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In Customer Service, You Are Always On Stage

November 8, 2008 By 21 Comments

I am sitting in my local coffee shop (a big brand, not Sbux) and wondering what I want to blog about. I am the only customer sitting in here on a Saturday afternoon, so perhaps the employees forgot about me.  What disturbs me is the LOUD conversation I am hearing behind the counter.

“Wow, can you believe three limos of high school students pulled up the other night after their dance and we had to make a whole bunch of lattes, iced teas, and frozen drinks? It took forever to close!”

“Some huge PTA group came in the other day at 8:30 pm and promised they would help put the chairs back when they were done. They finally left at 9 pm, and the place was a mess.  We didn’t get out of there for ages that night. How rude.”

“Julie was in here and was so drunk, we closed the doors early and put chairs in front of them so no one would come in.”

I am very tempted to stand up and say, “Hey, guys and gals, I write a blog on the customer experience, and I am not too impressed right now!”

I don’t think they realize that every word they are saying reflects on the business. They don’t seem to want to put in a little extra effort to service large orders late at night because it inconveniences them. They don’t seem to be glad that I am here at all; they are too busy with their own “social hour” behind the counter.

You’re On Stage

You can spend a lot of money building up your brand and creating a cool logo. You can market the latest coffee drinks and specials to all your local customers. You can build a fabulous customer loyalty program to reward your best customers.  However, if your employess are not doing their part to support the business, it is all a waste of money.

Great customer service happens every minute, even when no one seems to be looking. At Disneyland, they call their employees Cast Members (CMs) and tell them they are “on stage” whenever they go into any area where their customers (guests) can see or hear them.  A customer’s perception is a critical part of whether their experience is positive or negative.  Every employee contributes to that perception, every minute, regardless of whether they are behind the counter, a rep on the phone, or a member of the cleaning staff.  On that last item, even the janitorial staff at Disney participates in one of the park’s most popular activities, Pin Trading; check out this post from a Disney discussion forum:

At WDW (Walt Disney World) even the janitor CMs had pin lanyards on. The best places we found for pins was at Crystal Palace and Cosmic Ray’s. The manager at Cosmic Ray’s actually got on his radio and requested that all CMs that had lanyards and were available to please come over so a young man could trade with them. Talk about some pixie dust!

Customers Rock! take: Treat your employees like gold, and they will take care of your customers. Hire customer service employees who are people with a passion for serving others.  And remind them all that anytime they are potentially visible or within earshot of customers, they are still “on stage”!

(Photo credit: argus456)

Filed Under: Customer experience Tagged With: , ,

Putting Customers First: Inspiring Relationships

October 14, 2008 By 6 Comments

“In this volatile business of ours, we can ill afford to rest on our laurels, even to pause in retrospect. Times and conditions change so rapidly that we must keep our aim constantly focused on the future.” — Walt Disney

I am very excited to be live-blogging the Customers 1st Conference, taking place at the Disneyland Resort from November 16-19!  This event will help companies figure out how to keep their aim constantly focused on the future – and how to keep their business growing based on a firm foundation of solid customer focus. I am looking forward to live-blogging the Customers 1st Conference for several reasons:

  • There will be speakers from many customer-focused companies all in one place, including Disney Institute (of course), Cisco, FedEx, JetBlue, Xerox, the NBA, Hyatt Hotels, eBay, and Bath & Body Works (to name a few), as well as keynotes from gurus and luminaries (ex: Joe Torre, manager, LA Dodgers baseball team, and Keith Ferrazzi, author of Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time.
  • I love the title of Monday’s keynote by Rob Maruster, SVP Customer Service, JetBlue Airways: “Bringing Humanity Back to Air Travel through Servant Leadership & Internal Championship”. Wow!  Bring it on!
  • There will be experiential learning activities - I can go to Disney and still be part of the conference!  We can get outside of a conference room and learn.  This includes the Disney Service Challenge inside of California Adventure park and the Customer Experience Immersion Event in Disneyland park (called “Swarming the Magic Kingdom”).  I can’t wait to get my hands dirty!!
  • There are opportunities to for intact teams to celebrate at select events, such as the Connections Block Party and Disney’s Service Challenge Scavenger Hunt on Sunday.
  • There are tracks on people (employees are a key to customer focus), customer experience (what my blog is all about!), front line faces (about customer service), numbers talk (the all-important measures and metrics), as well as opportunities to just network (such as the Slackers Happy Hour – can’t wait to see that one!).
  • The event organizers are providing each attendee with a journal, not just a program, to really keep track of business cards, notes, as well as the agenda.  Sounds intriguing.
  • The event organizers also promise to “surprise and delight” attendees, a familiar rallying cry for those who are customer-focused.  I am looking forward to seeing what they come up with!

Want to join me at this innovative event?  Learn more about the NACCM Customers 1st Conference here.  If you are ready to register, click here to get a 15% discount on registration (it should take you to a page with my discount code already entered, which is XM2100BCKCRL). 

“You can dream, create, design, and build the most wonderful place in the world, but it requires people to make the dream a reality.” -Walt Disney

Filed Under: Community, Customer experience, Customer loyalty, Customer service, Customer strategy Tagged With: , , , , , ,

It’s Not About the Money – Guest Post by Eric Brown

October 6, 2008 By 11 Comments

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!

Filed Under: Customer experience, Customer loyalty, Customer strategy, Customers Rock!, Guest bloggers Tagged With: , , , ,

Where is Sales Focused? Part 2

September 10, 2008 By 2 Comments

Part 1 of this blog post discussed the importance of focusing on existing customers to help weather the economic storm.  Today, we take a closer look at how your sales team is focused. 

I was inspired to write this by a post at Jim Kukral’s blog about how one bad salesperson can destroy your brand.  In a video post, Jim shares his sad story about a salesperson who didn’t seem to understand Jim’s need to shop around before committing for a big-ticket item (you’ll have to go over and watch the video to find out which store he dissed and which one he ended up buying from).  Here’s an idea of what Jim said:

“I don’t care what discounts or coupons they may have in the future. One employee, with one horrible sales tactic and personality destroyed their brand for me. That’s how easy it is to do.”

What is Sales Focused On?

Take a look at your sales force.  It may be a crew of sales people staffing a retail store.  It may be your channel partners working to incorporate your product or service into their offering.  It may just be one person and a phone.  Regardless of how your sales team looks, most likely they are focused on making sales, as they should be.  But what are they focused on when they are trying to make their numbers?

When I worked as director of marketing for HP in the UK and Ireland, we had several sales teams, each targetting different groups of enterprise (commercial) customers.  As marketing, we partnered closely with sales to help them understand the needs of the various customer groups and how they differed.  The most successful sales teams were those who used their understanding of those customer needs to change their sales approach to one that was totally focused on helping make it easier to do business with HP for that customer.

In Jim’s example of a salesperson that turned him off, the salesperson was more focused on pressuring Jim to get an immediate sale than he was on helping Jim meet his needs.  This self-focus, rather than customer-focus, drove Jim away, and the sale was made elsewhere.  I had a similar experience last summer when we were trying to buy a new truck, but this one was a poor experience with the dealership itself (and an unmotivated, yet professional, salesperson).  The dealership and sales team seemed to be more focused on what was convenient for them rather then what was convenient for a potential buyer.

Do You Want My Business?

Times are tough.  Competition is fierce.  Customers have high expectations.  With all of these factors in play, businesses can’t afford to treat their customers with anything other than respect and great customer service.  If you aren’t sure whether you want your customer’s business or not, take a step back and look at it from their perspective.  Here are some tips to make sure you are ready to meet and exceed customer expectations.

  • Hire a mystery shopper to check out all aspects of your customer’s buying experience.  Notice I didn’t say your sales experience; again, you need to look at it from the other side of the table!

 

  • Talk to customers who have purchased from you recently.  How was their experience?  Were their needs met?  What could have been better?  You might not want to hear all the answers, but if customers aren’t happy, they probably won’t keep buying from you.  Even worse, they could say bad things about you to others.

 

  • Get your best customers to come in and meet with you and your sales team (or do it via phone conference).  It gets sales teams all jazzed up to hear positive feedback from customers, and you will get ideas on what works in your customer’s buying experience.

 

  • Create customer profiles of different customer groups and their needs.  Make sure your sales team understands how they are unique and how their sales approach should change in each instance.

 

  • Train sales in WOW customer service and relationship building techniques.  Customers should be viewed as people, not transactions.

Too much to think about?  Simply put yourself in your customer’s shoes and take one step at a time.

(Photo credit: LatinPoint)

Filed Under: Customer experience, Customer service, Customer strategy, sales Tagged With: , , , ,

Guest Blogger: Colin Shaw on Customer Experience and Emotion

September 2, 2008 By 10 Comments

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.

Hierarchy of Emotional 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)

Filed Under: Customer experience, Guest bloggers Tagged With: , , ,

Guest Blogger: Esteban Kolsky on Customer Service and Email

August 18, 2008 By 9 Comments

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)

Filed Under: Customer experience, Customer service, Customer strategy, Guest bloggers Tagged With: , , , ,

Ikea Rocks with its Retail Customer Experience

August 9, 2008 By 9 Comments

In the current economy, consumers are holding on to their money more tightly and making hard choices about if, and where, to spend it. Having a great customer experience greatly increases the chances that a) customers will come back to shop there again and b) they will tell their friends and family about how great it was! Word of mouth is very powerful marketing; studies show that consumers trust friend recommendations more than information from vendors.

Ikea is one of those stores with a great shopping experience that evokes word of mouth. In addition to the fun one can have by sitting on all those couches or envisioning how that bedroom would look in your own house, Ikea does things to make a difference even to the smallest customers.

Ikea has a play area for the littlest ones, where they can romp while their parents are enjoying the shopping. However, Ikea actually encourages families to bring their children with them through the showroom experience, starting right from the entrance. At our local Ikea store, a staircase leads shoppers up to the showroom floor. I was very impressed when I noticed they had put in a hand rail at kid-level, just right for those youngsters to hold onto while navigating the steps (see photo). The sign on the hand rail says the following:

“We care about the little ones, too. Look for the hand rails mounted lower, specially for your children.”

This does two things for the customer. One, the rail itself helps the kiddos feel like grown-ups (look, Mom, I can reach the hand rail!). Two, it specifically tells customers that Ikea has thought about their experience in advance and has done something to make it better.

Understanding Customers

Whether your customers are consumers or businesses, having a solid understanding of them makes all the difference in the sales and marketing process. How do your customers shop your business? What would make it easier to buy from you? Craft your own customer buying experience around the answers to those questions, and you will find an increase in not only sales, but also in new customers as the word spreads that you are a fabulous place to meet their needs.

For more great insight into the retail customer experience, see the these smart blogs: Doug Fleener’s Retail Contrarian, CB Whittemore’s Flooring the Consumer, Stephanie Weaver’s Experienceology.

(Photo credit top: rmarmion; photo credit bottom: bcarroll)

Filed Under: Customer experience, Customer strategy, Customers Rock!, Marketing Blogs Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Re-Experience Starbucks, Update 9: Customer Loyalty

July 29, 2008 By 6 Comments

Part 9 of the ongoing ReExperience Starbucks project with Jay Ehret from The Marketing Spot.  Don’t forget our survey, which is still open, at the end of the post. Please tell us what you think about the changes at Starbucks!

How does Starbucks create customer loyalty?  John Moore at BrandAutopsy said this a few years back:

“For years, Starbucks Coffee has used high-touch methods to build and maintain a loyal customer base. In his book, “Pour Your Heart in It,” Howard Schultz, in supremely succinct fashion said, “If we greet customers, exchange a few words with them and then custom-make a drink exactly to their taste, they will be eager to come back.” That is the true description of a high-touch way retailers can connect with customers to build enduring loyalty. “

John was writing this post to contrast the approach of high-tech methods of building loyalty with high-touch methods of building loyalty.  Which approach is Starbucks using today?  Let’s look at what they have been doing lately to improve customer loyalty and the customer experience.

Customer Service

Starbucks closed all of their US-based stores for a few hours earlier this year to conduct partner (employee) training.  Right after the training, it was observed that Starbucks partners were making it a point of asking for customer names again (something they had moved away from) when taking drink orders. They also seemed pretty cheerful and upbeat.

Fast-forward to July 2008.  At my most recent experience in a Starbucks I regularly frequent, there was no recognition or asking for names.  My mother-in-law was with me, and she pointed out how “grumpy” one of the partners seemed to be.  I had noticed this before with the same person.  I did notice signs on the wall, directed at partners, which pointed out how to manage fresh bananas (a key ingredient in their new Vivanno smoothies).  

I have also noticed a quieter, more subdued attitude from employees at other Starbucks I have been to lately (including my most commonly visited store near my house).  I wonder if a combination of store closing news and the introduction of new, time-consuming drinks has weighed-down our barista friends.

Customers Rock! Take: Keep focusing on your employees, especially when things are difficult.  They are your brand ambassadors to the outside world.  Customers will notice the change in customer service right away!

New outside seating!

New outside seating!

Customer Experience

 

 

 

 

 

I am not sure if this is happening at other Starbucks, but one of our local stores has put in nice, comfy seating – outdoors!  Now if they can just 1) keep the tables cleared of trash and 2) put some more cushioned chairs inside, we might have a winner.  (Note – that is my Passion Iced Tea on the arm of the chair…)

 

Introducing… New Products

Starbucks has really been focusing on the introduction of new products in their stores these past few months.  First came Pike’s Place Roast, a new blend of coffee meant to hearken back to early days when Starbucks was a true coffee experience.  Although it has had mixed reviews, the idea of grinding in the store has helped boost the coffee aroma (which was sorely missing before).

Most recently has come Vivanno smoothies (mentioned earlier), the Orange-Mango Banana and the Banana Chocolate.  These two new smoothies are high in protein and fiber, and not horrible with respect to calories (compared to the Frappuccino).   Reviews of the Vivanno so far have been mixed.  One interesting thing I noticed in the comments to the blog post Starbucks’ Vivanno vs Jamba Juice was how customers felt like it was out of place to order “smoothies” at a coffee store!  Others who are comfortable with the use of protein powders really seemed to like these drinks (see comments in this BusinessWeek post on Vivanno).  Personally, I would rather stick with my iced tea and get smoothies somewhere else.

Customers Rock! Take: The Pike’s Place Roast has been a good way to try and re-focus on being a coffee store.  It still needs some work, but they are on the right track.  The smoothies are a good option for someone coming to Starbucks looking for something nutritious to drink.  However, is this really why people come to Starbucks? 

Does It Make a Difference?

Here are the real questions to be answered.  Do these new smoothies help Starbucks get back to the “third place” experience?  Does the Pikes Place Roast bring in new customers?  Does the Starbucks Loyalty Card bring back loyal customers?  So far, the reviews are conflicting.  It takes more than new drinks, free WiFi, and comfy chairs to retain customers.  It is not just about high-tech vs high-touch approaches.  It takes building relationships, one customer at a time. 

Starbucks has the opportunity to do so through many channels, both high-tech and high-touch: the daily interactions with customers, the registered Starbucks Reward cards (they have yet to try to interact with me, and I have three cards registered), and their site MyStarbucksIdea (which is heading in the right direction but lacks a true dialogue between customers and partners).   However, it just hasn’t really happened yet.

Starbucks, I would like to see you be successful in re-inventing yourselves through the customer experience.  It would set new standards for other companies who know they should be more customer-focused.  It would make your existing customers happier.  It would help insulate you from your competition, and they are charging up fast. 

There is just one thing you still need to do: look at your stores truly from the customers’ perspective.

What do you think?  Fill Out Our Survey!

Jay and I have put together a short survey to see what you, our readers, think about Starbucks and its “re-Experience” project.  Please take just a minute to click on this survey link and fill it out.  You could even win, what else, a gift card to Starbucks!  We will be report results on our blogs shortly.

(Photo credit: TAlex)

Filed Under: Customer experience, Customer loyalty, Customer service, Starbucks Project Tagged With: , , , , ,

Who Speaks Louder: Marketing or Customer Service?

July 15, 2008 By 9 Comments

Overheard the other day from a cashier at my local grocery store (a large chain, by the way): “Can I get a bagger over here?  You aren’t paying me enough to have me bag the groceries, too!”  I heard this as I was coming up to the check-out counter with my purchases (which were only a few items).

Wow, what does that do to the brand’s marketing messages?

The issue here is this: the customer doesn’t differentiate between what marketing is saying and what they hear from customer service personnel.  All messages, regardless of medium or origin, add up to communicate the brand’s image to the customer.  Yet too often, marketing and customer service are managed separately in a company or organization, they don’t speak to each other, and they don’t have common metrics (you know, those things that drive the behaviors?).

When we look at it from the company’s perspective, we see silo-thinking, each department focused on their own area.  When we look at it from the customer’s perspective, what do we see?  One brand, with everyone working together for a great customer experience?  Or many experiences, looking like many brands, with the experience differing based on how customer service personnel are asked to behave?

Customers Rock! was started to focus on highlighting companies that understand these concepts.  Customers Rock! doesn’t mean the customer is always right.  It means we should view our customers as one of the most important assets that we have; therefore, we should plan each step of how we are going to get, keep, and grow these assets.

Who is speaking more loudly to customers at your organization?  Do you need to bring those messages into alignment?  What do customers think about your brand, from all perspectives?  These are critical questions to answer as companies consider how to weather the current economic storms.

“The relationship that is formed when marketing and customer service meet is like saying that you’re making good on your promises.”  Meikah

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

Starbucks and Store Closings: How will it affect the experience? Update 8

July 3, 2008 By 7 Comments
Custom latte photo from Starbucks
Custom latte photo from Starbucks

Starbucks recently announced they will be closing 600 domestic stores, which will mean Starbucks partners at those stores will be “placed” at other stores or let go.  Reactions to this announcement are varied, and they include John Moore’s post on the need for Starbucks to “prune” (which he wrote last year and is still relevant today), Jay Ehret (my partner in the Re-Experiencing Starbucks project) and his post on the commoditization of Starbucks, as well as partner discussion over at the Starbucks Gossip blog about who will stay and who will go.

Here is the official word to customers from Starbucks as part of their press release on the closures: 

Starbucks will reach out to customers who are impacted by the store closures in a variety of ways including directing them to the Starbucks Store Locator at www.starbucks.com. Customers who have questions or comments on any store or their Starbucks Experience may contact Starbucks Customer Relations via the web at www.starbucks.com/customer/contact.asp.

Until the store closings are announced to the partners, the Store Locator won’t help (I checked for my area, and nothing has changed yet).  In the meantime, customers appear to be reaching out to Starbucks about their favorite locations.

Customers Want to Help

Per feedback from some Starbucks baristas in the comments at the SB Gossip blog, there are customers who are asking what they can do to help [clarifications in brackets added by me]:

“Every customer who asked today wanted to know what they could do to ensure my store wouldn’t close. (That’s like 50% of the cafe, and 80% or the DT [drive thru] customers).

My DM [manager] was in house, working on his computer when a couple of the folks asked, so I pointed them to him. He, and they, were more than happy to have the discussion.”

Customers are even reminiscing about the Starbucks they have visited and are offering suggestions of which stores to close/open on MyStarbucksIdea, the Starbucks customer community:

On memories:

“I have traveled much of the US for work and pleasure and have visited many of your locations. I have many fond memories at your locations in Seattle, San Fran, Atlanta, and NYC and interested in knowing if they closed without having to go through the list (as they are long and remembering some addresses is difficult.)”

On which Starbucks to cut:

“Close the stores in Safeway and Target and open another drive up store on West Main – Close the drive up store in Bloomfield, NM the drinks there are sub standard and so is the service. “

The Customer Perspective

From the customer perspective, the Starbucks experience is as much about the people as it is about the coffee.  As I have said before, the people make the difference.  Will customers follow their favorite baristas to their new assignments?  What if they go to a competitor?  Relationships built up with people count for a lot – we build trust with other human beings, not with a company.

It remains to be seen whether these closures will impact the customer experience in a negative way.  If going back to the customer experience is really what the Starbucks “Transformation Agenda” is about, then one wonders where increasing the number of store closures fits in.  If the stores that remain open are staffed to the proper levels so customer service doesn’t suffer, this may help the experience in the long run.

Per John Moore, pruning is important for the health of a plant (or a business).  It allows for new growth.  I agree with you, John, and I am glad to see Starbucks focusing on their key business, including those stores that offer the most success to the company. 

However, too much pruning, or cuts in the wrong places, can severely damage the plant.  What remains can be ugly.  I am trusting that Starbucks is not going into “cost cutting” mode (and I hope you are right, John, that they are not) but is truly using the shears as part of a long-term strategy for business health and happiness.

Filed Under: Customer experience, Starbucks Project Tagged With: , , , , ,
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