6 dates to savour in the great customer experience souk

On 4 April, at Google in Paris, En-Contact, Ino Global and Google Chrome will be welcoming those who are helping DNVBs (digital native vertical brands) or fast-growing brands such as Groupe Verlaine to improve customer engagement and customer journeys, including at critical moments, the moments of truth.

PayFit, Doctolib and Onepilot will be testifying. The strategies of Sezane, Le Slip français, Selency and Groupe Verlaine* will be "dissected", based on an exclusive study conducted by En-Contact magazine. Last week, Groupe Verlaine won Kantar's prize for the best acquisition strategy and CSR advertising campaigns outside the top 100.

The editors of En-Contact (the independent, international magazine on customer experience, BPO and Trust & Safety) would like to suggest a few dates, exhibitions and readings. What is the Roissy police? Who is Wifirst? Is Teleperformance dead?

From 26 to 28 March in Paris, the big souk of CRM and call centres AND customer experience AND acquisition AND engagement AND digital marketing: All 4 Customer.
27 years after it was founded by Advanstar Communications Inc, the French trade show for telephone platforms and CRM has changed its name (it was originally called SECA), but for anyone looking for slippers, spices and good contacts in the fields of call centres, CRM and lead intention, it remains a veritable bazaar. All 4 Customer says it all. Really good conferences such as the one hosted on 26 March by Intelcia and Pickup Services or the one hosted by Comete.ai and Wifirst on 27 March (AI and technology at the service of customer relations) coexist with numerous plenary sessions incorporating story-telling.

There will be 48 speakers at the plenary sessions, and only one of them is an entrepreneur, a boss. This just goes to show the extent to which those who talk about customer and employee experience and personalisation are not often the ones who take responsibility for it, pay for it and have to make trade-offs in terms of money and time. And yet, prioritising and establishing the customer, patient and visitor experience as a real marker requires trade-offs, courage and discernment. On the question of courage, the testimony of an entrepreneur is often more instructive.

We visited a trade show where we didn't turn the tables.

Here are a few examples.

KYC and digitisation of processes.
As a loyal and professional customer of La Banque Postale, I found myself :

- without access to my bank accounts for three weeks. The reason? Forms that had already been sent out twice in the last six weeks didn't seem to have been digitised and sent to operational management.

- and without a working bank card. You can't buy office supplies or a printer's paper, or pay a bill in a restaurant... KYC is seriously flawed at La Banque Postale, as it is at many financial institutions. To change a certicode, LBP still sends you a letter, which takes 12 days to arrive. Why is this? We're not going to embarrass Pierre Grauby, one of the speakers present, who is a La Poste employee, or Isabelle Kupecek, Director of Customer Experience and Quality at Banque Postale. But we'd like to.

Employee experience.
At Decathlon's Madeleine shop in October, a temporary worker died on his first day of work. According to our information, this was very probably because a manager at the northern company asked him or her to go faster, to get on a forklift truck, even though this was not part of the temporary worker's job description. Unloading the lorry quickly, in the middle of the dangerous boulevard de la Madeleine, putting products on shelves quickly to sell more, is this always compatible with the experience of employees and subcontractors? So this week we officially put the following question to Barbara Martin Coppola, CEO of the Decathlon group: "Since his death, have you been in contact with the family of Mr Boyibo Traoré, the temporary worker in question?

The following response from Decathlon's communications department is eloquent. "An investigation is underway, so these comments will not be sourced under the name of Barbara Martin Coppola". In other words: we forbid you to put this official response (which is not an official response) into the mouth of Mrs Martin Coppola. Decathlon, the champion of customer and employee experience, doesn't appreciate being asked about the stitches in these subjects.

The impact of AI on customer services.
The world's number 1 outsourced customer experience company, Teleperformance, has lost 75% of its market value in less than two years. Its competitor, Concentrix + Webhelp, has lost just under 50% in one year. Can AI do as well as hundreds of thousands of employees, and in what timeframe? The financial markets believe so, and are anticipating it. We won't be talking about this at the show, as Teleperformance won't have a stand there. At the very moment when it should be speaking out, explaining and educating, the company in France is as if paralysed. Here, as with many BPO specialists, many managers are wondering whether their jobs will be retained. How do you maintain commitment when fear dominates? And if it did, there would be no media coverage: call centres are of no interest to anyone. Have you ever met a minister or a major media outlet at Porte de Versailles in the last twenty-seven years? Yes, but not at SECA or All 4 Customer.

Once these reservations have been made, a visit to the aisles could prove beneficial for anyone who is prepared to sign order forms. easiware (one of whose co-founders, Brendan Natral, has just announced his departure) has not announced its turnover for 2023, but the French publisher rivals Zendesk in terms of functionality. Voxpay is the only French solution that lets you cash hotel or rental reservations by telephone, using a simple smartphone. With Paris 2024 just a few weeks away, it's about time (we tried a fortnight ago to pay for a room at Mama Shelter in Lyon. It was a real hassle. We were saved by the Accor website.   

On Monday, check out En-Contact's list of the ten stands we think are unmissable this year.

Stay tuned for a major announcement concerning the Trust & Safety market at the All 4 Customer trade show on 27 March.
Read all about it at 12 noon on 27 March on the En-Contact website.

On 4 April, at Google in Paris: the golden rules and the impact of AI on customer relations for digital natives.
A morning co-organised by Ino Global and Google Chrome, with presentations from Payfit, Onepilot, Doctolib and an exclusive analysis of Sezane's, Slip Français, Selency, Groupe Verlaine, digital and visual strategy. The conferences will be hosted by En-Contact. You'll be allowed to ask the tough questions.

Is Yuccan Lead a good option to acquire new customers ? What is hipto ?

To register, click here.

Until 2 June, at the Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine in Paris: Paul Andreu, the architect of passenger and tourist routes.
Trained at the Ecole Polytechnique, the Ponts-et-chaussées and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paul Andreu designed the famous Terminal 1 at Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle. At the time, we weren't talking about the passenger journey, the customer journey, customer interaction, the rest area... Yet Paul Andreu and his team worked on all the items that contribute to the passenger and visitor experience in airports and museums (Osaka, Beijing, etc.). Accompanied by a colourist, Jacques Fillacier, and a designer, Joseph-André Motte. To them we owe the orange benches, bold colour choices that help you find your way around. Did you know that a specific typeface was designed at the time for all the signage at Roissy airport? This eponymous font, "Roissy", developed by Adrien Frutiger, was published in 1976 and designed in 1968 specifically for Roissy airport. Ticket price for the exhibition: 9 euros. We went along and were thrilled.

On 24 and 25 May, in La Baule, safety and quality of the patient experience in nuclear medicine, organised by the Georges Charpak centre.

June 2024, the first New Biz Forum.
The first BtoB event in France devoted exclusively to customer acquisition.

Manuel Jacquinet.