Syed's Customer Experience Blog

The Perfect Holiday Gift This Year - Great Customer Service

In a fight for holiday shopping dollars, many companies are now using feedback from customers - on everything from store cleanliness and staff behavior to billing and support issues - to respond directly to customers to solve complaints. And they're doing it before customers walk away.

via www.prweb.com

I know this is a seasonal message but it amazes me how many companies pay this subject lip service but never implement anything tangible to help front line employees. Just redirecting a percentage of budgets allocated to market research firms, consultants and internal insight teams is enough to dramatically change the customer experience for customers and employees.

Kudos: Amazon.com

Kudos: I really like Amazon.com customer call back service. You put in your telephone number on the website and within 30 secs THEY CALL YOU! I love it. I finally feel like I am the customer for once. There agents seem very good as well. Well done Amazon!

Vancouver 2010 Games lack of feedback.

Frustrated by the lack of feedback channels surrounding the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. where is the voice of the community?

When unhappy customers meet tag clouds

I saw this on Gizmodo.com an had to share it. It is a classic case of looking at customer experience in a silo fashion. customer forums are good, right?  tag clouds are good, right? they don't have anything to do with the call center of shipping, right?  wrong!!

if you don't live up  to your customer experience promise this is what can happen..What does this do to the NewEgg.com brand?

Rethink your Customer Value Management (CVM) strategies before it is too late.

Today’s competitive business environment means consumers and businesses have seemingly endless choices and products are commoditized quickly. Despite these challenges businesses must still strive to deliver growth in revenues and profitability.

Unfortunately businesses that are struggling to improve profitability are often guided to focus on the “profitable customers” or “high value customers”. This is often grounded in a misguided view that it is impossible satisfy all of your customers so you should just try to satisfy the high value ones. This approach is termed Customer Value Management (CVM) and although it seems logical it has some very severe side effects for the business.

The main problem with CVM is the message it sends out to employees and the effect on corporate culture of saying that, “we are not going to give everyone a great experience only customers that are high value”.  This gives everyone in the business a message from the top that great customer experience is optional depending on the customer value to the business. Once this message is in the psyche of a business it is very difficult to remove and it will impact all your customers over time.

Customer value management is not necessarily a bad concept in theory but it is very difficult to operationalize without impacting a company's brand perception. Focusing on servicing and retaining the “right” customers may help short-term profitability, but is unlikely to deliver sustainable growth, since resources are directed at servicing a narrow sub-set of potential business rather than building a large number of satisfied customers and customer advocates.

Customer value management also makes it too easy to justify poor customer service by writing off the “wrong” customer segment. Finally, by effectively ignoring a proportion of your customers, you will successfully motivate many of them to churn away from your company. Worse, if you give customers a bad experience, they tend to tell other people about it.

Today more than ever before customers love to share their experiences. We all know how easy it is to rant or rave on twitter, facebook, myspace, etc.. The challenge here is that when customers talk they don’t care about their own "customer value", they don’t know which segment they fit into, they just talk. And it is likely that your most valuable customers will be reading about your brand from the least valuable ones.  This is not a good situation.

So I think companies need to take a long hard look at how, where and why they use Customer Value Management strategies.  These strategies coupled with information in poorly executed CRM systems are probably doing more long term harm than good, both to the brand and the growth potential of the business. 

In the age of social media that we live in companies need to focus on customer experiences not customer value. Investing in delivering good, consistent experiences across the customer life-cycle will deliver far more value to your shareholders and be more sustainable than focusing on only serving high value customers well. Unfortunately delivering a customer experience focused strategy is much harder than a customer value strategy and perhaps that’s why companies have taken the CVM path in the past. The good news is that customers are not going to stand for that approach in the future because now they have a voice and it is getting louder!

Syed Hasan

CEO

ResponseTek

Apple: Will a drop in innovation improve the customer experience?

Since the return of "Steve" 12 years ago, Apple’s success has rested on its ability to innovate, from 1” thin aluminum laptops, to revolutionary mp3 players, to the re-invention of the mobile phone.

As a result of all of this innovation and great products, we as consumers were willing to put up with the obvious gaps in customer service that has become part of the Apple brand, or the faults with first generation products (I still have the burns from my overheating first generation MacBook Pro). 

We’ve given Apple the benefit of the doubt, because they’ve always pushed the boundaries. However, if you look at Apple over the past two years or so, there hasn't been a lot of innovation. There has been the illusion of innovation with press conferences dedicated to uni-body laptop construction, new colors of iPods and new apps for the iPhone.

When you pull back the marketing veil that Apple has used so well with its product announcements, you have to admit that real innovation last occurred in Cupertino with the first generation iPhone and MacBook Air. Everything since have been iterations at best, and at worst, fixing things that should have been done right in the first place (iPhone 3GS software, anyone?).

Given that product innovation seems to have slowed, I believe the arrogance that often surrounds Apple's customer service has to go too.

For example, if you buy a product from an Apple store and want to return it, you’ll likely be charged a 10% re-stocking fee. There will be no fee if you buy the same Apple product at Best Buy and return it.

Unhappy with an app you buy on iTunes? Good luck resolving your issue. Apple will sell you the app but will not help you solve a dispute (or at least I can’t find a way to do it). 

So with the drop-off in innovation, are customers going to start expecting more from Apple's customer service, or are we going to continue to let Apple off the hook because their stores look cool and their products are still hip (but expensive)?

Based on Apple's latest financial results, it is the latter. We will continue to drink at the fountain of "cool" even if it costs a lot and the service sucks. It is a shame because Apple could give us both great products and great service if they wanted to and really show everyone else how it should be done!

Syed 

What is the role of the Customer Experience Executive?

Companies started formalizing executive roles focused on customer experience about 2-3 years ago. As someone that has operated in the Customer Experience (CE) arena for over 10 years it was great to see the customer experience getting formalized and my hopes for companies using the "voice of the customer" as a serious management tool increased accordingly.  At the time we never really knew how the role was going to play out but it seemed surrounded by good intent.  Unfortunately the SVP/EVP/VP Customer Experience  has rarely lived up to it's promise and now as times get tough the number of Executive's with a "Customer Experience" title that are being let go is increasing almost daily.

The problem I think is that most, if not all customer experience executives operate in a Corporate Group role rather than in the Operating Groups of large companies. The effect this has is that they become responsible for guidance and best practice identification but the have very little power or influence where the rubber hits the road, at the operating groups.  As a result in my experience very few customer experience executives have been able to transfer their excitement and priorities for monitoring and managing the customer experience across to the executives in the operating groups. 

The other factor that has led to the lack of impact a typical customer experience executive has on changing the business is where the budgets are held. Most group level CE executives have a small budget which is focused on addition market research, consultants, etc. However, the budgets needed to truely transform customer experiences are much larger and typically owned by operations or the contact center. As a result most CE executives never get into the real issues around measurement, consistency, systems or behavioral change because they do not have the mandate or resources to affect change.

I am disappointed to see that so many CE exec roles are being cut these day's but I also recognize that the role as it has been used in most companies today is ineffective. The role and responsibilities of a CE exec needs to be revised if they are ever going to impact large organizations. Perhaps the role should sit in the office of the CEO, be an extension of the operations role or operate at the board level similar to an audit or compensation committee?

If you have come across a company where the CE exec does have the influence and resources to make change happen please let me know.

Syed

Customer insight strategy: Think Small.

Most small businesses still collect customer insights in real-time.  Every time a customer steps into a store, the owner can watch where the customer goes, offer help, and ensure they’re satisfied. Small businesses ask customers what they’re looking for and what they like, all as part of a casual conversation. 

Informal as it may be, most small business owners will tell you that these conversations are the heartbeat of the business. The information they collect from customers every day influence every aspect of their business, from staff training to purchasing to display.

Unfortunately, most large businesses have lost this connection with the customer. The conversations might still be happening at the front lines, but unlike small business, the customer conversations are not adding intelligence to the business. Valuable customer insights are lost. 

Companies typically think of the value of customer insights in a strategic sense for competitive positioning; hence, billions of dollars are collectively spent on market research to gain some insight from customers, even if those insights are skewed or manufactured due to the built-in constraints of surveys, focus groups and mystery shopping. 

There’s little value in “arms length” relationships that fail to recognize the sophistication, knowledge and technical competence of the customer. Big business needs to recognize that advances in technology now make it possible to capture these conversations once again and use them to make business – and the people who drive it – smarter about the way customers are engaged, every day.

Given the chance, customers will use phones, IVR, SMS, email, the web – and yes, even face-to-face interactions –  to tell you what they want, when and how.  At ResponseTek, we are helping our clients absorb, collate, analyze and distribute customer insights – both structured and unstructured – so they become part of your company’s customer intelligence  By opening up as many channels of communication as possible to collect customer insights, companies can stop viewing insights as problems, and start seeing them as opportunities for innovation.

We have seen that companies that recognize the need for continuous front line customer insights ( example: Lastminute.com) have a greater chance of getting back to the mentality of the continually improving and adjusting small business owner. The biggest challenge? Getting companies to recognize this as the preferred alternative to ‘traditional’ paradigm of periodic, centralized customer research, before it’s too late.

After all, in this economy, there’s always another company out there who’s willing – and able – to listen to your customers.

Best regards,
Syed

Just say "No!" to pop up web surveys

I know this is going to be a bit of a rant, but I just can't click in silence anymore..... 

Thing that has got me typing is the broad mis-use of of customer surveys on websites.  Now don't get me wrong - I don't have anything against asking your customers for feedback on their experiences to help you improve performance. That's the business ResponseTek is in.

My issue is that more and more these survey's pop up before I have even had an experience.  I don't now why but it seems that almost every site I go to these days has a pop up survey  as I enter the site asking me for feedback...."I have't done anything yet", how can I give you feedback?!?

Perhaps it's because the survey companies that specialize in selling these types of surveys are off-loading them for rock bottom prices, fueling the rapid spread across the web. Or maybe ecommerce and marketing depts are being pressured for more customer insights, and will buy anything for a "quick win". 

Whatever the reason, I just wish that companies would think about how to implement these programmes properly so they don't turn a positive customer insight strategy into an actual negative customer experience (irony of ironies) because of poor planning and bad implementation.

That is it.  I have had my say.  NO MORE MINDLESS SURVEYS! .

Syed  

Welcome to the year of Customer Experience

I wanted to wish everyone a happy new year for 2009. 

Perhaps I am going against the grain but I believe 2009 is going to be a very important and exciting year for those of us working in or around the Customer Experience Management (CEM) field of business. In 2008, we saw a step change in the way that organizations view customer experience information as well as a rapid maturing in their understanding and expectations of how they could better use the "voice of the customer" as a business tool.

I believe 2008 was the first year that companies seriously started to ask tough questions of their market research groups and vendors regarding the return on the billions of dollars spent on market research.  The effect of this maturing understanding of CEM, coupled with the economic imperative to keep the customer you have  during the current downturn, made the later half for 2008 one of the most interesting times so far in the evolution of the CEM sector.  With more and more companies looking for new approaches to understand how and where they should focus the efforts to improve the customer experience.

I see the trend continuing in 2009 with more and more dollars being re-assigned from "traditional" market research programs to actionable customer experience programs. This can only be a good thing, especially if you are one of those people spending your company budgets of backward looking market research data instead of forward looking customer experience improvement information.

We have lots of topics to discuss this year..... and I promise to be better disciplined regarding regular blog postings.

Happy New Year

Syed