Customer Crossroads

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

Interview with Jonathan Tisch about Reinventing the Customer Experience

This blog tour by Jonathan Tisch has been interesting on a few levels. What a creative idea, for starters. And what a clever publicist to pick up on it.

I knew we'd be up at the end of the tour week, and I thought that things might be getting repetitive by now. So I sent questions that I hoped were different, and might scratch through the polished package that accompanies anyone who occupies a corner office, to say nothing of someone who is also on the speaking circuit.  I don't think we got anything unvarnished, but I think we did get some frank and forthright commentary.  Here's our e-mail Q&A, as conversational as we could make it.

"[It is] challenging for CEOs to balance service versus profits"

Susan Abbott: Jonathan, I first wanted to tell you that I read a paragraph from your book to kick off a recent client working session about customer experience. It was about how everyone in the organization actually needs to think about and be focused on customers. I was happy to hear people repeating this stuff a week later to others.

I only wish it was so easy to get people on board, especially at the top of the organization.   I know some are -- Lafley at P&G of course is a great example. But it seems like the exception, not the rule. Why aren't more executives on board?

Jonathan Tisch: With the focus coming from Wall Street on quarterly earnings for public companies, it becomes a bit challenging for CEOs to balance service versus profits. The enlightened leaders of some companies have figured out that great customer service usually leads to an enhanced bottom line. That is the ultimate challenge – to find ways for your customers to receive the service that they deserve, turn them in to life-long customers, and ensure that they don’t go to the competition should they have a bad experience. 

"What has changed is the business of hotels, not the hotel business"

SA: One of the things that immediately drew me to your book was your genuine understanding of the vulnerability of the traveler who is a guest in your hotel. I spent a few years where I was continually on the road, and it can be a lonely and frustrating place at times.

Still, I recognize that my expectations are very high. But of course this wasn't always the case -- I can't imagine what travel in the 1800s must have been like. It makes me wonder how customer expectations will change in the future. You mentioned the importance of staying on top of emerging trends and the next demographic shift. Could you comment on that? 

JT: What is happening in the lodging industry today relates to the old saying, “the more things change the more they stay the same.” What has changed is the business of hotels, not the hotel business.

Our business has become highly sophisticated with very large, corporate entities becoming players. When you look at the Marriotts, InterContinentals and Hiltons of the world – all with many thousands of properties, at different price points and market niches – you understand that the big are getting bigger and that, through acquisitions and strategic alliances, they have become formidable competition with tremendous offerings.

There has also been a greatly enhanced focus by Wall Street and private equity on the hotel business, so many of the new players are very well capitalized and have extremely bright people as part of their organizations.

That’s the business of hotels.

But what hasn’t changed since the first person checked into a hotel 1,000 years ago, is the hotel business. At its core, our business is based on hospitality and making people feel welcome, comfortable and safe. The companies that continue to thrive are the ones able to skate the line between profitability and hospitality.

Going forward, we will always have new technological advances to deal with. But once again, our industry is extremely biased toward interpersonal and human relations.   

"The companies that thrive are able to skate the line between profitability and hospitality"

SA: You mentioned several instances in the book where staff quite correctly bend the rules to look after a customer. But you also note consistency is critically important -- customers need to know an organization is reliable and dependable.

Is there a tension between customization and consistency? And if so, how does an organization deal with this tension?

JT: If your co-workers are properly educated and trained, then customization and consistency can, indeed, be compatible. That’s the nature of crisis resolution. What I like to discuss with my Loews Hotels co-workers isn’t about the problem necessarily. It’s about the recovery.

With so many options for the consumer, recovery from a problem is paramount because that’s how you keep one of your customers from going to a competitor.

It is a very fine line that has to be taught to, in some cases, entry-level individuals – how to get involved and what opportunities for crisis resolution are available to them. At Loews Hotels we pride ourselves on balancing consistency with customization to provide the level of service our guests have become accustomed to. 

"The CEO cannot be involved in every decision -- nor should they be"

SA: I'd like to ask you about managing a culture of innovation. If we want to harness the creative talents at all levels of an organization, how do we do that? What specifically does the CEO need to do to role model the right approach? Short of writing a book, of course.

JT: The CEO always sets the tone for an organization. Due to corporate hierarchy, it can get a little lonely at the top if there’s not complete buy-in at every level of the organization.

Due to physical and time constraints, the CEO cannot be involved in every decision – nor should they be involved in every decision. It’s extremely important for middle and senior-management to have a very clear understanding of the goals and objectives of the company. In addition, creativity is an important tool that should be harnessed to effectively manage toward these goals. This is something that needs to be taught to all the individuals making decisions.

"The CEO always sets the tone for an organization"

JT: It’s very important to always monitor the touch-points of your organization so that you can see where the customer intersects with your product or service.

As the CEO, there are times when I find myself talking to clients about their experiences, in a sense pleading with them to be honest and candid with me. It really is important for the CEO to hear everything – the good and the bad. Because much of what gets to a CEO on a daily basis is somewhat sanitized by those working for them, I find it important to regularly speak with our guests.

Additionally there are always letters, observations, comments and criticisms that come across the transom. CEOs always need to understand what’s being said about their organization so that they can deal with the situations appropriately.

SA: Thank you, Jonathan. It's not often that a CEO of a major organization lets themselves be interviewed by a blogger. I really appreciate having your executive level perspective on things that my readers and I think about!

JT: Thank you, Susan, for this dialogue! I’ve enjoyed this week immensely. Thank you for welcoming me to your blog.

SA: We talk a lot on this blog about the need to stay close to customers, and the tools that help you do that effectively. I'm wondering what some of your favorite methods are?

Customer Service Carousel Redux

*** Updates are added at the end of this post.

I've been having some problems logging in to my main business bank accounts, as documented earlier.

I have now called the 800 number twice, and have spent a considerable amount of time -- as they requested I do -- documenting what exactly is wrong with their web site. I sent this information exactly as they requested, through a secure internal message site.

They promised

1. to get back to me within 24 hours
2. to e-mail me when their response was posted so I could log in to see it

They appear to have fulfilled promise #1, but I didn't know, since they didn't fulfil promise #2. I found out today that the problem isn't fixed, and it's basically my problem now.  Here's the message they sent me:

Thank you for your feedback. We appreciate the time you have taken to write us.

Please note that the team that answers messages only has limited access to customer accounts and personal information. Although we can assist customers with general inquiries, we are unable to fulfil account servicing or investigation requests.

For further assistance, please call Online Banking support at 1-xxx-xxx-xxxx. If you don't have a Telephone Banking password, at the start of your call press 0 twice to be connected to a representative. Assistance is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If you're calling from abroad, the number is 1-xxx-xxx-xxxx. Collect calls are not accepted.

Thank you for using Online Banking.

Sincerely,

Jane
Internet Communications Specialist

This organization is making more than a billion dollars a year. And they are spending a LOT of money on branding.

This is what I would call a 'customer managed relationship.' If I want the relationship to work, I'm going to have to manage it. And that includes figuring out why their web site is -- you know -- [what's a polite word here???]

Update May 21, 2007.  My e-mail response to feedback has not received a reply. Problem still exists.

Podcast on Customer Experience

Stephanie Weaver is starting a podcast series on customer experience, and kindly invited me to be her first guest, on the topic, "What is the customer experience"?. Listen to our conversation here.  You can also get it from iTunes here.

Some of you will remember Stephanie as the co-creator of the amazing Bathroom Blogfest (tag: ladiesrooms), which we hope to reprise in October 2007.

Defining Customer Experience

Stephanie Weaver has an interesting post defining the inside and outside of customer experience.

"• Inside. First, the experience happens in your customers’ perceptions. It’s seen from their point of view, created by a combination of their feelings, sensations, and prior experiences. Unfortunately, what you intend doesn’t always matter. All that counts is what’s happening inside a customer on the day he or she is at your site. You can’t control this inside dimension. No two customers will ever have the same experience, since everyone has a unique point of view.

• Outside. Second, an experience is made up of many separate pieces outside the customer. That’s your part. The outside dimension begins the instant a person decides to visit, continues throughout his or her time with you, and ends when he or she leaves. You control nearly every aspect of this outside dimension."

I like this approach. We basically agree on the concept, but this is a nice way to put it. Here's my definition, and you can download the graphic model below.

Customer Experience Is... the internal response of an individual to their interactions with an organization's products, people, processes and environments.

Internal response includes the thoughts, feelings and emotions experienced and the rational, psychological and sensory benefits of the experience.

Download ARC-Customer-Experience-Model.pdf

This is civilization: Flying Porter

I'm sitting in an airport lounge that feels a bit different... it's Porter Air, at the Toronto Island Airport. A fellow sitting nearby just said to his buddy, "This is civilization!". And indeed, so far this trip has lacked half the hassle of flying out of Pearson.

[Above: ferry waiting area]

For starters, the lounge is free to everyone. And wireless access is free. There are nice flat-screen computers like the one shown above, and branded water.

The guy beside me -- who has a combat pattern skinned onto his Blackberry -- just finished an espresso. 

You get here via a short ferry trip from downtown. You can pass the short wait by watching the scoters bob and dive for fish. You get to the ferry terminal via a comfortable shuttle bus from the downtown check-in kiosk. And it's a NICE bus. And all the staff are NICE!  They say things like "have a great trip" while giving you a smile.

There are a few mis-steps. I wasn't sure what floor the checkin kiosk was on, so they could have better signage there.  Plus, I just heard Frank Sinatra sing "New York, New York" on the audio for the second time in an hour. And "The Girl from Ipanema" just started. Tape definitely not long enough. But interesting ambiance, and obviously thought through by someone. (Note to self: remember to put the new Sennheiser headphones in briefcase for the next trip)

But the main advantage has to be the ease of access from downtown, and no $50 taxi ride to get to the airport.  I actually came to my first meeting via public transit, and then walked over to the shuttle kiosk. I have to agree: it feels VERY civilized.

I confess I was not in favor of keeping this airport, when it has come up as an issue in municipal politics. And there has been more than enough jiggery-pokery on the funding to keep us taxpayers in a state of rage for years. But as long as this thing is rolling, I plan to give it a try.

Wish List, Continued: Fewer unpleasant surprises

Doing some research for a client a few weeks ago, one of the things people had to say about their service experience was approximately this: 'please make sure I know everything I need to know.'

Consumers often take responsibility for 'not knowing the right questions to ask' -- I've heard this sentiment many times in experience research. They blame themselves for not asking what they should have known to ask... crazy, isn't it? Because that's why you are talking to a representative of the company in the first place. Unless the reps are just order-takers.

It's the feeling that the company rep actually know the pitfalls, but they're not telling you unless you ask a direct question on that topic. It's like some weird game show.

I've had this experience in my business several times recently. There's a whole industry that supports qualitative marketing research, called "field." These are the people who own the facilities, make the phone calls to invite respondents, and manage all the details, like catering. No matter how carefully we try to manage the field costs, the final invoice always seems to have a little surprise. Sometimes several surprises. On a big project, by the end of the thing, it's enough to fund an upgrade in airfare, or a dirty weekend in a country inn.

And because I try not to surprise the clients with a bazillion little nickel and dime charges, these extras invariably come out of my pocket.

Even though I put up a few of the lyrics to one of the funniest songs you'll ever hear -- Master of the House -- I don't really think it's as bad as all that. But there is a reluctance to tell you everything you need to know. People want to win the bid with a low up-front cost. Then they add on everything else as you go along. 

But here's what you need to know: This kind of thing damages loyalty. Period. Full stop.

So tell your customers what they need to know. That's what the very best service operations do, when they provide advice. Full transparency. 

As for myself, one of these days I hope I'll know all the right questions to ask.

Resources:

Lyrics to "Master of the House" by Herbert Kretzmer , part of musical Les Miserables, found here.

Christmas wish list: fix the numbering on your PDF manuals, please!

A regular reader mentioned his frustration with the software manual he just downloaded. It's a 428 page manual, and all the page numbers are wrong.
We both know the problem here, right? The cover has no page number. The first few inside pages have gorpy numbers like i,ii,iii... These are conventions from the world'o'paper.

Most of these user manuals will not be published for users, however -- they are largely going to be used by people reading them online.

Wish #1: Santa, please ask them to number each page for the electronic age, so we can enter a page number in the Adobe reader nav bar, and go to the right spot the first time. Even better, how about navigational links?

Wish #2: Please, Santa, would it be asking too much to have these docs formatted landscape, so you can easily read them on your screen?

Banks Using Podcasts to Connect: First Direct stays on brand with clear communication

First Direct, a UK direct banking organization that is part of the HSBC group, announced that they would be charging customers with dormant accounts a 10 GBP monthly fee. Bravely, they have a podcast  that contains an interview with Chris Pilling, the CEO, explaining what is going on:

This podcast contains key information about the new current account proposition.
  Our Chief Exec, Chris Pilling, talks in detail about exactly what is happening and how it will affect our customers.

It's short, and worth listening to. He comes across as calm and clear, and provides a reasonable explanation of what is going on.  Whether or not you agree with what he's saying, this is such a great approach, to speak directly to your customers about what is going on. Way to go!

When I looked around their home page, you can see that the podcast is totally on brand for these guys: "jargon free service."

A couple of other things that caught my attention:

• imagery that is fun and friendly
• Pet insurance -- pets are big, and getting bigger. Plus they're cute and friendly for a bank to show on its home page
• "Most recommended" -- a much more compelling statement than the usual, "we're great." And it reinforces the customer focus

Customer Experience Coach Tips:

• Translate the core values of the brand into everything you do, including how you handle announcements of service changes and bad news in particular

Service Recovery: apologies and liability

"I'm really sorry this happened"

When things go wrong, our sense of justice cries out for an apology. For reasons of liability, the more wrong something is, the less likely you are to actually get one. This may be changing, at least in some places.

Saskatchewan is the latest jurisdiction to introduce changes to their Evidence Act explicitly to address and remove the liability attached to an apology.

British Columbia, California, and Australia already had something like this in place. We should have this everywhere, so nobody hides behind the fear of unwittingly creating a bigger problem just by saying "I'm sorry".  Very often, this is all people really want -- a sincere apology. Without it, disputes can drag on and leave people feeling dissatisfied and deeply hurt.

People are less likely to sue their doctor over malpractice if they get a sincere personal apology. So it's not just the right thing to do, you can save money, too.

Let's get this going everywhere, and bring a little more humanity back into customer relationships.

References:

'Sorry' not enough for legal liability, Saskatchewan says, Globe & Mail, Nov 17, 2006 (free for 7 days after publication)

Apology a tool to avoid malpractice suits, Boston Globe, Nov. 12, 2004

The Sorry Works! Coalition, an organization promoting the use of appropriate apologies as a way to reduce medical malpractice suits, and increase disclosure in doctor-patient relationships. White papers, research summaries, and other resources

PS - we're not talking here about the popular fake apology, the public relations apology, or anything other than the real deal.   

Don't plant the seeds of doubt

"Good to excellent service must be delivered again and again. As soon as a customer has a bad customer service experience, the seeds of doubt are planted. The probability of the next sale decreases, erasing gains made from previous positive experiences."
        - Carlos Mora

This is so, so true. You are only as good as the last experience. You may have been heroes for years, but any deviation is seen as a new and negative trend, not an aberration.

And it might not even have been your organization that let someone down. It might have been another company in your category, but the customer thinks you are all the same.

The fundamental difference between a service experience and a product experience is the tremendous difficulty of delivering consistency. Don't let anybody tell you it's easy -- it's not. But you have to keep at it. The gardens of customer experience take a long time to cultivate, but they are always fragile.

Here's article link: "Customer Service as Marketing through Statistical Modeling" by Carlos Mora, DM Direct Nov 14, 2006.  Thanks to Emma Warrilow.

Responsive service: how fast, how personalized?

Like it or not, our customers compare us on many dimensions across categories, not within categories. I think this is particularly true with things like contact centres where you speak to an agent, and online "contact us" kinds of help.

The new standard for B2B: act on feedback immediately

I'm experiencing some exceptionally responsive service right now from a technology company, and it got me thinking. FocusForums has kindly loaned me the use of their platform to use in a student project I'm handling right now, which will culminate in an afternoon seminar for some post-grad research students. They asked if I would take some notes on my experience with their application and share any feedback that they could use to improve navigation or functionality. So I've been capturing stream-of-consciousness notes and e-mailing them every day.

Note that this is not a new business -- they've been steadily improving this application for four or five years or more.

The incredible thing is that they started responding to my feedback immediately. They didn't say, "thanks, we'll put that into the hopper for the next development cycle". They said, in effect, "let's get somebody on this", and they have already made several improvements to navigation. WOW.

Let me just emphasize one more thing here. I'm not their customer yet. I think they would like me to be a customer, but right now, I'm just a prospect.

The new standard for B2C: respond like you mean it, and be quick

Here's a few examples of excellence in the B2C world.

The Ask-Us button:

I recently sent an e-mail question to the "ask us" address at a not-for-profit centre of excellence associated with a university. I thought I might never hear back, or might get a pre-loaded response. Nope. The next day, I had a personal, detailed response with links to additional helpful resources.

The Help ticket:

Typepad, the folks that provide this platform, invariably respond to help tickets the same day. A personalized response. With a name. Recently, I sent them a request for a feature. They asked for clarification. I provided it. And they said, "I will certainly pass this feedback along, it's a great idea." This all happened in the space of a single day.

The help forum:

Not all web 2.0 tech companies can pull this off, apparently. I use Feedburner statistics. I use the paid version, theoretically "premium".  The statistics jump around a lot, sometimes as much as 30% in a day. I have posted queries on their user forums. I finally sent them an e-mail one day. Their form letter e-mail told me to go look at the forum topic. Not personalized. And not very helpful. Most of it in geek-speak. You're a blogger, therefore you must be a geek, right? If not, you probably shouldn't play with these toys, you might hurt somebody.

Palm also has a help forum, filled with issues from users with problems. Here's one from October 31, with no answer yet. At least Feedburner monitors their forum and posts responses. Palm doesn't seem to see a need to do this.

The whole existence of a huge forum with problems and titles like "Known Workarounds" or "phpBB 2 Issues" just tells you what you need to know, doesn't it? What kind of a product or service generates tens of thousands of user problems, and then doesn't fix them?

More importantly, where is your organization on this spectrum?

Place & Process in the Ladies Room: Bathroom Blogfest Continues

Let's look at the typical public bathroom from a customer experience standpoint. Our focus is place and process, two dimensions that are inseparable here, because the design of the bathroom largely determines the process. There are a number of design issues in the bathroom, as we'll see in a moment.

Location: where IS the bathroom?

Can you find it? Why do we always have to ask where the heck the bathroom is?  Is it possible developers don't ever have to go? Or did they all go before they left home, just like mom said to do? Or maybe they never had a kid in their hand that was saying, "Daddy, I have to go now!"

Store employees report that they are frequently asked where the bathroom is, because mall signage is ambiguous. Nancy Lueck of Bloomingdale's in Stanford Shopping Center, quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle, says, "If you are standing in the store as an employee, the first question you always get asked is where are the rest rooms."

One of my favorite worst examples of poor location and signage is the ladiesroom in Scotia Plaza's food court.

Scotia Plaza is a triple A office tower with an underground shopping complex in the high rent financial district. They may have the most expensive square footage in the city. As you can see from the food court picture, it has luxe finishes everywhere, and there's even a concierge for tenants.

But if you can find the signage for the bathrooms, you will then have to walk through two fire doors, and wind your way through the bowels of the building to find the public washrooms.You leave the public space and enter the industrial corridor. Perhaps this was intentional, but I avoid their food court for this reason.

In general, the bathroom is removed from the official public space. In another food court across the street at Commerce Court, you also go into the service corridor to use the bathroom. Most malls are set up this way as well. Makes no sense to me at all.

Let's go inside

Here's a typical layout for a public ladies room. Three stalls, parallel to three sinks, each with a mirror. One of the stalls is wider for handicapped access.

Soap dispensers are sometimes provided for each sink, but sometimes, inexplicably, there is one for a whole group of sinks, and you need to walk to it.

As Heather S. recently pointed out to me, most soap dispensers cannot be used by someone without two hands free. You need one hand to press the dispenser, and the other to catch the soap if you don't want to scrape it out of the sink:

"I’ve seen handicapped people struggle with them and helped them out.  And, yes, it’s been me with a briefcase and a purse and a coat…but, at least I have the option to put on my coat, or put down my purse/briefcase."

Of course, there is no official place to put down your coat or briefcase once you are outside the stall.  You have to hold them, or put them down between two sinks, or on a floor that is likely wet. But there's not enough space between the sinks, and it's usually wet there too. It's wet because the towel dispenser is a long ways off, and so is the dryer.

The design in use

Here's my concept of what this design looks like in use. There aren't enough stalls to keep up with normal traffic flow, such as over lunch at the food court. So the line-up goes out into the hall.

At the theatre, there's a race to the ladies room in order to get in and out before curtain call, and people are literally pushing to get in ahead of the crowd. Really takes the edge off that expensive ticket, doesn't it?

Once the line-up starts, of course, the frustration of the space only gets worse. You can't get to either the towel holder or the hand-dryer without bumping into people.

Where does the stroller go?

Even though there are lots of moms at the mall with strollers, there is no accommodation for a stroller.

At newer airports, a curved entrance with no door is often used now, to make it easy for people to come and go with their hands full, wheeling, pushing and hauling all their stuff. I guess we're not supposed to have bags of stuff in the mall. But wait... we're shopping, right?

It might also be nice to have a place to hang all those bags while you wash your hands. So here's the thing -- whether a woman is in the mall or in a downtown food-court, she has stuff in her hands. A purse for sure, perhaps a briefcase, maybe a coat, maybe an umbrella, maybe a shopping bag, and maybe a child's hand.

Don't try to change behavior - plan for it

Women want to refresh their makeup at the mirror. We are not going to stop doing that anytime soon. And young women need a LOT of time for this activity, checking and re-checking hair, makeup, breath, and precise location of the yoga pants on the hip.

If the only mirrors are in front of the sink, there will be a crush while some try to wash their hands, and the rest primp. A more reasonable plan would be to put the mirrors off to the side, as a some better ladiesrooms do.

Maintenance

Part of the rationale for only one paper-towel dispenser located far from the sinks is likely the reduced maintenance. But I know of a couple of public washrooms that have an attendant wiping up almost full-time because of all the water dripping from everyone's hands. How does this make sense?

At a ladies locker room I recall a redesign that put jars of pot-pourri on the counters. Looked nice for the first week after the redesign. After that, they gathered dust. A year later, they were starting to look pretty disgusting. There was no maintenance plan.

Major overhaul needed

Kathryn Anthony, professor of architecture at University of Illinois thinks it's time for a change:

“Although we are all forced to use them whenever we’re away from home, many of today’s public restrooms raise a host of problems for women as well as men, adults as well as children.... It is now time for architects, facilities managers and building code officials to revisit public restrooms – and they need a major overhaul.

“Like it or not, most of us use public restrooms every day. Consequently, even the slightest improvements to this part of our built environment can have a tremendous positive impact on all segments of our population.”

References and Resources

A summary of Kathryn Anthony's article is here. In it, she highlights the challenge of changing demographics and the problem of opposite-sex caregivers who can't accompany an opposite sex person into a public bathroom. This means standing outside worrying about whether grandfather is okay or has he fallen?   

The American Restroom Association is a not-for-profit organization that is lobbying for changes to public restrooms to improve accessibility and increase privacy.

The World Toilet Expo 2006 will be held in Bangkok Nov 16-18. These folks are concerned with sanitation on a global scale.

The World Toilet Organization has a number of articles on their site of interest, such as this one, that identifies lack of bathroom privacy as a major issue for people. Ikea apparently surveyed home workers, and discovered this was one of the reasons people like working at home. I also learned that some Japanese bathrooms have noisemakers you can push to provide covering sounds and increase privacy. There is also a game, called Urgent, that lets you design a 3D public washroom. It's a bit slow to load, but looked like it could be interesting.

Stephanie Weaver has a great post on design issues in the bathroom, with a picture of a sink designed at kid height. This is so obvious, isn't it? Why aren't there more of these?

Integrated Customer Experience Applied to the Bathroom

When you are trying to build a branded customer experience, you have some very specific operational levers you can use as a manager.** When I start to think about a client's situation, I systematically work through all of the operational dimensions to make sure we consider everything. So let's do this together with the ladies room, and see what we learn.

Product

Doesn't really seem to apply to the ladiesroom, as we are assuming that the basic functionality exists. If your ladiesroom is missing the basic functionality expected, you're wasting your effort on anything else.

The term product can open debates about what it is you are actually selling. My solution is this: it's the literal answer a customer would give if you asked them what they are buying.  So Disney may be selling "happy memories", but if you ask people what they just paid for, they will likely say "admission to Disneyland". A bank may be selling "financial security", but people say they are paying for "a chequing account". It's a way of distinguishing product features and benefits from other elements of customer experience.

People

Unless you have employees holding hand-towels in your public washrooms, this isn't about your employees, their roles and their behavior. Except that you might train them how to give directions to the ladiesroom discreetly. You need to have standards for the cleaners. And some approach to the bathroom key if you are going to make people ask for a key.

Price

When I was growing up, the bathrooms in department stores cost 10 cents to use, so my Mom and I shared. [Thank goodness those days are mostly over.] So price isn't really a lever with the ladies room, because we are going to assume you don't charge for it directly. However, your customers will expect all of your facilities to "match". Best Western's facilties can be less luxurious than Hilton's, but need to be better than Motel 6. This is why we talk about "integrated customer experience" - it all needs to fit together.

Communications

Your marketing communications probably don't need to reference the ladies room. But...consider the tremendous word of mouth McDonald's has had over the years for their bathrooms, which are almost always amply proportioned, fitted out with baby changing tables, and reasonably clean. It's a part of their brand promise, isn't it? And in their early days, this was a point of differentiation from the local greasy spoon. Now it's the minimum we expect, especially from a national franchise. If you are ever in doubt as to the minimum standards for a public bathroom, check out the McDonald's in your area, because they have defined the line. If you are below this standard, most people are going to think you're cheap or uncaring.

McD's also seems to take the viewpoint that we are all their customer -- which we pretty much are -- therefore don't worry about people coming in just to use your washroom. There are McD's that police their washrooms for non-customers, but they are infrequent, and are usually in troubled neighborhoods.

So we owe a debt of gratitude to McDonald's for raising the bar on bathrooms in the past.

Place & Process

These are the two dimensions left, and they are intimately linked in the ladiesroom. Because the place determines the process. So let's look next at the two P's that relate to the ladiesroom.

There's a lot to say about that, and we'll be saying it in the next post.

References, Resources, and more about the Bathroom Blogfest:

** Six rings of value: We call them the six rings of value, because they all link together to create an experience. There's a nice graphic here.

McDonald's: an improv group put a tuxedoed bathroom attendant in the Times Square McDonald's, and handed out free amenities like combs and cologne, explaining it was a head office promotion. People seemed to accept this at face value. Read the amazing story and see the pics here.

The bathroom can be a restroom, a place of restorative calm. Reshma Anand tells why she loves the bathrooms at the Taj Mahal hotel. CB Whittemore provides examples of the bathroom as work of art. These are differentiated bathrooms, memorable bathrooms, bathrooms that show imagination and pride of ownership.

The bathroom is clearly a place of secrets. Sara posts pictures about handwashing, and statistics about who does and doesn't wash their hands, including Sara herself.  Maria Palma reveals that she is uncomfortable in bathrooms, and amuses herself by studying shoes.

It's all happening at the loo

The ladies have had it and we're going on a quest to clean up the ladiesrooms of the world. What started as a casual conversation between Stephanie Weaver and I has quickly turned into the Bathroom Blogfest.

During the week of October 30, we'll be plunging into the ladies room and posting on the customer experience. Does it matter to your customers? And if it does, how does yours stack up? What's the good, bad and ugly of the ladiesroom experience?  If someone hired us to fix this horror-show, what would we all suggest be done? Tune in to these fine blogs Hallowe'en week (and isn't that fitting?) to get the nitty gritty on the ladiesroom:

• Experiencology
• Church of the Customer
• Flooring the Consumer
• What I do for a living
• the curious shopper
• Customers Are Always
• Fast Company Now

We were pretty chuffed when Linda Tischler (Fast Company) and Jackie Huba (Church of the Customer) agreed to scrub in. And Reshma Anand (What I do for a living) will be giving her thoughtful perspective from Bangalore. But there's still room in the cubicle if you want to squeeze in.

And if you have ideas, comments, pet peeves, and even better - PICTURES -- of the best and the worst, please send me a note. 

Power dynamics in customer relationships

This is a story about your relationship with your customers, although it may not seem like it at first. Walk with me for a bit ...

I went back to my hometown this summer, a place I hadn't been in many years. My high school, when I went back to look at it, seemed surprisingly benign, although they've made the windows smaller, so I may be mistaken about that.

How I got kicked out of Latin class

Wandering around town spotting the landmarks of my youth, I could not for the life of me remember why I had to take Grade 12 math in summer school one year, riding my bike across town every day with the morning traffic. This morning, at about 5:40 a.m., the pieces fell into place for me, and I woke up remembering. I had been kicked out of Latin class, and was thereby was missing a credit needed to get into university.  (This is what our brains are up to when we aren't paying attention.)

Here's what happened.  Bored and restless in Latin class, I started writing a letter to my best friend. Miss H grabbed the letter and started to read it in class. Horrified at this prospect, I grabbed it back. The net result is that I got kicked out, but not before being yelled at -- literally -- by several people. It was a horrible experience, and I'm glad I forgot about it for a few decades.

This morning, I thought about Miss H, the young and pretty Latin teacher. She probably didn't have a lot of tools in her student management kit. But she went straight to the big guns of humiliation when she felt threatened. She didn't even try to just say: "Put the letter away and pay attention". She did not understand herself to be in a position of significant power relative to her students. But she wanted victory, and she wanted it definitive. And when things escalated, so did everyone else.

You have power over your customers

Think about how similar the power dynamics of the classroom are to the situation of a customer with a problem. Perhaps they couldn't get the car loan because their credit was bad, and you had to tell them. Perhaps they overspent on downloads with their phone, and didn't understand it would cost a fortune. Maybe they can't get your backup software working, and just fried their data.

Whatever it is, the more difficult the situation becomes, the more the big organization has a tendency to get up on its hind legs and start hitting. Saying things like "you can't speak to our agents this way", and "don't use that tone of voice", or the familiar "no one else has had this problem". Eventually, you might even say, "so if you don't like it, sue us".

But when you think about it, the customer is just one little person, and you, on the other hand, are a gazillion dollar enterprise. You hold almost all the cards.

How customers get justice

Customers don't hold very many cards at all. They can leave -- but that's not too satisfying if you already fired them in some sense. They can complain, but that takes time, and they may not believe there is much chance of effecting an improvement in their situation. In fact, they may be so distressed at this point that they can't cope with your organization any more. Their last option is to say bad things about you.

And that is how customers even the score. They tell everyone over a long period of time how negatively they view your organization.

What to do when things go off the rails and badly

1. Remember that it's not personal for you, it's personal for the customer. They don't even know you. You are not the target.
2. Remember how much power you wield on behalf of the organization, even if you feel powerless, and don't even think about using it. After all, from their perspective, things are already going horribly wrong. Don't add fuel to the fire.
3. Be gentle. Be gracious. Take a breath. Tell everyone to take a breath. Get everyone a glass of water and a chair.
4. Recognize that few of us respond well to tremendous stress and frustration. Not them, and not you. Make allowances for them, even if they won't make them for you. (Because it's not about you, it's about the organization)
5. Never forget that the most loyal customers in the world are people who had a problem and had it solved. This is your opportunity to make that happen.
6. And of course, if there's anything I learned from Latin class it's this: semper ubi sub ubi*

*always wear under wear 

McDonald's McChronicles: Brand Loyalty in Action

There's a McDonald's in Rosemont Illinois, that has the current era version of a jukebox available to customers.  Plus, it's apparently the cleanest McD anyone has ever seen. This all according to McChronicles, a blog about McDonald's written from the customer viewpoint. 

These folks clearly love McDonald's, and are horror-stricken when standards fall.  Witness this post about people pawing through the straw dispenser.  There's also some thoughtful commentary about the vegetarian option (are these McChroniclers really qual researchers in disguise??) and what it takes to change customer perceptions.

I did not know that McD has a corporate blog related to social responsibility, but I found out at McChronicles.

And I was not aware of McD's standing offer to give them feedback, which is here. And unlike most of these forms, this one makes sense, and provides a great big space for commentary, as well as not asking you to classify your feedback or other irritating stuff.  Just tell us who you are and what you want to tell us.

Turns out that McD's is now offering an Arch card, a reloadable store payment card. That's the arch card up there in the picture. And what a good idea that is, even if it did take a while.

Continued browsing turned up a list of other McDonald's fanatics, like McKroes McPictures Blog where you can see pictures of McD's all over the world, and McDone Media, which posts news and photos of McD's around the world.

Now that's a brand. And whatever you may think about McDonald's recent history or future prospects, you have to admire the power in that kind of customer connection.

References:

Tip of the hat to Glenn Ross at www.allbusiness.com for the lead

More on Consumer Confidence: What a surprise when things work the first time

Why your customers are putting off buying stuff they want and can afford

I have new evidence for my latest hypothesis, that people put off buying goods and services they want because they are expecting a hassle.  They are expecting uncertainty, delays, and distress. They are actually surprised when this doesn't happen.

Here's my proof, for which I need to tell you a mother story. A real one, about my own cool mom, who probably would prefer that I not reveal what decade she was born in, let alone her actual age.

She's had a few computers over the years, and been through the pain of installation and upgrades. She's dealt with viruses and hard-drive crashes. She pays her bills online, and monitors and trades her stocks online, and has done all this for quite a few years. She e-mails digital photos of her hiking trips. In short, not a Luddite.

Surprise, it works!

What my mom did not have, until yesterday, was high-speed internet access. She wanted it. She's wanted it for a long time, actually.  But to get high speed, she had to switch ISPs, and convert to a cable hookup. And she was expecting that switch, and the house-call to install the cable, both to be a big headache. 

When it wasn't a big hassle, she was genuinely surprised.

Shocking to think that people put off buying your service even though they want it. Revenue forever lost, because someone expected the customer experience to be painful.

Integrate for your customers and win their hearts

C.B. Whittemore at her rather unusual business blog, tells the story of her mother shopping for carpet. It's the usual horror show, told in three installments, with confusion, too much choice, things going wrong, no one explaining, mom getting frustrated....

Among the things that happened to C.B.'s mom, (who I have to think is beyond the age where you want to hump furniture around by yourself), was being asked to move her own furniture. She wasn't told she could keep the waste carpet. She wasn't told a lot of things, in fact. I guess she was just supposed to know.

Are you relying on your customer to keep track of everything?
The thing that really struck me about this story was that the customer had to do the work of integrating that the company had not bothered to organize. In fact, the company was relying on her to know what was going on.

I think consumers/customers have come to expect this kind of headache, and it stops them from buying some kinds of things that they might otherwise do e.g. new flooring, new kitchen -- anything that might be complex to organize.  Because we know no one will really help us, and if things go wrong, we are on our own.

Consumer Confidence

When economists talk about consumer confidence, they don't mention this, do they? That we are confident that things will go wrong, confident that the delivery will be late, confident that the installers will have muddy feet or whatever. Confident that the hassle may well outweigh the good times.

You have to live with everyone's reputation for service, not just your own

If you are in a customer experience kind of a business, it's not just your own reputation you have to deal with, unfortunately, it is the reputation of everyone who has let your customer down in the past.  Your experience might be flawless, but they don't know that yet.  You have to overcome their bad memories of those other banks, other contractors, and other carpet retailers. 

Testimonials, service standards, guarantees, etc.
Overcoming other people's bad behavior is one reason testimonials are effective. It's not just you saying, "we're different" -- it's your customer saying that.

Service standards also help here, especially when you make them public, so people can hold you accountable. Money-back guarantees used to accomplish this, before people started hedging on the guarantee commitment by asking you to return the thing in the original box, and similar nonsense.

References:

Here's the link to the story, Endless Frustrations [and what an apt title!]

C.B'.s blog is about floor coverings, and marketing to women.  I just love her title, which is Director, In-Store Innovation.  Maybe you should give that title to someone in your organization and see what happens.

Personalization & Co-creation Trend: HP's its personal campaign

HP's new campaign, it's personal, is letting me create my own little video ad.  You can see it here:

Or you can go make your own.
 

HP has tapped into something important here with the notion of "it's personal". Our computers are extensions of our hands and our brains, more and more. Losing a hard drive is now worse than losing your wallet. When you can't use your computer, it feels very difficult to be productive. Amazing how this has happened so quickly.

Apparently some of HP's enterprise customers are exercised about the new campaign, because they have been telling their employees that the computers are not personal, are in fact company equipment, and should not be shared with kids or used to download music, edit personal pictures, etc. Someone needs to tell these companies that they crossed the work-personal boundary first, by expecting employees to be available anytime, anywhere.

The personalization trend we have spoken about here before is more than just acknowledging this, however, it is giving people the ability to have their own preferences met. This seems like a good start. Is HP thinking about customers the way Apple does? We can only hope.

Prospects versus customers: marketing and the user manual

More compelling insights from Kathy Sierra (via Seth Godin) in her blog post "Why marketing should make the user manuals". Heck, you don't even have to read the story, just look at the picture and you'll get the point. 

Even stand-outs in the experience management realm mess this up.  Just compare the Ikea catalog to their self-assembly instructions.  The catalog is appealing, glossy, full of photos, and uses diagrams only when they are actually clearer and better for communicating.  The self-assembly instructions are clearly not part of marketing, they are part of low-cost manufacturing. 

If you think about how much of your business comes from repeat customers or referral customers, you might want to think about changing your approach.

Using the Power of AND to Innovate: BBQ It Yourself Restaurant Concept

I went bicycling on Pelee Island earlier this summer, a bucolic place in Lake Erie that takes 90 minutes or so to reach by ferry. A great place to get away from it all; it's so quiet it's hard to find a newspaper. And home to one of the most innovative and fun dining concepts I have seen. 

The island is well suited to growing grapes, and Pelee Island Winery has a large number of vineyards there, as well as a wine pavillion. 

This place has a very small permanent population -- something like 175 people.  And the visitor traffic seems to be mainly cottagers.

Most wineries seem to have some kind of dining operation, so you can enjoy some of the wine with food.  But given the small population, Pelee needed to be clever about this.

So they created a self-BBQ operation.  You buy your meat (beef, venison or buffalo burger, chicken, sausage or vegetarian) frozen at the Deli-Hut. (And a small selection of salads, etc.) Then you barbecue it yourself at the free barbecues provided. 

After you've finished grilling, you can enjoy your meal at one of the picnic tables overlooking the vineyards.  With a glass of wine, of course!

What's even better is that they make the picnic area available to anyone without charge.  (There is a small charge to use the BBQs if you don't buy your meat from them.)  So regulars on the island tend to frequent the place as a great picnic spot.

Using the power of AND to innovate
I imagine that during their planning process, they wondered, "how can we give people a reasonable food experience with some wine AND very low overheads AND low operating costs AND that doesn't rely on having access to trained serving staff?"

• The winery gives its guests a good food experience with very limited overhead.
• They build goodwill in the community at the same time. 
• All those people who come to picnic regularly have a great opportunity to drop in and buy wine while they are there.
• They aren't competing with any of the other local dining establishments, all of whom serve Pelee Island wines.

This was a totally fun thing to do after a couple of hours of cycling, and I highly recommend you try it if you are ever there.  And a really wonderful example of innovation in creating a good customer experience.

Convenience Rules

On my travels this summer, I happened upon the unofficial Heinz museum, housed in a public art gallery in Leamington, Ontario, longtime home of a large Heinz plant. 

These "2 minute soup" machines caught my attention.  There wasn't a lot of information, so I'm a bit fuzzy on how they worked. They were still a good reminder that convenience has been on consumers minds for a very long time. 

Campbell's Soup At Hand seems to be addressing the same desire.

Self-heating cans have also been used, most recently by Wolfgang Puck for a self-heating latte. (NY Times article here, free subscription required).  Nestle used to have a self-heating coffee product in the UK, but it apparently has been taken off the market.

OnTech is the leading can provider, although the underlying concept has apparently been used in the military for many years. OnTech kindly provides a summary of their marketing research here and here although they don't appear to have a lot of customers, other than Hillside (an affiliated business?)

Our take:

We want convenience, but it doesn't always trump other considerations, such as taste and price.  A self-heating can is probably heavy, and you still have to plan ahead enough to take the can with you.  Plus, there's enviro-guilt to deal with when you dispose of the can. I'm guessing that these are some of the reasons that self-heating cans have yet to take off, while microwaveable soup in an insulated container is doing just fine.

On the other hand, as emergency supplies for hurricane season (as the PalmBeachPost suggests) price may be less of a consideration, and a self-heating cup of coffee could be just the thing.

Seth Godin on Broken Stuff: 20 minutes and several good laughs

Having trouble getting motivated when the sun is shining?  Give yourself a 20 minute refreshment break and watch Seth Godin at the GEL conference, talking about experiences that are broken, and enjoy some laugh-out-loud funny stuff. [And get a chance to see Google video in action, if you haven't already]

The best take-away from this:  if your customer says it's broken, it's broken.
If some poor customer takes the time to actually tell you something's broken, try not to argue with them. They are very likely speaking for lots of other people that couldn't be bothered wasting their time to tell you it's broken.

And this week, make it your job to fix just one broken thing, no matter how small.  Bonus points if you empower someone else to fix some broken stuff.

In my personal calendar, we are coming up to the end of the psychological year.  September is always the first month of the new year if you started school in September. 

So end the year right, and fix a few broken things. 

Validate Your Customers

Have you ever had a choice to make and when you finally decided, still felt some doubt?  This is very human, and has been studied.  In fact, the more options you had to choose from, the less likely you are to be satisfied with the choice you ultimately make. 

One of the earmarks of a good customer experience is validation for your choice. Let me give you a good example, and one that didn't quite hit the mark.

A good example
I've been looking for a folding chair where I can put my feet up.  We used to call these a chaise lounge, but now they don't fold, weigh a ton, cost a lot, and take up a lot of room on the deck.  I wanted the old fashioned kind.  After ages of looking, I finally found one in the camping section of Wal-Mart. At the checkout, the clerk said "My friend has one of those chairs, and they're great!".  I instantly felt validated in my decision.

Not so good
In a good bistro recently, I asked about the Pad Thai... would the server recommend it? The server assured me it was excellent.  After I ordered, he said, "Guess what the main ingredient is, in Pad Thai  sauce?" I was trying to think of tamarind, but persimmon was what came out.  "No", he said, "It's ketchup".  It was an awkward moment.  I didn't change my order, but wished I had.  My dining companions were horrified.  In trying to be friendly, the server had botched the validation thing, and pretty much took the fun out of the meal.  Why, oh why hadn't I ordered the lamb curry like everyone else???

Why is validation important?

Being overwhelmed with choice is not the only thing we are working with here.  We are also working with the Peak-End rule, initially hypothesized by the great Daniel Kahneman.  We judge an experience in memory by the peak (either high or low) and the end. 

This is why we have the saying, "you're only as good as your last [...]"  We know that the last part of any experience is the part by which we will be evaluated.  The last muffin or hamburger.  The last encounter. We know this, even though we aren't as clever as Daniel. 

So why let your customer leave the experience feeling uncertain or doubtful?  Tell them what a good decision they made.  Give them a little validation.  You'll both benefit.

References:
For a good explanation of Daniel Kahneman's Peak End Rule, check out this Wikipedia entry.

For an excellent book on the science of making choices, check out The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, by Barry Schwartz.

Technorati Tags: peak end rule, kahneman, validation, customer experience

Dear Mr. Sabia: Why Won't the Vacation Message Work?

Dear Mr. Sabia*:

My business has been a Bell Customer since inception, and we currently use your high-speed internet service as well as multiple business phone services. I have been a loyal supporter in the past, but it seems that nothing is easy with your company, and the user experience continues to deteriorate.

The main reason I am writing to you now is because it is the only way I can be sure someone will actually pay attention to this complaint.

Please indulge me as I tell you about the latest installment, as I try to set up a simple vacation auto-respond message.

Yesterday, I spent time trying to get a vacation message set up on webmail, but it would not work. I did check online help and FAQs, with no obvious reason for the problem.

Today, I spent an hour on the telephone with one of your service representatives (from 10:00 am to 10:12 am on musical hold, and thereafter until 10:54 with Vladimir). 

The problem is this: I have e-mail addresses that are at domains not hosted by Bell, such as my company domain, abbottresearch.com. Any mail that is originally sent to another domain will not receive an auto-respond message, regardless of the fact that it is visible in my in-basket on webmail.  This information is not in your FAQ.

Mr. Sabia, I know your time is valuable, but so is mine. Please ask your engineers to 1) make your webmail functionality less parochial and 2) immediately amend your FAQ on this issue to make it clear to customers that your service does not work with any address that isn’t a Bell domain. How hard can this be?

Your technician’s recommendation is that I seek a solution from my web host. And you can be sure I will be seeking a solution. Because this is not an isolated incident. Here are a few of the other problems I have had in the past year with your company:

· Difficulty setting your account numbers up on electronic payment functions so I can pay my bills online. You should really give people a prize if they can figure out which number on your bill is the actual electronic billing number. 

· Finding out that I cannot get cell-phone coverage in Jamaica, where one of my clients is. Your competitors don’t seem to have this problem

· Finding almost anything on your web site.  I thought about trying to consolidate my bills, but this is something that requires more than an MBA to master, and was too complex for me

· Taking the time to set up online bill information access, and finding out that a) it is really designed for people with advanced engineering skills and b) you can’t get the information any faster anyway, so it’s not that useful for a small company

· Constant phone calls from people who purport to be enquiring about service but actually want to sell me something.  The most recent one wanted me to lock in for several years in order to get a discount.  There is no discount that would make me want three more years of this

Mr. Sabia, I urge you to cash in your options while there is still time, because the future of this organization is in serious doubt.

Yours truly,

Susan Abbott

PS I invite you to put the word “complaint” into your own online search engines and see what happens.

*CEO of Bell Canada

Technorati Tags: bell canada, how to complain, customer experience

Customer Power: The Cluetrain is Pulling in Again

When Cluetrain Manifesto first highlighted the power shift from companies to consumers in 1999 we all waited and hoped for change.

But very few executives actually sat up and took notice.  If anything, the drive for ever greater efficiencies has led to significant decreases in service levels when things go wrong. But the shift in power to consumers has not stopped; indeed the train is picking up speed all the time. Two recent news events illustrate this brilliantly.

Viral marketing meets customer service: the video

A Comcast Technician Sleeping on My Couch is a video that a customer uploaded to YouTube that documents the hour spent by a technician on hold at a customer's home, calling in for support, finally falling asleep. Comcast may not have been trying for viral marketing, but they got it anyway, with 600,000 people having now viewed the video, to say nothing of the related media coverage. The brief video is a must-watch.

Viral marketing meets customer service: the audio

After years of hearing "this call may be recorded for quality control purposes", customers have taken the hint and are also playing the quality control game.  AOL, notorious for the hassle they give to customers who try to cancel, has had one of their cancellation calls recorded and made public via the Insignificant Thoughts blog.

During the four minute recording, the service rep argues, stalls, asks to speak to the customer's father (!) and indicates the customer is being difficult to get along with, as well as insisting that he be allowed to read verbatim from a lengthy script rather than just act on the customer's clear direction to cancel his account.

AOL spokesman Nicholas J Graham told the New York Times

"By my count, he used the word 'cancel' 21 times," said Nicholas J. Graham, an AOL vice president and spokesman. "That's not counting the I-don't-need-it's, I-don't-want-it's and I-don't-use-it's. Add the other inferences, it's probably closer to 30."

One unhappy customer tells...

You've probably heard that one unhappy customer tells ten others.  This is clearly no longer accurate.
When customers are dissatisfied, they have always done one of three things:

1. complain
2. leave
3. get even

Complaining may not get you very far with a service organization like AOL's.  Leaving (if they'll let you) doesn't provide much sense of justice.  Getting even is now a rich and readily accessible experience.  Customers no longer care what the root cause of the problem is.  They want a reasonable standard of service and if they don't get it, they're prepared to go public.

Don't say you weren't warned.

References

Randall Stross, New York Times, "AOL Said, 'If You Leave Me I'll Do Something Crazy'", July 2, 2006

American Customer Satisfaction Index.  Comcast scored 60 for Cable and Satellite TV, and 69 for Fixed Line Telephone in Q1 2006. AOL Time Warner was last scored in Q2 2005, at 71. 

Christopher Locke, Levine, Searls, Weinberger, Cluetrain Manifesto, 2000   (Or read it here for free, at the Cluetrain site)

J.G. Blodgett, Granbois, Walters. (1993) The effects of perceived justice on complainants’ negative word-of-mouth behavior and repatronage intentions. Journal of Retailing.

J. Goodman, J. (1999) Basic Facts on Customer Complaint Behavior and the Impact of Service on the Bottom Line. Competitive Advantage. Research conducted by TARP.

On how to get your customers to change their behavior

Behavior change is not easy.  Just ask anyone who's ever tried to diet, stop smoking, stop drinking, exercise more or stay on top of their to-do list.  That's why we have 12 step programs, personal coaches, and the whole self-help industry.
So if you really want to doom your new product to failure, introduce something that requires a real change in behavior.  It may work, provided it solves a BIG problem for your customers.  Even that takes time.
Look at the 10 year plus adoption cycle for ATM machines.   
Our take:
Leverage existing behavior patterns wherever you can. You'll add years to your life.

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Get Cooking: Recipes by Phone, etc.

Working moms still want to have it all, and smart business people are trying to help them. And home cooked meals appears to be a big part of the picture.

Wireless Recipe Alerts Solve Dinner-Time Desperation Problem

One innovative idea I saw recently was a women's magazine that will send recipe ideas to your cell-phone via SMS text messaging.  If you like the sounds of say... enchilada pie ... just enter the code for the ingredients. After you get home, log in to the web site for the full recipe.

Not sure what you're going to serve for dinner tonight? No problem! Get great dinner ideas – and ingredient lists to go with them – sent straight to your cellphone. Once you've registered for the program, you'll automatically receive three text-message alerts a week (click here to learn more about text messaging) suggesting quick and tasty dinner ideas.

This just works on so many great levels:

1. It solves a real problem for a harried parent experiencing mealtime panic
2. It gets you in touch with the customer several times a week
3. Once they get to your web site, they pay for the service by casting their eyes over the paid advertising

I also loved that they explained text messaging in simple terms, and also tell you how much it will cost. See the site here.

Home Cooking in an Industrial Kitchen

Dream Dinners was the first of this new breed of service / retail concept: make a bunch of home cooked meals in a really big kitchen where you can do it quickly, stuff them in your home freezer, and voila -- fast and easy home cooking.

Whatever the merits of this approach from a time, cost or nutritional standpoint, the look of the website (above and top) says volumes about why this concept works. The little notes look like something from another generation, that had fountain-pen written recipe cards where the ink was smudged by little hands helping mom in the kitchen. It's loaded with emotion, reinforced by a simple design that evokes a (probably mythical) simpler time.

I can't imagine that this concept appeals to people who really like to cook. It's all about wanting to give your family home cooking, but not actually doing the home cooking. Or doing it much, much faster, without any of the chopping or cleaning up. But you can say you made it yourself.  And the recipes reinforce this, with titles like "Mom's Macaroni and Beef".

You might actually get better taste with Lean Cuisine, but there's no emotional satisfaction in that, is there?

Technorati Tags: dream dinners, wireless recipes, customer connections

Customer Experience of Business Travel: the Airport

Although they are an essential and pervasive element of the customer experience, airports are institutional and bureaucratic at best, and struggle to address the customer experience in a meaningful way. 

Customer Experience of Waiting: Chairs

Let's consider airport waiting areas as an example.
The seating is designed to be easy to clean and durable. Some of it, like the IMAT chairs in the picture, is quite attractive.  

When you watch it in use, here's what you see:

• People banging their heads into the person sitting behind them, because back and front are just too close
• People trying to catch a snooze on a long layover in the middle of the night, but finding nowhere they can stretch out, even though the terminal is almost empty
• People strategically placing parcels on seats in order to ensure an empty seat and some minimum space between themselves and the next party over because we just don't like to sit that close to strangers
• People trying to balance a hot drink and a sticky bun on a slanted seat while they make a phone call, resulting in lots of spills and messes
• People (like me) dragging one of these behemoths closer to the plugs so I don't have to sit on the floor

The cleaning staff tend to place seating for maximum efficiency with minimum work, not to improve the experience of waiting. At Pearson, this means great huge areas with no seating at all.  (Maybe they need a plan-o-gram?)

JP Morgan Chase Targets Business People Seeking Plugs

 J.P.Morgan Chase feels our pain: they have started placing stickers around the electrical outlets in airports. Indianapolis was first, as reported in Wall Street Journal (subscription required) and brought to my attention by Quirk's.  The stickers read, "This outlet works. Now you can too."  Also on the sticker, the e-mail address and local phone number for their commercial banking unit. This is brilliant, IMHO.

Getting Your Exercise in an Airport

In the larger airports, figuring out which carousel has your bags can be a major challenge. What, you mean you can't read the single monitor located at the far end of the hall?  But exercise is good for you, right? No wonder so many people refuse to checks their bags now.

This might sound just grumpy, but why are the taxi stands in newer airports (like Pearson) always so far from the baggage exit??? You definitely don't find that in small airports (like Kingston, JA or Edmonton, Alberta), where the taxis circle like sharks around chum, and are happy to carry your bags to their car.

[I'd love to work on this for someone, but I don't think airports actually compete for business in the usual sense, so it's pretty unlikely they would hire a customer experience consultant.]

Pricing to Captive Markets, Reprise

A few days ago I spoke about timing and price changes in the context of air travel. When I left Kingston, I took one look at a line-up that seemed to have about 300 people waiting for about two clerks, and said, "I think I'll upgrade".  On the whole, I'd rather see people fix their service problems with actual good service. But if you can't quite get your total customer experience there, you might want to consider letting people pay for a premium service of some kind.

Blue Mountain Coffee, Reprise

More on the coffee:  just in case I wasn't clear, Blue Mountain coffee is delightful. But there aren't many coffee bars, and they mostly don't invite you in to sample the local product. Just my observations about marketing in other places.  I have no idea what the situation is in the resorts.  Anyone?

Technorati Tags: blue mountain coffee, customer experience, business travel, airports

Getting a Good Coffee in Kingston, Jamaica and other third place observations

Still here in Kingston, Jamaica on business -- and making observations to share...

In-room coffee versus coffee bar coffee and cannibalization...

When I first started working here a few years ago, I knew of only one place to get a good coffee, at the Pegasus Hotel.  So, like many of the foreigners here, I dropped by their coffee bar fairly regularly for an outing and a fix.

This trip, I see the Hilton has finally caught on, and built their own coffee bar.  And I see the other consultants hanging out there at the tables pretty frequently, just as we do at Starbucks at home.

One weird side-effect of this change: the Hilton still has coffee makers in the rooms, but they only provide instant coffee now.  I presume this was to force us to go buy the cappuccino.  IMHO, this was a mistake that makes them look cheap.  In a Hilton anywhere else, I would expect to find the in-room coffee AND access to many other coffee bar alternatives. 

The room coffee was never a substitute for the other stuff in terms of coffee quality. (D'oh) Aside from which, as I noted above, people like to hang out somewhere, and the new coffee bar has quickly gained standing as this third place.

Pricing to a Captive Market: Business Travel

Still in Kingston, Jamaica, and still making observations about business travel.

Lesson #4 – You can charge big with a captive market

One of the odd things about lesser developed countries is that everything is expensive. Prices seem to begin at what you’d expect to pay in a major US city downtown, and go up from there. And if you are staying in a big hotel, by definition you are wealthy, and can therefore pay a lot for everything.

Wireless internet, which is cumbersome to set up, and somewhat patchy, costs $12.00 USD daily or $143 USD weekly. You could buy the router for less than that.  Still, after fighting with dial-up yesterday, I bit the bullet and signed up.

Printing a page in the business centre is roughly $5 USD per page. [That one is still a stunner.]

Oddly – or perhaps not – you can get a one page letter typed for less than that, about $2 USD. Paper may be extra, I’m not sure.

No doubt there are cheaper business services somewhere nearby, but with no car, they pretty much have you. [Trust me on this, only the locals drive themselves here.] And all the business centres have the same prices.

The trick seems to be charging just below the rage point. At least that’s how it feels.

I hit the rage point once -- I wanted to order a room service salad as a light meal. Wwhen I realized it was going to cost $ 25 USD, I said forget it, and dragged my exhausted butt down to the deli.

Lesson #5 -- Timing is everything where price is concerned
I have paid big to print handouts for workshops -- that's what you have to do when you are racing against the clock.

Here's another example, perhaps more familiar:
When I was boarding the flight here, I was offered the opportunity to upgrade for $185.  A very good idea for the airline to do this. I wavered, but decided to brave economy class. Fortunately, it was half empty.  If I had found myself sitting in the midst of screaming kids, I would have gladly paid the $185, but by then I would be stuck. Once you board, no more upgrades.

The foregoing is a good example of letting your process drive the experience, and losing opportunities. Because airlines don't want to load extra meals, they don't offer on-board upgrades.

They should figure this out, because lots of people would go for it.

Customer Experience in Business Travel

This is the view from my office this week: I’m working out of a hotel room in Kingston, Jamaica. In the past few years, I’ve spent many weeks here, and I’ll be sharing some observations about customer experience on the road.

There are four business hotels in New Kingston that a business traveller would stay in, and I’ve stayed in them all at one time or another. Here's what I've learned in the process.

Lesson #1 – Being closer to the competition is not a bad thing

Terra Nova evokes an old plantation house. The rooms are cozy, and the food is outstanding. The chief problem with Terra Nova is that there is nothing within an easy walk, so after a couple of days you feel really trapped without a car.

As a result, I always try to stay along the strip of hotels along Knutsford Blvd., where there are three hotels right beside each other: Pegasus, Courtleigh, Hilton. It’s easy to go for a walk to one of the others, and all of them are near a large public park with security guards. And if I really want a fast food fix, that’s available too a short walk away.

Lesson #2 – Breakfast is critical

All of my favorites offer a good buffet breakfast without a lot of fuss and bother. The whole business travel industry has gone this way, because none of us have time to waste in the morning. I’ll tell you later this week about coffee… 

Lesson #3 – Travel is a lonely affair

The Courteigh is friendly and cozy, but there’s not much public space to hang out in. So I tend to eat there, but rarely stay there.

The Pegasus, a former Mandarin, is very fancy. It has pretty good public space, and you can hang out in a variety of locations. I love their 1/8^th mile walking path where you can see hummingbirds and gekkos in the morning.

Social space is where the Hilton wins. And they take a big edge on friendliness too. Hilton has a huge enclosed space with a pool in the middle. There are always people at the outdoor bar having a coffee or talking business. There are always people working on laptops at tables by the pool. In short, there is company.

The seasoned regulars always choose the older cabana rooms. They’re not as fancy, but you can sit on your balcony and work. You can hear other people around you. You never have to wait for the elevator. You just don’t feel as lonely.

The staff makes a huge effort to learn your name. Even though it has been over a year since I was last here, several people recognized me and welcomed me back.

It took me a while to warm to the place.  But it's my first choice now, and it has nothing to do with status.  It's all about feeling comfortable.

Technorati Tags: "differentiate your hotel", "customer experience", "business travel"

Making Bricks More Like Clicks: Designing Real World Space Like Information Space

In Web 1.0, we wanted to design online spaces to be closer to physical environments, and tried to create online experiences that were as good as having a decent sales person at your side. 

Web shopping is often so good now that people are starting to run this model in reverse: trying to make real world shopping as convenient and informative as online shopping. 

David Weinberger's article in Feb 2006 HBR article in "The HBR List: Breakthrough Ideas for 2006" talks about this phenomenon. [Yes, I'm behind on my reading again -- aren't we all?]

It's surely true, isn't it -- when you know what you want, online is easier in many ways.  There is so much more information to support the sale, for one thing.  If you can't read the print, you can make it bigger with a simple CTRL+.  Just try that in your local pharmacy. 

Physical stores can capture the best of online shopping by stealing a few tricks.

Utilize better signage -- give people good navigational aids, Ikea does this well.

Give customers access to online -- or paper -- catalogs at the store.  Mountain Equipment Co-op does this well.  And they also post hand-made signs on items that tell you other important stuff you might want to know about products on display.

The web's huge strength is cross-selling: pointing you to the other things you will likely want with that product already in your shopping cart. Or even solving the whole issue for you, with kits and bundled selections for common requirements.

Some grocery stores do this exceptionally well.  I remember being in a grocrery store after a day of downhill skiing. The first thing I saw inside the store was a display of ready-made dinners like meatloaf and lasagne, situated right beside bags of pre-washed lettuce, a selection of salad dressings, and basically everything else you might want after a day of skiing.  I grabbed the meatloaf, snagged some wine from the wine boutique, skipped the cigar boutique, and headed back to the chalet.

Now that is a store that  is paying attention to customer needs.

Technorati Tags: retail space, customer experience, online shopping, bricks and clicks

Do Your Customers Trust You?

Public relations firm Edelman released their sixth annual global trust barometer study, available online (click the chart). 

Among the opinion leaders surveyed, "someone like yourself or your peer" is the most trusted source of information about a company, exceeding even doctors and academics in most of the countries they surveyed. And we have much greater access to the opinions of "people like me" through the internet.

If people lose trust in your company, they won't purchase your products or services (70-80%), they'll tell other people bad things about you (70-80%), they won't invest in your shares (65-75%), and they won't even work for you (40-50%).   

The communications channels that worked so well in the past-- controlled messaging to specific stakeholder groups like investors, analysts, employees and customers -- are being supplanted by horizontal peer-to-peer communications.  Articles in business magazines are still a trusted source of information about a company, right up there with family, friends, and peers.

Beyond this lack of confidence in traditional sources of information, they see a "yearning to move beyond the simple act of consumption of information to social networking." 

Remember that co-creation trend we talked about a few days ago?  Well here it is again.

Edelman's recommendation? "Smart companies must reinvent communications thinking, moving away from a reliance on top-down messages delivered through mass advertising."

Other ways to develop trust:

The most important drivers of trust are company of origin (not easy to change), industry (not easy to change) and company behaviors (this ball's in your court). 

Quality: the quality of your products and services is a key driver, but not sufficient (Sony piracy scandal). 

Accountability: companies that put their name on their products show that they are accountable.  Unilever realized a big lift in their trust ratings as a result of putting their corporate brand on their packaging: people know them now, not just their brands.

Attentiveness to customers: showing you understand and care about their needs, (P&G). 

Employees: Showing concern for employees is especially important in some labour markets.  But communicating with your employees is also critical:  "they want contextual information on the business, including the company's strategic direction, how decisions are made, and competitive issues."

Being socially responsible: participating in disaster relief efforts (Wal-Mart), being environmentally responsible (GE), and cleaning up your third-world-labour issues (Nike) are all good for increasing trust. The social responsibility program must be consistent with your core brand values to make an impact.

CEO: celebrity CEOs are no longer a trusted source of information.  In fact, CEOs and CFOs are now among the least trusted sources of information. 

Our take:

However distasteful it may be, you are going to need to become more transparent, more open, more consistent in all your activities if you are going to build and keep a strong brand.  To get the dialogue going, look at how Amazon has brought customers into the communication and co-creation of the product, and see what you can borrow or build on from them.

Technorati Tags: Co-Creation, Edelman, Building Trust, Branding

Brand Lecturing is Out - Co-Creation, Sharing, Architecture of Participation is In

I've been documenting examples of a trend recently that I call Content Co-Creation.  Turns out other people have spotted this too, and have written some interesting posts on the topic:

Kathy Sierra at Creating Passionate Users calls it sharing:

Sharing knowledge, lessons learned, product reviews, tips and tricks, links/bookmarks, and even photos

She points to Tim O'Reilly's definition of Web 2.0, where he labels this the architecture of participation:

Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an "architecture of participation," and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences.

Co-Creation in Action

Here's a good example of what I'm talking about.  The Lance Armstrong Foundation has created a donation site where you can upload a photo of someone who has battled cancer into a mosaic.  You can be part of the creation of something special that a lot of people will see.  It's much more personal and more connected than simply sending a cheque in.  As the copy on the site says, "we want you to be part of it".  [Thanks to Jennifer Rice for bringing this to my attention]

My Take
Tremendous energy is going into anything and everything that lets people become part of the conversation. If your brand is only doing one-way communication, you are missing out on an opportunity to become part of a richer dialogue with your customers.
Risky? Maybe.  But if you want to differentiate -- and you do want that -- you can't wait until everyone else is doing it to get started. 

Let's Try a Little Co-Creation: Send in Examples
Seen a good example of this trend?  Please post ideas, links, thoughts...

Technorati Tags: content co-creation, marketing trends, Lance Armstrong, Cancer Mosaic