Customer Crossroads

Happy rituals and customer dialogue: Take a lesson from Curves

I posted a while back about Curves...

4Oct07 - Design a great customer experience: find a segment and meet their needs
I was very impressed at the process that Curves' founders seemed to follow to get their original plan. In the post, I talked about how they had figured out what some of the barriers are for women to using conventional gym programs, and how they overcame them, thereby creating a new market, and triggering tremendous growth. [Which, by the way, is still a really good idea] For example,"Not rewarded for my progress. Always measured against a standard I can't meet."

9Oct07 -Making tradeoffs in customer experience design: Curves Smart and what it means for the Curves experience
In this post, I looked at their introduction of new technology to track each workout. The technology changed the happy ritual of heart-rate monitoring from a human interaction to a machine interaction. Personally, I missed it a lot. As I suspected, at least in my local establishment, this change led fairly quickly to a lack of interaction between staff and customers. Here's what I said then...

"Part of the ritual of Curves has been the heart-rate check. Everyone on the circuit stops and does a 10 second heart-rate count at the same time. It's part of the routine, ensures you aren't about to expire from heart failure, and also ensures you are working hard enough to get some benefit from the exercise.

"But the happy ritual is also that the fitness coaches stop the music while this happens, and ask everyone "are you OK?". With the new equipment, this ritual has been dropped. The new equipment has a heart-rate monitor on one piece of equipment. It's all automated now."

Little did I know that this second post would become among my most popular posts of all time. Not only that, but it has attracted an astonishing [for me] number of comments.

Here's what has been happening, I think. These Curves fans are concerned. Things are happening. Things aren't working as well as they used to work. They have questions.

So ... they go to the web to seek out answers. And they are finding, not a Curves forum, but this blog about customer experience and human behavior. They are sharing their worries with each other in the comments on my blog. Yes, folks, this is what your customers are doing when they can't talk to you. They find each other somehow, somewhere, and they still talk. The conversation is happening without you. The brand story is changing, and you're not involved in it.

The posts have continued to grow and expand. The company appears not to be in the dialogue, with the exception of a few brave individual employees.

I'd love to know what is happening to their user base as a result of this change. But I can tell you one thing -- there are people who are raving fans that are upset, and no one is giving them any kind of a forum, and they sound pretty let down by this. Here are a couple of extracts from the comments:

"No matter how hard I work, it doesn't stay in the green, and I feel as though I'm going to pass out or burst into tears. I have no problem working hard, and I admit I'm out of shape, but I am not morbidly obese and I am only 25 years old. I should not feel miserable after I leave."

"Today a staff member told me that I must not be working hard enough...At first the computer coach was great but now we are all getting frustrated about our negative results."

" I feel as though I never can make progress. When I spoke to one of the counselors her response was that since I work out more than 3 times a week the machine may be confused. NOT a good response. I don't want to pay for confusion and I don't feel as though I am making progress."

You could spend a lot of money on research getting findings like these. This is pure gold, and it is just sitting there.

What is clear to me is this. For some users, this change put back a barrier that the previous experience had overcome, #5 shown above. The original system was set up to provide a lot of positive feedback through monthly measurements and progress charts. Positive feedback through staff interactions. But the new system is giving people a lot of negative feedback. It's all about the computer now, not about the people passing on atta-girls to the members who are trying to get fit.

My favorite is this comment...

"The owner of my Curves says that I am the only one having this problem"

People have researched this kind of thing. It's a pretty safe bet that the ratio of people having a problem to people reporting a problem is about 10 to 1. So if you hear about it, it's a problem.

Of course, you won't hear about it if you aren't listening.

This just in: Facecard for students

Facecard

Facecard is a new pre-paid debit card targeted to students -- it's prepaid and re-loadable, and usable anywhere MasterCard is accepted.

Although it uses the debit system, it isn't really a debit card so much as a variant on a pre-paid gift card.

Among the other features:

• usable at ATMs
• Friend to friend payments
• Loadable online by the cardholder
• Others can add to the balance like a gift-card
• Not a credit card, so no credit check is used or needed
• Parents can sign up their child

The major pitch on the site is that using a pre-paid card helps students avoid accumulating unnecessary debt and get control of their spending. Here's an excerpt from the member news section of the site:

On my birthday last year, I received probably 10 gift cards from friends and family. They were from 10 different stores ranging in amount from $5-$50. While gift cards are great and all, $20 at a nice clothing store won't buy you much.

This year is going to be different. Now when my aunts, grandmothers and friends ask me what I want for my birthday, I can say "I'd love some money on my facecard." And anyone, not just members, can put money on my card. All they have to do is come to facecard.com, click "Give Money," and they're on their way. Tada, a birthday made easy thanks to facecard!

The name appears to be a stroke of brilliance, at least as long as Facebook is around. The product is available to US citizens aged 13 and over.

Timing issues: that old back to school season, and wanting to be a grasshopper just a little longer

It was in late July that I heard the first back to school advertising. I was driving along back roads in Maine, dreaming of a summer that could last forever. Like a thump, reality came crashing in.

But worse shocks awaited me. Among the flyers waiting for me at home was an offer for the Sears Christmas Wish Book for 2008. I can pick the catalog up at a nearby location, and if I order something between August 13 and September 12 worth more than $100, I can I can earn Sears Club points.

It was with a weary heart that I realized the Christmas shopping season was just around the corner. There's a brief reprieve until Hallowe'en is over, and then the floodgates will open.

In a store a few days ago, I heard a young lad complain to his father that the shorts were all gone, while looking at a rack of fall coats. "What if I want to buy shorts?" he said. "It's still summer -- where are the shorts?" I could only silently agree.

Some of these calendar rituals work, and some of them are just habits that have encrusted the media calendar like barnacles on an old boat. [Dare I say a little research would reveal which.]

Instead of calling it the end of summer sale, try the forever summer sale. Because I'm not tired of it yet.

Service Recovery: a few well chosen words go a long way -- aka clean up on aisle two

There's no substitute for simple human concern and simple empathy when things go wrong. A human response can soothe the savage customer, and create an opportunity for useful communication. Starting from a posture of defence -- "we didn't do anything wrong" -- is almost always the wrong thing to do. You may 'win the discussion,' but lose the customer.

Here's a great example of how a customer who goofed [me] tried to get some help, and instead was turned into a raging virago of emotion by the defensive and unsympathetic posture of the service staff. [At least the gas station is still standing. Thank heaven for small mercies, as they say.]

I was putting gas in my shiny new Vespa 150S yesterday after riding back from a meeting downtown. So the bike was naturally pretty hot.

I guess I made a newbie mistake, thinking that most pumps will stop pumping when the tank is full. [I mean, I've only put gas in about four times, heh, heh. And some pumps do stop, even with my wee bike tank].

You can imagine my state of mind when I realized gasoline was pouring all over the hot exhaust pipe and puddling around my feet. Yikes! After shutting off the nozzle and stepping back to assess matters, I used the handy intercom. "We'll look into it" was what I heard.

That didn't sound too promising, but thinking help would arrive, I waited. Another try at the intercom generated no answer. Then I moved the bike away from the pumps and went into the store.

Now there are a few things the store operator could have done. He could have said any of these things, which would have been great:

• "Are you OK? Is there a lot of gasoline, do we need to come out with some sand? Is there a fire danger?"
• "Wow, I can see you are upset. Why don't you grab a coffee on me and wait while your bike dries off before you start it up."
• "Hey, that happens sometimes, really sorry. You can't trust these pumps with a small tank. I was just heading out there to throw down some fire retardant."

Instead, I got a little lecture about how it wasn't the fault of the pump, it was my fault. No concern for the people standing around at 11 other pumps while a puddle of gasoline was waiting to do something ugly. And some pretty bad behavior on my part as I realized this guy a) didn't care about me, b) wasn't the least bit worried about a major fire hazard, and c) thought I was wasting his time and upsetting the giant line of people trying to buy a Tim Horton's coffee. There's little doubt that they heard me talking about "risk of fire, and you don't seem to want to do anything about it!"

So who's right here?

If that's the question you asked, you are asking the wrong question. It doesn't generally matter who is right.

Customers do screw up. And you need to help them calm down and fix their problem. And fix your problem, too, if they created one for you.Yup, clean up in Aisle 2. And a little empathy with that mop, too, if you want this person to ever darken your door again.

References:

Sunshine Lollipops and Rainbows, by Lesley Gore.

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