You've probably heard of or seen United Breaks Guitars. 11 million people have on You Tube! It's a horror story of a bad customer experience gone viral, and the song was performed live at G-Force in Melbourne in August. One has to now shudder at how powerful individual customers have become so tread carefully!

However, there's another side to this story. It's the success of Taylor Guitars (the victim in the video), whose sales have gone through the roof. I prefer that side because it reminds me of what can be achieved when you get it right. Westpac, one of our clients, just won an award for Australia's best contact centre and we give you an overview of what they've done. Perhaps your organisation can be an award winner?

Any feedback or suggestions? Please let us know.

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In this issue, we also cover:

• Our presence at the G-Force industry conference, where we helped 40 customer service leaders "become the customer".
• We start the discussion on the impact of some game changing trends and what organisations need to do to be successful. We talk about the impact of mobile devices.
• Finally, we provide an update on our people and services.

Soon we will unveil our new facility in Sydney. It's a dream we've had since we began 7 years ago. It will be a place where our clients will be able to solve complex problems faster and better than before. A place to collaboratively design customer experiences and accelerate change where you can expect to achieve "one month's work in a day"!

Raj Mendes
Managing Director

Duncan Graham's team received the Award for Australia's Best Contact Centre in 2010 and this year, he was nominated to be the prime judge for the awards.

Duncan recently joined us at The Customer Experience Company and he's committed to helping you achieve the best possible results from your contact centres. Have you wondered how your contact centre measures up against Australia's best? Well, Duncan can tell you.

It's easy to pay lip service to customer feedback. But when done right, like Westpac have, you stand to reap some very tangible business benefits. By truly listening and acting on customer feedback, Westpac achieved a +30 point (57%) increase in Net Promoter Score (NPS) and halved the number of detractors within an 8 month period. Being crowned Australia's Contact Centre of the Year is icing on the cake. Click to find out more about how CEC helped Westpac achieve these results.

Have you met Joe? He's one of your customers and he does everything on his smartphone. While watching TV at home, he has his phone out to surf the web, swap a few texts, check email and facebook, all at the same time! Have a look around you the next time you are on a train and notice the number of people who are using their mobile devices.

The question is - how many of your customers are like Joe, and what are their expectations around being able to interact with you via their mobiles? The answers might surprise you.

This year at G-Force, we literally changed the conversation. We took 40 customer service managers and leaders and asked them to "become the customer". They placed calls to a bank, an insurance company, a telco and a government department. What do you think happened on those calls? How would your organisation have fared?

We are pleased to welcome 4 new members to our team and also announce the appointment of Service Line Leaders.

Grant Westbury, joins us from IBM Business Consulting where he has been for 6 years having a total of 15 years industry experience. Duncan Graham, joins us from FlexiGroup, an Australian Contact Centre of the Year Award Winner of 2010 and a prime judge of the 2011 ATA Awards. Julian Wong, joins the team in Melbourne from Deloitte, and Alex Auroux joins us from Ernst and Young in Paris.

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