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

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

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

Why was I there?  They were interested, like many other CEO’s in the area, in learning more about the Social Media Revolution and how his new phenomena of communications could impact their businesses.  They were eager to hear my message about what the “tools of Social Media” are and how they fit together to become this powerful business communications force.

I shared the concepts and advantages of blogging, social networking (myspace, facebook, LinkedIn, and twitter) and the other elements that make up this powerful suite we call Social Media.  By sharing a number of examples about how companies are using these today, they were able to understand how Social Media will be changing the landscape of how we communicate, build relationships, improve the customer experience and achieve business goals faster and cheaper than ever before.  The group responded very favorably and asked some excellent questions.

The Bellevue Chamber of Commerce, led by Betty Nokes, CEO and President, is really looking ahead to how they can personally use Social Media to build even more value for their members and the businesses in the Bellevue community.  I commend Betty for her willingness to allow us to share a somtimes shocking message about how dramatically this landscape is changing.  I also want to personally thank Jim Frank of Human Capital Resources, a human capital solutions company, for introducing me to Betty and the Chamber.  Jim attended one of our early seminars and became “enlightened” and felt this was an important message to share with his fellow EBRT members – thanks Jim, the members are all a little better off today because of your willingness to share our message.

I also wanted to recognize a few of the members of EBRT that I had the opportunity to talk with at the event.  Donna Shirey of Shirey Contracting, sponsors of the Zero Energy Idea House  (check this out – way cool), Nancy Cho, President and CEO of Oki Golf, Dave Ferguson, CEO of Click Engineering, Jim Hebert, Hebert Research, John Parkey, and George Bartell of Bartell Drugs - just to name a few.  What a great group of people.  I would encourage anyone to join the Chamber and in particular the EBRT group.  Definitely call Betty if you are interested.  This group will definitely make things happen in our area…

Blaine

Blaine Millet

Customer Experiences Inc.

twitter: @BlaineMillet

This is an executive networking group that has been around for 90 years and has a very rich history and heritage for helping the members build new relationships in the community and help each other out in growing their businesses by sharing opportunities.  The executive Director, Glenna Thomas, was really looking out for her members by allowing us to come in and talk about a very leading edge and yet at times controversial topic – Social Media and Social Networking.  My hat goes off to her and Dennis Tyler of DialPro Northwest, for taking the chance on having us speak to their members and introduce some leading edge information. 

The group seemed to really enjoy being exposed to how Social Media is the next REVOLUTION in communications and how it can be used to help them in their businesses.  This was our 7th seminar on the topic of “Social Media for CEO’s” in the past few months and as usual, much of the information was very new to the audience.  I was very encouraged at how receptive the owners and executives were to how this could transform their businesses.

If you are in the Seattle area, I would strongly encourage you to contact Glenna and get more information about the group.  While we didn’t get a chance to meet everyone, we did meet a few great people afterwards, some of which were: Peter Frix of Frix Technology Group, John Kane from Kane Environmental Inc., Jim Conway from The Farwest Group, Diana Ehli, Dexter Barnes from Seattle Dental Associates and Linda Bianchi from both Windemere and the Vashon Island Chamber of Commerce - just to name a few. 

Again, THANK YOU Glenna, Dennis and The Seattle Executives Association for allowing us to crash your luncheon – much appreciated and very enjoyable.

Blaine

Blaine Millet

Customer Experiences Inc.

twitter: @BlaineMillet

As it turns out, there was something that went wrong with the WordPress blog being able to recognize the database on my host, Bluehost.  Since I don’t host the blog on WordPress, they basically say there isn’t much they can do to help.  However, my host, Bluehost, stepped up today and dove into it and figured out the issue and was able to resolve it and restore the link to the database and now we are back – thanks.  Bluehost has been awesome for me so if anyone is looking for a hosting company, you should definitely check them out as they have great technical support and great products as well.  

Glad to be back, now we can get back to putting some posts back online.  Again, my apologies to you my readers.  Thank you.

Blaine

Blaine Millet

Customer Experiences Inc.