Tag Archives: customer delight

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eCommerce: When Experience Trumps Information

fightMy 13 yr. old daughter was expounding on the dangers of internet predation last night as a result of starting a new technology class. Her information was spot on until she tried to explain to me how the internet had no doubt changed since the 70’s and 80’s.

I had to tell her that as far as mere mortals went there WAS no internet in the 70’s and 80’s.

Back in the 90’s however, when the internet was building into the juggernaut it is today, the phrase amongst those of us who were building websites was “Content is King”. You see, it was all about the information.

In the more recent past, yesterday to be exact, I found myself ordering electronics online. I needed to get an external hard drive and an SD card and have them shipped to my son’s college address. A seemingly simple task to be sure.

Best Buy was showing the lowest price, but their only available shipping method wouldn’t get the goodies there on time. Of course I only found that out after getting to the last stage of the check-out process. I certainly could have used some shipping information earlier in the game.

Next I went to TigerDirect, they usually have the lowest price, and found that they were only slightly more expensive than BestBuy BUT they offered second day shipping. I’ve used them before and been well satisfied with my purchases.

Once again I wove my way through the shopping cart experience, not significantly different than any other shopping cart experience really, and got to the end where I could confirm that I wanted second day shipping. This is where Tiger made the information play…for every shipping option available the site provided the estimated arrival date of the shipment. Pretty cool huh? A great piece of information to include, yes?

Well… it seems that choosing second day shipping on Jan. 8 had the good arriving in California on Jan 15. Next day service got them there by Jan 14 !?!

I wanted to confirm this odd math so I first tried the online chat function which told me they were too busy to answer. I next tried calling customer service and after 35 minutes on hold I surrendered.

A new Google search lead me to ADORAMA. I’d never heard of them before but they appeared to have the items in stock. Once again I filled my cart, created a payment profile, and selected second day shipping. This site didn’t show me any estimated arrival dates.

I called customer service who answered straight away. I explained my situation, wanting to be sure that if I paid for two day shipping that it would in fact take two days. After providing the SKU’s I was looking for the agent confirmed that if my order was entered prior to 8:00pm EST is would indeed arrive in Thursday, if my order was confirmed later than 8:00 the items would arrive Friday.

They got my business.

TigerDirect provided the most comprehensive information of any of the three sites. But the information seemed wrong in context…leading me to my second axiom from the early days of the internet: “Content is King but Context is Crucial.”

It is likely the situation that The Case of the Odd Shipping Dates has something to do with distributed order fulfillment or in stock items or some such internal, logical excuse. I don’t care. Two days is two days.

In this case the vendor who presented LESS information won because they provided a significantly better customer experience.

As a result I now have a new bookmark for finding consumer electronics. Experience trumps Information, and sometimes, it even trumps price.

Is it your experience the eCommerce sites generally provide the right amount of information or do you find your self scrammbling to sort it out as often as not?

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Bonefish Grill and The Importance of Being MORE than Earnest

Back in February I posted a comparison between two, quite different, customer experiences: Mike’s Camera vs Bonefish Grill.

For those who’ve not seen it the post tells the story of how each company messed up a reservation and how they handled it. It describes how Bonefish Grill had been a family favorite of ours but that they had so badly goofed on a Mother’s Day reservation that we probably would never go back.

Well, I’m here to say we finally gave them another chance. I’d received an email promotion for a steak and lobster meal that sounded too good to pass up so, against my better judgement, and swayed by memories of good meals, we decided to give them another shot.

The evening started off fine, we were seated quickly, and promptly served drinks. Then things started to slip a little.

We were told that they were out of one of the items on the specials menu and that the pork chops were gone as well. No worries, neither item had been on our radar. Moments later we were told that they were also out of tilapia. I thought it was kind of odd that they’d be out of so many different items at 6:45 on Sunday with no wait. The big issues now though was that the global tilapia shortage meant there were three or four additional items that were out of play and those items WERE on our radar.

As the server left to give us a chance to reassess our orders I leaned across the table and said, “If they’re out of the special I’m thinking we just leave.”

When the server came back to take our order she apologized for the tilpia scarcity and offered free desserts, on them, to make up for it. “Ok,” I thought, “At least they’re trying and they’re landing in the sweet spot for customer service so…good on ’em.”

To make a long story short…

The special was great, and in stock. The other meals were up to snuff, our expectations for good food exceedingly well met. Our drinks were kept full. All in all an earnest effort by the staff even if we’d been mildly put out by a certain level of snarkiness that would normally have been just on the outer edge of not quite good but barely acceptable.

Three desserts duly arrived and a short time later so did the check. Full charge for the post dinner dainties included.

Normally, with good food and good service we would merely have pointed out the mishap. But with a recent history of bad experience, snarky service, and a failed promise we’d had enough.

My children and I were all for writing “free dessert” in on the tip line on the bill but my wife is much nicer than we are so we tipped the staff somewhat below our normal standard and departed somewhat put out by the experience.

So what can be learned by the failure of a second chance?

1. You never know when a customer is giving you a second…or last…chance.
Because of that the level of service needs to be consistently high whether people are coming in for the first time or the last chance.

2. When circumstances conspire against you, up the game, for real.
Being out of goods isn’t the fault of the staff. But the ability to make it better IS in their control, or should be. When circumstances go bad you have to up the game not just with lip service but with over the top customer experience.

3. When you’ve lost a fan you’ve lost more than a sale.
Bonefish may or may not care if I ever come back. They can point to the fact that they swayed me back with an enticing promotional offer. Fair enough. What they have lost though is the fact that I no longer recommend them, something I used to do regularly and often.

Have you ever had a customer experience that took you from fan to ban like the one we just had last night?

 

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The NFL and an Interesting Revelation

Somewhere along the way I think I must have missed something. It seems to me, and maybe I am wrong, that I used to be able to choose between two NFL games in the Sunday morning slot and two in the afternoon slot.

Even with the advent of Sunday Night Football I thought I still had my pick of two in the morning and two in the afternoon.

What happened to my afternoon choice?

Perhaps it is different in different markets but here in Colorado we get one game in the afternoon and it seems like it is almost always either a Cowboys game or a Giants game. Unless of course the Broncos are playing in the afternoon then we get them…but only that one.

As I started pondering this woeful dearth of afternoon football watching options during the Giants dismantling of the Saints and was struck by a startling revelation.

The NFL doesn’t care if I have choices.

You see, in almost any business providing choices means more cost. It can, and typically does mean more revenue as well but it can double or triple costs often making the additional revenues less than worthy of consideration.

Providing choice means there will be people who DON’T watch one of the games. Providing NO choice means people watch what they’re given.

My simple analysis was completed in less time than it takes for a boy named Suh to come up with an excuse for kicking someone in the groin but it did land me on a new customer type: The Addict.

Whether or not you consider yourself a football , or more particularly an NFL addict the truth is the NFL considers their customers to be addicts and I’ll provide three pieces of supporting evidence.

1. Other leagues have failed
Remember the WFL or the USFL? Who could forget the XFL? All leagues that saw the potential for an expanded football market, all failed. Even college football has a different kind of following than the NFL.

Of course this lends support to the leagues assertion that their product is unique enough that they have a corner on the professional football market…and addict fans.

2. We’ll watch anything with our teams logo on it.
NO matter what the challenge, replacement teams in the 80’s, back up who aren’t ready to play, replacement coaches, replacement refs…as long as it is our squads logo we turn out to watch.

Maybe that’s another reason people don’t watch the pro bowl…wrong uniforms.

3. Teams that sell out, always sell out.
This indicates there is no shortage of backup customers to be had if the current pool of season tickets holders and regular buyers should all suddenly contract the plague.

This steady stream availability, probably more than anything, makes the NFL comfortable with measuring out the goodies to their addicted fans.

Now of course I’m mostly being facetious here. But there is a nugget of truth buried in the midst of this madness. If we can somehow find ways to control output and build a big enough customer pool it may be possible for ANY enterprise to develop addicted customers. Mange to do THAT and you’re on the gravy train.

What do you think are the key ingredients for building a customer base that is addicted to your product or service?

 

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Black Friday: A Customer Experience Perspective

Madness. It’s all madness.

I do not normally enter into the fray on Black Friday (what color will they give Thursday now that they’re stretching the shopping hours backward into Thanksgiving?) but with Walmart less than 1000 yards from my backyard and half off a premier item on one of my kid’s Christmas lists we decided to give it a “dive in / dive out.”

This wasn’t my first time truth be told. In years past I have ventured out on Black Friday. I just think it has gotten substantially more insane in the last half decade.

There is a distinct difficulty in starting BF shopping hours while the store is already open. Supposedly the sale started at Walmart at 8:00. I was to the item location by 8:04, having seen literally hundreds of them in place in the case earlier in the day…they were all gone. In four minutes? Really? Somebody had to have broken the rules.

To make a long story short we found both the items we were after and we got in and out in about 30 minutes. But I believe I am forever scarred.

In my observation Black Friday is one very specific time of year when the retailers do not care about the customer AT ALL. They throw out a tantalizing array of loss leaders and teasers then stand back and watch the feeding frenzy.

  • You were fifth in line so you get that laptop? Sorry we only had three of that model.
  • You came in at 7:45 hoping to get positioned for the 8:00 start and the shelf was empty already? Yeah, people started grabbing them at 7:00 when we put them out.
  • You stood for 30 minutes in what looked like a queue for Mortal Death Match 19 for XBox 360 and someone just walked up and got one ahead of you? Sorry, we can’t control this size crowd.

The ultimate measure of success for Black Friday is sales, fair enough. But I sometimes wonder how many customers get really ticked off at some particular retailer who either couldn’t think crowd control or who went in with low inventory on all the big sale items and as a result decides not to shop there any more.

Of course they’re hoping that we’re SO consumption driven that we’ll overlook those things that bother us and keep coming back like Pavlov’s dog.

So what lessons can we learn from Black Friday retailers approach to customers?

1. You CAN compete on price alone.
Obviously I am big proponent of service. Price has to be competitive but there are studies that show that customers are willing to pay higher prices for better service. Of course in a 12 hour rushed frenzy you can’t serve people well, you just need to get out of the way right?

I suppose I’d argue that if you choose to compete on price alone don’t be surprised if your customers start thinking of you as a commodity, something I may need but will get along without if I can.

2. Volume is king.
It doesn’t matter how much one person buys if you get 10,000 to just come in the door. That’s the thought behind the loss leader approach, get a bunch of people in the door knowing they’ll buy more than just what they came looking to purchase. I suppose that approach works too if you are basing your approach to building a customer base on a couple or crazy, gimmicky events. Loyalty? Nah…overrated, right?

3. Customers CAN be fooled all the time.
retailers keep putting out the teasers and consumers keep running in, many reveling in the competitive edge they got  by grabbing items at 2:00 and waiting in tot store to pay the sale price at 8:00, other happy to have shoved their way to the front and grabbed the last Mortal Death Mach 19. The vast majority don’t get the one big thing they came looking to get but went away with a few other items on their list, happy to have saved money…and they’ll do it again.

And now please excuse me, I have some sarcasm still dribbling down my chin.

What are your thoughts on the madness of Black Friday?

 

 

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Customer Experience Shout-Out of the Week

It was a touch and go thing there for a minute. Usually I list Kohl’s Department Store amongst the companies that “get it” from a customer experience, or at a minimum a customer service, standpoint. This past week however they slid dangerously close to my list of “I don’t shop there any more” vendors.

Somehow, back in August, our usual Kohl’s Card back-to-school-shopping-bill didn’t arrive in the mail. My wife, who is ever diligent about such things, wondered at that, but we got caught up in the stuff of life and didn’t think too much about it. We eventually just paid what we owed based on receipts we had.

Unfortunately that payment crossed in the “mail” and we were charged a late fee in September. We didn’t pay it, we called in a disputed it, but apparently did THAT too late because we were charged a late fee for the late fee. Now we were expected to pay $30 in late fees for $24 worth of goods.

Again we called to dispute. This time we got a fairly rude gentleman on the phone who suggested that he could take off one late fee but not both. We countered by suggesting that if he bothered to look he’d see we had been Kohl’s customers for nearly a decade, never had a late fee prior to this, in fact rarely ran a balance, and that this was unacceptable. He countered our counter by saying he could remove both late fees IF we paid the one dollar interest charge on the first late fee.  Sheesh.

We agreed.

This month our bill had…wait for it…two late fees. The one he didn’t take off after we paid the dollar and a late fee on top of that.

I called once again. I wasn’t in the mood to negotiate this time really so after the requisite confirmation of who the operator was speaking with I launched right in. I explained the series of events succinctly and then said:

“So, I’m calling today to see if we can either get these two late fees reversed or to just pay you the thirty dollars, cancel my card and never do business with you again.”

The operator responded:
“Yes, Mr. Fletcher I see the conversation history here. Can you hold for just a moment please?”

When she returned, in what truly WAS just a moment, she launched right in:
“Alright Mr. Fletcher those charges have been removed. Is there anything else I can do for you today?”

I kind of felt cheated, she’d stolen my steam. At the same time I was glad it was so simple.

So what’s the moral of the story?

1. Companies with a history of good service will usually come through.
As I mentioned I have had good experience with Kohl’s correcting things that needed correcting. If I hadn’t I probably wouldn’t have given then a couple attempts.

2. Consistency is crucial.
I say this because if I had NOT had previous experience from which to draw I may have left them hanging after the first botched attempt. Making sure all of your service people can handle things right the first time is crucial to building those good experiences.

3. It all starts with the right attitude.
Attitude drives behavior. Setting an attitude that says lets help the customer goes a long way towards creating consistent behavior and developing quality customer experiences.

What examples have you run into lately of companies who have managed a customer experience save based on your past experience with them?

 

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Do Churches Have Customers?

So with all the work I’ve been doing lately on Customer Experience I can’t help but as this question. After all I spent the first decade or so of my working life in churches. So for the sake of argument let’s create a generic profile of what makes a customer and see if it applies:

1. Customers start from a point of need.
Ok, sometimes the “need” is more of a want but you wouldn’t buy something you didn’t want or need so this is where a “customer” begins.

2. Customers typically do some shopping
There are certainly times when people make an impulse purchase but in general they do some research before making a buying decision.

3. Customers make a commitment.
Typically we think in terms of a financial commitment but there may also be contract terms like when you purchase a contract for cell phone service.

4. Customers repeat or defect based on service.
If the product does what is expected, in other words it meets the need/want, then service determines whether a customer makes another purchase or defects to a new provider.

5. Customers promote products they really like.
The end goal in getting satisfied customers is to have them promote your product.

 

In the interest of full disclosure I have to say that I have had this conversation with several “church people”. In every case the immediate answer has been “no, we don’t have ‘customers’, we have members. Our people are more involved than just being customers.” But really? Doesn’t that behavior list look a like like a church goer?

On top of that let’s think about some of the jargon we use around church:

  • “We all NEED Jesus”
  • People can be said to be “church shopping”
  • We ask members to commit or talking about “committing our lives to Christ”
  • Churches often talk about the “back door being larger than the front”
  • Church members “vote with their wallets” when the offering comes plate by on Sunday morning.
  • And of course all are expected to “do the work of an evangelist”

I’m being slightly tongue in cheek here but not overtly so. Is it possible that where churches start to miss the mark is where they DON’T think of attendees as customers? When I think of someone as a “member” or as part of a “church family” then there are certain expectations that go along with those words. Expectations like “sacrifice” or “volunteering” or “staying committed through tough times”. We might ask those things of family members but we’d never ask them of customers. Would we?

There is certainly something deeper about being a committed member of a church than just being a mere customer, however; I can’t help but wonder what it would look like if a church were to start to embrace some of the same principles that businesses use to create satisfied, promoting customers and applied them to their congregation.

What do you think? Would churches see a positive change if they were to start adopting some corporate best practices for acquiring and retaining promoting customers?

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Migrating to a Better Customer Experience: Four Stages

Trying to sort through all the messaging, tactics, and analytics around Customer Experience (CX) can be daunting. Where do you start trying to create a better customer journey?

  • Do you look at beefing up customer service?
  • Do you fix what’s broken?
  • Do you build on what works?
  • Do you implement new systems?

The answer to any and all of the above is: Maybe.

There are certainly numerous pathways that can take a company from where they are today to a better envisioned customer experience tomorrow but allow me to suggest four stages of development that will help not only chart those paths to success but, in the end, make them shorter as well.

Stage 1: Assessment
This first stage is where you map out your current customer journey as it exists today. You capture all the touch points a customer has with your company. You capture all the places and ways data is stored. You determine what life looks like from the perspective of the person outside your company doing business with you and from the perspective of the person inside your company trying to know something about the customer.

The assessment stage is where you start to get to some understanding of where you’ve got gaps and holes in the customer journey, of where things get clunky in dealing with you and in your dealing with them.

Stage 2: Strategy
This is the one that jazzes ME most because I am a strategy guy. After you’ve assessed the current state of affairs you begin the strategy stage by defining a better envisioned future. This not NOT, “We will fix this gap or that hole.” rather it is a statement about what the customer experience will look and feel like when you’ve created the next generation.

The strategy stage next looks at how to get from where you are today to where you want to be tomorrow, or later this afternoon…we all want it faster don’t we? This includes both near and mid-term milestones and measures of success. You’re creating YOUR map to better CX.

Stage 3: Implementation
In this third stage you’re starting to implement process changes and, in some cases, system or infrastructure changes. You’re targeting the long term goal and measuring against your strategic milestones.

It is important to understand that this may be the longest of the three stages thus far. There will no doubt be immediate, near term, middle term, and longer term pieces of a implementation plan and so patience here is the key. Implementation may also result in the modification of some of those milestones you’ve created as assumptions are challenged or confirmed. You do NOT, however, want to start with implementation or it will go on forever.

Be patient, stick to the plan.

Stage 4: Change Management
If I love strategy I hate change management. It is always so tactical, practical, and nit-pickingly bothersome, but hear me in this: It is absolutely necessary.

When you start making large organization wide changes it is easy for communication as to the “why” to get lost. It’s been said that “Vision Leaks” and this is certainly true in any sort of company wide process or system change. The constancy of a good change management stage is what keeps everyone aligned with the strategic vision and marching in the same direction.

In truth change management works through all four stages but it leaps even more prominently to the forefront when you’re implementing changes that effect everyone.

Which stage have you found the most difficult when it comes to making big organizational changes?

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3 Prerequisites for Creating Better Customer Experience

Many companies are starting to come to grips with the reality that providing better customer experiences can be incredible differentiators.

That leaves them wondering where to start. Do they look at customer service metrics? Do they give away freebies to their loyal customers? Do they invest in new information systems?

All or any of the above may be required but allow me to suggest three prerequisites, three places to start before you start investing largely in reinventing CX in your organization.

1. Examine Your Processes
It is all too often the case that the connection points between sellers and buyers are owned by siloed departments within larger organizations.

Before you start budgeting for new CX systems you need to examine your end to end processes, including all the places where customers have a touch point with you. You’re looking for consistent voice, consistent messaging, and consistent knowledge of the customer.

Imagine you attend a networking event where you engage in deep conversation with someone you believe will be a potentially great business partner in the future. You spend nearly two hours talking about mutual interests, past experiences, and possible future endeavors. You make plans to meet for lunch the following week.

What would it be like if you met for lunch and this promising new connection had no recollection of your previous conversation? What if they found everything you had talked about at lunch fascinatingly new even though you had shared it all before?

Examining your processes allows you a way to discover if your customers are having an experience similar to that lunch meeting.

2. Explore Your Purpose
It’s not just processes that need to be looked at in a new light. In most organizations the purpose of the marketing group is to fill up the pipeline, the purpose of  the sales group is to bring in customers, the purpose of the support group is to keep them happy.

What would change if the purpose of all three groups was to create customers who advocated on behalf of your product? What if the objective was to create every customer as a positive reference from the first time they ever heard about your product or service?

Creating end goals that are larger than departmental goals continues the process of breaking down silos and lays the groundwork for better customer experience.

3. Empower Your People
Have you ever found yourself talking to a customer service agent who just doesn’t seem to be able to fix something simple only to find out that when they pass you to their manager the problem gets cleared up straight away?

What would happen if that front line person was empowered to solve the problem themselves rather than having to pass the call to a manager?

By empowering your people to solve problems for the customer you not only streamline process but you create an environment in which every person who connects with a customer feels like they can impact the business positively.

Taken all together it becomes apparent that customer experience starts as a cultural imperative. No matter what systems are put in place, no matter what practices are changed if the corporate cultural doesn’t support the idea of creating amazing experiences for your customers any efforts to change won’t last.

If you were to start today to look for ways to increase customer satisfaction and psotivie experience where do you think you’d encounter the biggest challenges?

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International Cycling Union: 3 EPIC Failures

This week the International Cycling Union stripped Lance Armstrong of his seven Tour de France titles as a result of their investigation into his use of performance enhancing drugs.

While I am sure they feel quite good about their pursuit of “justice” allow me to point out the ways in which this is an epic, epic failure.

1. The failed their Purpose
Professional sports organizations are in the entertainment industry. They may indeed promote healthy exercise and provide competitive outlets for a small group of elite folks but at the very core of what they do they are there to entertain. Bicycle racing is a fringe sport at best, not nearly the following of the three biggies, football, baseball and basketball, not any where close to international sports like Soccer, not even approaching NASCAR in terms of popularity, mind-share, or revenue.

The biggest thing that has happened in the world of cycling in the last decade was Lance Armstrong. He put them on the map of sport. He brought them a larger audience. He added entertainment value beyond what they could have hoped.

And this is the thanks they give him.

When you fail at your purpose you risk becoming irrelevant.

2. They failed at Parity
Of course there is an argument that says we don’t want cheaters to win. That has been the argument that has fueled the pursuit of Armstrong even though he passed all the required drug tests when he was competing. So let me ask this:

What if they found out that EVERYONE in the races was taking performance enhancing drugs? Is it really cheating then?

In an article in the New York Times, Travis Tygart, chief exec of the US anti-doping agency said, there was still more to do to clean up cycling because there were “many more details of doping that are hidden, many more doping doctors, and corrupt team directors, and the omerta has not yet been fully broken.”

If that is the admitted case why aren’t they still looking at ALL the competitor’s blood samples? You can’t hide behind fairness and parity when you only go after a select few people. There are probably hundreds of competitors who will remain on the record as Tour finishers who cheated just as badly but didn’t win.

When you fail to adhere to your own trumpeted standards you risk becoming irrelevant.

3. They failed their Patrons
I may be alone in this but as a member of the viewing public I am not happily cheering for the pursuit of pushing doping out of cycling. I only got interested in it the entertainment value of the sport because of Lance’s pursuits. I don’t care that they’ve finally “proven” he used drugs.

They’ve lost me as a customer.

Not because of the scandal’s, not because of any supposed taint on fairness, but because they taken the guy who made them all the money and tossed him under the bus in some sort of holier-than-thou crusade. They’ve put the sport ahead of the consumer. They’ve tried to reconfigure their “product” right out there in the eyes of the viewing public and in my humble opinion they’ve screwed up the product as a result.

When you fail at understanding the customer you run the risk of becoming irrelevant.

Simply put, for me as a customer, the world of professional cycling has become irrelevant once again. Lance brought them to my attention and I watched even after he finished competing but this latest round of circus performances has turned me off completely and I doubt they’ll get me back.

Where has you seen other businesses fall prey to these kinds of failures?

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Customer Communications: Where to Start

How many time have you looked at the front page of a company web site and read something almost exactly like this:

The market leader in providing innovative solutions that transform businesses. Serving more than 67% of the fortune 500.

Drives me nuts.

Too often the starting point for customer communications start with the question, “What do we want to say?”

When you start there you suddenly find yourself with all kinds of due diligence facts, historical anecdotes, feature, functions and benefits…and so do all of your competitors. As a result everyone starts sounding very much the same.

The game changes though when you start from the position of asking, “What do we want the customer to do?”

Yes, it seems quite simple, particularly if you think the answer is, we want the customer to buy. But do you really just want them to buy? Aren’t you really MORE interested in them “succeeding”?

Typically we don’t just want customers, we want satisfied customers. So the answer to the question” what do we want them to do” is, “we want them to use our product or service to solve their problem.”

Of course in order to be able to start communicating from the perspective of solving the customers problem we have to now what the problem is and how your product or service solves it. THEN you have to let the customer know that you understand the problem.

So instead of:

  • We have
  • We are
  • We provide

You start with

  • You want
  • You need
  • You can

Try this experiment:

Take any of the communications you currently use to describe what you do and set them aside. Start the piece over with a description of the problem you solve. Next throw in a few lines about how your solution is unique in terms of what it does for the customer. You only get to talk about the problem and the unique solution, NOT your organization.

Now go look at your competitors communications and see if you don’t recognize how this approach starts to make you stand out.

When was the last time you saw a company talk more about you as a customer than they do about themselves?