Customers Rock!

Today we have a guest blogger with us here on Customers Rock!, Nate Bagley. Nate is the Social Media Expert at Mindshare Technologies. Mindshare is a leader in the Voice of the Customer industry, helping companies foster consumer satisfaction, build customer loyalty, and support employee retention. Click here to learn more about Mindshare.

Is Your “Lack of Remarkable” Preventing Customer Loyalty? by Nate Bagley

The most important aspect of any customer-driven business is consistency. If you cannot provide a consistent experience, it is impossible to generate loyalty within your customers. Without loyal customers, a business is just a whole lot of wasting assets.

The businesses that thrive despite a struggling economy, intense competition, or market saturation are those who have built intense customer and employee loyalty.

The best way to create loyal relationships is rather simple: You must measure the customer experience continuously. Measuring your customers’ feedback and acting on any inconsistencies (both good and bad) should be how you approach your business every day!

Recently, I attended a sports themed restaurant to watch the World Cup match between England and the United States. By the middle of the first half, the restaurant was packed with crazed fans… standing room only. I kept an eye on our server as she tended to dozens of guests within her section. She remained pleasant, yet incredibly busy.

Somehow, through all of the tumult, she managed to check on our table every few minutes. When she noticed our cups were running low on water, she brought us a pitcher, knowing she wouldn’t have time to fill them individually. She kept us happy, assessed our needs, and did it with a smile, despite having to work a section that was far over capacity.

Will we be returning? You bet we will, especially if every subsequent experience is of the same caliber as this one.

How can this restaurant chain ensure that every location provides the same level of service consistently to every customer? How can they make sure every staff member within the organization is consistently hitting customer service home runs like this? They must set a standard and then measure as many transactions as possible against it until they are consistently hitting the mark. The easiest way to identify irregularities in customer experience is through customer feedback. You must consistently listen to what customers are saying! Keep doing the things they love, and improve the things they don’t.

“When we measure satisfaction, what we’re really measuring is the difference between what a customer expects, and what a customer perceives he gets.” (“The Experience Economy,” Joseph Pine II & James H. Gilmore)

What are you doing to provide a consistently remarkable experience for every transaction in your business?

(Flickr Photo Credit: ogimogi)

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(Note: This post is a reprise of an earlier Customers Rock! blog post, and one that was very popular with my readers. As customer listening has become a common topic recently, I felt it would be helpful to post it again, especially as it discusses NON social media listening. Important to listen via all channels!)

Are we putting up walls between the enterprise and its customers?  Or are we putting up walls dedicated to its customers?

I was in Santa Barbara and had a chance to see how one company shares their customers’ voices.  Citrix Online hosted a tour of their facilities for me.  Besides being very employee-centric (one whole wing of their campus was dog-friendly!), Citrix Online is very customer-centric.

My hostess at Citrix walked me past their Voice of the Customer wall.  On it were three large groupings of many signs, each sign a verbatim quote from a customer.  Each quote was also directly attributed to a customer.  These customer quotes were divided up by Citrix’s main product lines, each grouping a different color.  It was in an area near the employee break room which gives the opportunity for many to stop and read “the writing on the wall.”

I love this idea of keeping customer comments visible to all in the organization.  It was inspiring to see the feedback plastered all over the wall!

Do you listen to your customers enough to get these types of quotes?  Or do you aggregate your customer feedback into several large categories so the true voice is lost?

In one of my previous posts, I asked you what other companies do to listen to their customers.  Kevin Hillstrom of MineThatData shared his experiences with some major apparel companies:

• At Lands’ End, professionals had to help out in the warehouse, or on the phones, during the holiday season and during bad weather. You learn a lot about customers doing that.

• At Nordstrom, we had to physically work in stores, or take orders over the phone, during major sale events.

• At Lands’ End and Nordstrom, we learned a lot about customers, by actually spending some time being close to the customer. Both brands are well known for their appreciation of the customer, both brands require professionals to have some interaction with the customer.

When I worked at HP, we learned about the “Day in the Life of a Customer” concept, which was very similar to ethnographic studies.  HP researchers would go to a company which was a customer of HP’s and video tape their business for a day.  HP would then analyze places where they could help make that customer’s business processes easier.

Lego’s customer service team shares customer feedback from the front lines, support, with the rest of the organization in their regular internal newsletter.  The information helps product teams improve their designs as well as highlights any potential issues.

Some companies tend to hold customer information within their own corporate “silos”.  By this, I mean that departments are not always good at sharing what they know or learn about the customer with other areas of the company.  This kind of knowledge-is-power attitude cannot exist if one wants to create a Customers Rock! company.

Companies like Lands’ End, Nordstrom, HP, Lego, and Citrix get close to their customers and share the verbatim “voice of the customer” within the organization to improve products, processes, and ultimately the customer experience.

Where can you improve your customer listening?  Go find a spot to make your “customer wall”, and start the conversation! (Note: original comments here; worth reading!)

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Recently on Customers Rock! Radio, I had the opportunity to have a conversation with Richard Owen, CEO of Satmetrix. We had a great discussion around listening to customers, gathering social media feedback and turning it into action inside of a company, and of course we talked about the NetPromoter score and how to use it strategically.  You can listen to the 12-minute segments here (Segment 1), here (Segment 2), and here (Segment 3).

Richard’s colleague, and CMO of Satmetrix is Deborah Eastman, and she is our guest blogger today. Deborah shares with us about considerations when listening to customers, whether online or offline, and how technology plays a part.

Delivering Voice of the Customer to Enable Customer Delight and Financial Gains

I hope we can all agree that delivering a positive customer experience is the key to building customer loyalty and achieving financial success. Countless reports and case studies have proven this linkage. A recent report that caught my attention is Watermark Consulting’s 2007-2009 performance analysis, which examines Forrester’s 2007 Customer Experience Index and shows how customer experience leaders outperform laggards in the stock market.

Now, it’s likely that the CEOs of customer experience laggards will tell you that their companies strive to deliver an outstanding customer experience. However, understanding the principles of customer experience and actually delivering them do not necessarily go hand in hand. In 2008 Bain & Company found that while 80 percent of companies believe they deliver a superior experience to their customers, only 8 percent of those companies’ customers report having such an experience. Similarly, a CMO Council study found that fifty-six percent of technology vendors perceive themselves as being extremely customer-centric, compared with only 12% of their customers.

There is a clear disconnect between the experience companies think they deliver and what customers experience, perceive and – more importantly – desire. It’s not about what you think… it’s about what your customers think.

In order to determine whether you are disappointing, meeting or exceeding your customers’ expectations, you need to continuously listen. And it’s not as easy as it sounds. It goes far beyond monitoring the chatter on Twitter and other social media platforms or performing your annual customer satisfaction survey. It requires soliciting customer feedback on a regular, ongoing basis at multiple touch points, and closing the loop to address issues and understand root cause.

You should know what your customers are experiencing every time they interact with your company. Take, for instance, a bank. You must consider your customers’ experience when they open an account, deposit or withdraw funds, overdraw their account, receive quarterly statements, use your online banking tools, request technical support, purchase savings bonds, apply for a mortgage, refinance a mortgage, and so on and so on….You get the picture.

My point is that your customers’ experience at each touch point will form their overall impression of your organization, resulting in a financial impact in terms of retention, repurchase and recommendations. In order to improve, you need to continuously listen and deliver real-time data to empower employees to take action. To gain sustainable competitive advantage, you need view data in a way that reveals trends and helps you to identify structural areas in need of improvement (i.e. policy, process, pricing, products, etc.).

So, as you can see, managing your customer experience means monitoring multiple customer interactions, aggregating and analyzing a plethora of data, and distributing role-based information across the enterprise in a timely manner.

It’s harder than it sounds. No matter how well you understand these concepts, you can’t make them work to your advantage without the help of technology.

And yet, a December 2008 study we sponsored with the CMO Council reveals that most organizations have not adopted the technology necessary to support their customer experience programs, and therefore have major deficiencies in the way they respond to customer feedback. In fact, only 23 percent of the senior marketers surveyed said they were using enterprise technology to engage, listen and respond to customers in real-time.

First-rate technology can and should:

• Bust organizational silos and provide an enterprise view of the customer experience.
• Capture information from multiple touch points and distribute it in real-time to initiate required action.
• Provide sophisticated, interactive analytics and role-based reporting that allow you to quickly identify and act on performance gaps.
• Allow you to segment data to identify trends and performance gaps across business units, customer segments and product lines.
• Incorporate your CRM and financial data to provide a big picture view of the direct correlation between customer experience and business performance.
• Be user-friendly. Employees will be more likely to embrace the system if it is intuitive and integrates seamlessly into their everyday tasks.

Developing and maintaining a customer experience platform demands time and resources, but there is little doubt that it will pay off. One example of this pay-off is Experian, a company we have worked with for several years. They successfully leveraged voice-of-the-customer technology and processes to identify key loyalty drivers and improve the customer experience resulting in increased wallet share in a highly competitive market. Experian’s customer experience efforts were so successful that they were awarded a Forrester Voice of the Customer Award in June of 2009. If you’re interested in other case studies of companies achieving business results by focusing on customer experience, visit satmetrix.com or netpromoter.com.

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I have been broadcasting my Customers Rock! Radio program now for 6 months, and I feel it is time to pull together a summary of information from some of those programs into a post (or two!). The radio program is really an extension of this blog; you get to hear my voice as part of an hour-long conversation around the topics we all know and love here: customer experience, customer service, loyalty, marketing, and social media. But I can really sum up the first 6 months of the program with the title of this post: we have been talking about what Customer Obsessed Service looks like. (Note: I borrowed this term from something that Rayanne Langdon was talking about on the show; she was sharing about Freshbooks and their involvement in the Small Business Web – companies focused on customer obsessed software.) This post will discuss the operational perspective of Customer Obsessed Service – what does it take to make this happen at an organization?

Expectations

Before we can discuss Customer Obsessed Service, we need to make sure we understand customer expectations. Customers have changed, and customer expectations have greatly changed! Social media has put everything into a new light as empowered customers are taking up their mobile phones and tweeting their distress for all the world to see. Here is a typical customer service tweet:

Does anyone know if COMPANY X has a Twitter? I want to make sure everyone knows how POOR their customer service is!! I’m sooooo annoyed.

If nothing else, brands need to be using social media to listen to the customer conversation for concerns or issues. Sometimes customers may be whining, and sometimes customers may have a real problem that needs to be addressed. Customer Obsessed Service means a company is attentive to what their customers are saying via social media (and via other mechanisms as well, including surveys, comments to sales, feedback to customer service reps, etc.) and then takes action to make sure the customer’s issues are resolved to their satisfaction.

Action: Do you understand the expectations of your customers for your products, and for your customer service? If not, spend some time listening to customer conversations, talking to customers for clarification, and determining the top pain points.

Employees

Most employees in an organization don’t understand what it takes to provide great customer service, much less Customer Obsessed Service. Yet employees are a key factor in whether customer service sucks or rocks. This is true whether the employee actually works in customer service or whether they are not customer facing at all!

Customer Obsessed Service starts with hiring the right people – those who are naturally people-focused, have a passionate spirit, are empathetic, and like to think creatively to solve problems. Southwest Airlines calls this having “…a Warrior Spirit, a Servant’s Heart, and a Fun-LUVing Attitude.” I couldn’t agree more!

These employees also have to be empowered to do what is right for the customer. This doesn’t mean giving every customer a discount, or something for free when they complain. It DOES mean listening to the customer’s needs and doing what they can to make it right without always having to get a supervisor’s approval. Guidelines need to be clear, and when they are employees are freed up to get the help they need to turn around a bad situation with a customer.

Action: Start with an assessment in your organization. What do your employees think about your customer service? What would they do to make it better?

Customers as Assets

Customer Obsessed Service is also achieved based on how we measure it.

Incredibly, many companies today are still measuring their customer service based on how many calls they can process in an hour. Get the customer off the phone/chat as soon as possible in order to respond to more customers. The end result is usually customers that have to call again in order to finish getting their questions answered. These types of metrics are used when organizations look at the customer service department as something to be measured on a P&L statement. Customer service is viewed as a cost center.

Organizations espousing Customer Obsessed Service view customers as a valuable asset that belongs on a balance sheet. Each customer interaction is a golden opportunity to improve the relationship, and each customer touch could result in a customer who is so happy they become an evangelist for the brand.  Don Peppers and Martha Rogers talked about this in their book Return on Customer Companies that treat their customers as an asset create a very different approach to customer interaction; each customer contact is reviewed to see how it will add to or detract from the value of each customer.

Action: Review your customer service metrics to see how you view your customers.

What About You?

What else do companies need to get right operationally in order to create Customer Obsessed Service? Who is doing it well? Leave a comment with your thoughts, and let’s start a discussion on Customer Obsessed Service!

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Today’s guest blogger is Michael Sansolo, author of The Big Picture: Essential Business Lessons from the Movies. Michael Sansolo is a consultant and frequent speaker for the food retail industry, and is a contributing editor and weekly columnist for MorningNewsBeat.com, a daily newsletter on the retail industry.

The Ultimate Customer Compliment

There is one simple line of praise that every business should seek when it comes to gauging the customer experience. It happens when one customer gladly recommends a store, product or service to someone else.

In our new book, The Big Picture: Essential Business Lessons from the Movies, my co-author Kevin Coupe and I argue that we can use popular films to tell highly descriptive stories to drive our businesses. And there is one movie scene on customer service that stands out for all time when it comes to winning customer recommendations.

Recall the most famous scene from the movie When Harry Met Sally. It takes place in a restaurant, and Harry, played by Billy Crystal, boasts about his prowess as a lover. Sally, played by Meg Ryan, asks how he can be so certain. Harry says he can tell, but Sally is skeptical.

In a scene of hilarity rivaled by few moments in movie making, Sally proceeds to experience what appears to be physical ecstasy despite the face she is sitting in a restaurant. Her movements, moans and groans draw the attention of everyone sitting around her as Sally presses on until she concludes with what can only be described as a sexual climax. And then she calmly returns to eating, having made her point that Harry doesn’t really know if his lovers are satisfied.

But that’s only the set up. Within seconds, the camera focuses on a much older woman sitting behind Sally, who was interrupted in the middle of ordering her meal. Asked what she wants, the woman points to Sally and says, “I’ll have what she’s having.”

It’s hilarious. And it’s a great statement on customer service.

Great customer service makes other shoppers want to get involved. Great customer service generates word of mouth, new clients, and a reputation that can’t be beat.  Great customer service makes others say, “I’ll have what she’s having.”

Every business should seek to build that moment. They should seek to provide an explosion of customer delight that draw attention and raves. In fact, we should crave the “I’ll have what she’s having” compliment from trading partners, employees, and more.  We all want our business to be the admired business and the one that others want to work with or for.

On screen it’s an easy moment. Inside a business it is anything but. One premise of The Big Picture is that businesspeople can use film moments to build success stories.  Consider showing the restaurant scene to your employees and ask them what it would take to win that moment of envy.

The simple truth is that great customer service is so easily achieved, but also easily ignored because being average is usually good enough. However, an extra smile, courtesy or show of personality can go a long way.

A few weeks back I was in an Aldi Supermarket in Illinois watching customers. Aldi is known for extremely low prices. The stores have few items and few employees, so service is non-existent. But on this day, the young woman at the cash register was making magic happen.

As customers came through her lane she could have handled them quickly and accurately, and that would have been acceptable. But she did more, complimenting them on their product choices. With one simple move, she elevated the checkout experience and made each shopper feel special. It cost nothing and took almost no time.

Now imagine an Aldi shopper sharing that moment with a friend who had an ordinary shopping trip somewhere else the same day. In short, that cashier made others say, “I’ll have what she’s having.” That’s going to lead to new shoppers, new sales, and new success.

And just like that, an ordinary day becomes a happy story about customer service.  The Big Picture: Essential Business Lessons from the Movies is loaded with lessons like that.  We hope you’ll like it. More importantly, we hope those around you will see you enjoy it and will say to themselves, “I’ll have what she’s having.”

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I am pleased to have Kevin Stirtz as a guest blogger today here at Customers Rock! Kevin Stirtz is the Amazing Service Guy, a speaker and trainer who helps organizations of all kinds deliver Amazing Customer Service. His recent book: More Loyal Customers has won 5 star reviews at Amazon.com. Kevin lives in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis & St. Paul). I love the title of this post. It rocks!

Real People Rock! by Kevin Stirtz

A big mistake some companies make is they hire and manage people like they buy and manage equipment. They seem to believe people’s behaviors can be designed and managed like machines.

And a key tool in this strategy is the ever-present script. Most employees despise them. So do many customers. To a customer, a scripted employee sounds like a phony, uncaring employee.  This will not help you improve customer service.

Chris Garrett wrote a post recently about being real vs. phony. Here’s what he says about real people:

“Real people rock. If anything, I would always rather meet an imperfect human being than a fake robot. Be proud to be you, mistakes and all.”

When management forces unnatural scripting on employees, they can be become the robots Chris talks about. They say and do as they are programmed.  And this prevent them from delivering great customer service. Here’s why:

1. Scripts come from management

How much time does management spend serving customers? Probably very little. A smart, informed and engaged employee is better equipped to serve customers than a manager whose contact with customers comes from reports and surveys.

2. Scripts tend to serve the company’s interest first

Anyone who has ever been on the receiving end of an employee script knows they exist to help the company get what they want.  But this is in conflict with our real job which is to help our customers accomplish what they want, in a way that works for us.

3. Scripts cannot predict or address every situation

Because they are static and based on history, scripts can never replace the judgment of a well-informed and trained employee. Things change too fast. There are too many possibilities to plan for.

But the biggest problem with scripting and programming employees is that is devalues people. It discounts the worth and the capabilities of employees. It says:

“We don’t trust you enough to do your job so we will map out every detail for you. All you have to do is follow the road map you are given.”

Scripts disregard customers too. When you script your employees you are telling your customers, you don’t care about having a relationship with them. You’d rather just walk them through some impersonal steps like a machine and hope that satisfies them.

You want loyal customers? Hire real people and let them be real. Give them the guidance, encouragement and resources they need to help their customer accomplish what they want. Forget the scripts. Hire real people.

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Today I am pleased to feature another guest post by Chip Bell. If you have seen the movie Ramen Girl (and even if you haven’t!), you will relate to this post. The parallels he draws between passionate cooking and customer service will be something you will noodle on for awhile.

Chip is the author, with John R. Patterson, of the book Take Their Breath Away: How Imaginative Service Creates Devoted Customers. He can be reached through www.taketheirbreathaway.com.

Unconditional Customer Service by Chip Bell

Ramen is a traditional Japanese noodle dish that, well prepared, is a highly desired delicacy.  That’s the back story for the movie, The Ramen Girl.  A young woman finds herself in Tokyo and wants to understudy a master ramen chef who speaks no English; she speaks no Japanese.  He is impatient and demanding; she works hard to be perfect.  The climax of the movie (without giving too much away) happens when the frustrated chef takes the equally frustrated protégé to visit his mother, the person who taught him to be a great ramen chef.

Creating ramen, the mother tells the young women, is not about mixing ingredients in the proper proportion and cooking the broth at the right temperature.  In order to make a dish that connects your heart to your customer’s heart, you must put your soul into the preparation and presentation, not just your smarts and sweat.  It was a turning point.  The woman let go of her pursuit of precision and embraced the “from the heart” expression of her spirit.  Great customer service is like preparing ramen.

Step One:  Learn to Cook

There has always been a major difference “being a cook” and “being a chef.”  Cooks follow food recipes; chefs fashion cuisine creations.  We spent an evening with Tim Love, a world famous Southwest chef.  He had defeated the “Iron Chef” on the popular TV program.  “Before you can become a chef,” he described to us over roasted portabella mushrooms he had prepared, “you must first learn to cook.”  A good cook makes sure they have the right ingredients, the proper utensils, and have the oven set on the correct temperature.

Great service starts with the fundamentals of your quality service.  Bank customers want accuracy; hospital patients desire cleanliness, and airline passengers expect safety.  I call it service air.  We pay little attention to the air we breathe until it is removed or threatened.  Think we can think of nothing else.  Think about all the wasted energy creating a great service experience only to have it erased from the customer’s mind because something fundamental is mishandled.  Think of them as service condiments.  No salt and pepper on the perfectly set banquet table can remove the gourmet from the experience.

Step Two:  Remember the Goal

Then, without losing sight of “the right ingredients in the broth,” put your energy into your customer’s needs and hopes.  Service is not about you, it is about assisting another in a way that makes a difference while making an impression.  Great service is all about thinking of fashioning a delightful outcome by serving through the customer’s eyes.  It is not ever about what is easiest for the service provider; it is always about crafting processes and procedures that enable the service provider to make it great for the customer.

Who benefits from bills sent at the end of the month, opening and closing hours, paperwork of any sort, phone trees (punch 2 if you want…) and hold times.  If the customer could be in charge of designing “service their way,” how would it change.  Granted, no organization can turn service process design completely over to customers.  And, some of those forms are required by regulators who can pull a license or close a business if there is an absence of compliance.  Yet, our quest for efficiency sometimes entices us to forget to wear the “customer hat” when designing how service will occur.

Step Three:  Lose Yourself

Francis Coppola is one of this century’s best film directors.   Even folks who cannot recall his name, know his films—The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, American Graffiti, etc.  While making the movie Apocalypse Now, he ran into a challenge with highly independent actor, Dennis Hopper (remember Easy Rider?).  The encounter was chronicled in the documentary, Hearts of Darkness.  Dennis was spending too much time in the bar and not enough time exercising the boring but necessary discipline to learn his lines.  “You learn your lines so you can forget them,” coached Coppola.  “I need you to go past your lines and come from who you are, not what you recall.”  Great service comes from going beyond the basics to “come from who you are.”

The Good Samaritan story is well known.  But, a few facts about the story are known largely by students of the bible, not just casual readers.  The main character was a Samaritan and the target of his kindness was a Jew.  Samaritans were hated by Jews and vice versa.  The Samaritan went beyond self-held views of aversion to help his “neighbor”–the enemy.   When the scripture says, “A Jew went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves” one might think he was going South.  Jericho was actually North of Jerusalem.  But, it was 3500 lower and the route was physically taxing.  Stated differently, the Samaritan had just traveled uphill along a challenging journey to help Jewish man who was starting downhill.  The Samaritan’s compassion was not clouded by his fatigue.  Great service is not borne of duty, responsibility or contract, but delivered from the heart with little regard for gain, advantage or reciprocity.

Step Four:  Fill the Bowl

“Fill the bowl” in the Ramen world means giving customers more than they expect.  I grew in a small South Georgia town.  I made all my spending money mowing yards, especially during the summer—my parents were not fans of the concept of an allowance!  I got a $1.00 for a small yard and $2.00 for a large yard.  My grandmother had a two dollar yard.  One summer we had a major draught.  Yards barely grew at all and I was looking at a bleak year financially.  Toward the end of the summer, my grandmother asked me to mow her yard.  I was thrilled.  After doing a perfect job I met her at her back door to get my two dollars.  She handed me a $5 bill with the most wonderful words a ten-year old could hear:  “Keep the change.”  And, it did change my relationship with my grandmother.  A relationship I kept until she died at age 84.

There is an expression in golf of “playing over your head.” It means that a golfer is playing at an unexplained level of excellence in which serendipity and the extraordinary seem the momentary norm.  Customer loyalty soars when customers experience someone “serving over their head.”   Take the governors and conditions off your service and enjoy the difference your efforts can make.  Service that emanates from places in the heart touches the soul of the customer in a fashion they are left enriched as they are served.

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I have been reading quite a few blogs and comments lately about how social media and customer service need to come together. There has also been a lot of talk about the Social Customer and its importance. I wholeheartedly agree, and as you might imagine, I have a few quick thoughts on the subject which I will share below (inspired by some comments on left on Esteban Kolsky’s post at the blog TheSocialCustomer).

Service is the New Marketing

Been hearing that for ages; I even spoke at  a conference of that name 2 years ago! But what I believe is really trying to be said by this statement is that each interaction with the customer (each customer touch) has an impact on the customer’s impression of your company. That impression often imparts more about the brand than any marketing campaign. The contact center/customer service team/retail clerk is usually the place in the company with the most direct customer interaction (this is especially true for B2C companies). Hence, each customer service “touch” is an opportunity to “market” to the customer – or to leave them with a positive impression of your brand. In that sense, customer service is marketing – but I wouldn’t consider this to be new!

Community

My current role is in this area, and it is indeed a complex one. There are many types of communities: branded, customer-run, service-focused, etc. Interestingly, customers who are part of an online community are even MORE sensitive to “corporate marketing” than other customers, and they have a strong voice that will ring out over it. The main thing to remember here is that many of these communities have been around long before social media (for example, the customers participating in the San Diego Chargers forums are much more loyal than other customers participating in their other social media outlets), and the communities belong to them. Brands need to be aware of this type of “social customer” and realize that they cannot take-over these groups. They need to collaborate with  their communities to be successful.

Customer Experience

The customer experience is very important to understand across the organization. There has been talk about whether various departments will merge together in the future as social media begins to blur the lines of corporate siloes. However, I don’t believe the customer experience can or should be managed just through one department; our customers don’t see us that way! There is indeed a place for separate functions within the organization. There is also a place for metrics that will help companies understand how well they are doing with the customer experience and how well they are performing against customer expectations. Companies that are customer-focused tend to have customer-focused metrics that bring disparate business functions together, working towards one common goal: customer retention, loyalty, and evangelism. When these metrics are corporate, everyone wins.

The Social Customer

Yes, customers are much more socially connected in this day and age, so many of the aforementioned “marketing” activities are now taking place between customers (ratings/reviews/blog posts/tweets/etc.) rather than being broadcasted by the company.  However, that does not mean that each customer doesn’t want to be treated as an individual by the company. One-to-One Marketing has less to do with sending separate direct mail pieces to each person as it does with treating different customers differently. Having worked for/with Peppers & Rogers Group for many years, the 1to1 marketing process is mostly about managing the entire customer experience – which may be different for different customers (and likely is!). In order to do this properly, one needs to understand the needs of the customer. Now that many customers are interacting online, it is easier to listen and hear what they need. Companies just need to make sure they act on what they are learning – before their competitor does.

Your Turn

What do you think? How does an organization’s view of their customer need to change in today’s “social” world?

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This may be it. This may be the year that it finally happens. 2010 may just be the year that companies start to focus on their customers and serving them well.

Now, I am cautiously optimistic about this focus on customer service, but let me tell you why I feel this way.

- Brands are using a focus on customers as a competitive differentiator in their advertisements. Frank Eliason mentions the new commercial for the Chase Sapphire credit card service. It features the ability to talk “directly to a live person when I call” rather than being routed around an automated call queue. The new Domino’s Pizza commercials talk about how they have been listening to their customers and have improved their pizza as a direct result. Phil, who Tweets for them from Domino’s HQ, talks about how they have been serious about customer feedback and been researching this for 2 years. Kudos to these two companies and the many others who are making it public that they care about their customers and what they think of their brands.

- I am hearing more and more that “Customer Service is the New Marketing” from smart folks in the social media space (including in the above post from Frank Eliason). This isn’t a new concept; in fact, I spoke at a conference of the same name 2 years ago this February (where I first met Tony Hsieh from Zappos). Every customer touch is another brand impression of the company. Each contact with customer service, whether by phone, email, Twitter, or self-service is a brand impression. Each customer service representative says more about the brand by how they treat a customer during an interaction than any marketing campaign.

- Customers are having ongoing conversations with brands and with each other about products and services. Companies are realizing how influential these conversations are now that they are starting to listen to them via social media monitoring. And it is a good thing they are doing so. As I tweeted out earlier this week,

“Customer service is more critical than ever. The combo of social media and mobile devices = the perfect storm for an angry customer.”

Think about this scenario. A customer is standing in line at a retail store. The line is very long, and the checker seems to be taking forever. The customer feels like complaining to the closest person who will listen, and it is at his fingertips: Twitter/Facebook/posterous via his mobile phone. It is imperative that brands and companies constantly listen, and more of them than ever seem to be doing so. Those who are not will fall behind in 2010.

In my opinion, all the signs are pointing in the right direction for a focus on great customer service, and with it a rockin’ customer experience in 2010. Those companies that “get it” will rebound from this recession faster than those that don’t. Those companies that “get it” will have loyal customers who shout about how great that company is to anyone who will listen. Those who don’t may just hear a lot of shouting as their customers complain very publicly and then walk away.

What do you think? Is 2010 the year for a focus on the customer?

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I am enjoying my new radio program, Customers Rock! Radio, and on it I have the opportunity to talk with many different people. Some are from businesses, some are consultants, and others are authors. Later this month (January 25), I will have the privilege of hosting Barry Moltz on my program. Barry is the author of the new book BAM! Delivering Customer Service in a Self-Service World, recently chosen as a 2009 Best Small Business Book.

Barry is also my guest author today here on the first Customers Rock! post of 2010. Enjoy!

What Gets in the Way of Offering Great Customer Service? Guest Author: Barry Moltz

As consumers, we all want it. As companies, we all promise to give it. Somewhere in between, we lose good customer service. Why?

One of the biggest obstacles blocking customer service is confusion about why a company provides customer service in the first place. It’s a myth to believe that ethics, pride, or altruism are the reasons for a company to provide customer service. A company provides good customer service because it delivers an economic advantage—either in terms of increased revenue or reduced cost. Altruism isn’t a valid reason to provide good customer service. We like our customers a lot—as people and as customers, but our relationship is based on mutual economic advantage. We provide services that our customers need, benefit from, and are willing to pay for. BAM!-good customer service is part of our economic model.

Ethical standards of business behavior are unwavering. We believe that every company should behave ethically in all matters. The measure of ethics is whether or not a company keeps all its commitments in an honest and trustworthy way—these commitments may or may not include customer service. A side benefit of keeping customers happy and satisfied is pride in a job well done—but pride is not the  reason to provide customer service. The reason to provide BAM!-good customer service is because it increases the bottom line.

Here are some of the things that get in the way of offering great customer service. We call them BAM! Blockers.

• Many businesses have economic models that work only if front-line customer positions pay minimum wage.
• The computer or manual support system the company has stink.
• Customers are fundamentally unreasonable people who set out to prey on business owners, nicking away at profitability by asking for more than they are willing to pay.
• Our company believes in setting high goals and standards for our company, and higher expectations for our customers, whether we can deliver on those goals and expectations or not.
• There is nothing we can do in customer service since our products in the marketplace are so far from perfect.
• Just because the customers aren’t mad doesn’t mean you are delivering good customer service.
• What was good customer service yesterday may not be seen as good customer service today.
• Conditions have changed and the company cannot deliver the same level of customer service as before.
• The cell phone!
• The company leadership is saying one thing about customer service, but acts a different way.
• Employees don’t like their jobs. They kick the cat, taking their frustration out on the customers.
• The company doesn’t train employees with the specifics of satisfying customers.
• The company has set a price point that doesn’t leave enough margin to provide the level of service or quality that customers want.
• It’s inevitable that every business will keep customers waiting.
• Customers want a human relationship, and not every business can provide that.
• All businesses must use voice mail in order to keep expenses down.
• Well-trained and well-intended employees will not make mistakes that cause problems for customers.
• Employees may not be trained to efficiently and cost-effectively address customer problems without degrading service in other areas.
• Employees will never be able to figure out the right balance of authority and employee empowerment

What prevents you from offer good customer service? Tell us!

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