Kelly Letcher: Customer experience as a competitive edge
Gallagher Animal Management’s Customer Experience Manager, Kelly Letcher, says her role, though relatively new both to Gallagher and the industry, has become increasingly essential for businesses around the world.
“Customer experience (CX) has always been integral to a business's success, but we are starting to see more of a demand for it within companies. CX is influenced by how effectively a brand meets or exceeds customer expectations, so we are really starting to see the shift in business strategies to focus on how we are making customers feel.
“At the start of the journey we conducted initial stakeholder interviews with key leaders, and everyone seemed to agree on how important CX was. But while most teams had started work in this space, efforts weren’t aligned across areas of the business. We ran workshops across different teams and got a good base to build the CX strategy.”
At its core, Kelly’s work is about enhancing customer touchpoints with Gallagher.
“In many industries, market saturation is becoming a big issue. It is no longer enough to just have a good product or service; businesses need to think creatively to find ways to make customers experience memorable and seamless.
“In my role as CX Manager, we find opportunities for that—from very little things that improve the journey to big ones that transform it. I look at our customers' experience and identify the pain points in their journey with us, and then figure out how to fix them.
“We map out customer journeys, whether it's someone purchasing a product through e-commerce, buying in retail, or signing up for animal performance and traceability subscriptions, and then identify any pain points. We then create a plan on how to solve them!
“We’ve just finished developing five core principles for CX, like 'muddy boots,' which means we do what we can to deeply understand the customer’s needs by continuously listening and walking in their shoes. Having solid principles to follow and a CX strategy with cross-functional alignment is more important than ever.”
Kelly says it was surprising to discover how many departments were independently contributing to CX, without knowing about each other’s efforts.
"There are so many things we can leverage from each other. For example, we are doing some great user testing and interviews with customers, so we are now ensuring the information gathered gets shared with wider teams to leverage. We’re starting to build those feedback loops.
"It’s quite satisfying to find points of improvement and see them get solved. It’s rewarding. We’ve created a backlog of recommendations and regularly see improvements implemented. We’re at the beginning of our CX, but we’re making good progress.”
Kelly shared her insights at the recent New Zealand Tech Marketers Conference 2024, discussing why CX is essential in today’s market and outlining Gallagher’s approach.
“Although it was a bit nerve-wracking, I was super excited to share why I think CX is more important than ever. I discussed how we leverage brand surveys, user research, website optimisation, and marketing automation to drive meaningful connections with customers. Customer experience is a true competitive edge in today’s world."