Rather than repeat what Seth said in “Winning on the Uphills” post, I just wanted to share this with you and add my 2 cents.  The key in this to me is hat we all have the “moments of truth” many call them where things are in a shambles and look like there is no light at the end of the tunnel (except the oncoming train) and we don’t know what to do.  The key here is to “rally the resources” and demonstrate what you are really made of – delivering a great customer experience.

It reminds me of my days back at IBM when something would go wrong with a system or an installation (I was in sales and sold their big iron to big companies).  They didn’t sit around and blame or point fingers or try to convince the customer it was their problem, NO, they put “people in planes” and flew them in to solve the problem.  The customers LOVED it and we earned more LOYALTY that day than all the other days where we just kept them happy.

Morale of the story – use the worst of times and the crisis to demonstrate what it is your customer wants – focus on their issue and resolving it in the heat of battle.  And you don’t have to do this very many times – only once in a while and you earn a lot of Loyalty Points in their eyes.  So “man up” and show them what you’ve got…

Customers are EXACTLY THE SAME!  How many times have you woken up and found out a customer has “defected” and left for the competition.  You rally the troops, do an analysis of what happened and why and then go back to the way you were doing business with the rest of the customers until it happens again, and again, and again.  Why not stop this in its tracks.

I was talking to a prospective client the other day after he was lamenting about how hard it was in these difficult times to keep a customer.  My question to him was, “what are you doing today that was any different from a year ago?”  His answer, we do the same things today we did then and now they are leaving because of price and other issues (so they say).  I said, EXACTLY.  Changing the game, getting closer to your customer, understanding their needs on a “real-time basis” is critical to staying in front of the competition.

I encouraged him to have us do some interviews of his customers and let their “voice” be heard.  Half the battle is won when you reach out and just tell your customer you are interested in their opinions as you make changes or modifications or enhancements.  Who out there doesn’t want to be part of something new and exciting and improved – no one!  So don’t just assume that your customers are happy, put together some great questions, go ask and then report back what you learned.  You will be amazed what you will learn and your customers will start to understand that you really do care about them in ways other then them spending more money with you.  GIve it a shot – what do you have to lose – another customer???

Blaine

Loyalty is not built overnight, but it can start with a single event. This past week I was in Nashville celebrating my wife’s birthday and had some great experiences. I thought you might enjoy hearing about them as you think about “customer experiences” and how they can create “customer loyalty.”

Consistency is still KING. One particular experience we had in Nashville was to sample some of the local cuisine – very different from the Pacific Northwest to be sure. I never knew you could deep fry so many things! I wonder if new homes come with built in Deep Fryers in addition to the stove and cooktops. One restaurant we experienced was called Caney Fork Fish Camp, just outside of Opryland. We went there to try the local delicacy of “fried pickles” – which we heard were one of a kind. They were.

The fried pickles were, in my humble opinion, excellent! I’m not sure I could make a steady diet of them but they were certainly an unusual treat. I’m ahead of myself a bit so let me back up. When we got to the restaurant, the hostess was actually quite rude and seated us in the bar – away from the ambience and action. I asked to be moved and it seemed like a big imposition. First impression – not good. However, when the waitress came to great us she was totally opposite – super wound up and friendly. Happy to help, she immediately put things on a better course. By the end of the meal we met the manager and she was super friendly and very willing to talk to us “outsiders” about their restaurant, cuisine and culture.

So in the end, we had a great experience and left willing to recommend the restaurant to others. But it could have gone the other direction. I am still puzzled how they allowed the hostess to treat us like she did and set the “inconsistent” tone to be one I could have walked away from. If she had been consistent, they would have captured me from the start and I would have been beaming. As it is, I would warn everyone to ignore the hostess and focus on the waitress and manager. That is unnecessary and certainly wasn’t the impression they wanted to leave.

So if you want to capture the hearts, minds and feelings of your audience from the beginning, make sure your first impression is your strongest. It can carry the day and certainly allow you to jump start your way to building unsurpassed loyalty. Do a “self-audit” of your own organization – is the first impression ALWAYS consistent with the impression you want everyone to leave with? If not, time to start over.

Blaine

Blaine Millet

Customer Experiences Inc.

twitter: @BlaineMillet

In the customer world, it is, and should be, what can you do to help make your customers life easier, better, more efficient, more productive, more profitable, etc.  This is the way it should be – helping your customer be better at what they do by using your products or services.  If you stay focused on this, you will win out above your competitors that don’t play by this same rule.

However, if you are engaged in Social Media at all, you realize it is about “what am I doing right now”, or “what is on your mind” or “saying something about yourself” type of questions and comments.  Thus the dichotomy.  We are in the “ME” generation which makes it all about me.  But that doesn’t translate well at all to the customers world very well.

I believe you can in fact make the translation.  I believe you can take a world that focuses on you and focus it on your customers.  I will talk more about this in my next several posts.  The Social Media Revolution is upon us (visit my Social Media Blog to learn more) and I believe those that can make this connection between the customer (all about me) world and the individual (all about me) will be the magic that sets companies and organizations apart from each other.  Stay tuned…

Blaine

Blaine Millet

Customer Experiences Inc.

twitter: @BlaineMillet

My rule is that if “you don’t know the answer, go ask”.  This basically says that if you really don’t know what your customer is going to say (with at least 90% accuracy) then you need to go back and ask them for this information.  THIS IS NOT A SURVEY – is that strong enough.  Let me give you two Rules of Thumb.

FIRST RULE:  If you know what your customer truly wants and the the experience they want from you, then surveys are a great tool.  They should be used to “validate” what you already know and to give you the ability to continually check in with your customers to see if you are on track. You will get much more active participation because you are asking them specific questions based on what is relevant to them.  Where surveys don’t work is when you are “seeking” information on a regular basis and asking questions that are not relevant or important to your customer. Then it becomes an annoyance and a burden and they don’t respond, thus the reason response rates are very low generally.

SECOND RULE:  If you don’t know the information discussed above in Rule One, then you have to go “ask” so you can capture this information.  This is the “raw information” I talked about earlier.  Go ask them what they really want in the experience with you, what promises you should be keeping, how they want to be treated in the relationship, etc., etc, etc.  This is where you get the “really good stuff” that you can use to craft the ideal experience that differentiates you and blows the competition out of the water. If you don’t know this, then you are just fishing and hoping to hit it occasionally, which really upsets customers.

So, remember, when you know, do a survey, when you don’t know what your customer wants or the experience they desire, go ask and get the raw data as the start.  More on what to do with the data later…

Blaine

Blaine Millet

Customer Experiences Inc.

twitter: @BlaineMillet

OK, sometimes this might be true and out of your control.  But from my experience and what I have seen for many years, and even more so these days, these aren’t the real reasons at all – it is the lack of a consistent and desirable customer experience.  The lack of a consistent and “customer-focused” customer experience is the primary reason customers leave companies and go to the competition.

Remember, everyone basically hates change.  We drive the same way to work, we get dressed the same way in the mornings, we do a lot of activities because they are consistent and we feel comfortable with them – the same way your customer feels (or should feel) about you.  Because of this phenomenon of human behavior, the key is to understand first hand the experience your customer wants (ask them) and then design the way you operate to consistently deliver these experiences.  If you do, amazing things will happen – they will actually stay with you even though the competition lowers their price.

Learn about your customer – in depth.  Ask the “right” questions to get the “right” answers that they really want you to know to serve them.  Forget the survey process (topic of another blog) and build (or hire) a process to get the “good stuff” from them – this will give you a much stronger advantage and lead over your competition – more than cutting price by a few bucks.

Blaine

Blaine Millet

Customer Experiences Inc.

twitter: @BlaineMillet

Too often a business tells its existing customers that they are the MOST important people to them and that they are the KEY to their success and all sorts of other accolades.  However, what ends up getting exhibited is exactly the opposite.  The business actually REWARDS the new customers more than their existing customers.  For example, when my contract ran out for DSL service through Verizon, I received a notice in the mail that they would be willing to sign me up for another year at the current rate of $32.95 a month – sounded like a good deal, right?  Not exactly. 

When a did just a bit of research I found out that they were offering NEW customers a year of service for $19.99 a month to get them to subscribe to their DSL service.  I have been a customer with them for over 10 years now and I am getting this really super special deal and getting the privelage of paying over $10 more per month – WOW do I feel special.  Of course when I called and complained and threatened to terminate my service they magically matched the intro pricing for new customers and reluctantly gave me the lower pricing.

How many times have you treated your own customers this same way?  I hope none.  Customers are not stupid for the most part.  In a world of transparency, they figure things out – just like I did.  They will eventually (probably sooner than you like) figure out that you are treating new customers better than your loyal or existing customers.  If you want to build LOYALTY, start with treating them at least as good (if not hopefully better) than new customers.  They have proven they will consistently spend money with you, why put this in jeopardy by only rewarding your new customers. 

Acquisition is important for sure – but NOT at the expense of LOYAL customers.  Loyal customers have been shown to spend more and give companies greater margin – why risk this to bring on a new set that may or may not stick with you and lose your existing ones in the process.  In these difficult times, put your money into solidifying your LOYAL customers first, anything left over should go to acquisition.  Hope this helps…

Blaine

Blaine Millet

Customer Experiences Inc.

The key message from their study, “Giving Customer Voice more Volume,” was summarized perfectly, “Customer experience is one of the most critical determinants of brand strength and business growth. Yet most organizations and senior marketers suffer from major blind spots and gaps in the way they interact, handle and respond to customer issues or problems,” says council executive director Donovan Neale-May.

The truth be told, it is far easier than companies believe it is to actually understand the customer experience their customers want.  At least 8 out of 10 companies I talk with make this process far more complicated than it should be.  And as such, either delay the process or make it so difficult that their customers choose not to participate or contribute since they know it won’t do any good.  Are you one of those organizations?  If so, my free advice is STOP making it so complicated and your customers will reward you for your simplicity.  Hope this helps.

Blaine

Blaine Millet

Customer Experiences Inc.

In this article, Tom said, “If you can’t get people to pay for what they love, we’re all out of business.” WOW – this was a great statement not just for Newsweek magazine but for the world of business.  Think about it.  If you don’t create a customer experience where your customer doesn’t “love dealing with you” how long, in this competitive climate called a recession are you going to last?  This is something i have espoused for years and years that is you don’t have a customer experience that customers love and they don’t absolutely love dealing with you, Trust and Loyalty are always going to an elusive goal. 

If you take anything away from Tom’s message it is this.  Get someone to honestly evaluate your current cusotmer experience from an objective perspective.  NO, ididn’t say do another lame survey.  I said understanding the CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE and the PROMISES that go along with being able to deliver on this experience.  Get help in understanding the Promises your customers want from you and figure out how far off you are in being able to deliver on these promises and FIX IT or you run the risk of going the direction of the print media – extinction.

Understand what it takes for your customers to LOVE dealing with you and what PROMISES they want you to keep every day and you will have LOYAL customers that TRUST you and wouldn’t go anywhere else.  And in these difficult times, isn’t that what everyone wants?  Hope this helps…

Blaine

Blaine Millet

Customer Experiences Inc.

By way of background, we had this issue several years ago in the Customer Loyalty and Customer Satisfaction discussions.  What I would do is get a room of people together (not more than 25) and I would ask them all to write down the definitions of “Loyalty” and “satisfaction” and a few other terms.  You guessed it – what came back were a whole host of definitions that were all over the map.  So then, what “is” the right definition?  The only answer was, it depends.

Fast forward to today and ask the same question about the word “Authenticity” and I’ll bet you a venti Starbucks latte that I would get the same results as I did with the words Loyalty and Satisfaction.  Big problem.  If you have one definition and your audience has another one, you will NEVER see eye-to-eye and thus won’t be able to deliver the “experience” they are desiring from you.  It is absolutely critical that you are on the same page with your definitions so you can deliver on these.

OK, so what’s the answer you ask?  Find a word or words that aren’t as ambiguous and that you don’t have to spend a lot of time and resources to make sure you are on the same page.  We came up with the word “PROMISES” to do just that.  No, we didn’t invent the word, we just decided to use it in the context of customers to make life simpler and more straight forward.  When I asked the same question of the group above and used “Promises” they virtually all got it right.  Why?  Because it is a simple and powerful word that everyone understands.  Is it dangerous?  Absolutely.  Anything powerful has the potential of being dangerous.  I will talk more about this in another post.

I just read Seth Godin’s latest blog titled, “Authenticity.”  Interesting discussion on this exact topic.  Why?  Because Seth uses the two words, “Authenticity” and “Promises” interchangeably!  He believes the definition of Authenticity is keeping your promises and “acting” a certain way rather than “being” a certain way.  Very interesting argument.  But if I asked all of you if you would have equated these two terms, I doubt I would have gotten much agreement – thus my initial point – definitions that are ambiguous NEVER, NEVER, NEVER result in easy to deliver experiences. 

When you use a word, make sure you feel it has the strength to be consistent among your audiences, especially customers and employees.  Otherwise, you run the risk of misunderstanding and delivering the “wrong” experience to your audience.  That is the reason we settle on the word “PROMISES” and live by the belief that if you understand what these are and can keep them with our audience (personal or professional) you will build TRUST which ultimately builds LOYALTY - it’s that simple.  Comments welcome…

Blaine

Blaine Millet

Customer Experiences Inc.