Reynolds Busby Lee

Consultancy

Founded in 2005 Reynolds Busby Lee is a consultancy specialising in customer experience and the inclusion of customers in vulnerable circumstances. We are a team of senior marketing experts who solve customer conundrums in strategic, yet very practical ways. We understand the ins and outs of the real business world. Over the years, we’ve turned around many struggling organisations, by realigning them to the needs of all their customers. We have hands on experience of turning loss-making businesses into profitable firms with happy customers, staff, and stakeholders. We don’t just offer theoretical solutions; we also advise on the practicalities of how multi-channel changes should be implemented to boost customer engagement and experience.

Outcomes we deliver for our clients

• Strategic clarity
• Focus on customer experience and engagement
• Consistency and accuracy in recognising customers in vulnerable circumstances
• Confidence in selecting and delivering the appropriate support needs for each and every customer ensuring good outcomes are achieved
• Hearing customer voices in a meaningful ways that drive actionable change
• Marketing and customer service strategies that are aligned with the organisations mission and vision

Customer Experience

Founded in 2005 Reynolds Busby Lee is a consultancy specialising in customer experience and the inclusion of customers in vulnerable circumstances. Customer experience is often understood to be a function of what customers “do, think and feel” when they interact with a business or charity. Whilst many customer experience service providers focus on what customers do, we believe it’s essential to also understand the why i.e., what customers are thinking and feeling as well as what they’re doing. We’re great believers in Maya Angelou’s famous quote “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” 

Customer journey mapping

A customer journey map lays out all touchpoints that your customer may have with your brand or organisation step-by-step. It begins with how they first heard of you through social media or brand advertising, to their direct interactions with your product, website, or customer services support team – and includes all of the actions your customer takes to complete an objective across. Customer journeys are not linear and don’t always follow the same pathways, so your customer journey maps need to reflect this too.

We use a three-step approach to understand your customers’ expectations versus what’s happening in reality. We identify any potential hurdles in your current customer journey by reviewing your planned customer journey maps (if you don’t have maps, we can help you to create them) and interviews with your teams to learn their perceptions of what’s not working.

We typically start by mapping out the steps within your customer journey, then cross-reference that with data and ideally customer experience audits that reveal the actual pathways customers are following. Working with you, we develop an action plan We can even stay and help you to implement the solutions.

Customer journey mapping will help you to;

• Identify the pain points for your customers
• Identify the pain points for your organisation
• Develop an action plan for solutions

What’s not to love?

By spending time with you in your office – or remotely using Teams, Zoom or Google Meet – and identifying where the current blind spots are, we give you a thorough understanding of your ideal customer journey from start to finish – and importantly, how to achieve it.

Experience auditing

Where our work on strategy reviews is more high-level and focussed on intent, our customer experience work is more practical uncovering what’s really happening. Our experience audit clients come to us because something in the customer journey isn’t delivering the customer experience or results expected and our clients are struggling to see why.

We understand that it’s hard to be as objective about your business as your customers are, you know things they don’t know. When examining customer experience, the ability to look from the outside in, brings that objectivity to your table.

Then using qualitative research, we investigate to reveal the reality of the customer experience to understand the actual process as well as their attitudes and feelings as they navigate through the customer journey. Then working with your data or insight teams, we look to overlay your customer data to provide the quantitative insight. We approach this systematically using our CLEAR Model.

Outcomes our Customer Experience Audits deliver;

• Alerts of any business-critical issues e.g., where breach of regulation or compliance
• Identify any inconsistencies in interactions across contact channels and offer solutions
• Identify where customer journeys don’t go to plan and why
• Documented detail of each journey completed – step-by-step (with screen shots or video) to enable replication of issues
• A final report sharing findings supported by customer feedback and recommendations for action

Vulnerable Customer consultancy and training:

Can your customer-facing teams consistently and reliably recognise vulnerable customers, and do they know how to make reasonable adjustments to better support those customer needs? Do your back-office teams know how their roles can impact on customers with characteristics of vulnerability? Do your product and service designers consider characteristics of vulnerability when designing new or refining existing products and service? If not, then our training modules may be just what you need.

Through their Financial Lives surveys, The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) have estimated that approximately 50% of the UK adult population could be in a vulnerable circumstances at any one time. Being able to recognise characteristics of vulnerability is the starting point. You then need to consider whether the customer is at risk of a poor outcome and then what can be done to mitigate that risk.

Founded in 2005 Reynolds Busby Lee is a consultancy specialising in customer experience and the inclusion of customers in vulnerable circumstances. We began working in vulnerability in 2011 when our Managing Director, Elaine Lee, chaired a cross-sector working party for the DMA UK to improve the service delivered to vulnerable customers. Having co-trained with Elaine for a number of years, Jacqui Workman ex Managing Director of KMB Telemarketing joined the team in January 2023 as an Associate Consultant and Trainer.

Since then, we have gone on to create and deliver a series of training modules helping customer facing and back-office teams to be able to identify characteristics of vulnerability and to provide additional support to deliver good outcomes that are comparable to those of non-vulnerable customers. We also support our clients by sharing our expertise and strategic advice in relation to policies, procedures and processes that relate to your vulnerable customers.

Our training sessions can be full-day, half-day, or just a couple of hours. Our modular approach to training allows you to design the perfect learning and development sessions for your organisation and teams. Take what you need when you need it. Sessions can be delivered in person or on-line and will always be tailored to your needs. Choose from;

1. Why Vulnerability Matters
2. Recognising vulnerabilities
3. Reasonable Adjustments – what are they and how do you implement them
4. Closing the knowledge gaps with Lived Experience and Experiential Labs
5. Case study workshops
6. How to support your teams working with vulnerable customers
7. Vulnerability by design
8. Consultancy options

Outcomes of working with Reynolds Busby Lee

• Regulation and legislation compliance
• Reduced complaints
• Improved customer relationships – improved LTV
• Buy-in from Senior Leadership Teams and a cultural change to be customer centric
• Confident skilled staff
• Consistency of service and delivery of ‘good’ outcomes
• Improved service delivery and relationships with customers
• Access to practical tools to bring consistency and confidence when working with vulnerable customers (including a cross-sell product)
• Improved brand positioning
• Improved trust and dialogue between the organisation and customers

Strategy development and review

Review, Reveal & Recommend

Founded in 2005 Reynolds Busby Lee is a consultancy specialising in customer experience and the inclusion of customers in vulnerable circumstances. We often start our work with our clients by reviewing their marketing and / or customer services strategy. This enables us to get a feel for your target audience and how your organisation wants to engage with your prospects and customers, both active and lapsed. We will want to get to know your customer base and target audience.

We’ll then look with you at the results and assess whether the operational practices are delivering on the strategic intent. We’ll also consider whether the marketing and customer services strategies are correctly aligned.

The last step is for us to make recommendations based on the evidence you have shared and by drawing from the hands-on experience of our team. Our recommendations are always practical and realistic, we’ve been in your shoes and understand the real-world challenges you are facing.

The benefit for your organisation is that an experienced marketer will look at the strategy from the ‘outside in’ and challenge with objectivity whether it’s clear and effective in delivering on your mission and objectives by reaching the intended customer groups.