Reap some benefit from a down market

This is not a silver lining…make the best of it….type post. There is much to worry about in a down market and business owners and managers are pushed to innovate and come up with new ways to survive. For those companies that invested in building a solid customer experience practice they will have an easier time of it.

This week theWisemarketer.com published some very interesting findings that will help businesses be more responsive to customer needs and wants. These findings are relevant to any business that has an online presence. For the full article go here: http://www.thewisemarketer.com/news/read.asp?lc=q77042ix3050zz

74% of respondents said that they value customer loyalty programs more when they offer discounts based on their personal shopping habits.

In other words, recognize that customers do not want to be just another name on a marketing list. Show them you are paying attention to them and show your appreciation for their business. Discounts are just one way to do this.

…they want convenience and relevance to help speed up and simplify their online experience, with two-thirds (66%) expecting to view web site content that is specific to their interests and needs.

It is a common practice among internet marketers to push out these ridiculously long-winded sales pages that talk about everything except the details of the program or product. This is going to have to change if they expect to find new customers. It is like the carfax commercial where the consumer wants to see the carfax report and the car dealer offers something else to distract the customer by saying he has a note from the previous owner…” a promise” that all is in order… so just trust me.  No, the consumer wants the truth, not a pitch.

The recession has prompted 30% of internet users to shop online more often than they did previously

No surprise here but it puts businesses that sell online on notice to make sure they are providing what the customer is looking for. Hyped up copy and testimonials to sell a product- all the while providing no substantive details about the product itself- is not going to work.

84% of internet users would be less likely to visit web sites that hit them with unsolicited and unwanted information (like pop-ups and emails)

I get emails from at least two dozen marketers (sometimes if I am evaluating a program its more) and at least 95% of the follow up emails have nothing to do with improving the customer experience. Nearly all the emails are pitching something else. Marketers that do not wake up to the fact that the consumer is not looking for this kind of exploitation will see their mailing list shrink. Consumers do not like being played for a fool and no matter how clever the copy they will know when the marketer is adding value to the relationship or merely pitching another product in hopes of milking more cash out of  them. Companies like LL Bean have learned how to balance the need to always sell and at the same time provide content that is of interest to their target audience. I expect that when information marketers figure this out they will announce the discovery of this “secret” and try to sell a course teaching others how to provide a valuable customer experience to their customers.

Businesses that sell information or “How-to” courses are in a great position to add real value to their customers and grow their business in down markets. To do so they will have to change their business model to be more upfront and customer centric. Consumers are getting wise to the hyperbole so prevalent in online sales pages and pitches. For example I saw one product claiming to “reverse the aging process” another claimed that even though he was a convenient store clerk for several years he now consults with corporations (not other marketers) that pay him $25,000 per day or roughly $3000 per hour. Not even big blue IBM charges close to that so I think we can chalk that up to exaggerations or maybe lying? Either way I do not recommend you do business with a business or person that stoops to such tactics to try to make a sale. A quality product will always stand on its own merit. Consider the iPod for a moment. That was a revolutionary and cutting edge new product -never seen before-and yet it was not sold with sales pages that ran on for over 5000 words.

Whether you are selling information or a product, consumers want you to offer value and to deliver a good customer experience. Here are some thoughts fro you to consider.

1. Tell them what the product is all about. Do not just pontificate about how wonderful it is without giving the details.

2. Don’t obfuscate or exaggerate. My rule of thumb is the more bull they throw into the pitch the bigger the fool who buys it. There is a proverb that basically says with many words trouble is not far behind. An updated version would be with much hype and verbiage buyer beware! You can read more on this at http://dontscamus.blogspot.com

3. Deliver value after the sale. This is a post in and of itself, but in a nutshell…Ask what they think about your product and their buying experience? Provide information learned from others that will enhance their success and/or enjoyment with your product. If there are changes or improvements let them know. And, if there are problems with the customer address the concerns quickly and in earnest.

Who is Customer Experience?

I am having some fun with my title today. Certainly not a good one for SEO but oh well. But it is an important question. Many companies have spent time and effort trying to implement customer experience on a shoe string-a duck tape and baling wire project-only to fail.

I was speaking to an executive from an outdoor retail company and she acknowledged that a customer experience process is necessary- she was struggling with the who and how-to part of the process.  So here are my thoughts on the who…the how-to is a project in and of itself.

The person that leads the CE effort has to be someone who has the following qualities:

1. Passionate about the company and it’s customers.

2. Compassionate and understanding of the needs and wants of the customer

3. The CE officer needs to know HR, Marketing and Operations.

4. Has to be a good communicator

5. Creative

6. Possess and unshakable commitment to personal integrity

I’m sure there are other qualities you can think of but these are a few that I see a need for time and time again. The above are the minimum qualifications for anyone who wants to implement and lead a customer experience effort at any company.

On the company side no one should try to run a CE effort unless:

1. The CEO/President has a commitment to the customer-THAT IS KNOWN COMPANY WIDE

2. Employees manage customer expectations (teaches them) and these expectations are regularly communicated to the customers. It will save you a lot of aggravation later on and a lot less ‘he-said-she said’ arguments.

3. Employees and work groups have cross group communication and accountability–no silos

4.Management has communicated to all employees that taking care of the customer is job#1

5. The company takes pride in its product or service but at its core it is customer centric. This made the list because many companies focus on making the widget and so long as it is being bought take that as a tacit endorsement of how they do business and that they are treating their customers well. This is why when a company adds CE to their business strategy they win customers away from companies that are product/service centric.

Of course, there are more items for this list but this is a good start and I think it covers the most important aspects of a company’s culture that are necessary to have a good shot at implementing an effective customer experience practice that will show benefits in:

1. Employee retention

2. Less customer turnover

3. Increase in revenues

Customer Experience: The key business differentiator

I am going to share a fairly long article with you so I will keep this short. The link below takes you to an article where the author shares several shopping experiences-some good, some bad. What should not be over looked here is that this is one of hundreds of articles and posts wherein customers express their satisfaction or anger with a company they have done business with.

We know that most consumers DO NOT tell a store when they are unhappy with the service. We know that a small percentage (less than 25%) will make an attempt to get a problem resolved in a store but will not make a fight out of it. The rest leave resolving to never come back and if they have the chance they will tell as many people as they can about what happened. You are one of the lucky ones if you catch it online–you can make amends and if you are smart make changes so the bad experience is not repeated.

When you are focused on getting customer experience right it will also help you to know how to properly manage expectations because a customer with unmet expectations (reasonable or not) can spread a bad word as fast as someone with a genuine complaint. As you will read in the article the incident with the Apple display could have been easily avoided with a better pre-sale process in the store.

Here is the article out of CIO magazine:  http://bit.ly/

Customer Experience and being happy

Here is an article that is a must read. http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/greatergood/2009july/Frankel.php

I refer you to this article because how your employees interact with your customer base has a direct and dramtic impact on what your customers think of your company. So many companies are becoming aware of the fact that customer experience does drive revenues and can help control expenses as well. The problem with many customer experience efforts is that they are a rote effort.  A process of checking off a task list without making a change to the core values of the company. Customer experience, for them, is another gimmick or tactic to snatch more money from somebody. 

That only works for a short while and then you’re going to be busted. You will lose far more than you gained. Customer experience is about creating a win-win environment for both business and customer. Customer experience when done right can open up new business opportunities and sell more of your existing product.

Companies like LL Bean, that do a good job of customer experience, will  find more ways to serve an already loyal customer base because they are focused on doing that–it is part of who they are. And, other companies, that send emails like the one below, need to learn that by adding a vibrant customer experience practice to their business it will produce more sales and happier customers :

Dear Stephen:  Thank you for your interest in Zebra Technologies. By using Zebra’s innovative and reliable on-demand printing solutions for business improvement, organizations in about 100 countries—including Global 2000 companies and 90 percent of the Fortune 500—benefit from enhanced security, increased productivity, improved quality, lower costs, and better customer service.  You can enjoy the same benefits as these leading companies when using Zebra thermal bar code label and receipt printers (including wireless mobile solutions), RFID smart label printers/encoders, or card printer solutions, as well as printing supplies, certified smart media, software, and connectivity solutions.   The hyperlinks below contain the information you requested.  If you have further questions, please contact Zebra’s Inquiry Department at +1 800-xxx-xxxx

 Sincerely,

James [Anyone]

Director, Field Marketing and Enablement

 I was contacted by email, my preferred means of communication, but was not given the option to reply by email. I had only the option they wanted me to have.   Additionally, the links presented did not answer my questions in fact they created more questions, moving me further away from a buying decision. 

The company was contacted because I wanted to use their product on a project and yet there is no reference to the information I had already submitted. The salutation was a pretty good give away that this response/ advertisement was all about the company and had little to do with me as a customer. Now in fairness to them the response was nice and certainly better than none at all but the over all customer experience was poor. I also received a call from an inside sales person who was pleasant but when I told her I had been contacted by one of their resellers and I was still waiting on answers she simply said fine and went on to her next call….and I moved on to my next printer vendor.

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It’s the experience NOT the technology!

This will be a short post, but one I hope will make you think about your own customer experience process. I recently read an article talking about kiosks and what affect they were having on the store’s customer base.  As I’d expect in a report from a technology consulting firm, the article was all about the kiosks though after reading the article it was the customer experience (or lack thereof) that had the most profound impact on the author.

There are many technologies available to businesses today that can impact how your customers feel about the business. When properly deployed AND supported they can have a positive affect but be careful that you do not lose sight of the fact that technology by itself rarely has a measurable, long term impact on the customer experience.  And, it’s the customer experience that will, in the long run, determine your over all success.

A technology checklist for effective customer experience:

What value will it give the customer ? (i.e. will lines be shortened and waiting times reduced?)

Are there in-store personnel on-hand  to solve glitches that might come up?

Is the benefit readily apparent to the customer? If you have to explain the beneft then its probably not going to be as impressive to the customer.  This may sound similar to the first point but it is not and the difference is significant. All businesses will add technoliogy if THEY think it wil benefit them and their customers. Many do not stop and consider will their customers see it the same way. If they don’t the project can back fire and the business end up loosing customers. For example, adding a kiosk may shorten lines but if  the technoogy makes the customer feel stupid or, in some other way, out of control then they will reject the technology and perhaps take their business somewhere else.

Technology certainly has to offer a solid ROI to the company but if it is a public facing technology then how it is rolled out is just as important as any other aspect of the deployment. As the you will see in the article, both stores had self check out kiosks but the store that had success with them was the one that was suporting and taking care of the customer. 

Here is the article I referred to:  http://selfserviceworld.com/article_23046.php

CEOs and Customer Experience

The Beyond Philosophy posting is an excellent read for anyone still wondering if having a customer experience is necessary. Here is the link: http://www.experienceclinic.com/customer-experience/a-guide-for-ceos-their-responsibilities-in-improving-the-customer-experience/

I will add the following thoughts from first hand experience.

1.  Customer Experience pays significant dividends in terms of loyalty and revenues.That is a proven fact!

2.  When a company is focused on then customer and that is communicated throughout the entire organization employee performance improves as does the quality of any customer interaction with employees. It is a powerful resource when customers know that everyone, and not just the salesperson, is interested in their success.

3.  The CEO must put the full weight of his/her office behind the effort–no exceptions.

4.  Customer Experience  can not be faked. If it is not part of your core values the effort will, sooner or later, fade away.

5. Customers will react negatively to a hollow customer commitment effort. There are several examples online of companies that gave lip service to the idea of customer care but their actions quickly exposed their true colors and customers made for the exits.

6. Lastly, I think its best if an organization has one person committed to leading the customer experience effort.  It is too important a job to assign it as an extra duty to sales or marketing.

Patient Experience

After President Obama’s speech to the Congress, it is clear that the administration is going to take an active role in monitoring how the players in the health care arena are taking care of their voters..aka patients.
I have been saying that this is going to continue to be a key factor of future success for health care systems and medical practices. If you have any doubt about this then keep an eye peeled for increasing coverage of patient experience and patient satisfaction in the media-that should be sufficient evidence that this need is not going away anytime soon.

The book, Reinventing the Patient Experience: Strategies for Hospital Leaders is another example.
As little as 2 years ago the tenor of the patient care conversation, if a hospital was even interested in it, was casual and aloof-a topic of intellectual interest with little or no relevance to the business of running a medical system. That is changing quickly. The summary of the book will give you a very good overview of how the patient experience conversation is taking shape.

“Are you proud of the patient experience your hospital provides? Are you confident that your hospital is the provider of choice in your community? Does your hospital provide the experience you would want for your family members or friends if they were hospitalized?
The emerging age of consumerism in healthcare is forcing hospitals to reexamine their traditional practices and provide greater sensitivity and responsiveness to patient preferences. Conventional customer service training is no longer enough. Reinventing the Patient Experience provides the advice and inspiration you need to make significant changes in the way your patients experience care in your hospital.
The book draws lessons from the experiences of hospitals considered innovators in patient-centered care. This diverse group of organizations illustrates how integrating “high touch” and “high tech” care is possible at hospitals of all types and sizes. You will learn what strategies they put in place, what barriers they faced, how they moved past roadblocks, and what their keys to success were. Leaders from these pioneering organizations share how they tackled various implementation and operational issues in the areas of physical environment, nursing services, complementary therapies, spirituality, leadership, and sustainability.
Explore these four components of patient-focused care:
* Designing facilities to minimize stress, support family involvement, and remove physical barriers between nurses and patients
* Emphasizing a personalized relationship between nurses and patients, with more “hands-on” care provided by nurses at the bedside
* Increasing the availability and use of complementary therapies in an inpatient setting to meet the general increase in patient demand for these therapies
* Moving beyond the traditional role of the hospital chaplain and training hospital staff to provide spiritual support for patients and family members.”

This is good news and a good opportunity for health care providers. Those that “get it” will have a significant marketing advantage over their competitors that continue to run their businesses by debits and credits alone.