Conversation with… Peter Cross
Here we chat with leading customer behaviour expert Peter Cross about the defining moments of his career, the ideas behind his new book ‘Start with the Customer‘, and his thoughts on what today’s customers really want.
Your career has spanned roles from brand strategy to leading customer experience at John Lewis. Looking back, what have been the defining moments that shaped your approach to CX and leadership?
I’ve had an unusual career trajectory, moving in and out of large global businesses, both in retail and beyond, as well as periods of time working for myself. All this experience has given me the opportunity to see the world, the customer, and their evolving needs from different perspectives.
Early on, working for L’Oréal across a couple of continents, was a fantastic training ground. Your first job teaches you far more than you probably realise at the time, and for me, it was about understanding the fundamentals of winning, delighting, and inspiring customers.
Then came a very different experience, running a business with Mary Portas. The two of us against the world. We were ambitious and determined to make a difference to brands, customers, high streets, and wider communities in changing times – all of which helped shape my understanding of the role of business in society.
Subscribe to TRBJohn Lewis was transformative because of its unique business model and approach to both employees and customers. It’s famous for its service, but known equally for motivating staff to go the extra mile. I now lean on the sum of all these experiences to try to speak with passion and hopefully some authority about customer expectation because I’ve seen it from all sides – as a customer champion and long-time campaigner for world class service.
Your new book emphasises starting with the customer. What do you think most companies still get wrong about understanding their customers, even in 2025?
Around 20 years ago, powered by technology, the customer fell in love with speed. To keep up with ever changing customer expectation, too many businesses forgot that customer service actually means far more than getting things faster. Whilst how many of our needs are met may have changed, the needs themselves haven’t changed much at all. We still seek inspiration, consistency, trust, courtesy, expertise, connection and so on.
The book introduces the simple idea that placing relevant customer needs at the heart of your business, remains a surefire way to grow it. I introduce the reader to a “lexicon of customer needs,” which categorises customer requirements into transactional, interactional, core, and higher-level needs and suggests that different needs come into play in different customer channels.
By the time a customer reaches a physical store, they may have gathered up to two thirds of the information they need, placing a very specific focus on the remaining third – and how these needs are met through inspiration, emotional connection and deep expertise. Customers may not be as well behaved as they once were, as the retail sector knows only too well ( the book is dedicated to the important work of the brilliant Retail Trust), but that’s no good reason to pare back customer service and experience to a process. Whilst the customer may not always be right. they must always win.
The book talks about creating world-class service. How do you define that in an age when customers expect both human warmth and digital convenience?
The strange thing about service is that everything has changed – and yet nothing has changed.
I try to help the reader get their head around 21st century customer expectations and give them a sense of what might lie ahead, but regardless of what the future holds, the book draws the reader towards my conclusion that customer service is cultural.
The only way to deliver consistently good service is to build a service culture which starts at the top, listens for gaps between customer expectation and their lived experience, and influences every decision a business takes.
A service culture which defaults to yes rather than no. Which runs towards the customer to learn from your mistakes (or their complaints) rather than running in the opposite direction. A service culture which hires for happy and empowers, enables, recognises and rewards front line teams to be able to deliver their best work. A culture where the employee feels complicit in delivering the customer outcomes the business wants to see and where the ultimate aim is brand pride – the ultimate unlocker of the extra mile.
I also outline practical “golden rules” as well as the “cardinal sins” of service and the five most “unforgiveable” crimes against the modern customer.
What inspired you to write the book?
Data from the Institute of Customer Service had been calling out a long-term slide in customer satisfaction for thirteen years. Research commissioned for the book confirmed that over 50% of customers describe service today as painful, exhausting, overly automated, or simply not as good as it used to be. Chatbots and multi option contact centres are at the front of the queue as experiences the modern customer “dreads the most”.
So, a belief in the power of service to business and society, at a time when we could be about to lose it, nudged me into pouring a lifetime’s observation and experience into this book.
It’s my view, that it’s the thousands of tiny interactions in our shops, on our doorsteps, in planes or trains, that shape society. Should service be somehow severed from selling, we risk losing far more than we may realise.
Technology is amazing, but we mustn’t place blind faith in it. It’s part of the solution but it’s far from a panacea. Customers are human, employees are human, and a winning service culture needs to reflect that.
I deliberately call it service by the way, not customer experience or CX, because that’s the language customers use. They don’t say, “I had a terrible CX today,” they say, “Great product, shame the service was crap.”
Many retail leaders are struggling to balance operational efficiency with genuine customer connection. Based on your experience and the insights in your book, what’s the main piece of advice you’d give them for getting customer service right?
Jo Causon, CEO at the institute, and I interviewed seven “service legends” and interspersed their honest and hugely informative accounts of how to build a winning service culture, between the chapters.
These are leaders of companies thar are consistently rated at the top of the Service Index, like Ocado, Jet2,Ffirst Direct and John Lewis.
I was convinced that the major focus of both the book and the interviews would be the role of new technologies within the evolving customer experience. Yet, without collusion, they all said the same thing – service is cultural.
It starts at the top. The CEO must believe in it, embody it, and, along with the entire leadership, spend time systematically with their customers. Not just time with the data or the stats – real world time, listening and talking to customers to reveal the colour and context of their lived experience.
None of my conclusions are particularly earth shattering, by the way. Customer service has always been and always will be a feeling. It’s how your customer feels at the end of the day which will determine how long you hold onto them.
Hear Peter Cross speak at the TRB Customer Centric Retail conference on 4 March. Register for free places here
