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Bathroom Blogfest 2010 – Stuck in the 60s?

October 26, 2010 By 14 Comments

BathBlogfest 2010 buttonOnce again this year, I am pleased to be participating in the Bathroom Blogfest. This is the 5th year of the Blogfest (4th year participating for me – now with 34 other bloggers in 2010), and we use this opportunity to focus on the customer experience in one of the “forgotten” spaces, bathrooms! This year’s theme is inspired by Mad Men, and we will look to see whether some of these areas area still “stuck in the 60s”. Unless your business is 60s-inspired, it probably won’t work for you!

Now, here on Customers Rock!, I like to focus on the positives. So, I will show you one bathroom experience that is definitely “stuck”. However, I will then share photos of bathroom experiences that do a beautiful job of carrying the customer experience from the establishment into the washroom.

This Bathroom is Really Stuck!

I always advocate looking at the entire customer experience and working to ensure positive feelings as a result of those interactions. Recently, I was in Las Vegas for the BlogWorld conference, and I went to eat at Burger Bar in Mandalay Bay with some friends. The bar had a lot of great beers on tap, as well as a wide selection of bottled beers; it was a point of pride with them. So when I went to use the restroom, I wasn’t surprised to see the hallway lined with metal beer signs.

burger bar 1

This is a pretty neat experience; I felt immersed in the atmosphere as I proceeded (the door to the bathroom is at the end of the hall).  burger bar 2

Imagine my surprise when I opened the door to this ugly scene:

burger bar 3

Apparently, the restaurant shared the bathrooms with other stores/restaurants in that area (it was similar to a shopping mall), so their cool Beer experience ended at the door. It was such a stark contrast that at first it made me wonder whether I was in the right place!  The Burger Bar is “stuck” with this experience. Much like a parking lot, this bathroom situation was out of the control of the establishment.

What could be done to make this experience better? I don’t think there is much that could be changed, other than to create a sign at the end of the hall, before the door out of Burger Bar, noting that you are now leaving the restaurant and entering shared space. I am not sure that would completely remedy the situation, but sometimes simply setting expectations is all that is needed to turn a crummy experience into a tolerable one.

And Now For Some Great Bathrooms!

Las Vegas is definitely the city of glitz and glam, and the casinos and resorts make sure that feeling is carried through to every corner of their facilities.

Mandalay Bay

This washroom in the casino area of Mandalay Bay conveys the lush feeling that permeates the whole facility. The opulent furnishings mirror the carpets and upholstered walls leading into the bathroom. Luxurious.

Mandalay Bay bathroom

The Mirage

We went to The Mirage to see the fabulous Cirque du Soleil show Love (which was an absolutely wonderful experience itself, and one I highly recommend!) The bathroom was beautifully decorated with drawings of flower arrangements, which can be seen on the walls as one enters the restroom. (I definitely got some strange looks as I took this photo!)

Mirage bathroom overallWhat interested me was that the floral art actually continued right into the stalls themselves. There was a floral drawing mounted above each toilet (yes, I peeked into more than one stall to confirm it); see pics below for proof.

Mirage bathroom stall

While the pictures were indeed lovely, it would have been more practical to make the marble shelf a little larger so that a purse or small package could be placed there while using the facilities.

mirage stall 2

New York, New York

New York, New York hotel and casino is designed to look like something out of New York, and there were a lot of Broadway-style touches to the decor. We finished up our evening by sending the younger members of our party onto a voyage aboard the wild and long roller coaster at this hotel. While waiting, I stopped into the ladies room to check out the scene. The entrance to the bathroom had photos of famous stars from earlier decades (Marilyn Monroe, for example) lining the walls. The most striking feature of the restroom, however, was the fireplace! I don’t believe it was operational, but it looked very extravagant, especially with the chandelier above it.

nyny bathroom

What About Your Bathroom?

We have looked at the good, bad/ugly in this post with respect to how the customer experience carries over to the washroom. Whether your business is a retail establishment or a commercially-focused company, your bathroom still speaks volumes about your company. Is your bathroom “stuck in the 60s”, or are is it fully present in the year 2010, reflecting the best image possible about your organization? Let me know what you think about the bathroom experience!

Thanks to the Participating Bloggers!

Here is the list of all the participating Bathroom Blogfest 2010 bloggers! Thank you to CB Whittemore of Simple Marketing Now for her hard work pulling this blog festival together. I am honored to be a part of this effort

http://www.customercrossroads.com/customercrossroads/

http://www.KitchenAndResidentialDesign.com

http://blog.bigbobsoutlet.com/

http://blog.carpetsnmore.com/

http://blog.dolphincarpet.com/

http://fromthefloorsup.com/

http://blog.mybigbobs.com/

http://bloombergmarketing.blogs.com/bloomberg_marketing/

http://www.laurenceborel.com/

http://tiletalk.blogspot.com/

http://blog.jmbyington.com/

http://customersrock.net/

http://www.resultsrevolution.com

http://practicalkatie.blogspot.com/

http://www.professortoilet.com/

http://www.oreilly-depalma.com/blog/

http://livepath.blogspot.com/

http://www.awarepointblog.com/

http://circulating.wordpress.com/

http://spap-oop.blogspot.com

http://yourfifthwall.com/

www.josephmichelli.com/blog

http://www.modenus.com/blog

http://www.tilemagonline.com/Articles/Blog_Nalbandian

http://www.people2peopleservice.com/

http://www.onqualitativeresearch.blogspot.com/

http://blog.polinchock.com/

http://trendsblog.co.uk/

http://reichcomm.typepad.com/my_weblog/

http://www.arounddesmoines.com/

http://www.purplewren.com/

http://www.carpet-and-rug-institute-blog.com/

http://rimtailing.blogspot.com/

http://stevetokar.wordpress.com/

http://spiritwomen.blogspot.com/

http://experienceology.blogspot.com/

http://flooringtheconsumer.blogspot.com/

http://www.simplemarketingblog.com/

http://smokerise-nj.blogspot.com/

http://carpetology.blogspot.com/

http://lindaloo.com/

http://secretsinsandiego.com/

Filed Under: Bathroom blogfest, Customer experience Tagged With: , , ,

The Latest at Customers Rock!

October 4, 2010 By 1 Comment

News picThere has been a lot going on lately here at Customers Rock! October is going to be a busy month.

BlogWorld

I will be moderating a panel again this year at BlogWorld & New Media Expo in Las Vegas, October 14-16. My session this year is a special one. It looks back at the first panel I was ever involved in at BlogWorld 2 years ago, with some very special people. It included Frank Eliason (with Comcast at the time, now with Citibank – his first talk ever!), Tony Hsieh (CEO of Zappos), Brian Solis (author of Engage!), and Toby Bloomberg (Diva Marketing Blog). We discussed

BlogWorld Panel 2008

social media and customer loyalty, a very new topic at the time.  Fast forward two years to 2010. Much has changed in the world of social media, and customer loyalty/customer service is just now being discussed as a social media goal. I am very excited to have a panel this year with some of the same players (Frank Eliason and Toby Bloomberg are returning), as well as a new person (Melissa Lacitignola from Zappos) to revisit the topic of Creating Customer Loyalty and Social Media – A Look 2 Years Later. If you are coming to BlogWorld, please come to the session and meet the panelists – and me. And say “Customers Rock!” (On the right, there is a pic from the original panel.)

Customer World/NACCM Customers 1st

Later in October, I am speaking in Orlando at the Customers 1st Conference, which is now co-located with two other customer-focused events at the Walt Disney World Dolphin hotel, October 25-27. In my role as Community Manager at Verizon (where I am a contractor), I am speaking on how to use a branded community to engage customers and move from customer support to customer relationships. There are many great sessions throughout the three conferences (including another Verizon session at the Customer Uninterrupted event on using technology to support customers). Let me know if you plan to come; it should be very helpful for those of you in customer service!

Customers Rock! Blog on Assistant Edge

My blog Customers Rock! is a Featured Resource on the new content site Assistant Edge. It is a community site that gathers great information for executive and admin assistants, and Customers Rock! was asked to participate. There looks to be some very helpful information over there for assistants as well as for others in business; check it out and let me know what you think.

And more news…

Will be coming later this week, with a very BIG announcement. Stay tuned!

Filed Under: Customer experience

From Reach to Relationships: microMarketing Chapter Review

September 27, 2010 By 8 Comments

focusI was recently asked to participate in a review of Greg Verdino‘s book MicroMarketing: Get Big Results by Thinking and Acting Small This is not to be an ordinary book review, however, although I enjoy doing those on occasion. I was asked to participate in a chapter-by-chapter review. Per the request, “In essence, the chapter-by-chapter review process is a way for us to offer experts in each area the opportunity to review chapters that correlate directly with their area(s) of expertise and interest.” Great! This is a customer-focused approach. I was asked to review Chapter 7, From Reach to Relationships, as this is the chapter that relates the most closely to my Customers Rock! blog. (Full disclosure: I was sent a complimentary copy of microMarketing.)

The Concept of microMarketing

Greg’s book endeavors to help us move our thinking from mass marketing to microMarketing. He shares that mass communications are no longer hitting their target, and it is better to offer the right thing to the right person than to try and offer what you have to everyone. Since I have a background working with Peppers & Rogers Group, this is not at all a foreign concept to me. For years, Don Peppers and Martha Rogers have talked about the death of mass marketing and the new world of 1to1 Marketing. As you will see in Greg’s book, the time is really right for this type of marketing to make a huge impact through a fresh, individualized channel, social media.

More Than Interesting Tweets

Chapter 7, From Reach to Relationships takes this concept into the realm of the customer and their social networks. Companies can best reach a customer when they are able to make meaningful connections with them, which means they must understand and meet that customer’s needs. Just being a nice person representing a brand on the other end of a Twitter handle won’t cut it. Neither will campaigns that strive to amass thousands of new “followers” or “fans”. As I tell my students at UCSD, social media is not about campaigns – it is about relationships.

Greg then goes on to discuss the research published by the Institute for Public Relations on the types of relationships companies can have with customers, urging the type of relationship that engenders loyalty, which leads to evangelism about a brand or a product. This reminds me of the concept of energizing customers found in the book Groundswell – giving customers what they need to really help spread the word about the brand. The right customers will raise their hands and volunteer to do this, not because they have any kind of monetary incentive to do so but because they truly believe in the brand. Zappos customers, for example, are encouraged to do this through emails sent to them encouraging reviews after a purchase, but Zappos customers evangelize the brand because of the great customer service they receive.

The rest of the chapter focuses on two mini case studies of companies, Panasonic (Living in HD program) and Wal-Mart (Eleven Moms program) that have focused on micro-relationships with their customers, finding the right people to help share about the brand with their own personal networks and online communities. What I like about both of these examples is that they focus on individuals rather than mass demographic segments. I believe there is an opportunity to take this even further, beyond microMavens and to the everyday consumer or business person. Greg closes the chapter with a short discussion of McDonald’s Moms Online Hubs, who is doing exactly that with regular moms in the USA and Canada, providing them a place to blog and be heard.  These types of relationships can be built over time, with some effort from a company, and they do get results. The challenge for organizations large and small is to determine who the right people are to connect-with and enroll into your marketing programs.

To Summarize This Chapter:

- Don’t fixate on the numbers

- Look for ways to strengthen relationships with your “hand raisers”

- Empower your customers, and they will spread the word for you

Thank you, Greg, for the opportunity to review your book and to begin to digest it within the context of building customer relationships. You rock!

More Chapter By Chapter microMarketing Reviews

Chapter 1/9-20: Adam Strout

Chapter 2/ 9-21: Lucretia Pruitt, Mitch Joel

Chapter 3/9-22: Jason Falls, Toby Bloomberg

Chapter 4/9-23: Kayta Andresen, Murray Newlands

Chapter 5/9-24: Amber Nashlund, Marc Meyer, Chris Abraham

Chapter 69/27: Ari Herzog

Chapter 7/9-28: Danny Brown, Jay Baer, Adam Cohen, Becky Carroll

Chapter 8/9-29: C.C. Chapman, Elmer Boutin

Chapter 9/9-30: John Moor, David Armano, Beth Harte, Justin Levy

Filed Under: Customer experience

Growing Business the Old-Fashioned Way

August 28, 2010 By 8 Comments

growth11

Here is a blast from the past, a classic Customers Rock! post on taking care of your current customers. Thanks to @Foundora for bringing it back to my attention. Enjoy!

Many companies spend a lot of time and money on attracting new customers to their product or service.  Much of the marketing budget is spent on mass approaches such as advertising and direct mail.  While those media may have their place in attracting prospects, they don’t help companies with their most valuable asset: their existing customer base.

Taking care of existing customers is a fantastic, cost-effective way to grow your business.

Drew McLellan shares some advantages we have when we concentrate on the “old” customers.  I especially like the first advantage he lists:

“They know who you are and trust/like you enough that they’ve done business with you”

How well is your organization doing in its communications with your customers?   What would cause them to trust you and want to come back for more?

Take a brief break here and think about the last 5 communications you received from companies you (or your company) are doing business with.  What kinds of touches were they?  Interactions with existing customers tend to be one of the following types:

  • A bill
  • An upsell offer
  • A cross-sell offer
  • A renewal offer

While there may be some customer value in these actions, they tend to be more favorable to the company than the customer.  In order to keep and grow existing customers, a proactive strategy is needed.  Here are some great ideas from a few of my favorite bloggers:

Meikah of Customer Relations shares with us some insight from Jack Stahl, former president of Coca-Cola and CEO of Revlon, on how to strengthen relationships in a B2B setting:

“Persist in offering value. Give consistent and routine attention, which shows that you are always interested in your customer’s business, in good times and bad. Also, have an ongoing dialogue with the retailer, when an opportunity arises to regain your business.”

Offering something of value to your customers is very important to furthering the relationship.  If there isn’t value, customers may continue to do business with you for awhile, but the relationship will be short-lived.  Keeping the communications line open, whether or not the customer has recently purchased something, is one of the keys to keeping up a conversation with customers.

Joe Rawlinson of Return Customer gives us some ideas on communicating appreciation with existing customers.

“When was the last time someone told you how much they appreciated you? How do you feel when you get a thank you note?  If you’re like most, you get a warm fuzzy feeling inside. You smile. You feel a little bit better.

Don’t you think your customers would like to feel that same joy?”

Words of thanks are greatly valued by customers.  They are a nice antithesis to all the sales calls and could actually make the next call more fruitful!

Rosa Say of Managing with Aloha tells us how to deliver on the promise of our customers’ dreams.  She tells her readers about the art of creating loyal customers:

“Managing with Aloha incorporates the art of Ho‘okipa to achieve a service and product delivery that is unparalleled in the dreams of your customers, turning them into loyal customers for life. When people feel they have experienced the ultimate in good service and in hospitality, they return for more of it time and again.”

Customer loyalty comes from more than just great products and services.  The customer experience has a very strong influence on customer attitudes towards an organization.  I love the way Rosa describes it above – an experience that makes you want to return again and again.

Other ideas on how to create meaningful interactions with existing customers:

  • Birthday cards/anniversary of start of relationship
  • Invitations to customer appreciation events
  • Asking for customer feedback, then acting on it and letting customers know the results
  • Customer apologies, where needed
  • Customer advisory boards

Which types of interactions you use depends on the company, it depends on the culture, and of course, it depends on what is important to the customer.

Finally, one can always use the element of surprise to keep relationships fresh.  Here is an unexpected example from Bounce fabric softener shared in Andy Nulman’s blog.

Sometimes it is the little things that make all the difference.

(Photo credit: cookelma)

Filed Under: Customer experience, Customer service

Is Your “Lack of Remarkable” Preventing Customer Loyalty?

July 28, 2010 By 9 Comments

target photoToday 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)

Filed Under: Customer experience, Customer service, Guest bloggers

Expert’s Corner: Delivering Voice of the Customer

April 14, 2010 By 7 Comments

listen wallRecently 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.

(Image credit: TommL)

Filed Under: Customer experience, Customer strategy, social media, Voice of the customer Tagged With: , , , , , ,

The Ultimate Customer Compliment

March 22, 2010 By 6 Comments

movie theaterToday’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.”

Photo credit:

Filed Under: Customer experience, Customer service, Expert's Corner, Guest bloggers, Marketing Blogs Tagged With: , ,

Expert’s Corner: Kevin Stirtz on Real People Rock!

March 6, 2010 By 4 Comments

rock-starI 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.

Filed Under: Customer experience, Customer service, Expert's Corner Tagged With: ,

The Social Customer

February 4, 2010 By 5 Comments

conversationI 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?

(Image credit: sqursozlu)

Filed Under: Customer experience, Featured, social media Tagged With: , , ,

Focus on Customer Service in 2010 (Finally?)

January 19, 2010 By 7 Comments

focusThis 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?

(Image credit: michaeldb)

Filed Under: Customer experience, Customer service, Marketing Blogs Tagged With: , , , , ,
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