2019 Stratégie Clients salon: the retrospective!

The main topic of this 2019 edition of the Stratégie Clients salon was “relational intelligence”, as defined by Ghislaine de Chambine and Thierry Spencer with the following terms:

“Know how to listen to your customers and take their emotions into account in order to have them live exceptional moments.”

To address this topic, the seven plenary sessions had gathered as each year various Customer Relationships experts and they were a great success. Some nice brands had joined to testify about emotions within Customer Relationships.

• Gaëtan Maillet presented Decathlon’s “EasyReturn” project, born as a response to the feeling of dissatisfaction shared by customers AND collaborators, which stemmed from the throwing away of near-new customer returns. Secondhand resale, recycling, donations to organisations… lots of alternatives were found and put into practice by the company.
• Emmanuelle Saint-Jost, Quality Manager at BNP Paribas Cardif, mentioned her CRAC (Comité Réclamations Amélioration Continue) (content in French) which regularly gathers to discuss various issues while taking care each time to include customer vision.
• Alec Clément (Samsung Electronics France) presented their Champs-Élysées’ pop-up store. The original idea was to open a showroom where present and future clients could freely discover and test the various Samsung products. Introducing an after-sales space in the store (and consequently, potentially unhappy customers) was a risky gamble, but it turned out to be very positive. Samsung Electronics France) presented their Champs-Élysées’ pop-up store. The original idea was to open a showroom where clients and future clients could discover and test (free access) the different Samsung products. Introduce an after-sale space there (and therefore potentially unhappy customers) was a risky gamble, but it turned out to be very positive.

Treating dissatisfactions and asserting that they are truly taken into account rather than avoiding or concealing them is thus a practice that all brands should implement.

Our workshop in association with Meetic couldn’t possibly be a more perfect fit for the topic of relational intelligence. Indeed, relations (and emotions) are the very heart of Meetic issues: whether, obviously, in provided service or in the relations the brand seeks to establish with their customers.

Understanding expectations and creating emotions towards single people are the main goals of Meetic’s Customer Relationships and Studies departments. Catherine Monghal and Hortense Canel presented the tools they were using and how customer feedback analysis was a cornerstone of the brand’s strategy.

The two speakers also mentioned the importance of directly processing verbatim in different languages, as Meetic is present in fifteen countries.

This conference once again demonstrated the relevance of Thierry Spencer’s expression (with which we couldn’t agree more) which itself led to a plenary session this year:

“Verbatim is the new boss !” (in French)