The problem with focussing all your resources on core competence is that if the 'thing' you provide - product, service, whatever - isn't that exciting, then it won't be that memorable. You'll just 'get it right' and, to be frank, so what. That's what you're supposed to do.

It brings to mind what the former CEO of Burger King, Barry Gibbon, described as Nightmare Number 1, when he first took up the job and toured Burger Kings to find out more about the customer experience. Nightmare number 1 was this: "Even when we did it right, it was still pretty ordinary".

Despite all the talk of passion and excellence, most companies provide pretty mundane products and services that customers will never get passionate about or never think "That was excellent!" You're not going to make customers go 'Wow!', for example, if your job is to tell them what time the trains are due to arrive. Or, are you?

You are if you get the core competence right as a basic, a hygiene factor, then add something extra. The 'something extra' then goes from being superficial and unnecessary - which is how managers tend to see it - to the reason customers remember you. In other words, what most managers see (or don't see - it isn't even on their radar) as pointless and unrelated to the work is, in fact, your competitive advantage.

Here's a story from the UK to illustrate the point:

"Passengers on the platform at Leicester aren't just informed of train times; the railway announcer, John Palmer, also gives them a thought for the day (example: "Why is there only one Monopolies Commission?") or a history lesson.

Last Tuesday he told them that on June 23, 1314, the battle of Bannockburn took place. "It's a harmless way of brightening up people's days," says Palmer. And his bosses agree.

"We get a lot of positive feedback from passengers and hope John will carry on," says a spokesman for East Midlands Trains.

- From The Week

Good for them. The little things, you see, are now the big things in making a difference to the customer experience. What John Palmer is doing is the best form of innovation in customer service - It's personal, it's unique and, hey, it doesn't cost anything. Did he ask permission? I doubt it. Is there a process or a standard for what he does? Of course not.

Labels: customer experience, customer innovation

It's your people, stupid. Listen for the throwaway line at the end of this Southwest rap - "You won't get that on United Airlines". That is hugely important. This isn't fun. Well, it is, but it's more than that. This is Southwest's competitive advantage. It's why they are consistently the most profitable airline in US commercial aviation history. Oh, and watch the passengers' faces go from indifferent to absolutely lit up and engaged. And it's free marketing, of course. Gold dust. Where's yours?

Labels: customer engagement, customer experience, Southwest Airlines, Southwest rap, Southwest video

I gave a keynote talk at the Contact Centre Planning Forum last week on how to improve the customer journey. It was at the Novotel, West London. When I rang the Novotel West London to check my room was booked, I got an on-hold message that was designed to reflect the values of Novotel, which is all about big spaces to relax in with natural light and things like that.

So, the on-hold message says to me something like "While you are waiting for an agent, take these few seconds to breathe deep, refocus, relax, refresh." Too many organizations might think a branded on-hold experience means having a recorded sales message. That isn't a pleasurable customer experience. It's doubly irritating to be kept waiting and then have corporate messages thrown at you while you are a captive audience.

But, the whole idea of adapting your on-hold message to reflect your company values, as Novotel has done is...refreshing. My friend Shaun Smith says the new frontier for contact centres is creating a distinctive branded customer experience to replace the generic experience most contact centres offer.

It's small but memorable - and low-cost, incidentally - things like customising your on-hold message to actually add value to the customer that will, step by step, move us towards next generation distinctive experiences delivered through the contact centre.

I asked the 450 or so people in the room if they used on-hold messages. They all put their hands up, of course. I asked them if they used a customised message that reflected their organisation's values, or that added value to the customer, or at least was memorable for being different. No hand went up.

Sounds like an opportunity to me.

Labels: call centre customer experience, contact center customer experience

I had a sales call this week from Standard Life Healthcare. Before the agent could get very far I had to stop her and say I have two endowment policies with Standard Life designed to pay off my mortgage. When I was sold the first one, by a manager at the then Leeds Permanent Building Society (taken over by Halifax, now HBOS) I was told that not only would it pay off our mortgage, it would leave us with enough money to do something special - a trip around the world, for example.

A good number of years on, I now get red letters from Standard Life telling me I need to take action because one of the endowment policies is not going to pay up enough, leaving us £25,000 or so short, probably, by the time the mortgage comes due.

So, said I to the agent, there is no trust there anymore and, no disrespect to her, I wouldn't dream of taking out a Standard Life Healthcare policy.

"Oh, we're hearing that a lot," she said. "Sorry to bother you. I'll take you off our call list.'

I then asked what I always ask in these situations: "Do you have a mechanism there for feeding up the management chain what I just told you, and for passing on the fact that you are getting the same response from a lot of other calls?"

Eventually the agent said she would make sure she passed that onto a manager. But, I got the impression there is no open channel there with customer information flowing up the chain; that she would make a special effort. Perhaps.

Deep sigh. Amazon has its WOCAS reports (What Our Customers Are Saying) that feed this kind of customer intelligence into the system - front line people are asked to watch for recurring patterns like this. It's a total waste of resource when most organizations aren't similarly organized.

Even The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur knows it. In his blog post '60 Customer Servie Tips' he features this one:

25. Let Communication Flow - From the top to the first line supervisor, make sure your leadership team knows how to document suggestions and pass them on to the correct person who can properly evaluate and take action if needed.
-Dr. Jay McCurry, McCurry Training and Coaching

Quite right, too. All this stuff about 'Voice of the customer' you read about everywhere and organizations drowning in the data, and they aren't even capturing the important stuff.

Labels: contact center feedback, contact centre feedback, customer feedback, voice of the customer

Nice slideshare here (below). I particularly think the point quite late in the Slideshare - that even customers who look like enemies on the net can be quickly turned into friends with a conversation - is extremely powerful.

It confirms some advice I read recently, but have now lost the source for; that hotel customer service or sales people should trawl through Trip Advisor and other travel sites looking for reviews of their own hotels, contact customers who post a bad review, and ask their advice on what to fix, then let them know what changes you've made and politely ask them if they'd consider updating their review.

Decades old research told us that a complaining customer who has their opinion turned around by a responsive organization is more loyal than a customer who has never complained. Add that to the fact that bad reviews can be seen by thousands of potential customers and therefore do untold damage to your reputation, and the cost-benefit analysis of investing time in turning around these customers is enormous.

A bad review is just free consultancy on where you need to improve. There's an urgency in that, as long as it is unchanged, your reputation is being damaged with every potential customer who reads it. So, the clock is ticking. So, you could set up metrics based on how fast you can turn around a critical, negative review into a positive one.

This is the new marketing, kids. The old anonymous dissatisfied customers that never complain direct to you but were out there spreading negative stories about you by word of mouth were invisible to you. Invisible guerillas they used to be called. Now, they are not only visible to you, you can engage with them, contact them directly, and find out what action would turn their opinion around. Then, if it's reasonable, do it.

If you haven't incorporated this kind of activity in your customer engagement, service, marketing, communication or experience design , then you are behind the curve. If your mindset is "But, approaching one customer at a time can't be cost-effective" you're looking at it the wrong way. Think of it this way, instead: There is a negative advertisement on the web about you, reaching thousands of people. By engaging with the advertiser, you can turn it around into a positive advertisement. Does that make more financial sense to you? Because that's the new reality.

Your customer experience is probably more similar to your competitors' than it is dissimilar. Benchmarking (copying) probably hastens the convergence.

Over on his Leading Blog, Michael McKinney recommends the new book The Collapse of Distinction by Scott McKain, and quotes what you need to do about the trend to sameness, like so:

"You do not need to change everything about how you do business to create distinction. Start by walking through your list of points of contact with customers, reframing and redefining how you perceive each moment of interaction. From these new perspectives, you can then begin to create specific points of differentiation with your customers. By developing your professional laundry list from the exercise—and recognizing that if these practices are the industry standard, then they will almost always fail to create distinction for you—you are taking an important first step in disciplining yourself as a professional to develop differentiated methods and tactics. Different is not just good, different is better."

I used to say 'Be different, not better' to get across the point that difference is strategic, better is usually just operational. I like McKain's conflation that different is the new 'better'.

Another approach to this is to compare yourself to a competitor with two lists of customer touchpoints under the headings 'different' and 'the same'. This is a good starting point for convincing colleagues and bosses, who tend to focus too much on what makes your organization different from the competition and not enough on the similarities, and so tend to have a warped view of your own 'specialness' or distinction.

Michael delves into the book more on his Leading Blog post here

Labels: commoditization, design your customer experience, The Collapse of Distinction

How strong is your relationship with customers? And where do you look to find out?

I hear you murmuring "Customer Satisfaction Scores: they've gone up and up under my watch." I'm sure they have. They go up and up under most people's watch. Partly because people learn how to work the system - I'm not saying they're dishonest, just that if you focus on any measure you can make it go up. That tells you something. But not enough.

You need to immerse far, far deeper in what's going on than relying on customer satisfaction scores.

The three elements of relationship strength are:

1. Trust. Consumers believe the brand will deliver its promise, respect them and be open and honest with them
2. Commitment. Consumers feel some longer term emotional attachment to their relationship with the brand.
3. Alignment and Mutuality. A two-way affinity between consumers and the brand, with mutual respect, shared values and expectations met - which results in a continually rewarding experience.

Source: Carlson Marketing Group survey of 16,000 consumers in 2003. I read the survey findings in the book Brands & Branding, which has just been updated and re-issued.

Labels: Brands and Branding