Confessions of a CX Manager: Build a Culture Where Everyone is Accountable for Customer Experience

Key takeaways

• ‍Reeshma Clair is the Global Voice of Customer Lead at Simply Business, a UK-based insurance provider serving nearly a million customers. Over her 16-year career at the company, she’s been instrumental in shaping its CX strategy.

• As a power user of Chattermill, Reeshma leverages the platform to drive decision-making and secure stakeholder buy-in for major initiatives. “We use Chattermill to highlight key data insights and customer sentiment trends, ensuring we deliver actionable recommendations that senior management can easily understand and use to prioritize based on business impact.”

• ‍At Simply Business, keeping the company customer-first is a top priority. Customer feedback is shared through company-wide demos, cross-functional forums, Slack channels, and quarterly reports, ensuring teams are aligned on priorities and in tune with customer needs. 

• As an experienced voice of the customer leader, Reeshma considers social media an underrated source of customer feedback. “Social media really needs to be taken seriously because it's a direct and immediate channel for understanding customer opinions and identifying any potential issues. And also it can really damage brand reputation.” 

A conversation with Reeshma Clair, Global Voice of Customer Lead

Q: Hi Reeshma, great to have you here! Can you tell us about your role at Simply Business?

Reeshma Clair: I'm Reeshma, and my role as the Voice of Customer Lead is to objectively represent the voice of the customer. I provide key insights from both our current and potential customers and ultimately help the business interpret and take action on that customer feedback. 

At Simply Business, we regularly monitor changes in customer satisfaction and sentiment. We're really happy because our customer sentiment is very high, which is great!

On a team level, I'd say our overall objective is to champion the customer's voice across all levels of the business. There are a number of objectives that relate to that, such as collating the feedback, identifying any emerging themes, and providing that in the most effective way possible for the business to understand.

Q: What kind of feedback are you tracking?

Reeshma Clair: We look at various types of feedback—customer satisfaction, sentiment, and direct comments. It’s not just about what we’re doing well, but also identifying opportunities for improvement. My team monitors feedback from all our main customer touchpoints—email, SMS, surveys, our website, and online reviews.

Q: It sounds like you've been working with customer feedback for quite a long time. What specific areas are you looking to improve or understand through customer feedback? 

Reeshma Clair: Our overall goal is to continually improve all of the metrics that we use to measure customer satisfaction. It's not just a single metric that we would look at. That requires a dual approach. So we look at what customers think Simply Business is doing really well, and also look at the areas where customers believe that we could improve. 

For everything that we're doing well, the business can see where we can step that up. And for those areas where we see room for improvement, we make sure that all the relevant stakeholders are aware of that. 

Information sharing is an ongoing process. To foster a truly customer-centric culture, we proactively share all feedback and democratize the insights to ensure that all of our colleagues across the business have access to the feedback and are as close to our customers as possible. ‍

Q: That's so great to hear because it's not easy to ensure that everyone has equal access to customer feedback. Many times, different teams have their own metrics, reporting, and even tools.

Using Chattermill & CX insights

Q: I'm really curious to hear how you've been using Chattermill. How does Chattermill fit into your daily workflow? What's your usual first step when you log into the platform? 

Reeshma Clair: I’m definitely a big fan of Chattermill! Chattermill really puts customer feedback at the heart of what we do. It allows us to analyze, synthesize, and also ultimately act upon thousands of pieces of customer feedback. 

On an almost daily basis, I scan all the customer feedback that has come in the previous day to quickly identify any urgent issues that need to be immediately addressed. That's really important, particularly when we've got new product features or enhancements, to ensure that everything's working as smoothly as possible. 

At the beginning of each month, I also review bespoke dashboards that I've pre-created. This allows me to identify any key themes prevalent in the feedback in the past month and see how things might have changed.

Finally, every month at Simply Business we have a dedicated customer forum, a cross-functional representation from across the business where we all come together. As part of this regular forum, we review customer trends, and identify any changes in customer sentiment, and we use these insights to help identify any opportunities for improvement.

Q: Could you maybe walk us through how you use an example dashboard or a report?

Reeshma Clair: Yes, definitely! We gather feedback across multiple touchpoints and through various channels, including SMS, email, website, surveys, and review sites. Some of these feedback sources are integrated into Chattermill, which makes it easy for us to get closer to our key customer metrics and sentiment.

We've set up various bespoke dashboards for various teams across the business, so they differ depending on the team's needs. We've also used the automation workflow feature so that the dashboards can be published in Slack, a company-wide chat communication method that we use. 

This allows easy access to the insight in real time for all the different teams. That's just another way to demonstrate how we're making sure that feedback is going to the right people, that they have full visibility of the insights, and that they can act on and prioritize work based on these insights.

Q: How do you ensure that other teams are regularly reviewing that feedback data? 

Reeshma Clair: We have various forums in the company, including company-wide demos and town halls, where we share that feedback. As I've mentioned, the Slack channels are also really powerful in getting across the raw verbatim feedback the customers are giving us.

We get a lot of positive feedback, which is great! Customers will often mention specific agents that they've had a great experience with on the phone, and I will make sure that the agent and their manager get that feedback. 

We also publish quarterly voice-of-customer reports that showcase the key metrics and any changes in customer sentiment. So, we have lots of different avenues and ways of communicating all of the feedback.

Measuring impact & proving CX ROI

Q: Can you give an example of a change that was driven by customer feedback?

Reeshma Clair: There have been many examples, but a recent one that comes to mind is that Chattermill has helped us to gain a good understanding of our different touchpoints across our customer journey.

For our customers who make a claim on their insurance, we were able to identify that they wanted to have a better understanding of what is included and what isn't included in their insurance policy.

Q: How did you address that feedback?

Reeshma Clair: We identified the areas of frustration and how they changed over the years. We also used net sentiment analysis to identify the top areas that we need to improve. We knew that if we fixed these, we could potentially improve NPS by X.

There were specific areas that came up and communication was one of them. 

We've been able to improve not only how but also where we communicate this. That's helped our customers, and we've been able to manage their expectations a lot better.

Q: What’s the impact of having this feedback so visible across the organization?

Reeshma Clair: It helps create a culture where everyone feels responsible for the customer. When feedback is visible and people can see the impact of their work—positive or negative—it motivates them to do better.

Chattermill makes that possible because we can break things down by theme, by product, by sentiment. It gives us a much deeper understanding of what’s really going on.

Q: Finally, what advice would you give to other CX leaders trying to drive change?

Reeshma Clair: I think it's really important to get the business as close to that customer feedback as possible. So at Simply Business, we endeavor to get people in the business as close to the feedback as possible. So it benefits them to know exactly what the customer is thinking, what the customer is feeling, and what they're saying, even if they can't immediately act upon that. And in particular, we have a great interest from our senior leadership team, which is really great for us because it helps us to lobby change for our customers.

So my one piece of advice would be to share that feedback. There's no such thing as oversharing. Share it where you can, and let the business see the value of the feedback and how they are influencing that.

Becoming a CX leader

Q: What's your secret superpower as a CX leader?

Reeshma Clair: I'd say my tenure at Simply Business. So you mentioned earlier, but I've been here such a long time. I've got intimate knowledge about the business and about our customers and I've read thousands, hundreds of thousands, probably pieces of feedback. So the fact that I've worked at Simply Business for so long and I know the industry and the business and our customers really well, it is my superpower.

Q: What's the first thing you check in Chattermill each Monday?

Reeshma Clair: I don't actually work on a Monday, so as much as I love Chattermill, I don't go into the tool on a Monday, I have to admit. But on a Tuesday I do have a quick scan of all the feedback that has come in the previous day to see if anything needs actioning urgently. The teams I mentioned earlier, they do have access to all of the dashboards and all of the feedback themselves. So I'm confident that it's going to the right people and the right teams to action.

Q: Which feedback channels matter most to your team?

Reeshma Clair: It's like asking me if I have a favorite child. I love them all equally, obviously! So we value all customer feedback no matter what the channel is. And our customers are really busy people, so they run small businesses or they're landlords often on the side of their day-to-day jobs. So the fact that they've actually taken the time out to give us feedback is something that we are really grateful for and we do pay attention to it all, so I can't choose the specific, difficult to choose.

Q: Would you say that there is any underrated feedback source out there?

Reeshma Clair: I'd say social media feedback. Feedback shared via social media really needs to be taken seriously because it's a direct and immediate channel for understanding customer opinions and identifying any potential issues. And also it can really damage brand reputation. Not only can a customer speak directly to you, but they can also talk about you to each other. So the potential and the brand impact can actually be huge.

Q: One CX metric you are obsessed with?

Reeshma Clair: Again, I can't really choose one. I'd say it's important to track a range of CX metrics to get a more holistic picture. So I think it's important to choose metrics that the business can relate to and that the business can connect to, just to motivate people. And ultimately, so they know how they can influence and contribute towards them. So they need to be easy to understand. And we need to remember that the value in tracking a metric is ultimately if you can act upon the results. So it has to be actionable.

Q: What's the biggest CX myth you wish would disappear?

Reeshma Clair: The biggest CX myth is the fact that CX is the same for everybody, it's not. So it is crucial to avoid a one-size-fits-all CX strategy. Customers are diverse, and their needs are diverse, across segments, and across touchpoints. And I'd say effective CX acknowledges that by delivering a tailored, personalized experience, and by understanding different customer profiles and adapting with relevant context we can ultimately foster higher satisfaction and customer loyalty.

Q: What's your go-to way to get buy-in from leadership?

Reeshma Clair:At Simply Business we love data as an organization. The more data we can share, the better. So we use Chattermill to show key data insight on customer sentiment trends and present it in a visually compelling way. But it's not just about presenting the data. So we need to make sure we're providing actionable insights and recommendations that senior management can understand and connect with and can prioritize based on the business impact. So we often consider factors like retention and NPS improvement potential when we present these.


Q: What's the most unexpected insight from customer feedback that you've discovered?

Reeshma Clair: So the customer feedback we get is incredibly varied given the number of businesses and the type of businesses we serve. It's always a really lovely surprise when we get positive feedback about a customer service representative that has gone above and beyond for our customers. I like to share that with them and their team so that they know the impact that they're making and how appreciated they are by our customers.

Q: Speaking of positive feedback, what's the best compliment a customer has given your team? 

Reeshma Clair: Oh, there's so many! We always aim to make our customers feel the best and I think we do succeed with that ethos. I've read a lot of customer feedback where customers have been so happy with the experience that they received from the agent, that they want to marry them!

So there's been many marriage proposals and customers saying, give this person a pay rise. I really love seeing feedback like that. And again, we make sure that feedback does get to the agent who gave that incredible experience. 

Q: I really love that! What's your favorite Chattermill feature, and why? 

Reeshma Clair: I'd say Impact Analysis has been really powerful for us as a business. We've been using it more and more recently to understand which trends are impacting our net promoter score the most and pinpoint any drops in specific categories.

That really helps us when we're talking to a senior leadership team to present the robust data that we need in order to help the prioritization process and make smarter CX decisions. 

Q: What's the most rewarding part of your job?

Reeshma Clair: I think it's advocating for improvements that directly help our wonderful customers. So ultimately making a positive change for these customers and seeing the positive impact of my work, both on those customers and the business in general. That's incredibly rewarding for me. It fosters a sense of purpose and accomplishment.

Q: The best piece of career advice you've ever received? 

Reeshma Clair: Don't be backwards and coming forwards! So never limit your potential. I think that always stays in my mind. There are endless possibilities. There's never a bad idea, never a bad question. Don't be afraid to ask those questions that everybody probably in the room is thinking. Don't be backwards about it. 

Q: If your CX team had a tagline, what would it be? 

Reeshma Clair: It would be, “simply the best CX team.” And that might sound a bit boring, but if you've seen our advert, it would make a lot of sense. And if you haven't, I urge you to watch it on YouTube because it's quite fun! 

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