What it Takes to Become the CX Leader of the Year: The Story of Fergus Bugg

In 2018, when Fergus Bugg joined Experience Hub, he was given the task of leading the transformation of multiple contact centres. The goal was to create a world-class Customer Experience Hub Yas Concierge by providing a minimum-effort, single point of resolution for the guests' needs.

Fergus's approach was to empower his team members to reduce guest effort by providing the best solution from the get-go and delivering "wow moments" to the guests in their preferred communication channel.

Yas Concierge wanted to create a one-stop shop for all Yas Island guests. Thus, the project's most important objectives were:

* Aligning all delivered services with the industry's best practices
* Aligning with the parent company's vision and mission
* Maintaining a high standard of customer experience for all services
* Significantly contributing to making Yas Island a popular destination
* Transforming from a cost centre to a profitable customer-centric business
* Attaining increased employee engagement and employee happiness

What was Fergus' approach?

The success of Yas Concierge's depended upon good design and planning. Being a Lean Green Six Sigma Greenbelt, Fergus used DMAIC methodology to plan and implement the whole project.

✔️ The team held internal workshops to gather feedback from key stakeholders. This helped them spot and define the critical problem statements and focus areas for improvement.
✔️ They then combined the insight with the end-to-end customer journey mapping for their existing contact centre operations. This allowed them to understand the current touchpoints and areas that required improvement.
✔️ They completed a Customer Effort assessment to identify high-effort channels and processes and had sessions with the contact centre agents to understand the barriers preventing customer-centric service delivery.
✔️ The team used all the information they gathered to design four implementation phases to deliver the project effectively and successfully.
✔️ The team also established a PMO, and Fergus became responsible for the project's quality and tracking of time, cost, quality, change management and stakeholder engagement.

An essential point of difference for Fergus' strategy was the development of "wow moments". Contrary to what customer effort theory suggests (that people aren't looking for "wow moments") the theory Fergus proposed the team should include these moments and rely on them for customer satisfaction. The WOW Moment program encouraged the staff to build rapport with the guests and organise Surprise and Delight WOW for the guests during their visit.

What results did he achieve?

Fergus' initiative helped improve the CSAT scores from 92% to 97% in 2021. Moreover, customer effort, which is the number one factor behind customer loyalty, improved from 87% to 95% thanks to the help of Fergus' plan and initiative, which helped deliver over 500 unique 'WOW Moments' for the guests. In addition to this, the Employee NPS for his team improved from 0 to +70 since Fergus joined.

When Fergus Bugg first started, the team was responsible for managing only three internal brands, but since then, he has expanded their services to manage nineteen different brands.

The initiative turned into a significant success, winning GOLD for Experience Hub - Fergus Bugg in the category CX Leader of the Year at the International CXA® in 2021 (Experience Hub also won another GOLD in the Best Customer Service SME category).