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Customer experience that reaches around the globe
Author: Anne McLain
March 30, 2006
The other morning, I listened to an NPR interview with Karen Hughes, the U.S. Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. You may remember her as President Bush’s former Communications Director in various capacities. Right now, she is assigned to fix the world’s opinion of these United States. Quite a daunting task.
Hughes established a center at the State Department to respond to issues concerning our global neighbors. In reflecting on their work at hand, it seems that a lot focuses on creating a “superior customer experience” for global citizens. The world is America’s customer but Arab relations are agreeably a critical contingency to concentrate on. You must know your best customers so they are focusing heavily on Arab relations. The program is working to reflect our brand values by reinforcing messages how the U.S. continues to help the world by increasing aid in Latin American nations, amongst others. Sounds like it could be a lot of hot air politicking but just like those who practice good customer experience, they are listening too.
She heard from visiting Fulbright exchange students who are concerned with their treatment as they arrive in America. Creating ways to provide feedback is an important element when reviewing your customer communications. One of her key missions is to improve communication about homeland security measures. There are ways to ask people to take off their shoes, unpack their tech gadgets, and stand in long lines that promote an accommodating, reassuring, and safe atmosphere. This will also mean creating happy and customer-centric employees – at airport security and visa offices.
Only time will tell if the U.S. can regain its status as an open, welcoming community. An in-depth review of the Five Keys to Customer Experience might be a good start. They apply to democracies just as much as companies.
Customer Experience - Who Gets It?
Author: Jack Borland
March 13, 2006
I was at a cocktail party last week and met a number of people, from an outsource HR firm rep, to an IT consultant, to a custom wood furniture craftsman. The food was excellent, the venue (an art gallery) was stimulating, and overall I had a good time.
As usual in these events, everyone asked each other what their companies did. Again, as usual, when I explained that I helped organizations to improve their customer experience, I got a lot of blank stares. Interestingly, in almost every group, immediately after the blank stares, one person piped up with “Oh yeah, we do that!” and he or she proceeded to explain a practical example that dovetailed nicely with Vox’s work.
While a few of the largest companies have adopted customer-centric philosophies, I’m starting to see that a lot of smaller firms are waking up to the fact the “the customer comes first” is not an outmoded cliché. For instance, I met a guy who launched an executive assistant staffing firm. He attributes his company’s success to their focus on providing the best, most pleasant experience possible to their applicants.
When the time came to add headcount due to growth, he decided to hire a concierge for applicants rather than to just add another recruiter. The result? He’s getting more high-quality applicants, and even when they wind up being placed by another firm, they’re more likely to come back to his firm for their next job placement. And by developing a pool of talented, high-quality personnel, his ultimate clients, C level executives, keep coming back to him when they need quality personnel.
Ultimately, your best assets, and the only assets that don’t depreciate over time are people, either your employees or your customers. Focusing on providing a superior experience will win you longer, more profitable relationships with both. People have known this for a long time. The challenge is figuring out how to change organizations to do this consistently. That takes a special kind of mind-set.
Customers? We don’t need no stinkin’ customers!
Author: Bill Cusick
March 8, 2006
The bad news — apparently, executives at over half of the companies in a recent survey didn’t feel that they were committed to serving customers well. Two thirds of executives at these companies don’t bother chatting very often with customers — after all, what the heck do customers have to do with it, right?
More bad news — there’s some new information coming out suggesting that, when a customer has a bad experience, she not only tells a whole bunch of her friends about, but she actually exaggerates the story, really hammering the company more than is justified. Yuck.
The good news — it looks like many companies are increasing their customer experience budgets to more honestly commit to better customer retention. Could the message finally be getting through that treating your customers better might have a positive impact on the bottom line? Oh, wait…it looks like the money is being spent to push customers to self-service channels, primarily the web. There’s no more money going to the hideous automatic call-center technology or other primary customer experience service issues. I guess it’s just to save some bucks by making the customers do the work. So, maybe it’s not good news.
