Karen Morton
Customer Experience Strategy & Insights
An Post
Ireland
Karen has been voted one of five highly commened entrants to CX Leader of the Year 2021!
In 2019, An Post unearthed a hard truth – customers all felt that An Post was for somebody else. Hired that very year, Karen kickstarted her work on defining a CX strategy and framework by interviewing stakeholders from senior management through to teams on the frontline, as well as speaking to customers through focus groups.
This work informed the decision to focus the strategy on three priorities: making the service experience seamless, accessible and simple; identifying and delivering new propositions that could be more innovative than the traditional postal service offerings; and delivering more personalised engagement through omnichannel contact.
To facilitate with the strategy and to track progress it was necessary to launch a Voice of the Customer programme to measure experiences. With absolutely no CX measurement in place at the time of Karen's appointment, this meant starting from scratch. The programme is now operating at pace, with to date circa 9,000 completed customer surveys providing feedback and driving improvement. Other sources of insight now include Voice of the Employee sessions, monthly customer panels and quarterly customer councils chaired by An Post's managing director.
Another instrumental part of the CX strategy has been utilising customer journey mapping in collaboration with internal stakeholders to help reimagine what the experience looks like for the modern An Post customer. A number of new initiatives and education training programmes have been created for employees, as a result.
Despite CX measurement only starting very recently, An Post is already seeing an uplift in NPS and CSAT and a positive revenue impact in the updated post offices. And with a new contact centres set to launch by the end of the year, the progress continues apace.
I started in 2019 as a single contributor to the organisation. I am now pleased to say that I officially have a customer experience team consisting of an insights specialist and a CX delivery manger. I believe the contribution and delivery to the organisation has been recognised with now forming a team to support me.
As a highly commended entrant to 2021’s CX Leader of the Year Karen's entry stood out among our judging panel:
“It’s clear that from a starting position of being a lone voice, as CX practitioners sometimes are, Karen has substantially moved activities forward to gain recognition for customer experience both internally and externally. I feel that Karen’s level of honesty and professionalism is very high and this is translating into a CX programme that truly has customers at its heart.”
- James Scutt, CX Leader of the Year judge
