-rience. The key to making this work effectively isensuring that the task of communicating with cus-tomers is not delegated down the organization. Toensure timeliness, responses to customer concernsare made within hours. This requires a back-officeteam that enables every function to review the caseswith the management team and contribute to the re-ply (see Exhibit 6).

Engaging the Entire Organization

Customer-centricity is not something that can be en-forced by senior management top-down. No num-ber of key performance indicators, rule books, ser-vice standards, and the like will ensure that whena customer needs help, employees will act in theright way. They must want to be customer-centric

and do the right thing instinctively. In many cases,road freight companies are represented by third par-ties, such as suppliers and distributors, who influ-ence shippers’ brand perceptions. They, too, affectthe customer experience and, therefore, need to beincluded in any customer experience managementprogram.

Starting in one of its main markets, DHL Freight in-troduced the company’s common purpose and valuepropositions to the owners of the major haulersthat provide DHL Freight with trucking capacity.The company also shared the voice of customer in-sights from both CEM surveys, as well as direct feed-back obtained from customers through the NPA.In addition, drivers were introduced to the over-all CEM program, which not only made them feel


like part of the DHL Freight family but also raisedtheir awareness of the DHL Freight brand valuesthat they are asked to represent. They were alsogiven soft skills training very similar to that whichis provided to customer service agents to help themdeal with customers when picking up or deliveringgoods.

Research at DHL Freight that included 1,000 em-ployees across five countries found that there wassometimes a perception gap between employees andcustomers. Comparing customers’ and employees’ratings of the DHL Freight experience showed thatthere is a functional bias in favor of one’s own work.For example, operations overrated its ability to learnfrom mistakes and to be proactive, sales underesti-mated price competitiveness, and customer serviceoverrated the personal attention it provides to cus-tomers.

With so much attention aimed at customers, it iseasy to overlook employees when developing andimplementing a CEM program. To avoid makingthis mistake, DHL Freight asked employees ques-tions similar to those that were posed to customers.People working at the front line as well as behindit, across various functions, and at all levels wereasked a set of questions to gauge their job satisfac-tion, their likelihood of recommending DHL Freightas a place to work, and the ease of doing their job.The results showed that there is often a strong cor-relation between employee and customer satisfac-tion. Employees were allowed to add their own com-ments, which further shed light on underlying issues.Surprisingly, very few responses related to pay orthe quality of the workplace. The issues raised byemployees who gave the company low ratings re-volved mainly around the lack of collaboration be-tween departments and cooperation with colleaguesto solve customer issues. Team leaders were sub-sequently asked to discuss the results of the opin-ion survey and to make improvements, just as wasdone to address customers’ concerns in the NPAprocess.

Communications about CEM in the form of articles,flyers, and posters that were distributed throughoutthe company helped raised awareness. But a compre-hensive training program that would take employeesthrough the various mentioned stages of the CEMframework was needed. Although a consulting firmwas employed to structure the program and train thetrainers, management felt that if the program wasto have any credibility and make a lasting impres-sion, DHL Freight’s own managers should deliverthe training.

The formal training took managers away from theirday-to-day activities and was instrumental in effec-tively inspiring them and getting them to understandand adopt the essence of the brand while giving themthe tools to deliver it to others in a convincing man-ner. During the training, all country managers andtheir customer experience heads were taught howto tell the DHL Freight story in their own wordsand tasked with passing on the message to theirteams.

Communications about CEM in the form of articles,flyers, and posters that were distributed throughoutthe company helped raised awareness.

Creating a Performance Management System with

Defined Metrics

Performance management is essential to keep theCEM process described earlier viable within DHLFreight. When using methods like the NPA, thetemptation is to rely on scores to measure success. Itis risky, however, to manage the company solely ac-cording to CEM scores; statistically-accurate num-bers require a very large and random samplesize.

In practice, DHL Freight was calling only a frac-tion of its customer base on a weekly basis, whichwas unlikely to provide the robust numbers needed


to give a true picture of how the entire customerbase assesses the company. Also, there was somefallout of customers willing to participate in theprocess, which meant there was a potential for re-spondent bias. Typically, those who were least sat-isfied did not want to spend their time answer-ing questions, while many very satisfied customersmay have wanted to cut the interview processshort since they did not see the point of delvingdeeply into particular topics. DHL Freight’s man-agement thought that linking incentives to scorestoo quickly might have the wrong effect, leadingemployees to find creative ways to meet targets—for example, by giving customers rewards for pos-itive evaluations—but without improving customersatisfaction.

As more customers have positive experiences andmore employees become adept at delivering cus-tomer satisfaction, the company’s ranking amongcustomers will increase.

Making sure that the voice of the customer is cap-tured, shared, and discussed within the companyis more important than scores. DHL Freight madea tool available to allow employees to enter cus-tomer feedback and pass it on to others for follow-up. The tool builds a queue of customer calls thatcan be monitored as they go from first call (scores)to second call (elaborate on issue), and finally tothird call (resolution and feedback). Key metrics aretracked, such as the first to second call conversion,the number of third calls made, the number of callsper second caller per week, and response times. Inaddition—and more importantly—this process letsteam leaders, department heads, and senior man-agers see what customers are saying and what theorganization is doing to improve the customer expe-rience. As more customers have positive experiencesand more employees become adept at delivering cus-tomer satisfaction, the company’s ranking among

customers will increase. And happier customersand employees lead to faster and more profitablegrowth.

The Impact of CEM on DHL Freight

Although DHL Freight only started implementing itsCEM program in two pilot countries at the end of2013, with other countries going live sequentially af-ter January 2014, the impact has been very encour-aging.

● Improved customer dialogues. The CEM researchthat DHL Freight conducted showed that manycustomers do not have a specific company repre-sentative to speak to in person or over the phone.Typically, customers who are not supported by asalesperson or key account service desk tend tofeel left out, as there is little communication go-ing on between the company and them that wouldbuild a relationship. Since the introduction of theCEM program, several thousand customers havebeen contacted as part of the NPA or the STTTplatform. Just over half of them warranted a callback, and many of them saw their issues addressedas a result. Not only has this made a real differ-ence in the lives of these customers and their per-ception of DHL Freight, but it has also given themanagement teams valuable insight into what thecompany is doing well and not so well in the eyesof its customers.

● Change in the organizational mind-set. Imple-menting the CEM program at DHL Freight hascreated a strong awareness across the companyof the importance of being customer-centric. Oneconsequence of this is that leadership teams havestarted to push the topic at the forefront of theiragenda and are putting in place their own ini-tiatives to engage with customers. These includecustomer dinners, where the topics that are dis-cussed center on helping customers rather than onoperational performance and upcoming tenders.Other initiatives, focused on employees, encour-age them to share customer stories and give all


teams, not just those in the marketing and salesdepartments, the opportunity to present ideas onwhat they can do to make customers happier.The country management teams now spend timeduring every board meeting talking through thecustomer feedback that has been gathered, andthey often lead and monitor follow-up actions.Finally, at the global management level, a headof customer experience was appointed to themanagement board, and each country is takingsteps to appoint a dedicated customer experi-ence head in their respective senior managementteams.

● A better way to address issues. In some coun-tries that are facing serious customer issues, suchas an unusually high churn rate, country man-agement teams are turning to the CEM instru-ments for help in addressing the problem. In thepast, these may have been tackled by a Lean orSix Sigma team or with the help of an outsideagency engaged to conduct a costly and cumber-some market research survey. Now the manage-ment team and some department heads call lostor down-trading customers to find out why theyare turning away from DHL Freight. This givesdecision makers firsthand knowledge of the rootcauses very quickly and at no cost, allowing thecompany to quickly address concerns so improve-ments can be made in timely fashion. At the sametime, the calls tend to be very much appreciatedby the customers—which is a beginning to win-ning them back.

Recommendations for Implementing CEM in an

Operations-Driven Business

DHL Freight’s experience with CEM implementa-tion to date reveal several lessons.

● CEM is not a project, but an ongoing process.Creating a best-in-class customer experience takestime, and there is no defined end to the effort.It is an ongoing and continuous process of lis-tening to the customer, learning, and improving

what you do. Success requires a change in themind-set of the people at every level of the or-ganization, with everyone integrating this way ofthinking and doing into their daily job. At DHLFreight, CEM initiatives such as the NPA were im-plemented only after they obtained the full sup-port of the board of management as well as thecountry senior management teams. The countrymanagers then played a key role in convincingtheir direct reports of the relevance and impor-tance of CEM for the business, as well as in cre-ating awareness about the initiative across the or-ganization.

● Your common purpose and value propositionneed to drive everything you do. They should notchange over time and must be valid for every partof your business, regardless of the function or thecountry. They are more than simple attributes re-lating to employee behavior. At DHL Freight theyare integrated into all decision-making processes.This means, for example, that when hiring newstaff, it is important to ensure that they sharein the organization’s common purpose. This alsomeans that investment decisions are made on thebasis of whether they strengthen the company’svalue proposition.

● Everyone needs to take part. Everybody in the or-ganization either directly or indirectly influencesthe customer experience. There are many morepeople at the front line than the customer serviceteam. Also, sales, finance, operations, and variousother functions interact directly with customersand, therefore, influence how customers regard acompany. The people who are behind the frontline play an important role in delivering a goodcustomer experience, too. Without cooperationwithin the teams and between the functions, it isimpossible to deliver a consistent and satisfyingcustomer experience. At DHL Freight, managersin a wide variety of functions, as well as the en-tire senior management team, call and visit cus-tomers.

● It is all about customer dialogue. Customerexperience management is not complicated.


It simply requires that the voice of the customerbe captured at every opportunity. At DHLFreight, this is especially important because,unlike in a consumer business where employeesare often customers of their own products, in thecase of road freight there are very few employeeswho can view the service from the customers’viewpoint. This makes it all the more difficultto really understand what customers want andlike. This is why at DHL Freight, CEM revolvesaround setting up customer dialogue platformsacross all levels of the organization to ensurethat everyone from top management down to theshop floor can take the pulse of the customers.

● Speed is of the essence. When it comes to customerservice, there is little worse than calling customersand then not following up on what you discussedand promised. This is why DHL Freight measureshow quickly customers who gave their feedbackare called back. Whether the customer reachedout proactively or was contacted by DHL Freight,the time taken to reply to or to resolve an issue isalways measured.

● Look at your company from the viewpoint of thecustomer, and not at the customer from the view-point of your company. Managers’ understandingof what customers want is typically biased. Influ-enced by their functional role, they tend to inter-pret what customers are saying from where theystand in the organization. This is natural, sincepeople generally have little understanding of whatothers do and tend to focus on the things thatare strictly within their own area of responsibility.Customers, however, are influenced by the sum to-tal of all the experiences they have when dealingwith all the members of an organization as theygo through the entire end-to-end process—the so-called customer journey. To make sure that thisopinion is good throughout the relationship lifecycle, every encounter with DHL Freight needs tobe equally good and consistent. This is why DHLFreight checks to what extent customers experi-ence the intended value proposition each time theyare contacted.

● The voice of the employee is as important asthe voice of the customer. A company cannothave happy customers if the employees are nothappy with their job. DHL Freight has been care-ful to ensure that employees are not overlookedin the implementation of CEM. Customers im-mediately pick up on the level of happiness andengagement among staff. Therefore, it is essen-tial to enter into dialogue with staff, understandwhat is affecting their job satisfaction, and workon improving working conditions when needed.At DHL Freight, there is a continuous dialoguewith employees to understand what is going welland what can be enhanced. Although some ofthe comments from DHL Freight employees re-lated to compensation and working conditions,the majority of the feedback related to the abilityof employees to serve customers better and was,therefore, instrumental in improving the customerexperience.

● Don’t get hung up on scores. In implementingthe NPA, it is tempting to try to manage peo-ple by incentivizing them against the scores. AtDHL Freight, the NPA scores are tracked, butthey are not used to measure or incentivize per-formance. The reason to contact customers is toobtain a better understanding of what the orga-nization does badly or well, and to learn fromthat. Doing that consistently and continuouslywill automatically lead to better satisfaction andloyalty.

● Align the leadership team before getting started.To leverage CEM, an organization needs to be-come extremely customer-centric. Changing themind-set of employees is a time-consuming trans-formational process that must start from thetop. At DHL Freight, a great deal of effort wasmade to get the management board to agreeon the fundamentals of the company—its vi-sion, common purpose, and value proposition.Formal training is also critical to ensure thatCEM is instilled in the hearts and minds ofmanagement. The leadership team then needs totake charge of cascading the CEM message and


initiatives down the organization. DHL Freightfound this to be more effective and, therefore,desirable than delegating this task to an outsideagency.

● Involve everyone that plays a role in deliveringthe brand. Another aspect of improving customersatisfaction—one that is often overlooked—is theinclusion of third parties in the transformation.A road freight company like DHL Freight typ-ically contracts haulers in the open market. Asthey are the company’s face to the customer atimportant touch points, such as when shipmentsare picked up or delivered, they play an importantrole in delivering the brand promise. Therefore,they also need to take part in any CEM program.For many other companies as well, limiting com-munication and training to employees will preventthe capture of all the interactions that influencecustomers.

A big challenge that many companies face whentrying to get CEM off the ground in their orga-nizations is that managers typically want to knowwhat the profit and loss impact is going to be be-fore investing time or money into such an effort.Although the theory that managing the customerexperience results in lower churn rates, higher up-trading, more rigid prices, higher hit rates, and lowercustomer service costs is generally accepted, in prac-tice it is difficult to prove early on. It could takeDHL Freight as long as 24 to 36 months to generatethe data to produce hard evidence that can be mea-sured in euros. This could result in the topic’s fallingoff management’s agenda or the organization’s al-locating so few resources and support that the ef-fort fizzles out or is reduced to a mere communica-tions exercise that does not transform the businessat all.

The CEO at DHL Freight played a key role in over-coming this obstacle. His measures of success arebased on the answer to these two questions: Do wehave happy customers, and do our employees havea sparkle in their eyes? He knows that if the answer

to each question is yes, then business success and thefinancials will follow.

References

Berry, L. L., Carbone, L. P., & Haeckel, S. H. (2002). Man-aging the total customer experience. MIT Sloan ManagementReview, 43(3), 85–89.

Biedenbach, G., & Marell, A. (2010). The impact of customerexperience on brand equity in a business-to-business servicessetting. Journal of Brand Management, 17(6), 446–458.

Clatworthy, S. (2012). Bridging the gap between brand strat-egy and customer experience. Managing Service Quality,22(2), 108–127.

Johnston, R., & Kong, X. (2011). The customer experience: Aroad-map for improvement. Managing Service Quality, 21(1)5–24.

Meyer, C., & Schwager, A. (2007). Understanding customerexperience. Harvard Business Review, 85(2), 135–137.

Rawson, A., Duncan, E., & Jones, C. (2013). The truth aboutcustomer experience. Harvard Business Review, 91(9), 90–98.

Uhl, A., & Gollenia, L. (2013). Business transformation es-sentials. Surrey, England: Gower.

Verhoef, P. C., Lemon, K. N., Parasuraman, A., Roggeveen,A., Tsiros, M., & Schlesinger, L. A. (2009). Customer ex-perience creation: Determinants, dynamics and managementstrategies. Journal of Retailing, 85(1), 31–41.

Walter, U., Edvardsson, B., & Ostrom, A. (2010). Drivers ofcustomers’ service experiences: A study in the restaurant in-dustry. Managing Service Quality, 20(3), 236–258.

Wilson, A., Zeithaml, V., Bitner, M., & Gremler, D. (2012).Service marketing (2nd European ed.). Maidenhead, Berk-shire, England: McGraw-Hill.

Kim MacGillavry, head of Customer Experience and a mem-ber of the management board at DHL Freight in Bonn, Ger-many, holds a master’s degree in applied economic sciencesfrom the University Faculty of St. Ignatius in Antwerp, Bel-gium. Previously, he led product and service innovation mar-keting at Mazda, Stanley Tools, and various DHL divisions.He can be reached at [email protected] Wilson, PhD, MBA, is a professor of marketingand head of the Marketing Department at Strathclyde


University Business School in Glasgow, Scotland. His re-search focuses on customer experience management, servicesmarketing, and corporate branding/reputation. Previously, hewas a senior consultant at a marketing consultancy practiceand an associate director of a leading marketing research

agency, both in London. He earned his undergraduate andgraduate degrees from Edinburgh University, Scotland, andhis doctoral degree from Strathclyde University. He can bereached at [email protected].


Global Business and Organizational Excellence Sep_Oct 2014

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