theIdeaStudio (Customer Crossroads)

e-mail marketing for better or worse - how to make it better

Most of the e-mail marketing I get is tiresome and banal. There's little to engage the imagination, no sense that people understand my world or even want to. It's all designed to push me to their website, where I am pushed to engage in a sales call, and have trouble getting any real information. (I recently read that the biggest complaint that users of B2B web sites have is the lack of price information. Yup, no doubt about that one.)

Many of the newsletters I get are not much better -- all pitch, all the time.

Every now and again, something breaks through in a significant way and catches my attention.

Today, it was Amy Boren, of Decision Point Consulting.

Starting point: a great subject line

"A day in the life of a Focus Group Moderator, are we correct?"

Two things done right here. She has a clue what I do for a living. And she asks a relevant question that makes me want to read on. So I did!

Tell a story

I loved this part. She talked about some fairly typical challenges that people like me have. How projects start out simple enough then quickly become complex. How timelines shrink. How we need to deliver within the original price even though things have changed. A little exaggeration for emphasis.

I kept reading and reading, right to the end.

Some decent pricing information provided -- not a lot, but enough that I didn't assume "I can't afford this". And a teaser that she would tell me more.

Anticipated some of my obvious questions and answered them in the story she told.

A picture of a real person. Amy herself, of course. There's nothing like a real person's picture to add credibility.

Made me feel like a) she's kind of cool, b) she understands my world and c) this might be a service I would want to use sometime.

My takeaway

If you think you understand the world of your customer, show them that. Prove it.

Tell stories instead of relating facts, to engage and intrigue. Show how you make a difference.

Advice we could all use.

Hey Amy, thanks for making my day, and inspiring this post! 

 

Related articles

Why no one is reading your killer e-mail

Gathering customer feedback: the good, the bad, the ugly

Don't change it just because you can

Everyone is dealing with a lot of change these days. [Holy state the obvious, Susan]

So if you can save them from making changes that don't fix a problem, you should.

Case in point - the Microwave.

We've owned two microwaves before this week, when we bought the third. The first one was bought about 1985. The second one - a Panasonic - was bought sometime in the mid 90's. [My spouse says February 26, 1996. He keeps excellent records, apparently. And apparently we get the appliance buying impulse at the same time every year!]

It's still going strong, actually, but we are renovating and wanted a smaller one.

Off to our friendly neighbourhood Sears, and Bay department stores, after doing some requisite online searching. [Aside: like many in a small inner city house, we were searching based on size, not features. Even though I was really hoping for stainless...]

We picked up another Panasonic. Pleasant surprise: the controls are almost identical!

How is this possible, when the last one is more than 15 years old?

It's possible, because some unsung genius over at Panasonic has set up some rules. And the rules say you don't change things unless you can make them better. And the better has to be enough better that it offsets the nuisance of learning a new system.

Which means we already know how to set the clock. Which took about a nano-second after we plugged it in. Thank you, Panasonic! You had a simple control panel that worked, and you kept it. [Probably a big money saver, too.]

There are improvements, in fact. It's easier to see through the window. It's smaller. It's a lot quieter. Nothing to learn there, just stuff to enjoy.

Learning new systems is a feature of everyday life now. And not always a welcome feature, let's be honest. I love Office 2010, but it was a little hill to climb. Not a big climb, a hill. But it made me wonder how many iterations I will need to learn before the end of time? [My personal time, that is.]

So hats off to you, whoever is designing control panels at Panasonic. I thank you for making my life a little easier. You spent your time fixing things that needed fixed, not things that didn't.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Hey Paypal, ever hear of the envelope system?

I've been dabbling in a little online selling of late, for a couple of reasons.

One client suggested he pay me with his company credit card so I didn't have to deal with the delays from their payables department.

I've sold a few things online, (such fun!)

Net result, I'm running a balance.

But PayPal isn't relaly integrated into my business accounting system, so I'd really rather make most payments using my credit card. Plus, of course, there's the points involved.

But PayPal won't let me do that until the balance is gone.

Deposit taking institution, or not?

I've been wondering why PayPal is not regulated as a deposit taking institution (aka bank) for a while now, given the balances they must surely be holding.

So I'm guessing PayPal is trying to mitigate this challenge by telling me I have to have NO BALANCE before they will let me use another method.

Big pain in the rear end.

Just one more way in which technology and the ways we want to use it continue to outpace the rate at which we can develop policies to control the whole thing, and even regulate it.

Anybody know the real reason for this policy? I'd love to hear from you.

Are car dealers over-investing in nice facilities?

Apparently car dealers are objecting to the cost of building car merchandising palaces. And who can blame them, with an typical investment reported at $8 million!

Usually, it is the first movers that reap the rewards from this kind of investment, IMHO. They create a better retail experience, and they reap the rewards from image and perceived brand value.

Everyone else has to decide whether or not to keep up. Keeping up does not always generate a big payoff. The problem is, that NOT keeping up can cause your sales to suffer.

Similar situations:

- investing in color printing technology for your office. If other consultants are doing it, you probably have to do it, too. But don't expect some kind of ROI

- offering better coffee in your hotel. When the quality of coffee is going up everywhere, people get ticked if they can't get a decent cup of coffee at meetings and conferences. So you are hurt if you don't keep up, but don't necessarily benefit if you do

- a great many technology gains seem to follow this pattern. Banks are still processing cash, still processing cheques, but also processing debit, credit, online, e-mail, and now Twitter and Facebook transactions! Is the whole revenue pie bigger as a result -- doubtful.

I do feel sorry for the dealers. But thankful.

But I am so thankful for a carpeted showroom. I am so thankful for office designs that don't make me feel trapped in a sales guy's office. I am so thankful for a service area that I'm not afraid to sit down in, or even put my handbag down!  So thank you for the glass palaces.I'm sorry it hasn't been good for you. But it sure has been good for me!

Related articles

You're only as good as your front line staff

Gathering customer feedback: the good, the bad, the ugly

I wanted to boost the usefulness of my iPad with a Bluetooth Keyboard, and ultimately got the sleek and delightful Logitech Ultrathin last weekend.

The Good

As it happens, I used BestBuy Canada's online option that allowed me to reserve the item for in-store pickup. You don't have to pay in advance, but you do have to provide basic contact info, including your e-mail address.

The purchase itself was uneventful. Go to store, pick up item, pay for item, head home. Worked well, I would do it again, except...

The Bad

Yesterday, five days after the purchase, I started receiving requests for feedback via e-mail.

On Thursday, I deleted 15 such requests. This morning, I see there are 11 more in my e-mail. EEK!

In self-defense, I decided I should answer the darn thing, provided by ForSee.

The Ugly Deconstruction of the Survey

The e-mail promises a 5 minute survey. This in itself seems crazy to me. It should be more like a 30 second survey, with about 3 questions. But wait till you see it.

There are 34 questions, and 32 of them are marked * meaning you can't finish the questionnaire unless they are answered. This is an odious practice in itself, because it's so one-sided. I might be willing to answer a few questions, but these questions are silly.

They've decided there's a model involving a lot of factors, and they're going to make me answer every question in the model.

Naturally, I am not going to get a thing for investing my time in this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I thought perhaps there would be a place for open-ended comments, which there is. However, the survey makes it clear that no one will follow up on my comments.

I love the part that says "If you would like us to contact you about your feedback... visit the contact us part of the web site."

There are several links at the bottom of the page, but none of them go directly to a contact page, or even better, spawn an e-mail or contact form.

Interestingly, as soon as I clicked through to the Forsee site, YET ANOTHER survey opened up!!

Yesterday, I posted a Tweet to @BestBuy about the multiple survey invites arriving. They actually did respond, and copied their response to @BestBuyCanada.

For the record: I am not answering your hideous questionnaire. And if you loved your customers, you wouldn't ask them to do this.It's a hideous process, even if it was working correctly.

You're only as good as your front line staff

I was recently holidaying at a lodge in the Rocky Mountains. Deer Lodge - it's a charming old place that serves excellent game dishes, and is close to some lucious scenery and skiing.

Unfortunately, they have the challenge of all remote seasonal resorts -- getting and keeping good staff.

This year there was one remarkable incident that illustrates the issue.

Breakfast at the Lodge

We were having breakfast, and had ordered two coffees, which arrived with a refill carafe. "Nice touch!" I thought. Our waiter, a ditzy young man we had seen before, kept coming by to pour refills. I wanted to save my refill to savor after finishing breakfast, so said "No thanks." So did my husband.

Next thing I know, he has grabbed our carafe, still half full of OUR coffee (at $3.75 per serving, I might add), and whisked it away! 

My amazement only grew as I watched him take it to the servers' station, top it up from a pot there, then whisk it over to another table. Probably not the experience the manager had in mind. And lukewarm coffee for the next guys!

Breakfast at the Airport

By contrast, a day later I was having breakfast in the airport in Calgary. The server there seemed to effortlessly handle a very large number of tables, quickly nodding and smiling at people, dropping off menus here, adding coffee there, telling people she would be back shortly to take their orders.

They were out of coffee mugs for some reason, so she had cleverly obtained a pile of large paper cups from the nearby Starbucks, and was giving everyone a generous pour in these explaining as she went.

A fairly pedestrian meal made much more pleasant by the impressive hosting capabilities of the staff.

What's at stake: only your brand

It's a reminder that you can only be as good as your front line staff. You can't always hire the people you wish you could.  Instead, you have to ensure your processes are as easy to deliver as you can make them. Because poor staff will short-cut, they will forget, they will be inefficient, and they will barely be paying attention. After all, they came for the skiing / boarding, not the server job. Or they are trying to get work as an actor or artist. Or just put themselves through school.

But the brand and reputation at stake is yours, not the individual staff person's.

In this case, frankly, I was so astonished that I just laughed.

Top 10 customer experience trends: The future of customer experience

In this post, I talked about where customer experience thinking came from. This one is about where I think we are headed.

1. It's all about the customer. Still

Yes, that seems obvious. But it needs constant repetition. Control is not going to go back into the hands of the marketer. The diversity around us in styles and choices is just mind boggling. Customers are driving that, with the aid of new technology.

Personalization, check. Customization, check. Co-creation, check. None of it is going away.

2. Brands are powerful

Consumers are overwhelmed by choice and information. A brand can help you narrow things down. A brand can help you, as a person, tell your story. Only if the brand HAS a story, of course. See #8 for more on that.

3. Touchpoints will continue to expand

The number of mediums in use just keeps growing. The old stuff is still with us (newspapers, for example), and new channels pop up every day (like apps). As a marketer, you need to try to pull this herd of cats into something that looks like a coherent brand message, customized to deliver what your customer is looking for, and responsive to what they are telling you. Sound difficult? Absolutely.

4. If anything is going to replace consumption of goods as the thing that defines our culture, it will be consumption of experiences

There is evidence all around us that we value experiences as much as, perhaps more than, stuff. Which could be good for the planet. Stuff is not going away, but it might be dropping in importance. What is social media, after all, but an experience? Sponsorship marketing delivers experiences. Digital media delivers experiences. Great packaging even delivers an experience. If you aren't delivering an experience, you are going to have problems competing. [Yes, I feel your pain, wondering how the heck to do that as a consultant.]

5. The service + experience economy is going to produce a lot of tension. Show a little respect

The person serving you your coffee today is getting served by you on an airplane tomorrow, going in to your bank branch during the extended hours, and calling your support centre tonight after dinner. And vice-versa. Despite growing income inequality, the tolerance for being treated like a nobody -- even when you are buffing a toenail -- is low, and I think, decreasing. The 1% didn't get the memo on this. There's a lot of people out there feeling disrespected.

When you design a service experience, don't assume you will be able to find staff who can be trained to be obsequious. They're not growing those folks any more. [Except in those odd environments where people are highly paid to be obsequious.Your barista is not highly paid, regardless of what you think.]

6. We're going to expect better experiences in places that have never had to bother before

The last bastion of the bad experience will be anything that looks like government. Are petty bureaucrats still wielding power over people -- of course they are. We hate it, but we haven't figured out how to change it yet. We're all working on health care first. But when all of the commercial/consumer world is oriented towards creating a better experience, everything that doesn't try too hard is going to really stick out, and not in a good way.

7. The drive to improve experiences is going to improve efficiency

Oddly, most people think better efficiency and greater productivity comes from taking things away from customers. Not necessarily true. You can take away stuff that no one wants anyway, like delays in service, out of stock inventory, difficult check-out procedures.

It's not all about high-touch -- sometimes it's about just letting me get on with it. Consider self-serve gas. For most of us, doing it yourself is just a lot easier and faster, and therefore a better experience. Cheaper is a bonus. The same thing has largely proved to be true in transactional banking. [Now if we can just bring that to public transit!]

8. Faking authenticity is going to get harder.

There's no place to hide. Even for Apple. Instead, why not go for genuine authenticity? It's cheaper and more fun.

9. The perfect targeting solution won't help you if you don't have a story and an experience to offer

Will big data solve your problems? Maybe somewhat. But more likely it will be to the 2010s what CRM was to the 90s and 00s -- a lot of money spent for a lot of disappointment. Your perfect algorithm will only help you if you have a story to tell and an experience to back it up.  [Surely that's a relief, isn't it? Just hollering "buy, buy, buy" won't work better because of big data.]

10. No one will be paying attention

You think it's hard getting attention today? I think it's going to get harder. All that stuff about localization services that will drive traffic into your store. It will just feel like more spam for most. All those apps? Well, how many apps can you really use? Three? Five? Ten? Certainly not 30 or 40, not 100 or 1,000.

The only solution is to insist on relevance. Relevance might not mean utility in the conventional sense, it might mean amusement or charm [just look at Pinterest].

The bright spot here is that local businesses with some savvy will have an easier time of it, I think. People will be walking by your store anyway, right? 

 

This is what I see, at least today. What do you see?

Winning at Customer Support: The Future

I was delighted to be Dell's guest at their recent Customer Support Think Tank held in Austin in June 2012. This is the fourth of four posts on the event and themes.

Another amazing graphic from Allison Crow

See the graphic on Flikr

Video of Brent Leary talking about how support is not a cost center.

Jackie Huba gave us a fun challenge to bring our ideas about the future of support to life using objects and pipe-cleaners. The diagram my group came up with is below.

Here's the essence of what was said:

• Technology will be used in smarter ways to help people find what they want more easily. Google does this now of course, offering you improved search based on where you are and what you've done before. These tools will come to your support site, and not a moment too soon for most of us.

• There will be less need for support, because stuff will work better and integrate better. HTML 5 is supposed to help with this. (Way over my head, what do you think?)

• Cloud data will help the company know who you are and how best to help you. Their CRM systems will be able to pull in other useful information about you

• Internal company systems will route information in smarter ways, helping employees integrate across silos more effectively, and reducing the frustration associated with hand-offs

• Smarter diagnostics will help to identify issues -- not just what element is broken, but who you need help from (Was it the router? Was it the mouse in the wiring? Or do you have a software conflict?)

• Social media tools will be used to proactively advise customers what is going on when there is a larger problem. (Yes, our servers are down, but we expect them to be back up by 5 pm EST)

 

If you are a customer, the support future looks bright. (At least we hope so.)

If you are on the company side of things, you need to be thinking about how to get to this future. (Please, we're begging you, make it better.)

HUGE KUDOS to the Dell team for a) hosting the event and treating us all like rock stars and b) sharing so much of the information and learning. Incredibly cool thing to do!

Winning at Customer Support: Four trends to consider

I was delighted to be Dell's guest at their recent Customer Support Think Tank held in Austin in June 2012. This is the third of four posts about that event.

 

Discussing mobile in a breakout group

 

Four top trends were identified, and each was chewed over by a small group who reported back. Here's what's on the minds of the people there (a smart bunch, the discussions were amazingly rich!)

Gamification

Find a consumer somewhere -- or a business person -- who thinks support issues are fun. Good luck. What is more fun is helping people not need support in the first place. And one way to do that is to make the learning experience more fun, to reward the learning, and make the whole process engaging.

It's not about making support like a game, it's about using the principles game designers use to make things simple, easy to learn, and self-reinforcing.

Metrics

Some of these sounded kind of promising to me, like measuring the overall health of a support community. For example, what percentage of questions go unanswered? What percentage of questions are answered by the community versus the company?

Customer LIfetime Value and ye olde Net Promoter Score came up, of course, but generally people were talking about the need to expand and seek new and better metrics.

Tools + Technology

This group saw massive potential for improved systems, by incorporating more information into CRM (and making that available to support systems), by helping the customer help support, by avoiding many of the things that make us all mental (giving your support number over and over, re-identifying yourself, etc.)

Triage was a concept that made sense too. Deliver support appropriate to the nature/ severity / risk of the problem, and the value of the customer.

What about technology that diagnoses the problem for you -- we have a little of that now, and it's lovely.

Mobile

I was in the mobile group.We talked about how growth in mobile technologies is going to make the support challenge more challenging than ever. We'll be trying to re-boot our houses and cars, not just our computers. Our refrigerator will have ordered too many cans of OJ.

All those smart devices talking to each other will add a lot of complexity.

So we won't necessarily know where the problem lies (as is often the case with business system failures -- it could be the server, the router, the software, or a mouse ate the wires)

What is clear is that people will expect the support interaction to cross devices easily, probably to live in the cloud. We talked about how executives might want the kind of mobile access that consumers have to support -- like texted updates or twitter access.

I also think (and said this in the session) that we are collectively going to get tired of having to download an individual app for everything. We will want help to be much more device-agnostic.

We wondered if things like QR codes could be used to good effect, for example by putting them on the hardware we buy, so we can easily capture and send the information needed.

Gamification group discussion led by Dave Gardner @gardner_dave

I hope this is giving you some food for thought as you consider your own organization and what it should perhaps do in the future.

Next up: what else the future holds for #winningservice

Winning at Customer Support: Internal Challenges

I was delighted to be Dell's guest at their recent Customer Support Think Tank held in Austin in June 2012. This is the second of four posts covering topics discussed. 

 

The video above is me talking about how executives keep in touch with front line support issues.

This video is Heath Johnson at Dell talking about the integration of social media into the support organization.

There are several challenges that organizations face in providing support, effectively captured by the octopus image in Allison Crow's graphic, below -- there are a lot of different people that need to coordinate to make support work well.

I see support as an integral part of what people are now buying. We don't want to change our own oil, for the most part, and everything else under the hood is far too complex to tackle on our own. Many consumer services are like this, and virtually all business services.

So support is central to the purchase decision. Even if we don't always articulate that to ourselves, or have a grasp of what we should pay for it. That is not the theory-in-use in many organizations, however.

I also see support as a major adjunct to sales and vice-versa. If I am buying a second monitor (which I recently did), I also want to know what i need to do to make it work on the existing system. If I call support, they should be able to sell me the upgraded video card.

This is rarely the case with a large business -- my phone company Bell is a good example. The people who make sales calls can't help with anything at all! And the support people can't sell you anything. This craziness came about to make things more efficient, but I'm not sure that's working.

From the viewpoint of the corporates in the room, what helps is feedback from customers. Everyone needs to know how the organization is performing for customers. Whatever your metrics are, share them widely. 

And if it's a horrible place to work, well ... don't expect your support area to be a world-beater.
Your staff are going to support customers about as well as you support them. My professional experience suggests most employees will actually work much harder at customer service and support than the company deserves -- they often have internal barriers to overcome, and no one appreciates their heroics.

One more word about heroics -- if you are keeping a lot of stories about heroic service efforts, and celebrating them with all sorts of awards, it's a good sign that you've made it too difficult somehow. A system built on heroics is not worthy of the name system.

Next up: Four trends to consider in support

Winning at Customer Support: Social Service

I was delighted to be Dell's guest at their recent Customer Support Think Tank held in Austin in June 2012. Let me tell you about it.

There are days it is seriously fun to be me, and this was one of them -- with no responsibilities to plan, facilitate or manage the event, I was free to just engage in some thought-busting conversations with a lot of seriously smart folks in a gorgeous setting. My definition of fun!

Being passionate about customer experience

What the Think Tank was all about

If you've ever bought anything from Dell, you know that their front-end experience is impressive. They want their support efforts to be world beaters, too, and have felt for some time that they are not there yet.

Remember, of course, that Dell is massive, and serving consumers, small businesses, and global behemoths. And within that diversity, there are vast differences in customer knowledge and ability to solve their own problems, and of course their actual situation. Consider a trading floor with a server down or my Mom trying to get wi-fi to work -- vastly different support scenarios.

So their challenges are not simple. Same thing with the challenges faced by some of the other corporate participants at the event, such as Wells Fargo, Threadless, Nationwide Insurance, Intuit Demandforce, Salesforce Radian6, Citrix and Symantec.

Multiple communication media have made this even more challenging. There were four big chunks of the day, beautifully captured by Allison Crow, graphic facilitator, and led by Jackie Huba.

Social Service - how to integrate social media in a scalable way

 

One of the biggest challenges I see to social media use by corporations in a operating setting is that access to social media is often shut down in the corporate network. While this might make some sense for some people, managers are not going to become social-media savvy without using it themselves.

Seriously folks -- you want a social media strategy from people who are only supposed to use it in their free time? And the person they are working for has read a few reports on social media, but doesn't even have a Facebook account. Total fail in my view.

It seems that the reason some customers are turning to places like Twitter is because they are unwilling to navigate the complexities of finding someone to help, whether it's the IVR or the website. Future support needs to be a lot more intuitive.

I think most of the people encountering support have already tried self-help. They have looked at the FAQ, they may have phoned a friend. If their problem was that simple, they wouldn't be calling you, or desperately shouting out on Twitter.

There are a lot of things working today, however, and we talked about a few of these.

Among the things that are working well today, IMHO -- a lot of companies are making good use of video, especially YouTube ("Here's how to install a widget").

Support communities are also working, when they are well managed. It's not fair to expect your customers to do the job for you, though. You need to pay attention to the community and USE the information. Buff up your FAQs as a minimum, improve your installation instrucftions, and fix things that are just not working. Then tell the community, "hey, we listened."

Next post: managing the internal challenges.

 

Full disclosure: yes, Dell did pay for my airfare and put me up in the lovely W Hotel, but my opinions came free of charge.

 

Things we only notice when they don't work: the emotional landscape of utilities and banks

 

Life is full of things that we sort of don't pay much attention to until something goes clunk

Utilities are the originals. The gas and electricity we use in our homes, for example, is largely unappreciated except in two instances. One, when we pay the bill and may feel some annoyance at the cost. It's rare that we say,  

"Wow, for only a few hundred dollars, something ephermeral like gas that was formed millions of years ago and lives a mile underground was brought up from the ground, purified, transported thousands of miles, and has now been safely burned in my furnace to keep me warm all winter. Not a bad deal."

The other time we notice a utility is when it isn't working of course, and again, feel mainly negative emotions. Power failures would be the obvious example, but I also marvel at the land-line telephone. The uptime on the phone system is so amazing, that it's remarkable when it is NOT working. A symptom of a larger problem almost always -- a cut cable at the least, worst case perhaps a war-of-the-worlds Martian invasion scenario.

Interestingly, the problems utilities solve for us are big ones, right near the foundation of that familiar Maslow triangle. Being cold. Being in the dark. We are highly motivated to solve these problems, and communities will invest a lot in solving them. But once solved, we quickly habituate to all that warmth and light. We only experience their power in their absence -- irritation quickly building to rage and even fear as we face the elements as defenceless as a squirrel.

Other categories of services tend to behave this way too.

Bank machines do little to charm or endear themselves -- they generate emotion largely when they are out of order or being recharged with cash.

Support services in the business world tend to be that way. When everything is working, that's what we paid for, after all. It's when something goes wrong that we get all "what are you people thinking over there???"

Cloud computing / SaaS is surely in that category now -- a service that we get either for free (but still expect to work pretty much six sigma), or we pay a relatively small cost monthly, in which case our expectations are even higher.

I have to say that there are a few services in the cloud category that have made my life so much simpler I do actually appreciate them a lot -- Dropbox for example. But how long will it be before I am so dependent on it that any lapse of service causes major frustration?

You'll never be loved as a lifestyle brand

If you are in the position of marketing such services, you are working in a rather challenging emotional landscape. Your boss may be telling you they want to be as loved as Apple or Coach, but your reality looks more like the graphic above.

A bizarre flip side of these services is how we feel treated as consumers. We often feel like these providers barely notice us unless we try to leave. Or unless they are trying to gain our business. When we are just dutifully paying our bills, they appear to be as indifferent to us as we are to them.

For example, the phone company and cable company are all excited with offers for you if you'll move from a competitor. But once you are there, that's it. No more freebies for you! Same thing with your credit card company, who was all hot for your business until you moved, and you can no longer get in on all those great advertised offers.

With utilities, customers often feel unappreciated, even taken for granted. The same emotional play is working on both sides. If customers start leaving in droves, it's like the power went down at HQ -- suddenly everyone is paying attention.

I'm reading Daniel Kahneman's wonderful book, Thinking, Fast and Slow. I'm hoping I'll learn some fresh insights into this scenario. If I do, I'll let you know.

Meanwhile, I'll try not to take you, my reader, for granted.

The Secret to Delegating Work

Ben Yoskovitz on The Instigator Blog published a nice piece on delegation, apparently inspired by something I wrote here about the power of a good story.

There's no app for delegation -- but there are some great guidelines, and I like these a lot.

One of the things I have consistently encountered in organizations struggling to deliver a good customer experience is weak delegation. No one is allowed to do or decide anything.

You'll find just the opposite in leading organizations, for the most part. Within clearly specified limits, people can do whatever they think is right, using their own judgement.

The wall of distraction: Three rules of communication that will help you get over

This morning my workout buddy told me she was so distracted thinking about all the things she has to get done, that instead of gargling, she swallowed her mouthwash. Her explanation: "I have about 3,000 things on my mind right now. Do you ever have that problem?"

Oh yeah.

One recent morning, distracted with a dozen things and dabbing at the remains of the mascara from the day before, I noticed that the eye-makeup remover smelled odd. Odd, but familiar. Fortunately I noticed that it was actually nail polish remover before I actually got acetone in my eye. (Yikes!)

It's easy to find distracted and overwhelmed people -- just get into your car and go for a drive, they are everywhere.

I could have called it the wall of irritation, because there are so many little irritating things we all need to do ... follow complicated procedures, install things on our phones, reset passwords, find forms, meet deadlines, find answers in support forums, replace broken appliances, get new watch batteries. In the face of this, the world wonders why we aren't paying more attention to our health, spending more time with our families, and making good financial plans for the future.

There is now so much information available, that we can even feel guilty if we don't find the right answer to a great many things, like the best price on a car, or the most durable washer. The information has helped, but it has also added to the great wall.

We don't even have time to be good consumers. We don't read the fine print, we don't follow the instruction manual, and we click "agree" with abandon. Is it any wonder we re-use the same password over and over, even though we know this is not a good security plan?

Three ways to get over the wall

When I think about this in the context of my clients, I always come to the same conclusions:

• Keep it short -- our attention span is shorter than ... sorry, wait, what was I saying?
• Keep it simple -- none of us have time to sort out confusing messages
• Keep it relevant -- your product/service is not the thing we are most worried about (-- unless of course, you have really made a hash of things)

The New Experience Economy virtual conference - free and interesting

ClickFox sponsored a webcast presentation on Nov 10 that provides free access to 19 great thinkers on customer experience (and me).More details about the event, the sponsor and the speakers are here.

Registration is free, and the video is very good (thanks Skype)!

Some of the remarks that caught my attention:

- Beth Smits from BestBuy talked about not letting metrics and measurement take over as the only way you think of success. She believes that every customer interaction needs to create loyalty, not necessarily revenue.It's a balancing act for business to find, and stay, in this sweet spot.

- B. Joseph Pine II talked about how we must not get too stuck on innovating the products, because innovation in services is the cutting edge of differentiation

- Kerry Bodine from Forrester talked about the emergence of experience as the way to dominate markets in the current decade, and put this in context of trends of the past, where the best distribution or information led to market dominance

- I pay homage to Steve Jobs by reminding us all that "not sucking" is not enough -- we need to strive for much more than that (around minute 13 in the main video)

Really interesting approach, and I look forward to seeing more of this kind of information.

Thanks Tom Huston of ThoughtLead for the invitation to participate!

 

 

Confirmation messages: a nice touch and a good example

There is a local retailer of housewares and small home appliances that works very hard to set themselves apart from the national chains, called Cayne's.

We recently bought some soda chargers (for making your own soda water) via their web site. Here's the nice confirmation e-mail they sent. First time I can ever remember getting anything like this.

If you combined this with Dell's order status updates, you'd have something really spiffy.

These folks do a nice thing with pets as well, which I have written about here.

People that put you on hold: is there anyone that doesn't?

Reader Lindsay Willison sent me her article "10 Companies that Always Seem to Put You on Hold", naming basically any organization that a consumer is likely to call for service, ranging from the phone company itself to your insurance company, your cable provider, and even your health-care service.

Then there are those of us who no longer answer our own phones (guilty) because 80% of the calls are an unqualified* sales call.

I've met a number of people recently who carry two smartphones, one for family and actual friends, and the other for work. This way they can stream not just the calls, but also the e-mail. This shows just how polluted the phone lines have become with dreck of various sorts.

And it's not just the phone either -- I find that chat support if kind of like this too. There's one person chatting with multiple customers, and you have to twiddle your thumbs waiting for them to come back. (How many people can one person chat with I wonder?)

We like to complain about this, but really, what's the alternative? Because we sure don't want to talk to someone who doesn't know and can't help.

What might help:

• Sending a digital signal to your phone that shows you where you are in the queue
• Telling you where you are in the queue
• Not repeating that my call is important
• Letting me opt out of music by pressing a number key  "press 1 for soft jazz, 2 for sales pitches**, 3 for complete silence"

More troubling, I find, is that after 15 minutes of doing something else while on hold, when the agent finally arrives, they are all focused and in a hurry, and expect me to be able to kick my brain rapidly into gear. And who can blame them -- they're being judged on a pile of metrics that relate to speed.

I'm not sure what the answer is here. What's your take?

____________________________________________________________________

*Unqualified sales call meaning I'm a poor prospect for their service and the whole thing is a complete waste of time for both of us because I'm not going to buy anything regardless of the quality or the frequency of the pitch.

**Okay, call them product updates if you want

Delivery: Your customer service is only as good as the last contact

We recently bought some new appliances. Good sales experience. Then we had to deal with delivery.

The delivery window? All day.  (Have these folks not heard of cell phones?)

First problem: Two rather rude individuals arrive, and say they know nothing about a stove, but have a refrigerator.

Then they try to move the fridge in without taking the front door off.

After they leave, we have several bangs in the wall and moulding to touch up. Then we discover a few things that have been knocked off the back of the fridge, little bolts, and plastic thingy, that sort of thing. No idea where they belong.

Very poor response from customer service when we phone to try to locate the missing stove.

Stove finally gets delivered. Again, they want a full day delivery window. Older and wiser, we take the front door off ourselves (as well as putting it back on ourselves.)

Stove arrives, and these delivery guys are at least civilized.

However...

The somewhat better delivery experience does not quite wipe out the unhappy memory.

Our sales guy has apologized, and makes vague noises about "doing something" for us. But nothing happens.

So. We now join legions of others who hate the whole appliance purchasing thing.

Depsite a pretty great sales experience, I'm not sure if we would choose this retailer again.

My take

Profit pressures have pushed things like delivery service down to the cheapest possible option for most companies. The net result is that you get what you pay for -- people who are ill-equipped to represent your brand, and who may actually damage the total customer experience. And they are often the last people to see the customer.

Is anyone doing this better? What have your recent experiences been like?

The one most important referral: What great salespeople can do for you

In one afternoon at a shopping mall, I met three amazing salespeople.

After many years of service [some might say loyal, but truly, appliances are not loyal, they are stuck with you] it was time for us to replace our stove and refrigerator.

Like all other consumers of major appliances now, I looked online to try to thin out the field of considered brands and models. I remembered driving all over town the last time we bought something big [a tiny deep freeze and a washing machine], and finally ending up at Sears. So this time, we decided to start with Sears.

Amazing salesperson #1

We'd had a good experience with Edgar, the guy who sold us the freezer and washer, and hoped to see him again. No luck - he was off that day. But it was okay, because another guy with a very similar approach helped us.

1  You are as good as the last sales experience people had in your store. Every experience needs to create at least one referral -- where the client refers themselves back to you. If you can't get that one referral, you've got a problem.

It's a fine balance between attentive help, and someone that is so intrusive you can't look for yourself and talk to your spouse about what you see. This guy had the blend perfectly. I expected him to push the house brand -- he showed it to us, but when we said "nah, that's not for us," he moved on.

2  Shoppers are tuned in that you might be favoring one item more than another. And that's okay, as long as you don't go too far. See point #4 for more.

Through all of this looking, I was so impressed at the product knowledge this guy had at his fingertips. Even though I had spent a lot of time looking at things online, he was way ahead of me.

3  Many people have done their homework.They have researched online. They have looked at Consumer Reports. Can your sales staff keep up with them? Can they actually add value?

Everyone pushes their insurance package now. It's ubiquitous. Even the rechargeable batteries from Future Shop can be insured. So I knew the pitch was coming. But when it came, he made a recommendation that made sense. Then he offered some unique tips like this one: print a little label with the date the no-claim warranty rebate comes due along with the number to call, and stick it inside the fridge so you won't forget to call and get your refund. Nice idea!

4  Transparency is important. People have finely tuned BS detectors now.

Amazing salesperson #2

When we left the store, poor but happy, we didn't plan to make any more stops. But we did pop into H+M to pick up a DVD for the evening.  That's when we met amazing salesperson number 2. She wanted to be sure we knew about the BOGO. So we went and picked up a second DVD. Her enthusiasm for the DVDs, and subsequent recommendations for other products kept us engaged and buying.

5  Really helping people is invaluable. There is so much choice, that someone who can help you find what you need makes the whole thing fun.

Since we were in the store longer as a result of this, I remembered that I needed prizes for a project. So I bought some gift certificates. This person turned at $10 sale into a $100 sale with very little effort.

Amazing salesperson #3

Walking through the mall back to the car, I was offered some hand cream from a kiosk in the mall. You guessed it, I just met salesperson #3. She offered to show me a miracle. That's a hard offer to turn down, especially when the person has your actual hand in theirs. I walked out with a manicure kit for myself and two more to give to people (you wouldn't want to miss out on the special offer now, would you?).

6  Even the hard sell can be interesting if it is done in a charming way. Use the classic sales techniques, but bring freshness to them.

I told the last salesperson, "You're wasted in cosmetics. You should be in real estate." Her reply, "I want to sell luxury cars."  And I bet she will! She had crafted a script for herself that was entertaining and hard to avoid. She had figured out compelling ways to demonstrate her product. And she was charming throughout. I had to tear myself away before she started in on the facial products!

I left the mall optimistic for the future. These three people, working in roles many would consider dead-end jobs, had brought thoughtfulness, brains and professionalism to the task. They appeared to enjoy their work. They were trying to help people at the same time as making their numbers.

It showed, and it worked.

What's your take - would you refer yourself back to the last store you shopped in?

Relationship marketing: how to start rethinking it

In the last post, I suggested that most relationship marketing strategies are hollow at the core, and are really a pretty label for direct marketing tactics. Which is fine, but don't call it a relationship. This post looks at a different approach based on research in the public relations sector.

In my research work, I often find myself seeking a stronger framework to support my approach and recommendations to clients. [If you want to be a great consultant, not just a good one, you need to make clear and focused recommendations. Yup, it's scary stuff.]

I came across a wonderful paper recently by Dr. Linda Childers Hon at U of Florida and Dr. James E. Grunig at U. of Maryland: Guidelines for Measuring Relationships in Public Relations. [Download the PDF] Sounds pedestrian, but isn't.

Outputs is the immediate result of a PR effort -- such as getting newspaper coverage. Outcomes is the longer term measure of whether the activity and outputs are making any impact on perceptions of the target audience.

Six Dimensions of Relationships

Hon and Grunig make a case for six dimensions of relationships that can be measured, which they define as follows:

Control Mutuality

The degree to which parties agree on who has the rightful power to influence one another. Although some imbalance is natural, stable relationships require that organizations and publics each have some control over the other.

Trust

One party’s level of confidence in and willingness to open oneself to the other party. There are three dimensions to trust: integrity: the belief that an organization is fair and just … dependability: the belief that an organization will do what it says it will do … and, competence: the belief that an organization has the ability to do what it says it will do.

Satisfaction

The extent to which each party feels favorably toward the other because positive expectations about the relationship are reinforced. A satisfying relationship is one in which the benefits outweigh the costs.

Commitment

The extent to which each party believes and feels that the relationship is worth spending energy to maintain and promote. Two dimensions of commitment are continuance commitment, which refers to
a certain line of action, and affective commitment, which is an emotional orientation.

Exchange Relationship

In an exchange relationship, one party gives benefits to the other only because the other has provided benefits in the past or is expected to do so in the future.

Communal Relationship

In a communal relationship, both parties provide benefits to the other because they are concerned for the welfare of the other -- even when they get nothing in return. For most public relations activities, developing communal relationships with key constituencies is much more important to achieve than would be developing exchange relationships.

The paper provides questions that can be used to measure on a Likert Scale, such as "This organization treats people like me fairly and justly".

Are you seeking Communal when you are actually offering Exchange?

I found these definitions, and the questions proposed, quite thought-provoking. I believe one of the significant disconnects people experience in their relationships with large enterprises have to do with the expectation of a Communal Relationship when the other party is operating on an Exchange Relationship model.

For example, some providers of research platforms seek loyalty from people like me. But my loyalty is almost completely related to performance and pricing -- in the absence of those elements, I would move to other providers, despite having good interpersonal relationships.

The lack of control is an important issue in some business categories: financial services (especially lending), telecommunications (those cell phone contracts!) and health care come immediately to mind.

Better as a thought-starter than a measurement framework?

Not everyone agrees that this form of measurement is the pinnacle for public relations practitioners. See the article by Kim Harrison below.  This is a very valid point -- I am working on a project right now where the client wants to generate new ideas for PR events that will result in actual new customers for the retail stores. That's a very crunchy measurement. 

However, I am jazzed about this model as a thought-starter. Perhaps a touch-stone. And maybe even useful for thinking about things like brand advertising efforts.

What are your thoughts on this? Do you have any experience with this model?

Resources

More on Likert Scales  http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/scallik.php

Kim Harrison, Cutting Ede PR Blog. The Myth of Relationship Building as the Key Measure of PR http://www.cuttingedgepr.com/articles/relationship-building-pr-measure.asp

Seeking another way of looking at relationships

So much BS is written about relationship management in the current era of consumer power that you need a power-shovel to find any gems in the smelly stuff.

Part of the challenge is that most of what you will find is tactical -- "here's what you need to do" -- and is not necessarily informed by a guiding philosophy of any kind.

We went right from Permission Marketing and The Cluetrain Manifesto to "How to make a killing with E-mail marketing".

The challenge with focusing exclusively on tactics is that you will quickly find no basis for making your tactical decisions. For that, you need some kind of a strategy.  In developing a strategy, you will quickly find yourself trying to back your way into some sort of guiding philosophy.

I went questing for some meatier material to support a current project, and came upon a gem of a report about relationships and how to measure them. 

See more in the next post.

Resources

Seth Godin's influential book, Permission Marketing, published 1999, has principles that seem to have been forgotten in the age of better targeting tools. What people seem to want now is HOW TO MAKE AN ABSOLUTE KILLING WITH EMAIL MARKETING !  Interestingly, the book is actually titled "E-mail marketing for Newbies", but Amazon kindly provided the marketing phrase. [Maybe they read the book. I confess I did not.]

The Cluetrain Manifesto, by David Weinberger, Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls and Jake McKee is also available free online. Or you can buy it from many retailers if you prefer a hardcopy read.

 

 

Keeping things in context: what can happen in 5 years, and what it means for planning

I was doing a client debrief today related to a long-term technology project. Things in the planning stages will take years to build and launch -- 3 to 5 years, most likely. I wanted to help the client team remember that our research looks at where people are at today -- their expectations and experiences. But the planning needs to be out where people are headed, not where they are today. Such a cliche, right? But true.

Customer expectations are constantly moving. These days, customer expectations are moving fairly quickly.

We did a little exercise together to think about what has changed in the last five years. Here was the list I prepared for them.

5 Years ago: May 17, 2006 – what has changed since then:

• Netflix introduced downloading of video Oct 1, 2008
• Kindle launched Nov 19, 2007
• iPhone released June 29, 2007
• Nintendo Wii – November 19, 2006
• Facebook opened to non-students – September 26, 2006
• Google bought YouTube for $1.65 B October 9, 2006 (YouTube launched Feb 14, 2005)
• Twitter launched July 2006

When you think about what you or your company needs to deliver in the future, you might ask yourself what has changed in the last few years in the relevant dimensions in your industry. Then springboard from that into the future.

Some of these changes were so profound that it's hard to believe they are so recent!

What would YOU add to this list?

In the era of self-serve, the problems people call you about are not ordinary

Large organizations gather lots of statistics. Such as who calls the call centre. And what their problem is.

When they encounter a frequent problem, they do one of three or four things:

- they fix the problem (design feature, assembly instructions, whatever it is)

- they create self-serve options on the web site to help the customer fix the problem (such as tracking your package)

- they create an FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) file to deal with the problem

- they put a message on a phone recording to tell you the answer (such as what hours the store is open)

All of this is done to reduce the number of enquiries about simple stuff, and (hopefully) to make the experience better.

This has led us to an interesting situation -- all of those problems that used to be dealt with by people are now dealt with by us. By definition, what's left is uncommon problems.

So have a little respect for your front line call-centre staff, because they only get the difficult stuff. You may not be training them that way, but that's their reality.

My take

I was thinking about this again because I am speaking to some service quality professionals at the end of the month. And I think this is one of the things they have to contend with. We've actually solved many of the obvious service problems. What's left is not all that straightforward.

Your service doesn't have to be perfect: but it can't be hideous. Bonus: hostage loyalty versus natural loyalty

We decided to cancel our HighBeam research account a while back, and just waited until the renewal date was upon us to do it. [Ed. note: where's the link? Me: I am not helping their SEO by linking to them. Forget it.]

Hostage loyalty versus natural loyalty

This organization is one of many these days that has a rather obnoxious approach to renewals: they automatically renew you unless you cancel. There is no notice, there is no reminder, there is no opt-out.

Naturally, this begs the question of why their natural loyalty is so poor that they can't count on renewals... When any organization uses a hostage approach to loyalty, this is not a good thing.

Our chief money guy thought he had issued cancellations on all of our accounts. Then a charge went through. A phone call to the company generated no happiness. Here's what they said, roughly:

• Each account has to be cancelled separately
• There's a no refund policy, didn't you read the contract
• The fact that the charge went through only yesterday is irrelevant -- our no refund, no pro-rating policy still applies
• The fact that you have an e-mail confirmation of cancellation is irrelevant
• We can, however, offer you a discount right now if you extend your subscription
• There is a supervisor, however we are not authorized to transfer any calls to this person

Okay, that pretty much defines hideous, doesn't it.

Not only is there no help to resolve the issue, but pretty much an attitude of 'we got your money, jerk, and we plan to keep it. You could cancel now, but you'd lose access to our database for a year that you just paid for.'

Money guy asks me: Did you renew? Did you get a notice? I say, no siree, I did not

Next step: contact VISA

Biggest point in their favor: trying to help. Explaining what is going on. Advising of options. Being calm and respectful.

Key learning from VISA person:

• If you sign an automatically renewing contract, your bank will put the transaction through even on an expired card [so your expired card on the account is no protection at all]
• If you change your card number with the same bank, your bank might put the transaction through, even though that is not the card you gave the automatically-renewing-jerks

But, and happily...

• if they sent you a cancellation confirmation e-mail, we just might be able to get your money back for you

You don't have to be perfect, just don't be awful

So VISA wasn't really promising a lot. But they did calm down the chief money guy. They offered helpful information. And they tried to find a way to help. They did not suggest by tone or word that any fool who ticks "yes" to such an agreement is beyond help.

You just have to be nice. You have to try. And if you do, you will look so much better than the other guys, that you don't really have to be perfect.

Are you counting on hostages?

I don't want to tell you that hostage marketing tactics will not work for a while. But they will not work in the long term. And they will hide the fact that people don't want to renew, they just got suckered. If you were valuable, they'd renew.

Clever or annoying?

I'm curious -- what's your thinking about these automatic renewal contracts? A convenience (ie. clever) or annoying (seriously annoying)?

Credit card fraud and the customer service problem

Credit card fraud is a serious, expensive and pervasive problem -- even as the banks use clever ways to protect transactions (e.g. chips) fraudsters seem to find ways to keep up.

The net result is that many honest card holders have had fraud problems through no fault of their own. We appreciate that the issuers are vigilant in monitoring card use and can move quickly when they believe a card has been compromised or is at risk. In research, I hear lots of people taking comfort from this.

But companies are not always as quick to let the customer know what's going on when they take these steps. The tale of woe sent to me this week by a regular reader makes this clear. An automated message was deemed to be adequate.

Getting the automated message your card has been compromised

Here's a tale of woe from a loyal reader that highlights this issue:

On Monday, Aug. 9, I received an automated voice mail at my cell phone number advising that I was being issued a new card and that as of Aug. 6 my transaction limit was restricted to a maximum of $500. There was no explanation for why this was being done. Just a recorded announcement that was longer than the length allowed by my voice mail and that was cut off.

I can say for absolute certainty that no effort was made to contact me personally because my voice mail response for my cell phone specifically says not to leave a message at that number but to use another number. (BMO MasterCard has my home and office numbers and did not call either. They also have my e-mail address, but did not use that.)

I called on Aug. 9 and asked for an explanation and got the expected party line about how they are looking after my best interests etc etc. (And of course: "We are experiencing a significantly higher than usual call volume...." Do you ever not get that message?)

But here's the thing: On Aug. 5, I checked out from a seven-night stay at an all-inclusive resort and charged more than $3,000 to my MasterCard to pay for the visit. How would I have felt if my credit card was declined at that time over something that I was unaware of. Humiliated and inconvenienced are terms that come to mind.

In May I was in Europe for eight days and I didn't bother to take my cell phone because it doesn't work outside of North America. How would I have felt if my card had been cancelled or restricted during that trip without my knowledge? Humiliated and inconvenienced to the extreme are terms that come to mind.

Would a direct telephone call by a real customer service representative alerting me to what was happening be so hard?  ... After 30 years as a MasterCard and BMO customer I am considering switching to Visa.

My take

The focus on customer acquisition in the credit card industry means free points and bonuses for signing up. You might not be thought so valuable when you have a problem though.

If you have to get a new credit card number, you can plan on changing all those recurring payments yourself. A great example of a situation where you may as well look around for other deals since you're going to be updating everything anyway.

Profitability modeling has taken us to a place where your past real business counts for nothing, and your potential future business counts for everything. How bizarre, how bizarre.

What's your take?

Is anyone doing a good job on this? Do you have your own tale of communication woes over fraud problems?

How to survive in the shark tank: go for actual loyalty, not just inertia

If you feel like you are swimming in a shark tank of competitors, you are probably right.

Today's example: we are miffed at the service from our pharmacy. We use their automated call-in service, which is nice when it works. But if you have a new prescription on file, they won't refill the old one. Even though the IVR accepts the order.

Okay, fine. It's not a perfect system.

But the pharmacy staff know that they aren't going to fill this order. They could call to let you know. After all, isn't that why the automated service confirms your phone number? Why wait until you come in to tell you this?  [No kidding. When you put these things in words, the craziness is obvious.]

Other recent incidents: they were OUT of a drug I refill regularly (along with, my guess, about a thousand other women in a one mile radius). They told me to 'check back with them every week'. Are you kidding me? I transferred the prescription to another pharmacy. They had the same problem, but at least offered to call and let me know the situation.

Here's the thing. Within a 15 minute walk from my home, there are at least 5 major competitive outlets (some under the same banner, but with a different store operator). If I care to drive a little farther, there are many more options.

If there is a consolidation in this industry, (which seem likely due to other factors), who do you think will survive?  What about you -- if there is a shakeout in your industry, will you be on the steamroller or on the road?

I ask myself these questions all the time. And honestly, I often find areas to improve. That's the nature of service businesses -- they take constant management.

My take:

State your actual operating method in words, as if it were a service directive instead of just what you do. If this approach were the rule instead of just the habit, would it still make sense? What would your customers think if they saw it in writing?

Don't rely on inertia for loyalty. Try for actual loyalty. Then you have two kinds of glue in place, and a much stronger position.

Your take:

What's your view on this? Does service count for you? Could you easily replace your current providers? How do you keep your competitive edge in the shark tank?

Body language in real life: Susan meets the security guards, and ponders intimidation in customer experience

On a short trip through the shopping concourse at Union Station last week I noticed amazing pink chocolate boxes at Laura Secord. Yes, indeed, they were Sex and the City chocolates! I thought to capture a short video of them for you, dear reader, which is below.

What isn't in the video is that two huge security guards came up behind me and got all serious about "what was I videoing", and made vague references to the need for heightened security in the shopping concourse because of the impending G20 meetings here. They even told me I was not on public property -- how this can be true in a transit hub is beyond me.

Given that I had just finished a book on body language (previous post), I found it fascinating how quickly these guys were able to make my stomach do flip-flops just by standing far too close to me, mere inches from my face. Too close to see their hands, too close to see their feet.

The fact they were wearing bulletproof vests didn't help. And neither one identified themselves, so I still don't know who they were, although at the time I assumed them to be private security guards.

I'm joking about it now, but the truth is, at the time I found this quite distressing, it totally took the fun out of my day. And I didn't feel like buying any SATC chocolates either, although they might have helped my mood. Instead of lingering, I left, happy not to have had these guys pawing my Blackberry.

Having just returned from the Czech Republic, an authoritarian regime until the early 90's, it made me wonder what it must be like to live in a totalitarian state, where intimidation is the rule of the day every day. 

Every day intimidations customers endure

On a more mundane level, when you put yourself in your customer's shoes, it's important to consider what elements of your environment are potentially intimidating. Because intimidation is rarely a desirable element in a customer experience, and it is present more often than you'd suspect.

Older bank branches and hospitals are good examples of environments constructed to be intimidating, to hold up the authority of the institution, and to varying degrees de-personalize the customers/patients. Contrast the feeling in these environments with newer constructions and you will see that this was no accident.

Many pharmacies still put the pharmacist on a raised platform so that they are always standing above you, reinforcing a status difference. Not only that, but you must endure a private discussion in the presence of others -- others waiting in boredom for their own few moments of reluctant self-disclosure.

Once you start looking for these elements in customer environments, you will find them everywhere, in the way the environment is designed, or the way the employees behave.

By contrast, consider the environments that are winning awards and leading business results -- frequently, these organizations have systematically re-thought the power structure signals and elevated the status of the customer. And customers love it.

The video that threatened security of the G20, or something like that

Wishing for pleasant surprises

I am just writing up the report for a big project that has to do with computerization / automated functions.

Our experience of automation - which is pretty extensive now -- is usually that any random event is a negative event. Computers break. Software does not work. Orders do not go through. I'm sure we could create a long list of such things. Ticket dispensers on the fritz.

When we talk about customer experience and customer service, very often people talk about surprise and delight. I'm not totally a fan of this idea, because i think it creates a standard that is ultimately not meetable. However, that's not what i want to talk about today.

Today, what is on my mind is that we haven't built much surprise or delight into our automated world. Your machine doesn't give you a lollipop. At best, it does what is is supposed to, and it does it correctly. It also does it the same every time.

There are no random acts of delight in the automated world. Unless you are at a casino. That needs to change. We need to start making it a lot more fun.

Clever things to make customers happy: what's yours?

When I saw the way my cold beer arrived on a very hot day, I actually squealed in delight.

Now what clever thing can you do that doesn't require new technology or big expense and will show your customers you are actually thinking about them?

What's your clever thing?

[Extra credit if you observed that this was another Marriott, surely among the best managed front-end experiences in the hotel biz. I blogged on these guys once or twice before. Here's one, and here's another]

Catching up: immersive experiences, bathroom blogfest and simplicity

I've been away from my office for a week, but it feels like a month, things are so backed up.

This morning, trainer TK (aka the princess of pain) wanted to know why I didn't get any hotel workouts in... at the time, just getting enough sleep felt like a victory. Some experiences are very immersive, and don't leave much room for anything else. A good vacation is like that, but so are some conferences, and some of my work projects are like that.

Immersive experiences and simplicity

Here's the thing - many of your target customers are in some kind of immersive experience. Their day to day life is often pretty immersive if they have children and work.

They simply don't have any mind-share to spare for you or your needs. Maybe it's some procedure that seems simple enough to you (a mail-in rebate form, for example), but that bit of effort has to displace some other important thing. 

My take: no matter how simple you think your form, your procedure or your communication is, you need to make it simpler. If we have to set it aside for later, later might never come.

Bathroom Blogfest

The Bathroom Blogfest pretty much plunged on without me this year, and there was even a sponsor!! [Although I did get to dabble in logo design again, see left. It was more fun than the reports I needed to write].

I rather liked CB Whittemore's post about simplicity, here. Her recap of the week is here.

Simplicity of operation seems to have gone too far in public johns, IMHO. We all stand waving our hands under automatic sinks that don't come on, trying to get soap from automatic dispensers that won't dispense, and waving frantically at automatic towel dispensers that aren't whirring.

Mostly the automatic dryers seem to work, but you have to hang on to small children lest they get blown over by the high speed fans.

Inside the stall, it's much worse. If the automatic flush doesn't happen, you may look in vain (as I did a few days ago) for a manual button. Why these little buttons are so well hidden is a mystery. As often as not, these units flush twice, which is hardly a water saving. 

Encountering these mysteries in several airports, I empathized with the newcomers who must be mystified by these devices. If we can't figure it out, what hope does a foreigner have?  It's not like there are signs that explain what to do.

My take: We have a lot of weird obsessions about bathroom fixtures that could keep a team of anthropologists busy for years. I strongly suspect that the automatic switches have more to do with not touching the untouchable than with any real efficiency.

Good bathrooms are good for business

McDonald's is one of the few places you can count on a good bathroom, and that's motivated me to stop there on many occasions. And in the spirit of reciprocity, of course I buy something too. 

Linda Wright has actually written a book about this topic,

Skip to the Loo: Bypass Big-Ticket Advertising and Build Business with Better Bathrooms.

My take: I haven't read the book, but I totally endorse the concept. When you are talking bathrooms, you are talking about a need felt by 100 per cent of the population.

Blogfest Blogger list

Participating bloggers for the Bathroom Blogfest ’09 include:

• Susan Abbott at Customer Experience Crossroads http://www.customercrossroads.com
• Reshma Anand at Qualitative Research Blog http://onqualitativeresearch.blogspot.com/
• Shannon Bilby at From the Floors Up http://fromthefloorsup.com/
• Shannon Bilby and Brad Millner at My Big Bob’s Blog http://blog.mybigbobs.com/
• Laurence Borel at Blog Till You Drop http://www.laurenceborel.com/
• Jeanne Byington at The I mportance of Earnest Service http://blog.jmbyington.com/
• Becky Carroll at Customers Rock! http://www.customersrock.net
• Leslie Clagett at KB Culture www.kbculture.blogspot.com
• Katie Clark at Practical Katie http://practicalkatie.blogspot.com/
• Iris Shreve Garrott at Checking In and Checking Out http://circulating.wordpress.com/
• Julie at Julie’s Cleaning Secrets Blog http://cleaningsecrets.greatcleaners.com/
• Marianna Hayes at Results Revolution http://www.resultsrevolution.com
• Maria Palma at People To People Service http://www.people2peopleservice.com/
• Professor Toilet at Professor Toilet’s Blog http://www.professortoilet.com/
• David Reich at My 2 Cents http://reichcomm.typepad.com/
• Bethany Richmond at The Carpet and Rug Institute Blog http://www.carpet-and-rug-institute-blog.com
• Carolyn Townes at Becoming a Woman of Purpose http://spiritwomen.blogspot.com
• Stephanie Weaver at Experienceology http://experienceology.blogspot.com;
• C.B. Whittemore at Flooring The Consumer http://flooringtheconsumer.blogspot.com
and Simple Marketing Blog http://www.SimpleMarketingBlog.com
• Linda Wright at Lindaloo.com: Build Better Business with Better Bathrooms http://lindaloo.com/

Respecting your customers

I think you'll like this little story, but I have to tell you the situation first: I'm in Palm Springs at a Renaissance resort for the annual QRCA conference. Since I'm three time zones away from home, I'm up early.

So yesterday, I decided on a quick swim and a hot tub shortly after 7 am, when there was no-one around except the guys making the pool ready for the day.

I thought I saw a big pile of towels on the lounge seating. These are like giant outdoor livingrooms with fire pits to ward off the desert chill at night. The chairs are oversized bamboo and cushion affairs that are quite nice.

Turns out the towels had men under them. Two guys to be specific, both covered in big striped pool towels, with their street shoes and suits still on, and the evidence of the party the night before all around them.

What I loved is that the hotel did not chase them away at 2 am. They worked around them.

I didn't think the Marriott chain's service could surprise me anymore, but they show tremendous respect for their customers. And this was just one other example.

Leveraging e-mail to extend and improve the experience: managing before, during and after

In October, I'll be attending the Qualitative Research Consultants Association annual conference in Palm Springs. It's a fun conference, because it is only practitioners who attend, and the schmoozing-for-business-development factor is pretty low. We learn from presentations, try out the local restaurants, and even have a costume party. [I have described my colleagues as people who wear flowy clothes. Not all of us, but there are a lot of F-feeling personality types in the profession.]

Okay, so this is a few weeks away -- but this morning, the hotel sent me an advance welcome e-mail, and invited me to use their electronic concierge to set things up for myself.

This really made me smile. It was a good reminder of my reservation code, now tucked away in the trip file. It made me look forward to a bunch of things like swimming in the pool [that I probably won't have time for. I only wish they had an on-site costume service...]

From a business angle, this totally makes sense. I can order and book spa treatments, restaurant reservations, even room service items to be ready on my arrival.

Something to think about: before, during, after

Services are always anchored in time. There is time before the experience, the experience itself, and time after. You can think about ways to do a number of things in advance of the experience, whatever it is:

• simple reminders of an appointment, from a hair appointment to a doctor's appointment
• what to bring with you, for example, to a meeting with a mortgage officer
• an opportunity to book additional services -- while you're here, would you like to add an eyebrow waxing?
• a simple welcome message -- telling people you know they are coming to your organization, and that you value them

Your interaction before the experience can be designed to heighten anticipation, reduce anxiety, help people prepare, or help you prepare for them. And new information technologies makes this so easy.

What can you add to YOUR experience?

BYOB: bring your own bag, and how to manage it

In the fruit market on the weekend, as the cashier carefully packed our luscious-looking peaches, tomatoes, green and yellow beans, we talked about the BYOB* situation. 

Like other places, our city has decided that plastic shopping bags will carry a $.05 charge to discourage their use, and encourage people to BYOB**.

Our greengrocer clerk had recently been shopping for clothes, provided her own bag, and was very dismayed that "they didn't even wrap it". She was missing the careful wrapping in tissue paper, and then packing of her recent purchases. Purchases which cost a lot more than peaches. 

"They basically just handed me the clothes to pack myself", she said. She also pointed out that the major chain grocer just up the street does a much better job of using the BYO bags than this, and that "Clothes are really expensive; they should be treated special".

As we come to grips with reducing our impact on the planet, many strange things will happen under the green banner. As you and your organization figure out how to comply, don't forget to look after the details of the customer experience.

*Bring Your Own Bag

** Thereby reducing the use of something that is multi-use -- a plastic shopping bag -- and replacing it with single-use plastic, such as kitchen catchers garbage bags and the like. But it played well to the public. Now we are learning that re-usable grocery bags are a potential source of toxic germs and need to be regularly washed or otherwise cleaned.

Is self-service better, or just cheaper?

There's a terrific article at the BAI Banking Strategies website about the dangers of using self-service technology only to reduce costs, without any benefits to customers.

The Conundrum of Self-Service: Cost Savings or Customer Service? by Nicole Sturgill.

You don't have to trade off improved experience for improved cost -- the best self-serve deployments achieve both. Ms. Sturgill provides one example I really liked for this -- Dexia Bank based in Brussels. They created a self-service zone for cash transactions, and then removed the barrier that the wickets had set up between customers and staff. This is the kind of reciprocity that is very appealing to customers.

As Ms. Sturgill says,

The bank must be asking, “Is this faster for customers?” rather than “How much money can I save?” Another useful question: “Is this easy for customers to figure out?” rather than, “How much can I reduce staff?” While those latter benefits will exist, deploying from a perspective of saving money and reducing staff will look like exactly that and customers will be able to spot it easily.

When scoping out new systems and approaches, you need to set up design criteria that make sense for the customers and the company. Company criteria may relate to efficiency, quality, reduced staff, etc. Customer criteria need to include a requirement that the experience be at least as good, and preferably better. It could be better by reducing an irritant of some kind, for example. Or better because it's faster, more convenient, easier, 

The grudge factor: how expectations color customer experience

It's the first day of September, and I had to bundle up to walk to the gym this morning. Yesterday I thought about turning on the furnace.

I wasn't too thrilled about that, and neither is anyone else around here. Because this is the summer that never seemed to happen in my neighborhood. If you live in a northern climate, you had weird weather this year.  Whether too hot, too cold, too wet or too dry, it was way outside our allowable variances. And none of us seem to be able to just deal with it and move on. [I realize my complaints are trivial by comparison with the problems many areas have had. I'm still grumpy, ok? Even if our backyard isn't on fire.]

We feel ripped off. We had expectations. We scaled them back, And even our scaled back expectations were disappointed.

Sadly, there is no Weather Company to complain to, and we can't switch providers to FedEx Weather or Mozilla Open Source Weather. But we'd like to. We want the undo button to restore the last couple of deleted weeks of summer. We want a mulligan.

Expectations and customer experience

Very often when I am doing research into customer experience, people will have a story about how their expectations were disappointed. That in itself might not come as a big surprise to you. I bet you've got a few stories of your own.

What is incredible is how long people carry these negative feelings. They carry them for years. Especially if they didn't get some closure on the situation, like an apology or some redress for their disappointment. Not only that, but the damage might seem almost trivial or irrational to another person.

The whole point of branding is to create a set of expectations. It's the brand promise, right?

In service delivery, often the expectations were never made explicit, they were implied by the nature of the interaction. Expectations like: being treated with respect. Not getting ripped off. Not being lied to.

Satisfaction research has shown clearly that it is delivery against expectations that largely determines whether your customers are unhappy, just okay, or advocates for your organization.

The metric that counts is customer expectations, and they're formed not just by your organization, but by every organization. Unless you happen to be the leader in your category, in which case you have only yourselves to blame for rising expectations. [That's a good thing, by the way.]

The bottom line

Customers have expectations. When you disappoint those expectations, you've delivered unsatisfactory service, regardless of how your internal metrics look.

Disappointed people carry the negative thoughts around for a long time, no matter how trivial or irrational the situation may look like from the company side of things. So it's a good idea to try to understand what the expectations are, and either meet them, try to modify them, or suck it up when you've blown it. Because nobody just forgets about it. 

A change to our publishing schedule

Expectations segues nicely into something else I thought I should mention.

My standard for this blog has been to publish Tuesday and Thursday, with a "This just in" Friday when there was something cool to tell you about.

I haven't been doing a great job of delivering on this lately. But you're probably inundated with information [as I am], and would prefer quality to quantity, if you can't have both. So I'm going to aim for one post a week. [A brilliant, glittering, insightful thing with tremendous value added that will trigger equally glittering and insightful comments from you, our brilliant, beautiful and valued subscribers]. 

Your feedback, as always, is greatly appreciated. Thank you. We now resume our regular programming.

Delivery Hell: the experience doesn't end after the sale

My friend and colleague S.P. had promised to participate in an online meeting we were holding this week for some members of QRCA here. She kept e-mailing me from her Blackberry apologizing for still being at her cottage, where she does not have a computer/internet.

The reason? Four days of delays waiting for the furniture company to deliver her stuff.

Imagine the sense of rage at the tremendous waste of time involved.

Not only that, but all those happy feelings about new things for her cottage, a place close to the heart for those that have them, have been replaced.

Susan's Take

People are always talking about "delighting the customer" in the context of customer experience. But it's also important to just stop ticking people off. And a good place to begin is by only making promises you can deliver on. When you've fixed the irritants, you have a foundation to build a better experience.

Sauce for the goose department: one size does not fit all in customer experience

I heard recently about a barber shop that had different little treats for customers that varied all the time. I thought this sounded delightful, but the person who told me the story thought they should have been more consistent, offering exactly the same experience every time. They wanted consistency in all things, whereas I like sprinkles on top of my consistency.

Sometimes when I first start speaking with a client, I can detect an implicit assumption that I already know the answer to their troubles. I wish I did have the Big Book of Answers on this topic, but it's rarely that simple.

Some things are obvious and universal

Some things are obvious, and pretty universal. You need to return calls, avoid making errors, fix them promptly, and so forth. Your signage needs to be useful. Your statements need to communicate well. These things are basic hurdles of any service experience.  If you are highly consistent about doing these operational basics well, sadly, that will set you apart. It sets you apart because so much of this is done badly. But it can't really be said to be a branded experience, distinct or unique in any way.

Even though segmentation is pretty well established in marketing circles, especially for direct marketing, experience design is assumed to be more generic. It isn't. Not, not, not true. 

That saying, 'what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander' makes sense when you are eating the geese. If the geese are getting car repairs or hair cuts, they may very well want different things. This is the essence of segmentation, and it's crucial to thinking about customer experience.

Here's another example. A colleague of mine told me he prefers to deal with smaller companies as suppliers, even for things like telecomm service -- he's on VOIP -- so that he knows his business is important to the supplier. He wants to get to know the managers of the business. He wants a high touch experience. I prefer to deal with big enterprises that have high operating standards because they have big clients. I just want things to work, and hope to never have to call anyone.

Unless you are starting your business from scratch, you have existing customers/users/stakeholders who chose you. [Or who had to choose you, because you are the only game in town. That complicates things a bit. We call those customers hostages.] 

If you want to change your experience, change the service, be more customer friendly, or whatever, your first step has to be to gain some insight into what these people are experiencing today. What they might wish to be different. What is annoying or irritating to them. What hacks they are using as they interact with you. Then you have a starting point.

It helps to find out what staff are experiencing too, since they are the ones delivering the service.

But you still need to figure out, based on these insights, what you want your experience to do or be. You need some kind of vision.

Consultants like me can help you get to both these things, but we don't know what they are before we start. Nor should we. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to turn you into a cheap copy of something else. But to be successful, you have to be more uniquely your own animal, to discover and express your own DNA as much as possible.

Susan's take

One size fits all doesn't apply to customer experience any more than it does to shoes. To change your culture to be more customer focused, you have to have some notion of what customer focus means in your organization. Some vision of what the customer experience should be. And to get that, you need some insight into why your current customers chose you.

Resources

I couldn't resist the wonderful image above from Wikipedia under a creative commons license

Happy rituals: how to take your brand to a new level

I was thinking about a few of my happy rituals recently. Showering in the morning. Having extended coffee with the newspaper on Sundays. And sometimes, adding croissants from a favorite bakery, or homemade biscuits into the weekend morning ritual.

You may be, like me, someone who abhors repetitive routine. Even if you are, I suspect you have a few happy rituals.

The happy ritual

A happy ritual is something that gives structure and joy to daily living. When our happy rituals are in place, all is well with our corner of the world, even if the rest of the world is going to hell in a backpack.

Brands can join in those happy rituals. Which is why you find Bisquick, not with baking supplies, but with the pancake mixes at the grocery store. Pancakes are staple happy ritual accompaniment in many households. They are the birthday breakfast choice of lots of children, and one of the first things kids learn to make for themselves.

Coffee, of course, has become a major happy ritual, regardless of whether you are a Starbuckian or favor the independents.

I was thinking about all of this relative to my morning shower. [I'd much rather give up imported asparagus than my showers, if push comes to shove on the environmental front]  My hair care products aren't adding much to the experience. They are highly functional. They do the job I am buying them for. But they're not giving me any extra emotional goodies. No fresh scent that I would miss if I changed products, for example. 

You could argue that there are emotional benefits associated with keeping my hair from going insane during humid weather. Or keeping those expensive highlights looking fresher longer. That's true. the functional benefits do link to emotional benefits. But there could still be a  happy ritual during use.

Whatever the brand experience you are offering, if you stay at the level of functional benefits, you're missing out on ways to garner greater loyalty.

If you only do product research out of the customer's context, you will have trouble finding out about the happy rituals.

Acknowledgements

The image is from unadorned.org/morningpaper by Stephanie Troeth under a creative commons license.

I've written about happy rituals before.

With respect to deconstructing the Curves customer experience: Curves and more Curves.  

Why Starbucks and instant coffee don't make sense to me. How Starbucks surveys about customer experience. Starbucks versus my local independent coffee places.

This just in: digital nomads, social networking in the workplace, Burger King Studio reprise - how to manage social media

I have to tell you that the guys who created Burger King Studio -- Mess Marketing in Chicago -- demonstrated awesome social media management skills.  You will recall my post wherein I gushed about the cool t-shirts you can make online, and gave them what-for about glitches on their purchase process. Look at all the things they did right here:

♥ They are keeping track of social media mentions of their project. [check]
♥ Rob Robinson, creative director, immediately posted a comment on the blog [check]
♥ Then he tracked down my e-mail and sent me a personal note there too [check]
♥ He apologized for the problem, acknowledged my concerns, said they would give the feedback to the web team, and would also try to find my custom designs!  [check, check, check, double check!]
♥ I got an additional wow when a package showed up at my office, with two t-shirts, some cute buttons, and a catalog of the project showed up. [2 checks and a gold star for that one!] 

This is totally going to make workouts more fun while trainer TK - aka the princess of pain - is tossing medicine balls at me.

♥ Oh, and one more thing. They went hunting for my custom designs, and have promised to send them along as soon as they are made. [extra credit!]
Here they are:


I told him, via e-mail, that I was planning on using the t-shirts as prizes for a workshop I am doing for a client on consumer trends. Because I thought their project was pretty leading edge.  Which it is.

Okay, so he's getting a little earned -- aka unpaid -- media. And he had to exert a little effort for it, as do you. But look at this circle of happiness that was created. He gets more profile. I get cool t-shirts. AND I get a killer story for the next dozen or so presentations I give. Everybody wins.

And an even more loyal BK customer, who really likes to have it her way.

***

Stopping by Chris Brogan's blog I found an interesting report from Citrix about web commuters -- the workshifting phenomenon.  Some startling statistics like these: by 2008 there were 33.7 million US teleworkers. Forrester is projecting big growth, such that as many as 1/3 of the workforce will work from home at least part of the time.  Given that you can't flip burgers or change hotel sheets from home, I'd guess that this means knowledge workers will be telecommuting a lot.

A study Citrix Online commissioned found that 73% of American workers and 53% of small business owners want to be able to work remotely.

In the late 80's I was part of a Future of Work Secretariat that the ministry of labour in Alberta launched. We were talking about this stuff then, but the technology just wasn't there. Now it is.

Apart from technology support, what does this group of people need?

***

In a similar vein, Aon Consulting has published a report about employee attitudes around social media in the workplace. Aon is looking at the big shift towards Millennials in the workplace, and their comfort level with social media, and seeing a disconnect with the ways employers communicate.

45% of the 8000 respondents in the study already work remotely. Almost half use instant messaging at work. Four in ten use text messaging at work -- not to talk to family and friends, but to exchange information.

"The internet’s power not only gives people access to a wide range of news perspectives, but it grants each  person an outlet to express his or her own opinion on it. Employees are using social media to collect  information, to interpret and communicate it to others."

So many organizations seem determined to keep the lock on social media. If this study is any indication, it's not going to work.

***

Have a great weekend!
 

What do you need to know now? (About customer experience)

At a workshop on the weekend, several people suggested topics that I should write on. 
I thought I'd share this list with you, and see what you think.

The ideas list:

1. How to create a spirit of service among employees
2. How to gain / increase customers
3. How to improve sales and loyalty
4. How to train the customer
5. How to train and get results from front-line staff
6. How to get to an insight
7. How to motivate staff to give better customer service
8. Why must organizations ask for feedback and then ignore it
9. How to create + ensure customer satisfaction
10. How to create consistency in experience
11. Insights=Perspectives (Not sure I get this one, but I'm pondering it. Any thoughts?)

Is this the stuff you want to know? 
What would you add to this list?
What do you need right now to get through this day, this week, this month, this quarter?
Just to make this fun, I'll put all the responses into a hat and draw for a nice treat. Spam doesn't count, of course.

I'm off to speak at a conference in Chicago this week: the Symposium on Excellence in Qualitative Research. I'm speaking with a client about employment branding, a fascinating and growing requirements.

When I get back, I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the list above. Seriously, comments would be welcome. If you hate the idea of posting a comment on the blog, send me an e-mail. susan[a]abbottresearch.com.

Pondering GM: were they living in a cone of silence?

Watching the GM saga unfold, the most striking thing is how long it took for changes to be made, in the face of clear data.

I recently came across an old news story about GM -- around 1999 or 2000 was when the analysis was written. It was course material in a marketing management course. The how-not-to-manage-your-marketing-function part of the course.

The article talked about the pressing needs: To rationalize the brands and banners. Rationalize the dealer network. Get a better fix on consumer desires. The same article made reference to these problems having been in place and observed at least a decade before. 

It makes me think how truly impressive it is when a company can make big changes without a huge crisis. It speaks well of a whole culture when this can happen, not just of an executive. Because the example we have of GM is of a whole company that seemed to be living in a cone of silence half the time.

The service experience: GM vs Acura

Let me illustrate just how huge the cone of silence was by telling you about my 1989 Acura Integra.

The Integra was a delightful car, totally fun to drive and the perfect accessory for a young career woman. When I took it in to the dealership, here's what it was like: 

• Everyone was sharply dressed.
• The place was clean, and they served free coffee.
• They had a van that would drop you off if you worked nearby, or drop you at a transit station if you didn't.
• When you picked the car up, it was always freshly washed
• There were little paper things inside so you knew no oil from the mechanics feet got on your carpet or seat
• The whole thing was a pleasure. I actually enjoyed the ritual of it. I felt like I belonged to an exclusive club.

A few years later, I accepted a fabulous position as a regional manager for a bank. The job came with a car, and my market area included Oshawa, home of three GM plants and the head offices of GM Canada. I wore out three cars on that job, all pretty good vehicles, actually. Two Grand Prix and a Grand Am. No problems, just a lot of driving.

But here's the customer experience at a big GM dealer in Oshawa.

• The reception area was so dirty, I didn't sit down
• I actually didn't put my purse or briefcase down either, because the cement floor was pretty awful too
• There was a beat up wooden podium that served as a counter. It looked like it had been repainted about a hundred times.
• The guy serving me was dressed in oily gray coveralls
• I wondered if I was in the right place
• I felt like I had stumbled into some kind of guy's clubhouse
• They didn't wash the car. In fact, I kind of took a good look at the seat before I popped my suited behind down
• I never went back

If you see it once, it's a pattern

OK, it was one dealership. But there's a good saying in the world of sales and service: "if you see it once, it's a pattern." There are no isolated instances. If some bad thing is happening in one place, it's happening in other places.

Did no-one know how the industry was changing? Or did no-one care? Or did they think that it wouldn't really matter? Or did people try to make changes but just give up due to the tremendous inertia in the organization?

Things may have changed a lot at that dealership. But how would I know -- I never went back to check. And that is just the reality of dealing with consumers. Once we write you off, you're gone from our world.

GM seems to have a game plan now. And good luck to them implementing it, because they have a BIG hill to climb.

Burger King Studio: I loved you, but you don't like Canadians

I

I stumbled across Burger King Studio recently. This is BK's project to engage hipster artists in major cities, and have them create designs that can be screen printed on T-shirts. This seemed like a very creative and edge promotion to me.

These seemed like the perfect item to illustrate a number of interesting trends for a client project I am working on. My plan was to order a couple of these shirts, designed by yours truly, and give them away as prizes at a client offsite. Or if they were really cute, wear one and give the other away.

There were three little annoyances in the shopping cart phase.

First -- you could only order one of a design. Second -- even clicking "back" to see if there is some way to order more appears to wipe out the design you spent loving time creating. Turns out you can order more, but you have to create them one at a time.

Third -- only after you put all your information in do they tell you that they don't ship outside the US. But I had a Whopper with cheese only last week. It's pretty much a global company, although clearly a local promotion. 

What really annoyed me was their D'oh. Like I'm the idiot here.

However, it's easy for websites to find out where I am. Hulu, the re-broadcaster of all things television, won't let me watch anything at all. At least they're polite about it.

A few observations:

Avoid indulging in making people feel like idiots. [Unless of course you are a blogger or a journalist, in which case that is part of your job.] If you are building your brand, you can be edgy and still be polite.

I've been a BK customer for years. I actually go out of my way for BK versus McD. I was prepared to wear their brand imagery on my body! [Something I have previously only considered with Vespa.] And now I'm ticked.

The challenge for service delivery: people costs go up, digital costs go down

Sitting in the cold and gray of January can put one in the mood to contemplate the really BIG issues of life. Such as how the cost of digital services has dropped to practically nothing, and how the cost of human services continues to rise. And what this means for customer experience.

While stepping back and pondering this weighty issue, I checked out another amazing free tool available to the digerati. This one is called Website Grader, and for no charge beyond signing up to their mailing list, you can get a pretty good report on your web site, delivered in a minute or so.  [And there's a nifty badge too. I love badges, all bloggers do. It's down there on the bottom right, below the blogroll.]

All this as a marketing device to attract you to HubSpot's web services.

On the other hand, we have human services. There's a long standing tradition that people should get a little increase in wages every year. And occasional merit increases. So if the head count stays the same, more or less, the overall cost of the payroll rises.

This is leading to bizarre situations all over the place.

I can get webinars on many subjects for free, and can learn a great many things just by watching videos on YouTube, and reading free web content. It's even easier than going to the library. OR, I can take a class at a university or college, where costs continue to rise.

In my hometown here, the faculty of a major university have been on strike for two months because they don't like the latest offer: an increase of 9.25 % over a three year contract, with improvements in job security and benefits. [Are these people crazy, you may be asking yourself? Haven't they heard the news?]

With the cost of so much that is digital dropping, dropping, dropping, it gets harder and harder to find ways to support the perceived value of human-delivered experiences. Like, say, clerks in a clothing store, or tellers in a bank. No one wants to pay for these things directly. But the costs of human staff essentially rise every year, whether prices do or not.

Right you say, that's what has driven offshoring of call centres, among other things.

The challenge for us as experience marketing folk is this: how do you make the human experience valuable enough that people will pay the cost of delivering it? Especially when people are reassessing the value of pretty much everything?

No answers today, just raising the question.

Using GPS to build customer experience: yes, it's another Harley-Davidson story

GPS device maker Garmin is launching a specialized version of the Garmin Zumo - the Road Tech Zumo. It will come pre-loaded with all the Harley-Davidson dealerships, as well as a program to share rides. These will be the kind of rides motorcyclists love, of course -- with windy roads, good scenery, and an absence of express-lanes.

As GPS becomes ubiquitous, I expect to see a lot more innovation of this nature. Read more on the GPS Lodge story.

Resources:

Harley-Davidson Zumo GPS - the Road-Tech Zumo, on GPS Lodge, Aug. 4 08

Starbucks customer experience: not special, not really even local

I walked through my local Starbucks yesterday to see what they'd done with their recent renovations. Kind of hoping it might be a more suitable location for a business talk than it was before. Sadly, there are now fewer seats overall, and the customer space is quite a bit smaller. The counter is bigger, so the staff are likely happy. I have to assume that they're focusing this location on the takeout business, which may actually be a good decision, despite my dissatisfaction.

And therein lies the Starbuckian challenge.
They aren't unique anymore, they're not rare. They are convenient. They are, frankly, mass. Premium mass perhaps, but mass all the same.

In one of the emerging neighborhoods here, Leslieville, I saw a number of unique coffee houses one day. That's Tango Palace Coffee Company at the top of the page. The Dark Horse Espresso Bar was down the street a ways.

And Red Rocket Coffee, above, was not far from the streetcar depot, home of the transportation locally known as The Red Rocket.

This is what local looks like. I expect each of these places has a loyal following, their own strengths and weaknesses, some unique blends of coffee, and perhaps some fresh baked goods.

By comparison, Starbucks has become the Holiday Inn of coffee places -- it may not be special, but there won't be many surprises.

Despite their iconic status, Starbucks has some big challenges. Not the least of which is sheer size. There's no avoiding this once you go public, however. There's no joy in being a utility -- all the money goes to the growth stocks, and that's what Starbucks became.  Their recent decision to close some outlets likely makes a lot of sense.

Now what?

In today's marketplace, you can be budget-bargain or you can be high-end. You can stand for indulgence, or you can stand for the environment, or you can stand for being the smart decision, or many other positions. The mushy middle is a tough place to compete, however.

So what does Starbucks stand for right now, what is the brand meaning? And how does the experience reflect this meaning, reinforce this meaning, and bring this meaning to life?

Starbucks can thrive, but there's no way it keeps its premium price point unless it keeps its game up. So re-examining their coffee taste is a good idea. McDonald's has improved their coffee taste. The donut places are still serving good coffee. And together, these define the budget end of good coffee. Starbucks has to stay above this in the minds of consumers, and they have to earn their premium price. I hear people say it's the best coffee in the world, but I find this hard to believe, and it certainly doesn't mesh with my own experience.

The third-place thing is definitely still working for them -- at least where you can find a place to sit.

I think they might try to customize their focus for each local market, wherever they can. So that locations in business districts have more places for quick meetings, and locations in neighborhoods are friendly to SUV strollers. [I've never understood why they don't have stroller parking of some sort to end the congestion, or  designated seating, or something like that]. Customizing to be local within a consistent larger theme could mean that you get to know individual locations that suit your preferences. For me, I'd avoid the SUV locations, and head straight to the business and artsie ones.

Where they hang the work of local artists, this seems like a good thing to me. It helps them preserve a sense of place. Doing this takes time and effort, however, and staff need to be given a mandate to spend the time and make the effort.

One thing they could definitely improve is their food product. This stuff tastes like it was shipped in bulk from a single factory, and has been on the shelf for days. Especially since we are seeing the rise of local bakeries and patisseries again, that offer the real deal.

Resources:
For more on the challenge of running public companies check out this story by Miro Slodki, Is it time we fired our shareholders?

I've written about the coffee business before.

Cafe, Coffee Place, Coffee House: names and their meanings

Far Coast: Coca-Cola pilot coffee cafe in Toronto

Getting a good coffee in Kingston Jamaica and other third place observations

Starbucks Customer Experience

Becky Carroll has run quite a few posts on the Starbucks experience on the Customers Rock blog. As has Meikah Ybañez-Delid on the CustServ blog.

Coffee Wars

Just while Starbucks is having an identity crisis of sorts, everyone else has decided to get on the bandwagon.
Stephani Ortenzi quoted me in a nice piece about what is happening on the front lines of the coffee wars for Foodservice and Hospitality Magazine. (subscription only)

You can also read the article on Stephani's author site. "Hang Time: The New Language of Coffee"

Customer Care: Helping the 20% or Are you any better at this than Dell?

There is so much effort going into "Customer Care" these days, that there are times I think it's all just working great. It must be. Everyone says it is.

I get a lot of advertising material about systems that are designed to support Customer Care, make it "World Class", and so forth. Here's what I think. This stuff is great for the 80%.

Most of these Customer Care systems are designed to identify the 80% of common problems and make solutions to those problems happen quickly and efficiently.

Even though the whole project team knows the system is designed this way, everyone acts like the other 20% don't exist. When we encounter an incident from that 20%, we keep stuffing it back into the other set of routines.

In fact, EVERY time something doesn't get resolved the first time by one of these systems, it needs to be escalated to the red team, the swat team, or whatever you call it. Because these systems DO in fact work for the 80%, anything that jams up or falls out somehow has to be one of those 20% issues. And the main pipeline of customer care can't handle the 20%. These need to be quickly routed to some skilled and empowered team who can diagnose and fix problems. They often aren't.

I think we've all been there. In the spiral from hell [see diagram above], where YOU are the one documenting the problem, YOU are the one recapping all the previous ineffective efforts to solve it, and YOU are the one coming up with ideas that might work.

Sadly, I am in one of those spiral circles right now with Dell, trying to upgrade my DataSafe backup for more space. Yup, just trying to give them money, and they don't seem to want to take it under any circumstances. I've had one online chat session, several e-mails, and a lengthy phone call with my GOLD Tech Support. [Who can't help because it is a sales problem, although heaven knows they have tried.]

Eventually, I think they are going to realize that some glitch is slowing down sales of DataSafe, investigate, and figure out that something in their fulfillment for this product is screwed up. In the interim, the Customer Care machine will keep squeezing a lemon and hoping for orange juice.

Of course this is one of the great ironies of 20% issues. QUITE OFTEN they are early warning signs of some problem on the fulfillment end. QUITE OFTEN they are valued customers, early adopters, and other people who don't give up easily. All the more reason to flag these items quickly.

You want to improve Customer Care? Start looking at how you handle the 20%.

Testing the new blog authoring tools in Word 2007

I'm having fun with productivity tools this week. Got the new Dell desktop last Friday. You know the routine, of course – move files and settings, reinstall software, ask yourself if you should have partitioned the hard drive differently, and keep changing the location of the new giant screen. It's an odd combination of daunting and exciting, with most of the excitement done and gone about an hour after you turn it on, and the daunting part that continues for weeks.

Our computers, for some of us, are such an extension of our fingers and brains that even relatively minor changes can be tremendously disruptive. Which is one reason I stayed with XP, and didn't give in to the temptation to shift to Mac. 

The shift to Dell was one I resisted, but ultimately, they were the only ones who would let me configure online. And their online configuration/ordering tools were wonderful. They have even made the unpacking process much more attractive than I was expecting. The boxes actually look nice when you open them up, all neatly packed and white inside. [I know, some of us are hung up on aesthetics.]

I did get the new Office Suite software, and even though the ribbon is kind of neat, it's still a change, and therefore a disruption. There seem to be two big bonus items here, however, that are very cool.

1. Changing fonts and styles shows up instantly! Yes, this is amazing, fun, and incredibly useful. At least it is if you are type-design junkie like I am, constantly tweaking.
2. Built in blog authoring tools mean I am actually typing this post from inside Word! The software is integrating for me, and has a whole new menu bar that replicates several functions inside TypePad. If it works [and since you are reading this, it must have worked] this will be a nice addition to my life, and end a lot of annoying formatting problems that are tricky to resolve inside TypePad.

I bumped into a neighbor today who is in her 50s, and is retraining on computer skills to get work, after a marital split. I found it hard to believe that anyone can function without computer skills, it seems so rare now. I didn't tell her how many computers we actually have in our home now, between the new desktops, the old desktops, the current laptops, the laptops we are saving for no good reason, the laptop we read the New York Times on in the dining room on Sundays…. To say nothing of the handheld devices [both working and dead], and the peripherals. It's a wonder there is room for human beings.

Our tools continue to expand our reach. And when they do so seamlessly, it's a beautiful thing to see.

Starbucks Customer Experience: how would you answer?

Starbucks is conducting a survey with CustomerThink and GCCRM about their customer experience.

Their last two questions were good ones. My answers are in italics.

What do you like most about the Starbucks in-store experience?

It's a good place to have an informal business meeting with a colleague

What do you like least about the Starbucks in-store experience?

I really don't care much for your coffee, (except latte, breakfast blend are ok) and your bakery products are awful. Can be difficult to find a seat - one person will have staked out a whole corner for hours. I'm concerned your push into the children's market will make it too noisy and messy for adults like me.

That's how I answered. How would you answer?

The latest news on multi-tasking and what it means for customer experience

Luth Research recently released their IndicatorEDG report on multi-tasking. It looks like we are spending more and more time -- on average, 20 hours a week -- attempting to do two things at once.

"On average, 17 percent of our time awake -- approximately 19.80 hours per week -- is spent using two or more media simultaneously, according to the latest quarterly findings (Quarter 1, 2007) from Luth Research's IndicatorEDG™, an online study surveying more than 5,000 respondents in the U.S. The media in question included all mass media (e.g., TV, radio, Internet) and personal electronic devices (e.g., cell phone, MP3 player, wireless email device)."

Those who aren't employed spend more time in media multi-tasking -- no surprise there. But so do retired people, who average close to 26 hours a week in media multi-tasking. [So your suspicions are correct -- Mom or Dad really are watching the TV while talking to you on the phone.] 

And most of this media multi-tasking is TV together with something else --

"Watching TV was named by nearly half of the respondents to be what they typically do
when working on the Internet or email through a computer. One in five people have their TV on while using their cell phone to make phone calls. TV seems to be a natural fit to co-own consumer time and space with other print media, as 20 percent of the respondents cited TV as the medium they were also using when reading a newspaper, a magazine, or a book."

Those that are spending more time media multi-tasking report that they are less happy overall than others.*

What does this mean for customer experience and customer communications?

If you thought it was hard to get people's attention before, guess what? It's going to get harder. So clarity in all communications is essential.

In these circumstances, is it realistic to expect people to absorb the fine print, or read between the lines of your offer?  Probably not, in my view.

Greater redundancy in communication is also a good idea. Don't assume people are actually informed about your policies or product features or hours of operation. Make it clear, easy to find, and say it often.

If it's directed at anyone who is retired, make the print on the box big enough to scan at a glance, because that might be all it gets.

And your advertising had better be interesting enough to compete with other media. Even if it's only getting half an ear or half an eyeball, it needs to get a message through.

Resources and notes:

Here's the link to the five-page PDF report: IndicatorEDG Research: Media Multitasking

* Note that this should not be construed as a cause -- perhaps the multi-tasking is a response to other life circumstances, which are the underlying cause of the unhappiness