OK, you know I like to stay positive here and look for the “good” in customer service, but sometimes I’m just pushed too far!

Cheapoair.com.  Remember the name, stay away from the site!  I went to the site and found some great prices on hotels, and am planning my pilgrimage to Pasadena to attend the Rose Bowl.  I got on their site and found some decent hotels near the stadium and was VERY careful not to select the deals marked “non-refundable”. I know enough when traveling to avoid that, no matter how enticing the offer. 

I booked the higher priced rooms because there was a disclaimer, and I’m quoting directly from my invoice, “There may be a service charge for cancellations”.  OK, I’m willing to pay a charge for a re-booking.  As fate would have it, a friend offered me a room at their hotel and since I know other football fans that will be staying there, I chose to move my reservation. I called the customer service number that’s listed right next to the above disclaimer, and was told that, “No, even the higher priced rooms are non-refundable”.  Uhhh, no way.  “I’m on your site right now looking at the same reservation and the king room with golf course view is $121 non-refundable, $145 with some restrictions, and I clearly booked the $145 room”.

Well, a half-hour of arguing with no less than four customer service personnel and I still could not get my point across.  Why? because I’m sure that this is a purposely misleading site meant to rip travelers off!  My credit card company is disputing and I’ll get my money back even if it takes a while.  However, just the hassle has cost me some peace-of-mind and a few hours on the phone.

Remember – Cheapoair.com….bad, bad people!

A Jaguar.

A Mercedes.

A BMW.

Can you guess where I am?  A high-end car dealership would make for a very logical guess, but you would be wrong.  Sorry.  Maybe a Simon and Garfunkel reunion concert at the Excel Energy Center?  That would be a more creative guess—and creativity counts for something, I suppose—but wrong again.  How about a Minnesota Timberwolves game?  Possibly, if this were five years ago when people went to the games.  Give up?  I’m actually standing in the parking lot of a discount retail chain.

Once I started digging into this phenomenon—it’s a retail trend called trading down—I guess I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I initially was.  Most of the discount retailers have been thriving.  In the third quarter 2009, sales were strong for the discount store group overall, with particularly good results in the off-price sector.  Moreover, a few analyses of off-price retailers show they’re actually doing better as the economy worsens.

But the economy is improving, right?

Well, that can obviously be debated.  And boy, we all hope so.  Or do we?  An improving economy could bring with it some challenges for discount retailers who are benefitting from the influx of new customers hungry for bargains.  So what does this mean for them—a potentially improving economy?  It means that the time is now, that the window to turn these new customers into loyal followers is closing.

Discount retailers aren’t much different from other retailers, really.  In the end it’s still about product, service, and environment.  And it’s still about executing those three things consistently across all stores.

For discount retailers who are worried about the fading recession, I would say now is the time to truly understand your different customer groups and what they expect from your brand.  Now is the time to continually measure each touch point in the customer experience and refine operations to meet the expectations of new and existing customers.  Now is the time to build a fan base and understand what motivates different types of customers to choose your brand.  Now is the time to capture as much of your customers’ share of wallet as possible.

Because the old adage is true: what gets measured gets done.

And because, hopefully, the economy is getting bullish…and soon.

– Joseph Stanton, VP Business and Product Development

Define: Brand

When I Google “define: brand,” I get the following result:

trade name: a name given to a product or service

Is this definition accurate?

Traditional marketers would agree with Google’s definition. These individuals spend lots time and money developing a surface image of their brands. They create recognizable logos, catchy taglines, memorable ad campaigns and more to build awareness of their businesses and products. While this design, messaging and advertising might be necessary to promote a brand, they are not the key ingredients that dictate how a brand is established and perceived.

To me, the Google definition seems incomplete at best, superficial at worst. It’s unfair and unwise to presume that good looking logos, clever taglines or high-profile ad campaigns are enough to win customer loyalty.

Rather, brand should be defined as the sum of experiences customers have with a company. In this way, the brand is established and reinforced through every service experience and it embodies customers’ expectation for companies’ products and service experiences.

Wal-Mart is a good example of a powerful brand. When I walk into Wal-Mart, I expect cheap prices and reasonable service. And, that’s what I get. FedEx consistently delivers on what its brand promises: timely delivery. Similarly, Starbucks fulfills customer expectations by offering good coffee and pleasant ambiance. Every Starbucks I’ve visited has the same menu, service and décor. With its hallmark blue box and white glove service, Tiffany’s signifies good taste and high quality. My wife has never been disappointed when she finds a Tiffany’s box under the tree; nor have I when I arrive at the jewelers in need of some helpful suggestions about what she might like.

Brands like these have become powerful because customers get what they expect. Brand value has been established because these companies align their brand promises, or their surface images, with the products and services they’re offering. When they deliver on these promises, consistently over time and through every service experience, they’re able to reinforce and hone customer expectations. In this way, brand is formed through a set of ongoing experiences.

It’s time to stop thinking of branding as a marketing event. Establishing a brand is a journey. And, it starts with aligning brand promise with the service experience a company provides.

Knowledge Networks’ recent report on How People use Video Navigation confirms my comments in a prior post here that the best way people learn about new TV shows is by (drumroll, please…) watching TV! 

The funny thing is, people go online to watch something they already know about; they’re catching up on missed episodes of their favorite TV shows.  And the majority of people learn about new shows by – you guessed it – watching TV!  Usually those tune-in promos that are related demographically to the show you’re watching (aka commercials).  But since the spots are for related TV shows while you’re watching TV, they’re much more relevant to the viewer and much more likely to be watched than the run-of-the-mill paid ad.

Definitely not rocket science going on here.  Some interesting takeaways from their report:

• What we in the TV network industry call tune-in ads are by far are the most effecting in driving both TV and online video viewing
• Next comes word-of-mouth for again both TV and online video viewing
• Falling in third are content “guides” – interactive program guides for regular TV viewing, and content search and aggregator sites for online video viewing
• Not too surprising, press and reviews on TV also drive a large share of TV viewing
• Social media sites (friends/family/other) were generally the least effective

What does this mean for POTV (aka plain old TV)?  This plus the Nielsen data that 90% of  TV entertainment time is consumed through POTV and DVRs, 10% though online and mobile, TV’s not going anywhere in the foreseeable future.  The reason is is because the demographic spectrum of the 114.9 million TV households (per Nielsen) is hugely divergent and a bulk of those households are baby boomers (big POTV viewers). 

Will the 18-24 year old Gen Y’s change the game of  TV and online video viewing, and the associated current advertising as a monetization model?  Yes, most definitely.  Just not today or tomorrow.   The data is showing us that online viewing is here to stay and will continue to grow by leaps and bounds.  But how it will all work – who makes how much and for what and where you will see stuff - is still to be determined.  Until that’s settled, big entertainment-related money is just experimenting with online for now.  

Who’s going to win the hearts and minds of TV/video viewers?  Going back to my earlier point here, those TV networks & video content producers, and the advertisers that follow those eyeballs, that get-it early on and figure out the what, how, and whys of what I want to watch, when, and on what platform, will be the winners.

What scenarios do you think will help keep or kill POTV?

Rita from Symbian-Guru kindly let us reproduce a series of top 5s from 2009 Thanks Rita. We’ll run the top ten before the 31st I hope! Today the top 5 Symbian Uitilities.

Symbian-Guru’s 2009 Top 5 Symbian Utilities

By Dotsisx on December 17, 2009

One of the sad facts of business most people choose to ignore (or never learned) is it is never about you. Interactions with customers are never about what you want, what you need, what you care about, or anything else having to do with you. If you want to matter to your customers, what you care about doesn’t matter. This is especially true when customers are upset – which is why you’re there.

If your customer is angry, deal with it. It’s not about you.

If your customer wants you to go the extra mile, do it. It’s not about you.

If your customer wants you to do something faster, do what you can to get it done fast. It’s not about you.

If your customer has had a bad day and is taking it out on you, it’s too bad. It’s not about you.

If your customer has his or her own way of doing things that is effective for him or her, try to work within that system. It’s not about you.

If your customer is a horse’s you-know-what, even then, it’s not about you (this doesn’t include abusive customers.

It’s always about your customers. They’re your best friends.

I had just finished speaking at a conference when a member of the audience walked up to me and handed me a pay stub from a recent paycheck. I wasn’t quite sure why this woman wanted me to see her pay stub unless it was to show me that she made more money than I did.

I looked at her quizzically, and before I could say anything, she said, “Look what it says on the bottom of the pay stub.” I glanced down and there it was: a revelation that told me this company “gets it.”

“This paycheck is brought to you by your customers.”

My eyes grew wide and so did my smile. This company reminded its people every other week just who was responsible for the company’s success and that without that success, there would be no company. And there would be no job.

They could have communicated this by putting a huge poster on the wall, but that wouldn’t have made the impact that seeing this statement associated with the employee’s pay had made. In other words, the food you put on your table, the car you just bought, the college education you’re paying for, the ability to pay for the mortgage, the vacation in the Bahamas, and that new videogame system are all brought to you by your customers. What nice people they are to give you this money!

Now, we know that you worked very hard and you’re very good at what you do, but in the end, if the customer doesn’t pay the bills, there’s no place for you to do this work.

Customers are your best friends. They make sure your salary is paid. Or, if you’re in your own business, they make sure you make a profit – and remain in business. That’s why it’s never about you.

Think about how you treat your best friends. If they’ve been good friends for a long time, you’re clearly doing something right. You’re probably putting their needs before yours, giving them the benefit of the doubt and sharing the responsibilities for whatever you decide to do together. In other words, when you’re best friends, you make it about them and they make it about you. Now think about a time when you got into a fight with your best friend. Odds are that something happened where you made it about you (or vice versa).

The customer isn’t always right. The customer isn’t always nice. But it’s always about the customer. So next time you begin to think, “Who does this guy think he is?” keep repeating “It’s not about me … it’s not about me … it’s not about me.” Then, make it a positive experience for the customer.

When you make it about them, they’ll make it about you.

I wanted to start a discussion about the ways in which the browser and the player could be more closely integrated, so as to improve the overall streaming video experience for end-users.  Here are some of the ideas that myself, YoSpace and Thomson Reuters came up with – please feel free to add to the list!

• Enabling the player to jump to another URL on finishing playback: the use case is where a user receives a message or alert which links to a video.  Once the video has finished, the browser goes to a page to enable the user to learn more about what they have watched
• Bandwidth detection in the device: enables the player to tell the server which stream quality to use based on the player’s knowledge of available bandwidth (e.g. 2G vs. 3G vs. WiFi bearer)
• Phone can seamlessly integrate playback of a number of streams: for example, this could enable a news summary built from individual stories based on user preferences.  Or a service could feed in adverts at appropriate points in the stream.
• Player awareness of when in an advert sequence: so transport controls can be disabled (enables easier monetisation of content, and hence better content for users)
• Video hot-spots: the server can indicate hoyspot time offsets to the device, which can be used to trigger UI events.  For example, an initial summary of a news story could be expanded on based on some UI feedback, or a user could request more info following an advert (which would queue up a web page for viewing later)

These ideas are quite focused on hooks to improve services.  While I agree there are many improvements needed to the direct end-user experience, I strongly believe it is important for us in the device community to work closely with service providers, since providing a better platform for the guys who build video services ultimately leads to better products for end-users.

So – do you fancy a go at building these improvements?  Get in touch!

Jakarta, 22 Desember 2009

Experience atau pengalaman dalam wikis jadi seperti ini ” Experience as a general concept comprises knowledge of or skill in or observation of some thing or some event gained through involvement in orexposure to that thing or event. The history of the word experience aligns it closely with the concept of experiment.”

disitu ada kata knowledge, obervasi, exposure dan experiment, terlalu naif untuk langsung diartikan dalam kehidupan nyata, karena saya ingin mengiring opini pembaca blog ini yaitu akankan pengalaman dari bentuk pengetahuan, observasi, perhatian dan eksperimen dapat menjadi bentuk keuntungan yang dapat di kuantifisir.

saya ingin berbicara dalam kaidah CEM (Customer Experience Management) yaitu pengolahan citra dan pengalaman pelanggan. Jika anda bergelut dalam bidang barang dan jasa yang tehubung langsung kepada konsumen, maka akan sangat penting untuk mempertahankan efek pengalaman yang dirasakan pelanggan kita, itu adalah demi kelangsungan bisnis atau penjualan, jika mereka puas dengan barang dan jasa yang kita berikan itu adalah hal wajar dan sudah seharusnya namun bukan tidak mungkin efek puas saja akan tetap mempertahankan mereka akan masih menggunakan barang dan jasa yang kita berikan.

nah, disinilah bermain efek pengalaman, dan bukan hanya pengalaman tapi wow efek, yaitu apa yang kita berikan lebih dari ekspektasi pelangan dan melampaui standarisasi yang sudah biasanya sudah terbentuk.

bagaimana caranya :

setidaknya saya memaping ada 3 cara besar yang dapat dilakukan untuk menciptakan efek pengalaman pelanggan yaitu:

1. Kreatif dengan Inovasi

Apa yang disebut kreatif ? terjemahan bebasnya adalah bukan dari cara berpikirnya tapi hasil karyanya, jika anda telah berpikir dan tidak teruang dalam bentuk nyata itu belum kreatif, anda harus berpikir dan menejawantahkan dalam perbuatan, apapun prestasi yang akan anda peroleh dalam proses kreatif itu adalah bukan obyektifnya tapi sebagai hadiah jika berhasil akan sukses dan jika belum berhasil itu tandanya ada harus lebih berusaha keras atau mencari jalan baru.

2. Buat perbedaan

Slogan diatas sangat sering kita dengar, dan benar itu adalah mudah untuk didengar dan diucapkan, tapi cobalah untuk belajar menganalisa dan berpikir out of the box, jika anda sama-sama menjual susu segar dan 1000 orang lainnya juga melakukan hal yang sama, apa yang membedakan anda dengan mereka, pelajari, analisa, buat rencana dan lakukan perubahan. setelah itu amati perubahannya apakah cukup untuk anda atau harus lebih extrem lagi.. itu teserah anda.

3. Lakukan berulang-ulang

Setelah dua point diatas sudah kita lakukan, banyak dari kita akan merasa puas, karena experience pelanggan terhadap produk dan jasa kita menemui sisi positif, dan jika sudah berhasil jangan lakukan hanya langkah ketiga dari tulisan ini, karena itu akan membawa anda ke rutinitas dan tinggal menunggu waktu hingga orang lain berbuat yang sama dan anda akan tertinggal dibelakang. sebuah inovasi kreatif dan differensiasi adalah prilaku bukan obat dari penyakit, mereka harus dilakukan terus menerus dengan disiplin, dan disanalah nilai lebih anda dibanding yang lain.

sebagai ilustrasi adalah banyak dari kita sudah puas jika sudah mendulang sukses disuatu posisi dan setelah samapi disana kita berhenti sejenak dan terkadang berhenti selama yang kita mau, dan akhir dari proses itu kita hanya diungkap dalam sejarah bahwa kita pernah sukses dalam bidang X,Y,Z, sukses tanpa sustainable.

saya menghubungkan dalam dunia contact center, apakah kita akan puas dengan pecapaian dititik tertentu, saya rasa tidak demikian jika kita ingin terus maju, semua rapor positif harus diulang dan dicek apakah ada yang bisa dikembangkan, apakah level kita sudah sama dengan kompetitor dan lain sebagainya.

pada akhirnya untuk menakomodasi experience pelanggan terhadap bentuk provit adalah dengan menciptakan pembeda yang bersumber dari originalitas pemikiran dan perbuata anda terhadap pelanggan anda, dengan begitu mereka sulit untuk membandingkan dengan kompetitor anda, dan tercipta wow efek kemudian terjadi repeat buyer terhadap barang dan jasa kita dan on top of that akan menjadikan mereka (pelanggan kita) sebagai wom (word of mouth) agent secara gratis bagi perusahaan kita.

Salam perubahan,

Think out of the box,

GBM

I’m an avid student of business. One of my ongoing personal goals is to better understand what drives consistent success at large organizations. 

Over the years, I’ve read many great theories about how companies perform including Discipline of Market Leaders by Treacy and Wiersema, the 7-S framework from Waterman and Peters, Strategic Intent and Core Competencies by Prahalad and Hamel, Good To Great by Collins, and a number by Michael Porter: Five Forces, Strategic Fit, and Value Chain.

As I discussed in the post Fundamental Flaws In Management Education, the business world has changed. And while all of those models provide valuable insights, they don’t fully capture what makes companies successful today. 

In this environment, companies need to evolve into what I call an Aligned Enterprise which I’ve defined as:

An organization that acts cohesively and embraces change in its environment.

I’ve identified 4 key characteristics of an Aligned Enterprise (which I refer to as P.A.C.E.):

1. Purposeful leadership. Establishing and maintaining a clear and compelling vision for where the organization is heading and why it’s going in that direction.
2. Adaptive design. Infusing the realities of the marketplace (customers, suppliers, technology change, etc.) into the creation and evolution of products, services, and processes.
3. Customer-responsiveness. Increasing the magnitude and speed with which an organization learns from, and responds to, customer feedback.
4. Employee engagement. Building strong commitment from employees through alignment of hiring, on-boarding, training, coaching, communications, and incentive programs.

I’ll write more about Aligned Enterprise in future posts. Before I do, I’d love to hear what you think about the model. Does it resonate with you? Is there anything missing? What examples would you point to? 

The bottom line: How well is your organization keeping PACE?

Examples of business priorities both wacky and wonderful can be observed every day through the customer experience. What priorities does your customer experience expose? Are they wacky or wonderful?

Wacky business priorities in action:
My wife runs a gift shop with customers across the world, so she has to ship items frequently, especially during the holidays. The United States Postal Service chose the busiest time of year to radically change their online tracking system. When my wife, a pretty savvy software user, needed to chat with customer support to troubleshoot a buggy experience, the representative told her the problem was her browser choice; she needed to switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox to use the functionality she needed. Put another way, USPS opted to support the 1-in-4 user scenario and not the 3-in-4 user scenario, again, during the busiest shipping month of the year. As though that weren’t bad enough, the representative with whom she was chatting was dismissive and disdainful of her for being one of the 75% of online users that isn’t using Firefox.

This was a less than ideal customer experience. What could have driven USPS to make these decisions? What business priority won out over providing reliable mission-critical services?

Wonderful business priorities in action:
My laptop is old by laptop standards. In my experience, after 5 years, it’s time to get a new laptop. This belief seemed validated over the past few months as my laptop began shutting down in apparently random circumstances. When it started shutting down more frequently, it seemed related to video playback. After troubleshooting and consultation, I assumed the CPU fan was dying. I hoped I could replace it, but I prepared myself for the possibility that I would need to buy a new PC.

While I was calling around town to find out how likely and expensive a repair might be, I spoke with Aleem, a repair guy at HardDrives Northwest, a local small business with a great reputation for integrity, quality, and service. He listened to my story and concluded that I probably just needed to blow some dust out with pressurized air. It hadn’t occurred to me; I’ve had several laptops and never needed to clean the insides. I was prepared to spend thousands on a new PC, or hundreds on a repair. Instead, I got some simple free advice. Now my laptop is good as new.

Without a doubt, great customer service is a priority to HDNW. How many repair shops would have defaulted to saying they needed to open the laptop up, incurring at least $100 in labor costs? How do companies foster the kind of caring service I received today, the kind of service that earns my loyalty?

What Mitch Lieberman has discovered because of Twitter social media http://ping.fm/Kp5ab

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Your Employees Are Your Most Important Asset

Numbers, metrics, sales, service, results, outcomes, profit, loss, success or failure is all due to something that employees create, and affect – “affect” being the operative word here.  An organization’s brand is built, or broken by the people who represent the organization.

I have been reading a lot about employee engagement lately, and I’m glad to see that people are talking about it, especially during these challenging times.  The articles that I have been reading basically all agree that billions of dollars are lost each year due to employees who are disengaged with their work, and their organization.

Some articles blame a lack of leadership (I would agree), and some blame a lack of direction (I would also agree).  There are those who have come up with a “metric” driven solution (there’s probably something of use there), and others point to a lack of communication within organizations that create an environment of “I don’t know what’s going on so I don’t care” employee (yep, I see that as a major issue as well).

Common sense would tell us that if employees are not engaged, bad things are going to happen.  Critical resources (time and creativity) will be wasted if you have employees who just go through the motions each day while at work, creating the impression of “work.”  Anyone can come into an office (for the most part) and make it look like they are working, but it takes a person who has that fire and drive in their gut to make a real difference in an organization.

Disengaged employees drive mediocrity.  Just getting by each day and staying under the radar is a conscious, and unconscious goal of these types of employees.  A culture of mediocrity is a natural outcome due to this type of behavior, and it spreads like a disease across an organization.

Employee engagement does not have to be complicated, or take up a lot of expensive resources.  Basically, educating employees about, and getting them involved with the business is a good start.   Check out my website (www.archofchange.com) for some great ideas about how to build a more engaged workforce.

This year, for the first time, we sponsored the award for the best MBA Marketing dissertation at Bradford University School of Management, which is the 16th ranked Business School in UK (Financial Times 2009 rankings). The prize, a cheque for £100, was presented by Duncan McCallum, Founding Partner at McCallum Layton at the graduation ceremony on Wednesday 2nd December, to Andrea Musci from Milan. We are delighted to also confirm that we will be sponsoring the prize next year.

Nina Reynolds, Professor of Marketing at Bradford University School of Management said “We are delighted to have McCallum Layton support our MBA and look forward to developing our strategic partnership over the coming years.”

Every year I’m fortunate to experience lots of change. I enjoy it. The mix of excitement, uncertainty, and the helpfulness of so many people I’m fortunate to know make for a thrilling journey.

2009 has been exceptional. My forays into the world of social media exploded as the Stop Doing Dumb Things to Customers blogging experiment went from strength to strength. Thousands of people tuned in and many have contributed and co-created too. This inspired me to try and improve the mix of employee, customer and social engagement offered through the blog, and through LinkedIn and through facebook, and beyond. I found real enjoyment in writing and it helped make some fantastic new connections, of which more in a minute.

In the summer of this year, I resigned from a successful and enjoyable 12.5 year career working for BT which encompassed sales, sustainability, change management and employee engagement. I’ve started a new business (well someone had to). It’s called What Goes Around Limited. I hope it will bring the very best of what I’ve learned and am learning about engagement, sustainability, leadership, trust and autonomy in pursuit of great service to an even wider audience. In the few short months that What Goes Around has been in existence, we’ve enjoyed some success, uncovered lots of opportunities and made plenty of mistakes. Sorry, I mean learned lots of valuable lessons.

Something I learned a few years ago (I think it happened when I became a father) which I want to amplify today is the power of sharing. My experience of large organisations has taught me that sharing is often spoken about, and rarely practiced. The old maxim knowledge is power only feels right to me when the knowledge is shared to create power with others. Yet too often knowledge is selfishly held close in the belief that it can create power over others, where its value is truly limited, and sometimes even dangerous. In the belief that we can co-create more real power and movement in 2010, I want to share just a few of the many people and things which have inspired me in this exceptional year of change.

Have a great Christmas, and an exciting New Year.

Doug Shaw
07736 518066
What Goes Around Limited
Registered in England. Company number 06997727

Inspiring people, places and things

Jonathan Wilson. Jonathan is one of the most fascinating people I know. Though I’ve known him for some years, I include him on this list because the new ideas and opportunities he introduces me to make it feel like I’m often meeting him for the first time. This year he showed me a great way to measure communication and performance within a team, and improve it.

Is Bad Behaviour Killing Big Business. My friend Katherine Wiid encouraged me to start what is now a growing network on LinkedIn full of interesting people sharing, learning and having some fun discussing stuff about behaviour. Click here and if you like what you see, please feel free to join in.

David Zinger. Katherine then introduced me to David Zinger’s employee engagement network. A growing, thriving network of people with a sincere interest in this exciting subject. David also runs davidzinger.com an interesting and useful site full of insight, cartoons, poetry, plans and the Zinger employee engagement model.

Life Without Pants. Through David Zinger’s network I met Shereen Qutob-Cabral. Shereen is an enthusiast and a motivator. She showed me the way to Life Without Pants and its owner Matt Cheuvront. Matt writes and collaborates wonderfully. Amongst the wonderful things you can find at Life Without Pants is a great read called the Inconvenience of Change. 38 bloggers coming together each with their own story and perspective on how to inspire change.

What Matters Now. After enjoying the great work on Life Without Pants, I went seeking more. I found What Matters Now, which is the work of more than 60 people with big ideas and something to say. It will inspire you to make some changes in 2010, and to keep doing work that matters. Please download it and share it with your colleagues.

Other folk who’ve given me a hand in 2009 include Chris Plush, Tony Mason, Walter Hicks, Gary Smailes, Pete Massey, Dan Pink, Kate Davies, Ross Clephane, Lyndon Wright, David MacLeod, David Shanks (who gave me the name What Goes Around Limited), Dave and Maggie Wheeler, Huw Williams, Joseph Bridgstock, Tamar Collis, Charlie Duff, my dad Paul and my darling wife Carole and lovely daughter Keira Joe. For every experience I recall there are more I can’t right now so my apologies if I’ve forgotten to acknowledge your help and co-creation this time, I hope to do better in the future.

My cousin went to Lord & Taylor expecting to use a 20% coupon. After finding a bathing suit that she wanted to buy, she went to checkout.

The sales rep, however, said that the coupon did not work for her order. They called over the supervisor who insisted that the coupon could not be used for bathing suits. Even after several minutes, the supervisor could not explain where it said that bathing suits were not included. The sale rep was nice about the situation, agreeing that it was misleading after the supervisor left. But my cousin had to pay full price for the bathing suit.

The experience was so problematic that my cousin told me about it (and she probably told other people as well).

My take: I’ve included a copy of the coupon below. Take a look at the wording. Even with the closest reading of the fine print, it does not seem to say that bathing suits aren’t included. 

There were two significant problems with this interaction: 

• Misleading wording. Despite the large font claiming “Storewide Savings,” it has so much fine print that it’s very hard to understand. And the implementation of the coupon in the store does not seem to match how it’s worded.
• Unempowered employees. Even after realizing that the policy was wrong, the salesperson did not have the ability to override the system. She should have been able to give my cousin the 20% discount.

Unfortunately, these problems aren’t unique to Lord & Taylor. Too many retailers still try to lure customers into their stores with less than clear promotions. This type of experience may drive short-term traffic, but it doesn’t create loyal customers.  

The bottom line: Incremental sales aren’t worth the cost of loyalty.

Dare I Say it? Patients are not Transactions

Although my original article was originally entitled “Customers are not Transactions” and was written from the perspective of a typical B2C transaction, it is not dissimilar to the typical health-care/consumer (patient) experience.

As a Baby-Boomer, I’m now fulfilling the role of care-giver to my elderly parents. Recently I accompanied my Dad through the maze of many specialties, multiple doctor’s appointments, lab work interactions, insurance forms and intricacies, and finally admissions and procedures at a local hospital. I couldn’t help but equate those experiences with the typical consumer/store experience.

Health-care is a Consumable

You can’t get around the fact that health-care has become a consumable. Now very savvy consumers have resolute expectations of the desired or, unfortunately, minimally acceptable patient experience. And they have a plethora of choices of hospitals, clinics, and health-care providers from which to choose.

To be candid, I don’t see much difference between how health-care providers treat patients and how most companies treat customers – simply stated patients are treated “as transactions”. Think through the common health-care interactions from the perspective of a patient and/or care-giver. How would you want to be treated? Like a number? Like a transaction? No, you’d like to be treated as a person who has both physical and emotional needs and expectations. After all, you’re a person first and a patient and/or care-giver second.

What do I mean by Transaction?

Going back to my recent experiences with my Dad, I remember seeing the cordoned off lines to the check-in counter at a clinic. The receptionist/clerk called “Next!” and the transaction of taking the patient’s insurance card, collecting the co-payment (in advance of the meeting with the doctor), instills not only a transaction being processed but also a “all that matters is that you can pay” and further implies a lack of trust that the patient might skip out without paying after the appointment with the doctor.

If trust is lacking at the beginning of this interaction, what does it say for the remainder of the interaction? It’s crucial that trust is instilled in a health-care environment. The check-in process needs to address this as well as how effectively the nurse and doctor instill trust. The whole process leading up to the meeting with the health-care provider is pure drudgery. It’s simply wasted time for patients and care-givers. Yes, we’ve come to expect it but that doesn’t mean it has to be this way.

What’s behind treating patients as transactions?

Speed and economy-oriented metrics (based on transactions) and rewards can easily result in a lack of focus on quality time with those who need it most, the patients. This doesn’t apply just to health-care providers but also those who are the first interaction point, i.e., admission clerks, those who register the patient, any one who starts the interaction all the way through to the person who checks-out the patient at the end of the process.

A suggestion for those in the health-care industry is to look at every detail from the perspective of the patient and care-giver. As the Mayo Clinic cleverly observed several years ago, it comes down to the details: scuff marks on the floors, dirty shoelaces on nurse’s shoes, any detail that may be observed by the patient or care-giver as a clue or indication of lack of cleanliness or attention to detail.

In closing, I noticed at the hospital which treated my father that they had a large banner in the entrance about a nursing excellence program with a mission statement on promoting nursing. Nothing was mentioned about benefitting the patient. Obviously I can deduce that better equipped, trained, empowered, and happy nurses should translate into good care for patients. However, I perceived this banner as a sign that the hospital had an inside-out perspective. In other words, what’s good for the hospital’s inner workings versus what’s best for the patient. If you’re in the health-care industry, how patient-centric are you?

Now and then, I come across articles, books or… blogs that tout the merits of “exceeding customer expectations”. Essentially, the concept goes as follows: Simply delivering a product or service at a level that meets customer expectations is not enough; instead, you need to “surprise” or “delight” your customers by providing an experience they did not expect. Only then, according to the promoters of “Customer Delight”, will you earn your customers’ eternal gratitude and loyalty. Sounds good – seems to make sense. But how realistic is it? And more importantly, is it a profitable proposition in the long run?

Exceeding Expectations With Consumers Today Raises Expectations For Tomorrow

The question that immediately comes to mind is this: What do you think your customers’ expectations for their next experience with your organization will be after you exceeded their expectations on their most recent experience? Can you do less than you just did? See, here’s the problem with the concept of “exceeding expectations”: Once you’ve delivered at a certain level, you can’t go back – and are forever tied to providing that same level of service or quality your customers just experienced. Now, how long do you think your organization can sustain such an effort? Think of your customers – how you service them and what it would take to “exceed” their expectations. In you’re a retailer, exceeding expectations usually means adding staff (either for immediate availability or allowing them to spend more time with the consumer), increasing hours of operations, or offering apparel of all styles, sizes, and colors – and having it in stock too! If you’re a hotel, it may mean providing several styles of shampoo and conditioner for oily, normal, and dry hair, allowing 10:00 AM check-in and 4:00 PM check-out, and – gulp! – providing free internet access. OK, that last one was one of those features that (hopefully) will soon become part of the standard offer. But you get the gist of it. Exceeding expectations will cost you a bundle; and it would be a big, big stretch to assume that the return on that type of investment would justify such expenses.

Hard Enough To Consistently Meet Expectations

When you think of it, isn’t it already hard enough to consistently meet customers’ expectations – when expectations are often raised by consumers’ increasing ability to share and learn about current users’ experiences with the product/service at hand? Indeed, today’s relationship between seller and buyer is now dominated by the buyer (consumer), who can educate him/herself with the click of a button about your products’ quality and features, pros and cons, price competitiveness, etc – prior to the purchase. Because there’s less that is unknown, expectations are more specific and tangible, and customers know exactly what to expect. Anything less will result in disappointment, low satisfaction, and low re-purchase intent.

Little Return For Huge Effort

But that doesn’t mean that anything more will do much for your company in the long run either. This is where the law of diminishing returns comes into play. If you meet you customers’ expectations, more likely than not, they will renew their experience with your organization next time around. Why not? You’ve provided what they needed, most likely at a cost they felt comfortable with. So why take chances? Most customers are risk-averse, and would rather go with what they already know and feel comfortable with. Sure, providing something “extra” will create that moment of “customer delight”. But will it actually result in additional future spending, when you’ve most certainly earned it by providing what the customer expected? I would argue not.

Tough To Create “Delighted” Customers

Just for a moment, put on your “customer hat” and imagine filling out a survey about your most recent experience at a retailer. Per the definition of the supporters of the consumer delight concept, to qualify as a “delighted customer”, you’ll have to answer most questions with a 9 or a 10 (if the survey uses a 1-10 scale). Not just a question here and there, but the vast, vast majority of them. How likely are you to do that? Just think about your most recent visit to Wal-Mart, Nordstrom, Macy’s, Toys R Us, Target, Dunham’s, etc. From the moment you walked in to the moment you walked out, was your entire experience there worth a “10”? The layout: 10? The store associates: 10? The merchandise: 10? The check out: 10?

And it’s not just you; if 1,000 customers are surveyed, they will be expected to do the same. Now, seriously, what do you think are the chances of that happening?

Optimizing The Customer Experience

In the end, it’s all about finding the right balance – what experts refer to as the “optimization of the Customer Experience”. Provide too little, and you’ll lose customers; provide too much, and you’ll lose your shirt. Customer Delight (exceeding expectations) is a nice and appealing concept; but for most businesses, and particularly in today’s ultra-competitive environment, meeting customers’ expectations will prove challenging enough – as well as good enough.

During a presentation at the Fourteenth National Forum on Customer Based Marketing Strategies held earlier in 2009 in Las Vegas, John McKeever, president of Gelb Consulting Group and Jim Macksood, associate director of brand strategy and communication at the University of Michigan Health System (UMHS), shared their insights about an experience mapping study conducted at UMHS.

Their insights were captured in an article featured in Strategic Health Care Marketing .  To download a PDF copy, click on Insights from University of Michigan Health System Experience Mapping Study .

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Company enhances call center services portfolio with customer self-service offerings

Overland Park, KS (Vocus) December 18, 2009 — CXO Global Solutions (http://www.cxogs.com), a managed services firm specializing in unified communications and managed call center operations, today announced it has acquired Florida-based S3 Integrity (http://www.s3integrity.com), the developer and distributor of the WuLi Solution™, a proprietary customer self-service business process and technology. The agreement will be effective January 1, 2010.

The company also announced that Mike Tripp, S3 Integrity’s chief executive officer, will join CXO Global Solutions as president. Tripp will be responsible for the day-to-day operations and strategy for the call center oversight and management portions of CXO. Bryan DiGiorgio continues as CXO Global Solutions chief executive officer, driving the strategy of the parent company, as well as the operations and strategy for the non-call center lines of business.

The S3 Integrity WuLi Solution™ provides clients with web-based customer self-service solutions designed to improve their customers’ experience while reducing operating expenses. The unique solution provides clients with the means to analyze the drivers of customer service calls, and then creates web-based multi-media content to address those questions and issues. This enables the customers to find answers/solutions through the easy-to-use WuLi portal, eliminating the need to call customer service. While many companies focus on resolving a customer’s issue on the first call, the WuLi Solution™ allows them to take customer satisfaction to a new level by providing pre-contact resolution – a tangible market advantage.

Tripp is a 20-plus year veteran in customer management and business process outsourcing. He has extensive experience within the financial services, healthcare, telecommunications, consumer electronics, logistics and business process outsourcing sectors. He has led customer management operations for CBS SportsLine and multi-client BPO operations for well-known organizations, including APAC Customer Services and Sprint Telecenters. He will relocate from Orlando to the Kansas City area.

“We are excited about adding S3 Integrity’s capabilities into CXO’s service offering. The WuLi Solution’s self-service capability is a strong addition to CXO’s client solutions and complements our core set of call center management capabilities. This enables us to deliver a complete one-stop solution for our clients’ customer experience needs,” says DiGiorgio. “We’re also very glad to welcome Mike to the management team. He brings a great deal of experience and expertise and will be a strong addition.”

About CXO Global Solutions (http://www.cxogs.com)

CXO Global Solutions is a leader in enterprise communications systems and managed contact center operations. The company provides consulting, telephony, unified communications, managed contact center solutions, and related services to leading businesses and organizations. Companies of all sizes depend on CXO Global Solutions for state-of-the-art communications and operations that improve efficiency, customer acquisition and retention, collaboration and competitiveness. Through its wholly owned subsidiary WorkSpace Communications™ (http://myucworkspace.com), CXO Global Solutions delivers telephony and Microsoft-based unified communications on a subscription basis to the small- and medium-sized business segment. 

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When Bruce Temkins of Forrester Research says on his blog (http://experiencematters.wordpress.com) that 2010 will be a busy year for customer experience, he says it right. Strategy, technology, knowing and building relationship with your customers, restoring purpose in your brand, and the list goes on, are all part and parcel of the busyness marketers will experience next year.

The other day I was a participant (@AdaMarcom) on a Twitter chat #sm38 with Charlene Li (@charleneli) and other great marketers discussing social media, she said social media will be a key differentiator for businesses in 2010, where companies/brands who do well in this arena will increase customer loyalty, I was a bit skeptical.

Yes, social media tools on websites can help differentiate your products from your competition. They will make customer experience more pleasant and welcoming. But when most companies are going on Twitter and Facebook, responding to sales inquiries and handling customer service questions, then what could have been a differentiator is now part of life (the way of doing business). Companies are expected to provide satisfactory customer service, be it via a social media tool, a mix of social media tools or over the phone and email. More so in 2010 and the years to come, given more choices and increased exposure to brands in the media (online, TV, print and events), customers are becoming more knowledgeable than ever. They’re not only becoming selective and knowledgeable about the products themselves, they’re also getting pickier than ever about their shopping experience, how companies handle their orders, and what sources/sites they’re getting their products from.

“Don’t think of social media as an incremental “thing” to be handed off to a consumer. Your social media strategy is an extension of your company’s behavior,” said James Kelly on Forbes.com’s CMO Network in an article named “CMOs: Don’t Give Up Those Brand Reins!”

Customer service experience, with a smart choice of technology and social media tools, is going to be the key differentiator of marketing success and good company behavior in 2010. May I call it the “all-around” customer service experience? When I can pick up the phone, send an email, tweet my question, post on a Facebook fan page about the product I’m considering, finding help to research the product I’m purchasing, rating my experience with the product (and the process of getting the product into my hand), YouTubing the way the product works if it’s really that cool to warrant a video of its own, I think that’s ultimate all-around customer service experience.

Customers still dominate the center-stage of product marketing; they still have the reins the last time I checked. Though Time magazine just announced the “Person of the Year” to be Ben Bernanke, I think the ultimate person of the year is “I” the customer.

Let’s end with this thought on customer loyalty, and we’ll expand on this discussion in my next post: “Real value of social media/technologies is that it creates deeper relationships. How do you measure relationships?” tweeted by @charleneli on the Twitter chat #sm38. Building strong customer relationships will help unleash the true value of social media and technologies, hence giving you the best bank for the buck you spent on achieving it.

I believe with the thinking of creating deeper relationships and measuring them, we as marketers will head the right direction in 2010.

Related posts: Are you capturing your customers' full value?
10 Customer Service Trends in 2010
Social Media Convergence