Customers Inc. is designed to be a physical reminder to ‘think customer’ through the presence of 13 life size cardboard cut outs placed across our UK business.

The characters – real in all but name and image – represent every customer type. They are at various life stages with us and have different needs and views on our service – each carries a message based on recent experience.

The focus is on fun with each character injecting personality through a range of tools from video stories to instant messaging whilst delivering serious messages around service and highlighting the consequences of our actions on the customer.
 

 
Customers Inc. was launched in Q4 2014 to bring the voice of 5,000 customers we survey each year to our wider business and help our non-customer facing teams understand the part they play in delivering great service.

Customers are represented in every meeting room, ensuring their needs are front of mind in each decision we make and process we design.

The campaign has had a positive impact with several hundred employees submitting a ‘Big Idea’ – a suggestion to improve customer service in their department – creating a culture of continuous improvement and customer focus across all business areas.
 

 
Customers Inc. is unique because it brings a cardboard cut-out representation of a Customer in to the room, giving them a personality and making them impossible to ignore.

Each Customer carries a message which changes frequently based on their real-time experience of our service; this keeps the campaign fresh and ensures customer’s changing needs are highlighted across the business.

We have made it easy for our employees to connect with the Customers – they can send them an email or ask a question on Yammer – meaning they can interact and learn more about our Customers in a way that suits them.
 

 
Our strategy is to be First Choice for Consumers and Customers – to achieve this we recognised the importance of creating a customer centric culture.

Our biggest opportunity was to engage those in non-customer facing roles to better understand our customer’s needs and recognise the part they play in delivering great service. The response from these teams has been really positive; they are more connected to our customer’s needs and have helped to unlock service improvement opportunities we may not have identified previously.

Creating a change in mindset takes time and the cardboard cut-outs act as a reminder to ‘think customer’.