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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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/

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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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

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.

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.

In the past, the doctors bought the patients to the hospitals– that is changing and proposed government regulations are accelerating the focus on patient satisfaction. As patient’s exchange information and feedback they are getting more and more involved in the decision of which hospital they want to go to for a procedure. And, this trend is not going to reverse itself. Hospital administrators are going to be fighting a two front war soon if they do not focus on patient experience: one to attract doctors the other to attract patients. The good news is when done right, patient loyalty will attract doctors—it’s the patient that is bringing the money to the table.

A Chief Patient Experience Officer has several responsibilities:
1. Make contact with the patients. Here they have an advantage over other businesses–the “customer” does not buy a product and then leave. For a day or more the customer is in the facility and the hospital has easy access to the patient so it can manage and develop the right patient experience. The CPEO should define and lead that effort. Research has shown that patients, like customers of other businesses, react favorably when they see the hospital express interest and concern for them.
2. Train and maintain all hospital personnel to have a patient focused philosophy. This is not a gimme as one can learn from reading blogs, reviews and other online media about hospital experiences.
3. Be a resource for Doctor’s offices to extend the patient experience paradigm to the outpatient offices.
4. Build patient loyalty and add value in the mind of the patient during the hospital stay and afterwords.

The bottom line of this is the fact that when customer experience is high, revenues and referrals follow.

In health care, the goal is poorly stated to say its patient loyalty….patients do not want to be regular visitors. I use patient advocacy as a benchmark measure to drive growing patient revenues. So what can a hospital or medical practice do?

1. Have a patient advocate-a chief patient experience officer. The person charged with patient advocacy MUST NOT be an insider. This is too broad a topic to cover here but a few comments will have to suffice. The airline, automotive and banking industries (just 3 examples) all have learned that when it comes to change having only insiders doing the thinking dramatically retards the process and progress. Insiders filter challenges and opportunities through their loyalties, experiences, prejudices, and aspirations. Patient care is a new language for many health care providers and something is bound to get lost in translation as an insider tries to learn what patient experience development is all about.

2. Patient experience is proactive NOT reactive. For years hospitals have nodded to the notion of tracking, measuring and developing patient experience but the discussion is aborted with a,”yea-but we have to consider…..” and the patient experience is left as an assumed tick in the plus column if the patient walked out with some level of satisfaction. If the patient had a bad experience it is often left to the doctor or office staff to fix. This has not and will not work.

3. Patient experience starts with listening. Hospital counters, chairs and beds have to be sterile not the people. Patients want empathy and respect not cold, detached efficiency. During a recent trip to an ER the experience took an amazing turn for the better when the usual “take a seat” process was replaced by a sympathetic greeting and clear explanation of what was going to happen-which leads me to my next point.

4. Talk to the patients. This is another reason to have a full time staff person leading this effort. In most hospitals floor staffs are stretched to their limits. During busy times patients resign themselves to anonymity and obscurity until the storm passes. This drives that ‘peak to end ‘rule to the low end and diminishes any opportunity to have a patient advocate for the hospital. When you engage the patient and clearly communicate with them the patient experience always improves and sets the foundation for developing a patient that will enthusiastically recommend others to your facility. One last comment on good communication: always deliver on what you say you will. Do what you say and never obfuscate or deceive. Back to my ER experience once more, after the stitching was done and it was time to go I was left sitting in a room for over an hour with no idea what was going on. Neither the nurse nor any floor staff seemed to know and I got answers that were clearly a stalling tactic. As it turned out a doctor had to review the chart and sign me out. Had the admin person come in after the procedure and explained the process and the expected time before discharge this would not have been an issue.

5. The patient comes first. All businesses have to have rules and policies to operate efficiently but it is important that the customer/patient never see that a decision concerning them is weighed against a rule or policy and that the policy comes first. Any time a business puts a policy ahead of the needs of a patient; then, patient experience is going to suffer. It was a pleasant surprise during my ER visit that the staff had some latitude in allowing my family to come back for visits. At other times and other places I would have heard, I’m sorry but our policy is blah blah blah…” When a staff is focused on the patient they can often avoid policy-patient conflicts by proactively managing expectations.

6. Patient experience training is good but putting it into action is better and best yet is hiring staff that have, as part of their core values, a genuine interest in patient experience and care. Gwinnnett Medical Center in Lawrenceville, Ga. has been giving classes to the hospital staff using Stephen Covey’s materials to improve the patient care experience. So far, the feedback is that it is beginning to make a difference in positive patient feedback. As of this posting they do not have a formal position charged with optimizing and managing the patient experience. That will be the next good step.

Next posting: What is a patient experience officer?