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…

Last week was my wife’s birthday and we wanted to do something fun and special – of course, where have you heard that before.  Since we live in Woodinville Wine Country, Woodinville Washington, we decided having a party at a winery would be a fun experience.  But which one – there are tons of great wineries 10 minutes from our house.  We didn’t have much time so unfortunately we didn’t’ get to try them all (dang) so we narrowed it down and picked J.Bookwalter Winery.

They were very accommodating and we liked their wines.  Now came the test – the evening of the party. What were they going to be like?  After all, it was a special occassion so you don’t want it to be a bad memory.  Well, Nick and Erin came through big time and did an absolutely awesome job of serving the guests and making everyone feel at home.  They poured samples and glasses of wine, made sure everything came off smoothly and helped in every way possible to clean up.  Now THAT made it a memorable experience.

They did everything they should have to make it a memorable customer experience.  I knew what to expect from the beginning, they worked with me on the selection, made sure the guests were treated like kings and queens and in the end allowed us to do our thing and make the evening special.  My hat’s off to Erin and Nick – they get what a great customer experience is all about.  I would encourage anyone in the area to give them a call – use my name and tell them you want the same experience Blaine got – they’ll know what you mean.  Enjoy!!

Blaine

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.

Jamie starts off by saying that, “In today’s commodity-filled marketplace, oftentimes the only characteristic that differentiates one company from the next is customer service.”  Excellent point and one I completely agree with, other than the word “service” – it should be “experience.”  This was emphasized in the well known book (and the primer for what we believe in) titled, “The Experience Economy” by Pine and Gilmore.  In their book they claimed that in the new millennium (which is what we are in now), the primary thing that will distinguish companies from each other is the “experience” they provide their customers. I completely agree with this – and it is becoming more of a reality every day.

“If all you do is satisfy your customers, that’s not enough,” explains Randi Busse, president of Workforce Development Group Inc., an Amityville-based customer service coaching and training firm. “A satisfied customer is a former customer waiting to happen.”  I agree that satisfying your customers isn’t enough but not sure I quite understand her definition.  Let me offer you our definition, which I think is pretty clear to everyone.  We say, “A satisfied customer is one that is simply looking for the next best deal.”  Meaning, as long as you have the best deal around (price, delivery, terms, etc.) they will buy from you, but when a better deal comes along, they will defect and follow the “next best deal.”  The only way to prevent this from happening is to build LOYALTY with your customers.  Those are customers willing to “give you another chance” and stay with you.

The final piece I wanted to comment on was a statement made my Martha Rogers of Peppers & Rogers Group out of Connecticut.  Martha said, “Random acts of kindness are not nearly enough.”  We agree – but it should be taken a little further.  We coined a phrase in our book over 6 years ago that has stuck with many people over the years.  We said, “To create a Totally Awesome Customer Experience, you must eliminate the Random Acts of Excellence and Chaos in the relationship.”  Simply put, if you can’t create a “consistent” and “repeatable” customer experience, customers get confused and defect.  Customers want consistency and when they don’t get it they leave.

So in almost all cases of Jamie’s article, it was spot on – just didn’t quite take it far enough in my humble opinion.  My recommendation to our readers – take it all the way, don’t stop part way in developing your Totally Awesome Customer Experiences – develop “consistency,” move beyond “satisfied” to Loyal and eliminate “random acts.”  Hope this helps…

Blaine

Blaine Millet

Customer Experiences Inc.

Everyone is touting how great their customer service is or how wonderful of an experience they give their customers or how well our employees treat our customers, etc. etc. etc.  Put your money where your mouth is on this one.  If you truly believe you have the best service or experience or loyalty programs, then you shouldn’t be afraid to give your customers away to your best competitor.  Why?  Because if you have truly delivered the best experience in the market or provided the best customer experience in your field then you shouldn’t be afraid to give them away.  If they are truly LOYAL customers, they will see the difference between you and the competition and come “running” back to you.

However, if you don’t feel like you can literally give them away to your competition, then you have some work to do – and that is the purpose of this exercise.  Test yourself and be honest.  If you don’t think you can make that call and give them away, then start to find out WHY.  Why are you afraid?  Why do your employees think they would defect?  Why don’t you think you have the best customer experience?  Why would your customers enjoy the competition more than you?  These are all excellent questions and questions that hit at the heart of any customer loyalty program – or at least they should.

If you are an executive, ask your employees these questions and expect honest straightforward answers – don’t punish them for the truth, they know what is going on.  If you are an employee, test your executives with these questions and ask them what they think your customers would say.  Test each other, test the system, just simply test your customers.  You will be amazed what you will discover.  Hope it helps…

Blaine

Blaine Millet

Customer Experiences Inc.

Our research shows they are not in alignment - in more than 75% of the organizations today.  OK, so you are probably saying to yourself, “that seems high, especially since our company knows exactly what the customer wants and deliver it every day.”  This is the most common response to this type of question – of course we know our customers or we wouldn’t be in business.  This is where the “best companies” challenge themselves and say, “maybe we aren’t as good as we thing – let’s test it and check it out.”

Those are the companies that truly rule in the market and have the greatest competitive advantage, greatest margins, highest degree of customer loyalty and are able to dominate their competition.  You decide – which side of the fence do you want to be on in this discussion?  As a leader, take the challenge.  Challenge yourself and your company to test this on a regular basis.  And test it with someone outside the company that is objective and can get you the accurate answer.  Don’t ask your sales people to check it out for you or any other group – the answers will be biased and it will be a waste of time.

Here is your recipe to make this happen.  Determine your customer segments (based on the experiences you provide – not the products/services).  Then pick a random sample of 10 customers from each segment.  Hire an outside firm to design the right customer experience information collection process (usually interviews, focus groups, something face-to-face – NOT surveys).  Take the same questions you would ask and survey, yes I said survey, your employees (you can survey employees but not customers in this manner).  Do this in parallel, at the same time.  Collect the results and do a “gap analysis” to see how much in alignment you are or aren’t – be honest with yourself – being dishonest only exacerbates the problem.  There you have it – grass roots way to see how close you are to “truly understanding your customers.”

Take the challenge.  We do this every day for our clients and they are shocked by the results.  They can’t believe how far out of alignment they are in some areas and how close they are in others – but overall, they now understand WHY they win and WHY they lose and WHY they and leading or WHY they are following their competitors.  Let me know if you have ever done this and if so, how in alignment were you?  It will add to our existing research and will be something other readers will benefit from.  Thank you in advance for any contribution of information you make.

Blaine

Blaine Millet

Customer Experiences Inc.

In an interview, Phelps said, “Putting money in the bank.  When you train every day, sometimes there are workouts you don’t like, don’t want to do.  Bob says you’re putting money in the bank.  I guess I put a lot of money in the bank over the last four years, and we withdrew pretty much every penny in the bank.  After Bob and I both grab a break, it’ll be time to start depositing.”

What a great comment from the most decorated athlete at these Games – congratulations Michael and Bob – job well done.  OK, so how does this relate to customers, strategy and driving more revenue?  Well, I’m sure many of you have figured out already where I am going with this one.  Let me explain.

First, when you start by learning more about your customers than your competition, you start to make deposits in your “CUSTOMER LOYALTY ACCOUNT” and building up reserves.  The more you learn the more you deposit into the account.

Second, the more you are able to deliver on the Promises your customers want you to deliver on the more deposits you make into the Loyalty Account.  They measure you on how well you deliver on what you say you are going to do.

Third, when you demonstrate “consistent behavior” to your customers you are also making deposits into the account as they see you are able to give them what they want each and every day.  This is the crux of building customer loyalty (as we have discussed many times before) and as such they reward you with their loyalty for your efforts.

OOOPS – you screwed something up, made a mistake, messed up something.  This is the point where you actually make a WITHDRAWL from the LOYALTY ACCOUNT so you can make up for what went wrong.  If, like Michael Phelps, you have been doing your work and making deposits, your customers will give you another chance and allow you to withdraw from the account to make it right.  However, do it too often or too many times and you will “DEPLETE” the account and the customer walks – its that simple.

Michael gave us a tremendous analogy (we will be using it again for sure) that fits exactly why it is important for companies and their employees to make deposits in the CUSTOMER LOYALTY ACCOUNT every chance they get because, as we all know, we will have to make a withdrawal someday.  Thanks Michael and Bob – great way to look at something more than the swimming.   

Blaine

Blaine Millet

Customer Experiences Inc.

So is this good or bad?  Most people would say this is good – but they would be mistaken.  As you read through the article you will, like most of their readers, start to believe this is true and the best way to attract customers and build loyalty.  I would disagree that this is what will get companies there and allow them to say there and build loyal, committed relationships.  Let me explain.

From all of our experience and research one element of the customer experience keeps getting shouted out in every interaction – the customer wants “consistency” and “repeatability” and some degree of “predictability” in their experience, first and foremost.  Being treated well and respected is a minimum but what they really want is to know that they will get the same experience with each interaction.  Sure, there are opportunities to improve upon the experience and deliver some new elements.  But what they DON’T want is “random acts of excellence and chaos” (our term for not being consistent in what you deliver).  They don’t want “happy Harry” one day and “sad Sally” the next – they want “mediocre Mike” that they can count on every day.

The only way we have seen to build true consistency into the experience is to link the experience to the business processes that deliver the experience – that’s it.  All other attempts of being nice, doing something extra all the time, going above and beyond, can’t be maintained and thus can’t deliver consistency.  It only works when everyone in the organization knows exactly what they’re role is in delivering the experience – period.  Anything else is being left to chance.

So, I disagree with the article in several areas and agree in several others.  You always want to look for ways to differentiate your relationship and experience but don’t kid yourself into believing this can be done without first understanding what the customer really wants and then delivering each and every day.

Think “consistency” instead of exceptional and you will have happier customers that are more loyal and committed.  Without the linkage, you are simply leaving the experience up to your employees and chance – not the way to build loyalty in my mind.  Would love to hear your thoughts…

Blaine

Blaine Millet

Customer Experiences Inc.

However, if you are looking to capture “competitive” or “nuances” or “deep” information about your customer, ABSOLUTELY NOT!  Customers have been and still are being constantly bombarded by surveys by everyone – from their recent oil change to purchasing flowers.  But they just keep sending them.  I am convinced the more I talk with companies that this isn’t something they actually expect to give the good information, they just don’t know (or don’t want to expend the effort) to do something else.  To most, it is the “path of least resistance” and it gives them at least some metrics to work from. 

I try to ask a very thought provoking question when I am in the discussion over survey’s.  You might try this one in some of your conversations as well.  It goes like this, “Would you rather have “metrics” of mediocre information that doesn’t give you much insight or no metrics on information that is deep and different than what your competitors are getting?”  You be be the judge.  I think you already know my answer.

Too often companies are so anxious to report they have a 4.2 in customer satisfaction that they forget why they are “really” talking to their customers.  Isn’t the reason you survey them to understand more about them so you can continually improve the relationship, hoping to build more trust and loyalty?  I thought so, but I am constantly surprised that this is not the intent at all.  It is to get a SCORE so they can report how wonderful they are doing and how much they think the customer likes them.

I talk to customers all the time.  I am here to tell you this is NOT what they are really saying.  Most of the time they give you pretty good marks because they don’t really care.  What?  Yes, you heard me right, they give you good marks because they don’t care.  If they gave you what they really thought, you would call them and harrass them until you gave them higher marks and then you would leave them alone again.  In reality, they are giving you good marks because they want you to leave them alone because for whatever reason they don’t think you can deliver what they really want.  Change your perspective a bit?  I hope so because i really want you to see that the final marks you get might not really be the way your customer really feels.

Contrast this to the company that doesn’t send them these lame survey’s and actually TALKS to their customers and uses tools the CUSTOMER really wants to use to communicate back to you.  If you actually asked the customer what they truly wanted, what promises they want you to keep, how they want to be treated, how they want to interact with your company, what customer experience they want to have, you wuld hear completely different information than anything you get from your survey.  If you also make it easy to provide “realtime” feedback that is icing on the cake.  Do you have a blog?  Can they interact with you via your blog?  Make it easy for them to work with you and you will see a change in both the relationship and the quality of information.

So, moral of the story is don’t survey them to death and expect anything of value – except unhappy customers.  Talk to them (preferably using outsiders since they generally get more information than you will get) and make it easy to build a dialog when it is important to THEM.  The differences will be dramatic.  Trust me on this one – it will change the way you interact with your customers forever – and they will love you for it!!

Blaine

Blaine Millet

Customer Experiences Inc.

First, Step One – Decide you will invest in your customers.  When the economy is down, NOW is the time to invest in your customers.  I just read a report that gave some interesting numbers.  For example, a 20% increase in loyalty can yield up to 70% increase in profitability.  Cut it in half, cut it in a quarter or some fraction, it still generates higher profitability – that is the key message.

Step Two, understand your customers true loyalty triggers and drivers.  Take the time, invest in your customers and find out EXACTLY what it is that they want from you in these difficult times.  This is the time when most companies simply cut prices and feel this is being “customer-centric” – WRONG.  All this tells your customers is that you were over priced before and now you are trying to be more realistic.  What they really want is better service and more focus on their needs in their difficult times – that is the bond they want.  Trust me, they are waiting to tell you but you have to know WHAT TO ASK to get the right information.

Step Three – TELL THEM what you are going to do different.  The key is to make sure they know what you are doing BEFORE you do it.  Don’t just surprise them and test it out, tell them what you are going to do so they know what to expect.  They will be excited to see what happens and how you are going to deliver on these promises and services.  Don’t be afraid to tell them what you are capable of doing – just don’t tell them something you can’t deliver on. That will backfire and be worse than doing nothing.

Step Four – DELIVER, DELIVER, DELIVER.  Do what ever you have to do to deliver on these loyalty triggers and promises you make to your customer and what you are telling them you are going to do.  If you really want to do the best job, link to your business processes (this is what we talk about in our book, “Creating and Delivering Totally Awesome Custome Experiences“) so you can deliver “consistent” and “repeatable” awesome customer experiences to delight your customers.

Step Five – TELL THEM AGAIN what you are delivering and then ask them how you are doing – measure what you just told them and delivered to them.  Think about it – you now have three touchpoints with the customer – you told them twice and you delivered once.  What other program do you have that allows you to touch your customer with information they want to give you and get from you anyway – none that I have found.

I hope this helps a bit more and gives you a bit of additional insight.  The key to remember is make a concerted and active decision that you are going to focus on your customer more than ever in these difficult times – and don’t do it with price.  Do it with what they really want and what will last far longer than a quick price cut – delivering the experience they want and that will differentiate you and give you a competitive advantage.  Best of luck…

Blaine

Blaine Millet

Customer Experiences Inc.