Statements of Intent | Episode 2 | "Put People Before Process" - Ed Deason

“Put People Before Process”

In this episode, former head of customer experience Ed Deason shares his perspective on how businesses lose sight of customer needs amidst internal processes and efficiency drives. He recounts real-life examples of companies prioritising procedure over empathy—and one that gets it right. The key takeaway? Put people before process.

Topics Covered:

Why companies become process-centric rather than customer-centric
Specific examples of poor process-driven customer service
The negative impacts of commercialism and efficiency obsession
Ways to foster human connections in e-commerce
Balancing team productivity with customer satisfaction

Key Quotes:

"They lose sight of what their customers are trying to achieve and trying to get done. And therefore they provide a really crappy customer experience as a result."
"I blame commerce for that. I blame greed, I blame the need for more is more, I blame VCs, investment, shaping people's perception away from the customer and more towards growth and scale."
"What they want is their problem solved first time. What they want is the answers they were looking for. What they want is a bit of empathy."

Episode Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

01:05 Guest Introduction

01:34 Statement of Intent: People Before Process

03:38 Personal Customer Service Stories

07:47 The Problem with Processes

10:48 Impacts on Customer Experience

15:52 Fostering Connections

18:54 Balancing Metrics

Social Media:

LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/company/madewithintent

YouTube → https://youtube.com/madewithintent

Ed’s LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/edward-deason/

Creators & Guests

Host

David Mannheim

David is a big kid, a big Disney fan and a big geek. He founded User Conversion which was acquired by Brainlabs, is the author of The Person in Personalisation, and now the host of Statements of Intent. His mission is to help retailers care more for their customers by listening, being appropriate, being familiar and creating a relationship. He is doing that through his new start up, Made With Intent, a platform that helps retailers do just this by diligently understanding customer intent.

Guest

Ed Deason

What is Statements of Intent?

eCommerce has lost sight of the people at its heart—the customer. After working with the world’s biggest retailers for 15 years, David Mannheim (author of The Person in Personalisation, founder of Made With Intent) wants to change this.

Through solo shows and guest conversations, you’ll hear eCommerce leaders share how they intend to break the status quo gripping online retail. The lack of care. The short-sightedness. The sea of sameness.

Each 20-minute episode centres on the sharing of a statement of intent—A personal promise or guiding principle. It’s a vulnerable yet fun source of solidarity for weary commerce marketers who want to change things for the better.

~ This transcript is automatically generated so may contain some errors ~

I think when you're sort of in that smaller kind of startup stage, you're probably a lot closer to your customers, right? They're a lot more tangible. You're excited every time you get a new customer. And I think as your business grows and as they scale and as you add more layers of complexity and more departments, you can start to become.

Process centric, and it becomes all about doing the thing rather than helping the customer.

Welcome to Statements of Intent. In this 20 minute episode, we're addressing how e commerce has lost sight of the people at its very heart. You, the customer. It's a chat that's optimistic, it's casual, it's probably slightly ranty in places, but that's okay. But it's a place where I talk to senior e commerce marketers.

And share their statement of how they're looking to change the status quo of e commerce, adding more care, being more considerate to those very people that they're selling to the customer. I'm your host, David Monheim, the founder of Made with Intent. And we're going to jump right into it. Have fun

hi everyone.

And welcome to Statements of Intent. Today, joining me with this glorious beard and wonderful hairline is Mr. Ed Deason, uh, former head of customer experience at Wiggle, former head of global customer experience at

Pret A Manger, is that right? That's the one.

Amazing. So, you know, everything there is to know about how to treat customers correctly.

It feels like you're a perfect guest to talk about. this in more detail and add more color to it. Um, so let's dive right into it, Ed.

Ed, what is your statement of intent today?

My statement of intent is put people before process. Is that because it's alliterative? Oh, absolutely. I took it from a, there was a book I've been reading recently that has kind of a similar title.

I just

can't, Available now from all good Amazon stores. Uh, there's only one Amazon store and it's not good. Uh, put people before process. What do you, what do you mean by that?

So I've, I've noticed a real trend recently, and I'll talk about some personal experiences. I'll talk about sort of more widely as well, but I've noticed a real trend recently of businesses, particularly e commerce, um, thinking about things from an internal Business perspective rather than from an external.

What are our customers trying to achieve perspective? Right? So there you go. We we've got a process that customers need to follow. We've got a process by which we introduce new products. We've got a process by which we do X and it's very much. Business centric. This is how we do this thing, right? And they spend so much time doing that, they lose sight of what their customers are trying to achieve and trying to get done.

And therefore they provide a really crappy customer experience as a result.

Do you think that's a scale thing? Do you think that only happens in bigger businesses? Or do you think it's exacerbated? The bigger you grow, the more processes you have. The further disconnected you are from customer.

Yeah, definitely.

Process centric, and it becomes all about doing the thing rather than helping the customer. I'm guessing you've

experienced that. We don't need to mention company names or brands, but I'm guessing that that's something that you feel inherently that happens with most businesses and that you've witnessed

firsthand.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I've got I've got two examples in the last week, which is pretty terrible as it goes on. Tell us. And I'm going to talk, I'm going to talk about companies because I think it's useful sometimes to surface these things. So, um.

Or three companies, one was a good one and two sort of not so great example.

So the good example was with Admiral Insurance, right? And I've been a customer of theirs for a little while and I was recently made redundant and I was updating my insurance policy to reflect, you know, employed. Not employed, that wonderful experience. And um, and I was going through my renewal anyway, so I got that all done.

And I think a day later I received an email from them and it went, Ah, hey Jörg, you renewed with us yesterday, we're really excited, we really appreciate it. But we've noticed we actually charged you from changing your employment status from employed to unemployed. Obviously, given the economic environment right now, and actually just generally how that feels, we're not happy with that as a customer experience, right?

You've been made unemployed, we don't think we should be charging you for that. So we're going to refund you, right? Totally proactive, wasn't expecting it, didn't even notice they'd done it in the first place, to be perfectly honest. And I was like, that's a great experience. I really appreciate that.

They've recognized there is a process for when people make amendments, not strictly employed to unemployed, but when they make amendments to their policy and they charge for them. And they've gone, actually, in this particular circumstance. The people focused thing to do is not charge people for it.

The people focused thing to do, 100%.

So being more human in your, having empathy, I suppose, in your, or you know, maybe your, your statements of putting people before process, that feels like a, a statement of empathy as opposed to, um, the adverse of empathy. Um, intellect? No. Um, operation?

Yeah, maybe. There's some, some kind of amorphous thing that, yeah, that kind of combines those.

But it was the, it was the point that they've gone, okay, so we have a process. When people make amendments, we charge them. Yeah. Pretty standard insurance stuff. And then they went But if we're charging people for losing their jobs in the current economic climate, that's not okay. We don't feel okay about this.

That's not people centric. That's that's process centric. So we're going to do something about it. And this is the same company that, uh, over COVID wrote to me and said, Hey, look, we're going to refund some of your premiums because no one's really driving at the moment, right? So there's fewer people on the road.

There's fewer accidents. We're paying out less in claims. So we're paying out less in claims. So you probably should pay a bit less for your insurance. Yeah.

And as a result, I've gone. I can trust these guys, I can trust that they'll do the right thing. They'll think about the person at the end of the policy, if you like, versus the, in the internal process.

And

what struck you most about that interaction? Was it the delight, the unexpected nature? Was it, um, the fact that most companies don't offer that level of service and therefore they stood out? Was it the empathy that they provided in that interaction? What, uh, was it the tone? What were the things that made you really stand back and think, I like this?

Yeah,

I, I, so first of all was the consistency. It was the fact it was the second time they'd gone, Oh, actually we, we're making a bit of money here and we don't think we should. So I went, okay, they're consistent about this. Isn't the first time they've done this. And the other thing was, um, that they'd taken the time to contact me proactively.

I think a lot of businesses would perhaps recognize the same problem. So they'll go, Oh, people who are being made redundant, losing their jobs, uh, are unhappy. They're being charged. Okay. If they contact us, give them a refund. Yeah. And that, that's kind of typically what a lot of businesses would do. They'd go right.

Reactively. If a customer contacts us, that's fine. Give them a refund. What Admiral have gone and done is gone. Well, actually we don't want customers to reach out to us. They're already annoyed by that point. Just blanket, go out to them and tell them you're going to refund it. Job done. Don't need to wait.

Don't need to generate more contacts into the contact center. Don't need to wait for people to get frustrated about it. Just do it. Yeah,

that's lovely. And you said you had a few other examples. That was obviously like a money orientated, like almost a transactional example. Have you got, what, what were your other two examples?

Were they non transactional?

Uh, so another one was, so a not so great one, British gas. Uh, I bought sort of boiler cover with them, uh, last year I had my boiler serviced. They called me again this year to book the service in because I've got the kind of renewing, uh, renewing cover. Absolutely fine. Great.

Yeah, let's, let's book in the boiler service. So they take me through the upsells a bit. Would you like to cover your hob? Would you like to cover your oven? Would you like to cover your, I don't know, radiators or gas fire or whatever? Yeah. And I was like, right now I'm good. Thanks. You know, um. And they're like, okay, great.

No problem. Let's get the boiler service booked in. And then there's this really awkward pause as the, the poor agent who's called me to book in my boiler service and upsell me all this stuff realizes that they haven't got any spaces in my area at all. So he's gone through this upsell spiel. I've had to listen to it going, right.

That's fine. It's fine. I'll get to the end of this and I'll get my boiler booked in and he's gone. Uh, yeah, we, um, we actually, we actually don't, don't have any spaces to, to get your oiler booked in. Um, we'll call you back when we do. And, and obviously I'm about, I think I'm about two weeks later, I'm still waiting.

Interesting that the, the spiel, which is clearly a script. Which is clearly a process came before the reason of you actually ringing them up, right? Well, they

called me they that's that's what was embarrassing about it. Yeah, that's the approach They called me to book in my service. I couldn't fundamentally fulfill the function of the

call that makes it even worse Doesn't it?

They called you to fulfill a service that you have legitimately paid for And instead of fulfilling that service they started off the call i'm assuming taking you through some level security but with a business operated spiel about upsell How do you think they've gotten to that

stage? It's all process, isn't it?

You know, it'll, so, uh, it'll be time to call a particular person. So it'll drop into the agent's queue and the agent will say, right, I have to call Mr. Deason today and I have to offer him this, this, this, and this. And then at the end of the call, I can book in his service. And so that's what's happened.

He's followed the process, right?

But someone somewhere has turned around and said, you know, what would be great if we called up Ed or similar Eds. And instead of just saying, Uh, making the call very short and saying would you like your service done, being done next week, the week after, or never in your case.

Why don't we upsell everything else that we offer first? Because that feels like a completely human thing to do. Someone said that. How is that, how's that even got through the, I don't know, meandered through, just empathy, just emotional intelligence.

And that's, and this is it. They've got, it's, it's totally process driven, isn't it?

I think there's a lot we can

learn from, you know, you mentioned words like trust earlier. You mentioned things about smaller retailers, like those on Etsy where you get a single order and you champion that order. That gets lost through something.

In my book, The Person in Personalization, available now in your best Amazon stores, um, the, like, I blame commerce for that.

I blame greed, I blame the need for more is more, I blame VCs, uh, investment, uh, shaping people's perception away from the customer and more towards growth and scale. And, again, the concept is more and more. What do you see it as? Do you see If you're focused on process above people here, your story suggests so.

That feels more like efficiency rather than greed or commercialism.

I think

there's What's the enemy here, basically? Yeah, there's probably

a bit of an overlap between sort of both elements. Part of it is that efficiency at all costs. Yeah, I, you know, I do agree. Oh, well, this is a chance to upsell. Oh, this is a chance to offer X, offer Y, put this in their face. And I think if you think about the best retail experiences you've ever had, you know, in bricks and mortar, when you walk into a shop And there's a sales assistant there.

The first thing they do is not jam a 10 percent off offer in your face every time you try and look at a product, is it? You know, they don't follow you around the store trying to make you buy x thing or trying to get you add 26 to add 26 other things to your basket. The first thing they do is go, what are you looking for today?

How can I help you today? Yeah. And I think this is, and I think what's that kind of process piece is we've lost that in translation from going from sort of bricks and mortar retail, where every customer counts to this, like you say, sort of commercialized view, commoditized view of almost, um, sales and transactions, which is cram as much as you possibly can in the customer's face and hope that they buy something.

And in addition to that, I think. There's the concept of more is more, commercial and transactions. There's the concept of when it comes to efficiency, that's all about saving costs. So how can we save costs and by virtue give the customer experience, reduce the customer experience at, you know, in that British Gas example.

And then there's a third pillar that extrapolates both those things. And that's, this is a human to screen relationship. It's you, you don't have that human relationship of high. Can I help you today? So it's simulated. I mean, what are, what are your experience of? Uh, websites or apps that have, that like replicate that Brit, awful British gas experience that you had.

Oh, I think there's so many of them. I, and I was trying to sort of, I was having a bit of a think about this the other day and it's, it's those kinds of ones where, where that, you know, that wretched sign up to our newsletter. Pop up appears every single page you go to, and I was saying, you know, just like that, you wouldn't get a retailer running in front of you holding a 10 percent off sale.

Exactly! Every time you tried to look at a particular object, they wouldn't cover it up, would they? It's crazy. They'd go, what would you like to know about this? How can I help you with this? Would you like to accept our

cookies?

Yeah, it's chasing us around the website, yeah. That's it. And I can imagine someone just trying to lever cookies into your face in a retail environment.

In fact, I think that would be a good PR story that could get,

you know, quite loud. I'm open to trying it, right?

Well, obviously at Pret a Manger, that's that type of stuff would work, right? Speaking of PrEP, they're actually very well known for their customer experience. I've heard rumors of, you know, they give away a coffee a day or some coffees a day.

Uh, just for anybody who is nice to their staff, um, and stuff like that. They feel at least the perception is that they have a very good customer experience.

They do. And it's, and it's, it's probably that humanization point, right? So they do give away coffees and they do give away cakes and they do give away sandwiches and it's called the joy of prep.

And what they essentially do is they say to all of their staff in their shops, it doesn't matter who you are. Um, basically you can give away. I don't know, up to X amount of food a day or a week. Right? And it's up to you. If you want to give it away, give it away. If you don't really feel like giving it away, don't give away.

If you don't think there's anyone that's really sort of needs it today, don't do it today. That's absolutely fine. But they say, but if you've got someone who's, I don't know, they're dressed up and they're nervous and they look like they're probably going to a job interview, give them a free coffee, right?

Or someone who's obviously got a bit of, you know, mascara run and they're having a pretty rough day, give them a cookie. You know, and, and it really, and you create this really human connection because it's, it's, it's a very human interaction is the, it's the person behind the tool going, you know what you look like you could do with a coffee today.

Here you go. They feel good about it. The customer feels good about it. Yeah. It's really, it's hidden advice. It creates those connections. Yeah.

Yeah. There's some really great hidden advice of going to a prep. In a suit pretending you're at a job interview or put a mascara halfway run down your face, uh, noted for next time.

And so my question is there for, well, I have a couple of follow up questions.

How do you, how do you simulate that level of human connection on a website? Have you ever seen such an example that you feel is a great customer experience? in a human to screen relationship?

Yeah, I definitely have. So, you gave Axie as an example, that's quite a good one, right?

Where it feels like a really personal transaction and really often the sellers will talk to you and they'll be like, oh, is there anything else, you know, can I help you with anything else? Is there anything you want to know? And they'll stick a little goodie in the bag with it and all that kind of stuff, which is just nice, right?

And it's because it's that much more sort of individual transaction. Um, but one that does it on a sort of bigger scale, and I've talked about them before, is Bloom and Wild. You know, I really think they've taken so much time to understand their customers and try and get to the bottom of what it is their customers are trying to achieve.

You know, they think so, so carefully about their customer experiences. Um, the example I've used before is when I buy flowers for people, I don't like buying lilies. Yeah. Lilies are super toxic to dogs and cats. Yeah. And the last thing I want to do is buy a bunch of flowers that are going to poison someone's pet.

So I always, you've always got to know, don't add, you know, don't add lilies to the order or please avoid blah, blah, blah. Or you've got to hunt through the website to try and find a good case about lilies or whatever it is. I was setting up a, like a recurring order with bloom and wild recently, and they've got a little box that simply says, don't put lilies in my order.

They're toxic to dogs and cats. Um, you know, we, we know they are, so we won't include them. Yeah. And, and, and the whole, the whole experience is littered with little examples like that. And you go, they've really, really, really taken the time to understand what their customers need and want.

Yeah, I love it.

That's really nice. Sometimes that can be communicated really well in language, I find. Do you have a pet at

all, by the way? Uh, dogs and

cats. You've got dogs and cats. Do you ever use Butternut Box? No. Have you ever seen or been through the Butternut Box process? I

actually saw your example on LinkedIn yesterday.

Oh,

ruin it for people! Uh, yeah. Well, exactly. I feel as though you can simulate Empathy with language. So, in the Butternut Box process, it is a product quiz of, you know, tell us about your dog, and, you know, he, she, breed, size, forgive me, I don't have a dog, so I don't, I don't know the exact questions that they ask.

But the very first question they ask is, what is your dog's name? And there is no need to ask that question. It doesn't bear any weighting on the output of the recommendations that they're, the products that they're going to recommend to you. But boy, does it allow them to create a connection with you.

Because now, in all of their Uh, questions that they won't ask, um, is, you know, uh, is it a boy or a girl? They'll say, is Casey a boy or a girl? And that feels like they're trying to simulate a relationship between you or through you and your dog or pet. I think that's a wonderful example of creating a human connection and a human to screen relationship.

Uh, it's really nice.

So, may I ask, like, when you, when you did move to Wiggle Um, what were some of the values that you tried to impart there, uh, when you were championing people over process?

Yeah. Okay. So it's a good question. So I think, you know, I'll talk contact center because it's an easy one to start with.

Right. So I started, I was responsible for the contact center there and the focus was on productivity really or they were just coming off a kind of a productivity drive, right? That was all about answering as many contacts as you possibly can per hour. Yeah, all about process, all about get out of the door, get out of the door, get out of the door, get out of the door, rather than a focus on take the time to understand what the customer wants to take the time to empathize, take the time to understand what it is that they're trying to achieve.

So they have a better experience because the worst thing we've all been there, right, is when you write something to a customer service team, they miss the point entirely or they miss the one salient bit of information and just go back with a generic process. This is how you make a return. I wasn't really asking you how to make a return.

I was telling you I need to return it before X date because it's someone's birthday. I can work a return. What I really need to know is can you get it to me soon enough? Yeah. And when you, when they miss those elements, when they focus on the process. Here's how to make a return versus here's why I need to make a return.

You end up with these transactional, unsatisfactory, disappointing experiences.

Hmm. Surely there's a balance between the two though because you'll be measured or that team will be measured on how many tickets they satisfy per day. For example, how do you, how do you balance the two when you know for a while that the more time it takes to be empathetic, the, uh, least, less likely you are to hit those, those numbers?

Yeah. And it's a fair question. There's, there's always going to be an element of productivity. Right. But you've got to think about it in terms of a, I hate the term, balanced scorecard. Right. You've got to think about it in terms of what are the other things we're trying to achieve? We're not really trying to achieve an email out or 12 emails out and out.

What we're really trying to achieve is happy customers. So what is the most important thing we can do to make sure we get happy customers? Speed of response is part of that. Yeah. So they like to receive a response in a timely manner. So there's an element of productivity. But what they want is their problem solved first time.

What they want is the answers they were looking for. What they want is a bit of empathy, right? So do those things as well. So don't, don't make the only metric how many can you respond to in an hour.

Yeah, so I guess it's reframing the purpose of what that metric, uh, means to the rest of the business and introducing other metrics that are more qualitative, more long termism, more, well, more customer centric, really.

Yeah, of course. You know, and if you, if the problem is, if you were, you focused solely on productivity and you Churn out all these emails, right? A whole load of them are going to come back because you haven't really got the point. Yeah. And actually, so you're causing more work. You're generating more dissatisfaction rather than actually making customers happier because you've responded quicker.

I love it.

Well, Ed, look, thank you. This is just a nice 20 minute, almost a rant in some instances, uh, or ramble. Um, but something that's lovely and alliterative, obviously I'm a big fan. Uh, thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it. If anybody does want to find you to rant as a, as a fellow believer in this, where can they find you?

Uh,

look me up on LinkedIn, please.

Yeah. Ed Deason, MBE, sir. MBE? MBA. It'd be great if you were an

MBE.

I'm not an MBE yet. Watch

this face. Okay. Thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you very much.

There we have it. Thank you so much for listening. Please do like, subscribe and share on whatever platform it is that you're listening to on today. This show comes from the team behind Made With Intent, the customer intent platform for retailers. If you are of course, interested in being more profitable, whilst being more personal.

And please feel free to check us out at madewithintent. ai. Thanks again for listening and joining us on our mission to change how e commerce sees, measures, and treats their customers. I've been your host, David Mannheim. Have a great day.