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.

(Photo: wootang01)

Popularity: 2% [?]

1.     Listen and determine what is Relevant – What are the customers discussing today? (packaging, rude retail employees, return policy, friendly environmental practices, etc). Note: Not  all conversations are negative.

2.     Engage – Pick one topic that is relevant, find that passionate employee that is savvy on the topic and unleash the passionate employee to join and create online conversations. Not sure how to create online conversations, 3 easy ways to get started.

3.     Wash, Rinse, Repeat with steps 1 and 2. You will evaluate success on your first topic. What should be your second topic? (again, listen to determine relevance).

Popularity: 7% [?]

Welcome to another edition of Expert’s Corner here at Customers Rock! This time our guest blogger has a technology focus. We are happy to have Lori Wizdo, VP Marketing from Knoa Software, as our author today. Lori will share with us ways for organizations to get a handle on a major customer experience roadblock.

Enjoy the post, and let us know what you think!

Improving Customer Service From the Ground Up

In need of a new laptop, you spend hours walking around your local Best Buy comparing prices and features of endless devices each claiming to be the thinnest, sharpest and fastest on the market.  You select a winner, bring it home and it immediately begins to malfunction.  Figures.  After a dozen fruitless attempts to unfreeze the screen or retrieve your very important lost document, you finally give in and call the manufacturer’s support center.  The agent on the end of the line proceeds to put you on hold for 5 minutes, and then connects you to sales rather than support.  The following transfer takes another 5 minutes.  You explain the situation (again) to the appropriate agent, slightly annoyed but overall maintaining your cool.  The agent, furiously typing, apologizes for her system being slow today.  “I don’t know why it isn’t letting me do this today? It let me yesterday…” she mutters.  After 30 minutes on the phone, your computer is running smoothly but you hang up frustrated with the service, bitter towards the company, and just plain angry at your new computer. 

Invisible Problem

I am sure that you have felt this frustration before, if not during support calls, then paying your mobile phone bill, or waiting in a long line at a Macy’s counter.  Customers are constantly frustrated with the services they receive.  Many businesses don’t realize however, that a negative customer experience is often a direct result of the sales rep or agent’s inability to correctly execute customer service technology.  Due to the complexity of systems such as CRM, agents are frequently misusing applications or experiencing system errors which result in slow response times and inaccurate support for the customer.  

If a customer service agent does not make the experience seamless, it causes irritation and possible loss of business.  Despite the recognized importance in delivering an exceptional customer experience in this economy, companies have relatively little insight into how customer service agents are using, or misusing the technology they are given to interact with the customer. Managers have relatively little visibility into agent behavior and performance during each and every customer interaction.  This presents a major business dilemma: how can you fix a problem that you can’t see?

Taking a Closer Look

There is a new breed of optimization technology, Experience and Performance Management (EPM), which is helping to remedy these problems. This set of solutions provides a window into agent interactions with corporate customer service technology.  The software monitors the agent’s execution of processes and provides comprehensive metrics in two dimensions.  First, EPM monitors the agent experience to highlight problems with the technology itself. Then it analyzes agent behaviors and workflows to pinpoint issues with the agent’s performance. These metrics are used to identify and eliminate impediments that the technology is presenting to the agent and gives managers insight into problems with agent performance that are impacting customer experience.  With these metrics business managers are able to answer the following questions and create logical, direct solutions:

•          Are the transactions/response times slow?
•          Is the agent being presented with incomprehensible system errors?
•          Are agents using the correct transactions for the process?
•          Are they following the correct processes or creating workarounds? 
•          Are they using the applications effectively or making errors?
•          Are they utilizing all the tools available, such as the knowledge base?  

With these issues identified, managers can ensure that an appropriate solution, such as one-on-one training or a technology upgrade, is implemented.

Experience and Performance Management technology fills the need for a comprehensive, systematic approach for measuring agent experience and behavior with customer service technology.  These solutions can help identify the root of application problems, and improve the agent’s productivity.  Overall, the more efficiently agents are interacting with customer service technology, the better the customer service.  With a positive and productive relationship between the agent and technology, customers can receive fast, accurate service, ensuring long-term customer satisfaction. 

 

About Lori Wizdo

Lori Wizdo is a software industry veteran who, over the past 25 years, has helped launch several new technologies in emerging markets.  She has held senior positions with global companies such as BMC, Xerox, NCR and Unisys, as well as a number of smaller software innovators.  Lori was an early pioneer, championing the role of the individual in enterprise business applications. That belief inspired the launch of communities of practice and employee networking solutions at Unisys.  In her present role, she continues to evangelize the cause of the end-users as a key stakeholder of enterprise applications.  

About Knoa Software

Knoa Software was recently selected as a Gartner “Cool Vendor,” for its capabilities in end-user experience and performance management and was listed as a Leader in the “Forrester Wave: Passive Agent End-user Experience Monitoring.”

Popularity: 9% [?]

I love to bring in outside experts for you to share other perspectives on the Customers Rock! attitude. Today I am pleased to introduce you to Chip Bell. Chip is the founder of The Chip Bell Group and works from the Dallas, Texas area. His consulting practice focuses on helping organizations build a culture that supports long-term customer loyalty.

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

Service with a Grin by Chip Bell

We have an economy to which customers are reacting with despair.  What if the features of customer service could follow the same principles that make humor work?  Let’s example the construction of these simple jokes:

From comedian Joe Weinstein:  “My dog is worried about the economy because Alpo is up to 99 cents a can.  That’s about $7.00 in dog money!”

From comedian Larry the Cable Guy:  “Light travels faster than sound. That’s why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.”

Both comedians create a mental pattern and unexpectedly break that pattern in the last one or two words.  The construction of the humor is simple and easy to get.  Finally, the lines have a “tongue-in-check” levity that is joyful.  What if customer service could be unexpected, simple and joyful?  It could bring comic relief to gloomy customers.

Create an Unexpected Experience

Customer service with an unexpected twist can take a customer’s breath away.  Magic tricks and rainbows have the same effect.  What are ways to take an everyday service pattern and turn it on its ear for the unexpected enjoyment of customers?   What if the forms were in fun colors?  What if the server wore a funny hat?  What if the server had a fun signature greeting?

Keep it Simple

It was not the caramelized popcorn that made Cracker Jack a snack food hit for over a hundred years.  It was the practically worthless free prize inside.  You know you have hit a service home-run with customers when you hear them warmly say, “Why didn’t I think of that?” Simplicity trumps complicated.

And, Make it Joyful

Service is joyful if it is grin-qualified.  There will always be a few sour pusses that would never reveal their pleasure no matter how lively the deed.  Don’t let these “hearts of darkness” undermine your resolve to make the other 99.9% enjoy a service surprise.  Today’s customers are gloomier than ever.  They deserve your commitment to deliver your creative best.

(Image credit: Clivia)

Popularity: 21% [?]

My good friend (and fellow wine enthusiast) Steve Woodruff asked me to join in his community activity “Five in the Morning” – five posts that I find interesting – so here is my contribution! Grab a cup of coffee and a bagel, find a quiet five minutes, and let’s dig in!

Are Companies Looking for Customer Feedback?

One of the first blogs I read after starting my Customers Rock! blog was Church of the Customer. This easy-to-digest post from Jackie Huba shares the results of a recent survey by conducted by the CMO Council on whether companies are tracking customer conversations about their brand, along with whether they have employee incentives around customer satisfaction. Interesting that not many are focusing on these areas! Especially in this economy, Customers Rock! companies view customer feedback (including word of mouth) as a critical part of their business and create customer listening post in several venues (including but not limited to social media). What are you doing in regards to listening to your customers?

Kill ‘em With Kindness

Tom Vander Well of QA QnA writes an inspiring post on how to treat your customers, even if you think they are going to be somewhat nasty to you! It might sound easy, but this type of treatment strategy requires a plan as well as a certain fortitude to carry it out when a call center rep is “in the thick of it”. Check out the post for tips on “staying chill”.

Handling Negative Reviews

Linda Bustos at GetElastic has a thought-provoking post on how to handle negative reviews. Ignore them? No. Delete them? Definitely not! How about embrace them? Linda highlights one company that has embraced both the positive and the negative; check out her post to see how they do it.

Social Media: Music to my Ears

I met someone new this week (virtually, as many introductions are these days) who works for Heavybag Media. There was a fascinating post on their blog about the use of social media and web strategies in the musical instrument business. Contained in the post are lists of who is using what, as well as who is currently best-in-class using these new tools in the industry.

A Little Self-Promotion (sort-of)

As many of you know, I teach a class at University of California San Diego called Marketing via New Media. One of my long-time blogging friends, Tim Jackson, was kind enough to come and be a guest speaker. Tim shared about his MasiGuy blog and how it has really helped re-invigorate the brand. His stories were riveting, and the students really enjoyed his talk. Here is the post where Tim shares his experience talking to my class, along with some photos, so if you ever wanted to see what my class looks like, here it is! Thanks again, Tim, for sharing your knowledge and passion about Masi Bikes. You rock!

Liked Five in the Morning? Get more where this came from at Steve Woodruff’s Sticky Figure blog, subscribe to Steve’s blog, or follow him on Twitter. Like Customers Rock!? Follow me on Twitter or subscribe to this blog.

(Photo credit: bberry)

Popularity: 79% [?]

In the spirit of Customers Rock!, I want to take a moment and say THANK YOU to all of you who have contributed in some way over the past 2 years. I am very excited to be celebrating this milestone with all of you!  This past year has been an exciting one for me and for the blog.  Let’s take a quick look at what has been going on before we start the party!

Customers Rock! Blog Year in Review

- To date, I have written 270 blog posts (including this one) with 1565 comments – woo hoo!

- I moved my blog to my own domain, CustomersRock.net (with the help of Joel – thanks!)

- I did quite a bit of speaking, both locally as well as at great events such at BlogWorld and Marketing Profs Digital Mixer. I got a chance to meet (and video) quite a few wonderful bloggers as well, so thank you to all!

- Jay Ehret and I started the Re-Experiencing Starbucks project to chronicle the change agenda from Howard Schultz to see how it impacted the customer experience. (Note – while those postings have slowed down, at least on my end, expect to see a nice year-end wrap on this soon.)

- I once again participated in the infamous Bathroom Blogfest to discuss how the customer experience extends even into forgotten places!

- I had four marvelous guest bloggers this year: Brian Solis, Esteban Kolsky, Colin Shaw, and Eric Brown. Thank you all for the time you gave my readers.

- I started teaching the UC San Diego class Marketing via New Media; this has been really fun! I also started a blog to chronicle my journey there Teaching Social Media. The blogs of the students are there, too.

- I joined Brickfish as their Director of Social Media. Brickfish helps major brands connect with their customers via the social web and turbo-charges word of mouth from brand evangelists. Plus, you can watch it all live on their Viral Map (this is an example from a current campaign with Microsoft “I’m a PC”). Very cool!

The Biggest News

The biggest news of all is YOU, my Customers Rock! readers.  I have enjoyed talking with you over the past two years, and I am looking forward to many more conversations in the years to come!  I really want to thank each and every one of you, but I only really know who you are when you leave me a comment.

So – I created a list of my commenters, in chronological order, from the first day of my blog up until now. I have linked to your blog/website if you left me one. It was great fun to look back at all of those who have turned Customers Rock! into a two-way conversation and to see how many I am still active with two years later!

This list of commenters also makes for a great read for the upcoming holidays of some very worthy blogs (those in my feed reader are marked with an asterisk *)!  This is my gift to all of you this year.

Thank you again for your continued support. You all rock!

(Photo credit: antony84)

Commenters on Customers Rock! (and also a great blog reading list!!)

* Mack Collier (Thank you for being my first commenter, Mack!)

* Gavin Heaton (Thank you for being my first international commenter, Gavin!)

* Kevin Hillstrom

* C.B. Whittemore

Anne Simons

Marc Rapp

* Doug Karr

* Roberta Rosenberg

Sue Crocker

* Maria Palma

Tammy Vitale

* Lewis Green

* Meikah Delid

Steve Miller

Luis de Paiva

Rich G.

* KG

* Tim Jackson

KSAdams

* Jordan Behan

* Laurence-Helene

Bob Glaza

* Tom Vander Well

* Glenn Ross

* Ron Shevlin

* Douglas Hanna

* Maki

* Dale Wolf

* Mike Wagner

* Phil Gerbyshak

* Chris Brown

Robyn McMaster

* Drew McLellan

Troy Worman

Ugyen

Louiss Lim

Maryam in Marrakesh

Adnan

Chris Cree

Kermitfan

Marc Gregory

* Valeria Maltoni

* Steve Woodruff

* Sandy Renshaw

Jeff Brooks

* Lolly

* Roger von Oech

Paul McEnany

* Amy Jussel

Robbie Wright

Ryan Karpeles

* Doug Meacham

Ron E

* Robert Hruzek

* Joe Rawlinson

Threethan

* Jim Kukral

* Toby Bloomberg

Stacy Madison

* CK

Janet Green

Andrew

Bob

Natalie Ferguson

* Geoff Livingston

* Roger Anderson

Chris Clarke

* Christy Brewer

Delaney Kirk

James Taylor

Adam Kayce

David Koopmans

Laura

* Ann Handley

Jake McKee

Rachelle Lacroix

* Patrick Schaber

* Kevin Dugan

Martin Jelsema

* Paul Schwartz

Bill Bluel

Sylvia Martinez

Chad

* Katie Konrath

Nancy Heifferon

* Stephanie Weaver

Enrique Burgos

* David Armano

* Daksh

Anders Rask

Jeffrey Jackson

Uwe Hook

Jill Konrath

Daniel Sitter

Cord Silverstein

* Suzanne Obermire

Carolyn Manning

* Jay Ehret

* Mark Hurst

Mark E

* Terry Starbucker

* Rosa Say

NAJ

Crafty Bernie

Matt Havercamp

Dan Neely

Teri Isner

Ben Thompson

Jack Jia

* Anita Bruzzese

Maureen Valdes Marsh

Hajar

Anne Libby

* Connie Reece

The Knitting Bee

* Peter Kim

Andrew

Jonathan Treiber

Hank Brigman

Pat Fisher

Scott

* Dan Schwabel

Karin H.

Frank Phelan

* Doug Fleener

Darcy Moen

Brent Applegate

Sabine

Hari Vasilev

L.P.

Dan NessDarren Patrick

Joe Provenzano

German Parra

Jon Burg

* David Morse

Scott

* Bradon Caudle

Bill Gammell

Jeff Vincent

Richard Binhammer

Amber

Lissa Bergen-Boles

Brandon M

Wes

Mark

typestries

bsilvia

Jeronimo

Jeffrey Long

* Andy Nulman

* Kami Huyse

Rachel

David Reich

* Anna Farmery

Jeanne Dininni

Albert F A Matthews

Marc Karasu

Brit

* Olivier Blanchard

* Esteban Kolsky

Jen

* Chelle Parmele

Rebecca Caroe

Chris Wilson

Peter Fankhaenel

* Matt Dickman

* David Brazeal

Ahndunk

Boring Market

Justin

Marc

Gordon Whitehead

Julie

Erin Cavallo

Aaron Kahlow

Elaine Fogel

Dawn Hobbs

Micha

* Mike McDerment

* Tsufit

Kelvin Leung

* Todd Andrlik

Jack Shipley

Scott Howard

* Nancy Arter

Campbell Moore

Bhuwan

Jack

* Charlene Li

Ron Weber

* Josh Bernoff

Eric BrownJohn Gillett

Vicki Flaugher

Graham Hill

* BJ Cook

Ravi Kiran

Beth

Lee Jordan

* Sybil Stershic

Bonnie Larner

Leo Bottary

Curt

* Stephanie Gulley

Chuck

James Shields

Alison Terrell

GL Hoffman

Joseph Young

Paul

Kamal Kumar

Chris

Jimmy Hendricks

John Maver

* Pam Brown

Kathleen

John

Christine Morrison

Priyanka

Stephen Hampshire

Bernhard

Nathan Poling

ascanlar

Liz Walker

Kenny Lauer

Kristina Evey

Jody Reale

Paul Blunden

Elizabeth

* Colin Shaw

Chuck Van Court

Jeff Whitton

Matt Wilson

Mark Krupinski

David Tinney

naranjadude

Mark David

* Nicoletta Staccioli (one of my students!)

* Marji Chimes

Ryan Graves

Sarah Hughes

* Susan Abbott

Faris

Graham Brown

Sandeep Arora

Chad Horenfeldt

Shahar Boyayan

Maria Elena Duron

Allan Young

Robert

Popularity: 93% [?]

Today we have a guest blogger, Eric Brown, Founder and Owner of Urbane Apartments.  His unique approach to Underground Marketing and Property Management, focusing on the Residents Experience, has helped Urbane Apartments achieve some of the highest rents per square foot and per unit in the Royal Oak, Michigan area where they are located.  In this guest post, he shares some of his fascinating perspectives on brand and customer experience, as well as some of his company’s innovative ideas.

 

Does Money, Luxury, or Value Create a Remarkable Customer Experience?  What are the key ingredients of a Remarkable Customer Experience?

Remarkable, as defined by the legend Seth Godin:

• Remarkable doesn’t mean remarkable to you. It means remarkable to me. Am I going to make a remark about it?
• Being noticed is not the same as being remarkable. Running down the street naked will get you noticed, but it won’t accomplish much. It’s easy to pull off a stunt, but not useful.

Is the experience you are creating for your customer remarkable, and does your customer find value in the experience created? Are you matching your Brand to a Targeted Experience? As posted by one of Becky’s readers,

“Service excellence, just as with beauty, is in the eye of the beholder”

This is spot on. Take some time to evaluate what will Engage and Delight your customer based on your Brand. We were at the local Mini Cooper dealership and they openly invite customers to bring in their beloved pets to the dealership, which some folks get really excited about. It works for Mini Cooper, but you likely would not find that at the Jaguar showroom. Mini Cooper is matching a Customer Experience to their Brand; this example has no correlation to Luxury and doesn’t get better by adding more Money.  Southwest Airlines, you either love them or hate them with the cattle call lines, no assigned seats, no frills. Yet true Southwest Customers like, enjoy, laugh with, and  have a favorable experience with, Southwest. Herb Kelleher somehow figured out how to deliver a consistent, value driven experience and permitted his employees to fix it when it wasn’t.

We own and manage a small boutique apartment management company Urbane Apartments in Royal Oak, MI and have used some innovative ideas to create Remarkable Experiences for our Residents that align to our Brand. Here are some Case Studies:

• We do not send out paper leases. The lease, a floor plan, emergency numbers and some unit pictures are given to the resident at Move In on a thumb drive, which is also a key chain with our logo on it. Being able to walk away with all of the lease information on a tiny thumb drive that fits in their pocket and that they can also use to store additional information has created a “Cool Factor”, something worth talking about. This idea may not bode well if we were in the senior housing business, but it does resonate well with our target demographic.
• We have embraced Urbane Loves Pets, no extra fees, no breed restrictions, no size requirements. Our theory is that if we have great residents, they likely have great pets. And while there are certainly problems that occur from time to time, we own the segment pet market locally by creating a favorable experience for our “Pet Lover Residents”.
• Urbane created the “Freedom Lease” which affords maximum flexibility on lease terms for our residents. Lots of folks out there are consultants today, and the standard year lease did not fit this paradigm shift. We have fostered a living arrangement that works to address the residents’ needs, our needs, and allows flexibility, which evokes a better experience than figuring out how to break a lease when circumstances change.

What experience you are creating for your customer? Let us know your thoughts and stories here at Customers Rock!

Popularity: 41% [?]

Today I am happy to present to you a guest blogger, Colin Shaw.  Colin is founder of Beyond Philosophy, a consultancy, research, and training company recognized as thought leaders in the Customer Experience. They are located in London, England and Atlanta, GA, USA. Colin is an international best selling author and widely acclaimed public speaker.  Colin also writes a blog called Experience Clinic, which can be found at his company’s website www.beyondphilosophy.com.  I spoke to Colin over the summer while he was traveling in the States, and I think you will find his post thought-provoking.  Let us know what you think!

The DNA of Customer Experience

“We can’t do that…”….  ”you’ll have to go over there….”   ” you’ll have to phone a different department”

We have all heard these phrases in too many Customer Experiences. I am sure, like you, it makes my blood boil! But when I say “it makes my blood boil” what am I really expressing? I am referring to how I feel; my emotions. Just read the many postings in this blog and you sense the emotions the writers are feeling. Having dealt in the subject of the Customer Experience for the last 10 years it never ceases to amaze me that organizations fail to realise that over 50% of a Customer Experience is about emotions.

So let me ask you one of my favourite questions we pose to organizations every day of the week. “What is the customer experience you are trying to deliver”? Most organizations can not answer that question in a consistent manner. In addition, as emotions account for over 50% of an experience, here is a follow on question, “What are the emotions you are trying to evoke in your Customers”?

Again, most organizations can not answer this simple question and as such I believe they are not in control of their experience. The challenge becomes ‘as there is such an array of emotions which should an organization choose? Which emotions drive and destroy value?’

Following 2 years of research with London Business School, one of the worlds leading business schools, we have discovered there are four clusters of emotions that drive or destroy value. These are further outlined in our latest book The DNA of Customer Experience: How Emotions Drive Value.

The Destroying Cluster

This is the first area an organization needs to focus on. These emotions are evoked in Customers typically because their experience is “inside out”. This means the organization looks at what is good for them and imposes that experience on the customer. Our belief is organizations should be “outside in” looking at what the customer wants and deliberately trying to evoke positive emotions.

It’s impossible to eradicate destroying emotions entirely, but wise organizations take steps to mitigate them. It’s important to recognize that this cluster not only destroys value, but taxes resources and imposes other costs on an organization. Suppose, for example, delivery of a complex IT system is poorly coordinated and a few items are missing. In addition to feelings of frustration, this misstep wastes the valuable time and money of the personnel involved with installation.

The Attention Cluster

The Attention Cluster contains emotions used by organizations to attract customers. Our research has shown that these emotions encourage customers to explore your offers and experience, and boost customers’ short-term spend.

However, this cluster contains an inherent danger. Once they have attracted a customer, can they retain them? We’ve discovered that what attracts a customer in the first place may not turn them into long-term customers. As a simple example, imagine a theme park. Your first visit is likely to be interesting, stimulating and energetic — all characteristics of the attention cluster. But what happens after your tenth visit? The “interesting or stimulated” emotions fade. The experience becomes bland. To retain customers you need to evoke the Recommendation Cluster. 

The Recommendation Cluster

Here is where you really begin to build loyalty. The Recommendation Cluster includes basic human emotions like valued, cared for and trusted. Consider the last time you felt someone “valued” you; at home or at work. Why did you feel valued? What did the person do? They spent time with you, they understood you. They listened to you. It was personalised. Now flip this to your own Customer Experience, what could you do that included these traits and thus evoked valued in your experience.

The Advocacy Cluster

The Advocacy cluster is at the top of the pyramid, and contains only two emotions, reflecting their statistical importance. Happiness is a primary goal for everyone. People want to be happy, thus we seek out experiences which please us. Obviously, organizations should strive to make their customers happy. Happy customers become advocates, proactively telling people about your organization without prompting, and are among the most loyal. Word of mouth, after all, is the best form of marketing.

A Company’s Emotional Signature®

We also discovered all organizations have an Emotional Signature®. This is the level of emotional engagement an organizations have with its customers.

In our experience most organizations measure only the physical/rational aspects of the Customer Experience — price, product availability, range and so on. They ignore the other 50% of an experience; customer’s emotions.

In understanding the level of emotional engagement you can then determine what you need to do to change. I always liken this to a sound system graphic equalizer; your company’s Emotional Signature can be altered to produce a better sound, a better experience. Because they are not consciously and deliberately thought-out in advance, most experiences are “out of tune”. All organizations unwittingly evoke unintentional emotions.

For example, customers become frustrated when their actions trigger the wrong behaviours, and organizations should take action to reverse this. To persuade your customers to feel you “care for” them — a powerful differentiator — you may need to change your recruitment process and hire people who are naturally caring. It’s important to understand the level of emotional engagement to be able to take action to improve it.

(Top image credit: bonathos; article image credit: BeyondPhilosophy)

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Today we have a special guest with us, Esteban Kolsky. Esteban is a VP at KANA where he is very focused on great customer experiences, especially in the area of customer service. He is also an active commenter here on Customers Rock!, so please welcome him and enjoy the post!

Five Winning Strategies to Excel at Customer Service via Email

Back in the “early” days of the internet (read 1990s) we all thought that email was going to revolutionize the way we do customer service. Customers were going to send us all their questions and inquiries via email, which in turn was going to be answered within a few minutes – either automatically through a software package or manually by knowledgebase-assisted engineers. This setup was going to do away with the need to use telephones and call centers (after all, emails can be answered from anywhere), and reduce the cost for customer service.

Fast forward 15-20 years and it seems to be not where we thought it would be. Alas, we did try using email as much as possible yet the results were not as expected: automation was harder than we expected, customers did not like the speed of response (which was down to days in some cases, and non-existent in others), and transactions completed via email were not similar to transactions completed via the phone. This slow realization of the problems of using email for customer service made the adoption slow down almost to a trickle – pushing customer service automation via email to the point of extinction.

So where are we today? After 2-3 years of very painful experimentation and working in the lab, we are beginning to discover how to use email properly for customer service. There are over two dozen best practices and lessons learned that anyone starting to implement email for customer service would do well to read and understand before starting. However, the following five are the top sure-fire ways to get customer service email to work well in your organization:

1. Classification – customers tend to ramble in free-form emails, posing questions somewhere in the middle of long sentences or paragraphs. That makes it almost impossible for parsing engines to identify the inquiry within the email. Eliminate free-form emails in favor of web-based forms with drop-down menus to allow customers to send emails. You can create a unique answer for each unique combination possible, or a workflow to gather more information or open a ticket if needed. Knowing what customers are asking, what are the variables or terms more often used also assist in improving the knowledge-base.

2. Automation – customer service emails, as with phone-based inquiries, follow an 80-20 rule: 80 percent of the questions can be answered with 20% of the content available. However, with the constraints of email as a communication medium (complex, oddly-written messages, lack of interactivity for clarification or expansion of data), the 20% gets reduced very rapidly to around 5% of content that can be properly expressed through email. Alas, still it can answer a large number of incoming interactions automatically, greatly reducing the dependency on agents to answer those emails, and improving the speed of response for customers. Identifying that 5% of content and questions, creating the specific rules and deploying it can greatly improve the experience for customers, and create a fertile lab for organizations to discover more and more interactions that can be automated.

3. Integration – the best way to add value to an email response is to provide the customer with personalized, custom information that matches the customer intent when writing in. If they want to know the status of their order, don’t send them a link to the page where they can get it – send them the information. This is impossible to do unless the ERMS and the data stores and applications are integrated. In some cases, this integration is done directly and the data flows are controlled via business rules. In others, the integration happens through an existing application feeding data back to the ERMS. In either situation, the customer feels as if the system has been custom-made for their needs increasing satisfaction.

4. Maintenance – the quintessential secret to having a powerful customer service solution via email is the maintenance of the solution. This is nothing new; we learned how to do this while deploying our knowledge management solutions. Yet, email has a complicated set of business rules and workflows that must be maintained. Even if you support a centralized model for knowledge management, the email-specific components still carry a heavy load of maintenance. You could streamline the maintenance by deploying a centralized rules server across channels. Alas, as it is with knowledge, business rules and workflows get outdated as soon as they are deployed – making maintenance THE way to manage the content properly. The mid-life of an improperly maintained ERMS is very short, usually not passing a couple of months before customers stop using due to poor results.

5. Marketing – similarly, marketing is the secret to growing the adoption of email among your customers and within your organization. Customers don’t know you offer a specific solution unless you tell them about it, and they understand the benefits they can get out of it. Your organization does not understand the great job your email solution has done for you unless you tell them about it. Advertise your solution. Extol its benefits. Announce the availability of new and upgraded features. Create a killer marketing plan, target the right people to know about it, and distribute the information.

Where are you with the use of email in your organization? Are you an early and satisfied adopter? Or are you intrigued by the promise?

About the Author

Esteban Kolsky has over 20 years of customer service, market research, and technology experience. As Vice President and Practice Leader for KANA, Mr. Kolsky delivers strategic consulting, systems integration and managed services programs designed to help KANA customers deliver exceptional service experiences. Prior to joining KANA Software Mr. Kolsky was with Gartner where he built and managed both the eService and Enterprise Feedback Management practices. He has been featured in television and radio, and quoted in over 400 publications around the globe as an industry watcher and commentator.

(Photo credit: © Yannis Ntousiopoulos | Dreamstime.com)

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 This is Part 2 of the guest post by the generous and smart Brian Solis.  Part 1 covered conversations and the use of social media.  In today’s post, Brian helps us take the appropriate steps to really begin listening, then engaging with customers via social media.  Again, many thanks to Brian for sharing his time and talent with my readers.  Brian, you rock!

Social Media Empowers Customer Service to Build Relationships, Part 2

Sociology provides us with an understanding of how human interaction and the ensuing ecosystem shape individual attitudes and behavior. Sociologists study society and social action by examining the groups and social institutions people form. In Social Media, these communities take the form of social networks and the communal groups within them. People establish associations, friendships, and allegiances around content, objects, products, services, and ideas. How they communicate is simply subject to the tools and networks that people adopt based on the influence of their social graph.

Observation, monitoring and listening tells us everything. We’ll learn where the relevant conversations are taking place, who’s participating, what they’re saying and the tone of the discussions, the specific information they’re looking for, impressions and conceptions, as well as revealing the patterns of behavior within specific communities.

The million dollar question that every business executive needs answered is who’s responsible for managing these conversations and how much time and money will it take?
In order to determine the amount of resources, time and money that are required, It all starts with good old fashioned research along with the new tools to help you get to the answers you seek (see below for a list to help you get started). 

First..

- Identify who your customers are and where they go for information.

- Search for key words: Products & Company as well as competitors and their products and services.

- And, please don’t forget the relationships that exist in the real world. They’re also indispensable for providing feedback and insight now and in the future.

Based on the research results, you can measure the average frequency of relevant conversations, identify the more active hubs and communities, and the context of the conversations in order to determine time and variety of resources required (a community manager is required at the very least.) 

Here’s a formula that I developed based on participation averages over the last couple of years: 

The number of average relevant conversations per day per community.

Multiplied by the quantity of relevant communities.

Multiplied by 20 (minutes required to research and respond and also monitor for additional responses), variable +/- dependent on the case, usually +.

Divided by 60 (minutes)

Equals the amount of time required and in turn, the resources and associated costs required depending on internal labor or external consulting fees. 

Based on the research results, you can measure the average frequency of relevant conversations, identify the more active hubs and communities and the context of the conversations in order to determine time and resources required.

Throughout the research process, you’ll undoubtedly see that relevant conversations occur across disparate networks, are representative of a sweeping variety of related topics that require varying responses, and, that they usually map  to specific departments within your organization (those most qualified to respond), i.e. marcom, product management, customer service, PR, executive management, etc. Having someone keeping a pulse on relevant conversations and in turn feeding them, intelligently, to the right people internally and guiding them on the required response and follow-up makes the interaction more meaningful and helpful and also distributes the responsibility across existing resources. 

Here are some places to start listening (note, these tools are recommended for listening, even though many of them are also used for publishing and sharing content):

Social Bookmarks

• Ma.gnolia
• Delicious
• Diigo
• StumbleUpon

Crowdsourced Content

• Digg
• Yahoo Buzz
• Mixx 

Conversations

• Google Alerts
• Blogpulse
• Radian6 (paid)
• BuzzLogic (paid)
• Ask.com
• Google Blog Search 

Blog Communities

• Blogged.com
• MyBlogLog
• BlogCatalog 

Micromedia

FriendFeed

Pownce

Tumblr 

Specific to Twitter search:

Tweetscan

Summize

Twemes

TwitterLocal 

Social Networks

MySpace

Bebo

Ning

Facebook

LinkedIn 

Customers Service Networks

YahooGroups

GoogleGroups

GetSatisfaction 

Content

Video

YouTube

Metacafe 

Pictures

Flickr

Documents

ThinkFree Docs

Scribd

Docstoc

Once you’ve conducted the initial waves of research, identified the volume, location and frequency of relevant conversations, and estimated the required resources, you can effectively create an accurate blueprint for engagement. I call this a social map.

The next steps are dictated by the sociological work we’ve done, which reveals the culture within each respective network and how we should participate. Generally, each conversations should be treated as if you were approaching someone in real life whom you greatly respect.

- Start by participating as a person, not as a marketer.

- Talk like a person, not as a sales person or message factory.

- Be helpful and bring value to the conversation.

- Please remember, that during this entire process, you’re contributing to the personality and the perception of the brand you represent.

At the end of the day, we’re all people and thus we should approach conversations as such. It may seem like common sense, but as classically trained marketers, we tend to approach these things with our marketing hat on. It’s the difference between authentic conversations and one-sided talking “at” people we may be used to.

Most importantly, the lessons learned in the field should in turn be fed into the marketing department to create and run more intelligent, experienced, and real world initiatives across all forms of marketing, PR, sales, and advertising. 

In a social world, conversations will take place with or without us and the price we pay for missing them is potentially equivalent to the loss of brand equity and resonance.  Participation is the new customer service and the new art of relationship marketing.  Sincere, informative, and authentic interactions count for everything.  In social media, engagement is the only way to earn customer respect and hopefully their business, loyalty, and referrals as we continue to do what matters to earn their friendship.

Relationships are the new currency in Social Media, and as we all know, relationships need cultivation and value from both sides in order to grow into something of value and longevity.

You can connect with Brian on Twitter, Jaiku, LinkedIn, Pownce, Plaxo, FriendFeed, or Facebook.

Brian Solis is Principal of FutureWorks, an acclaimed PR and New Media agency in Silicon Valley and also blogs at PR 2.0 and bub.blicio.us . Along with Geoff Livingston, Solis recently co-authored “Now is Gone,” a new, award-winning book that helps businesses learn how to leverage New and Social Media.

(Photo credit: wds2007)

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