Oh dear what a mess Jeremy Corbyn has got himself into this week with the spat over whether he really needed to sit on the floor on a Virgin train, or whether his claims were inflated for political effect.

Ironically the channel on which he chose to vilify Virgin; video footage, was the same one used to try to vilify him, as Virgin produced live footage apparently showing available seats with timelines to boot. And the influential voice of Richard Branson added fuel to the already alight fuse by wading in through Twitter to support his colleagues and of course his brand.

The customer is always right….??
The notion that the customer is always right is being challenged in our mobile social digital, and of course visual world. Just as customers can quickly prove a point by providing a mobile screenshot or short video, so can an organisation now able to access a whole wealth of supporting, often passive data to refute a hitherto subjective complaint.

Who can doubt the service transformation brought about by the art of visual when YouTube is now the second favourite search engine - it's so much easier to find out how to fix anything by watching rather than reading the text or listening to an explanation.

Visualising better service
Organisations of all sizes and shapes must consider how a visual interpretation of their products and services can aid better customer experience, particularly to facilitate a better customer service conversation.

Most people struggle with ill thought out form filling, essential in our increasingly regulated and suspicious world. We have only begun to scratch the surface as to how we can alleviate unnecessary customer hassle and save valuable processing time for both customer and organisation by the creative use of video, particularly on a mobile platform.

The advent of video service calls used in mortgage applications has increased efficiency, provided regulatory benefits and of course can provide a better customer experience.

Complaints handing is one of, if not the most, critical area of customer service today, and anything that gets closer to the 'truth' has got to be welcomed by organisations customers and regulators alike.

Hitting the right tone
Tone is of course vital, and how you tell a customer they are 'wrong' when they believe they are right is an age old conundrum, and of course calls for highly skilled and empathetic colleagues who have the DNA of their organisations values within them, not to mention enterprise wise support so that everyone is singing the same tune.

Customer Experience Excellence
We had our quarterly Customer Experience Excellence Forum this week and heard some outstanding examples of innovation. Kindly hosted by NS&I at their state-of-the-art centre in Glasgow, we learned of their future ambitions and of their extremely successful partnership with Atos.

Salesforce, our lead partner for this year’s Convention, shared details of their pioneering CX initiative with Inuit – a US online tax return app – and how a simple technology has delivered significant increases in both c-sat and NPS scores.

The financial services theme continued as we heard from newly accredited CCA Global Standard bearer, Scottish Widows and the challenges of improving customer experience in the highly regulated pensions market. Kevin McGuire brought the visual back into the discussion and challenged us to name all four faces of Scottish Widows – a striking and easily recognisable brand!

‘Customer Service Street’
It’s easy to get dizzy at the challenge of delivering service in a digital social mobile world. To help us best reflect this ‘new era’ of service, we invited an art student to help us visualise what customer service looks like for today’s professionals. We’d love to hear your opinion on the results which you can view here. This is the theme for this year’s Convention so join us in Glasgow in November on ‘Customer Service Street’, challenge your own thinking and continue your journey to delivering great customer service – after all, seeing is believing!