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Contact Vox to learn about how we can help you create a comprehensive Customer Experience that drives bottom-line results dramatically higher.

I was driving back from North Carolina yesterday with a friend of mine and we stopped in Indianapolis, winding through city streets to locate a brewpub we wanted to try. The place was great, and we each picked one (and of course, only one) draught to try.

Though it was 4:00 in the afternoon and less than half full, they put us at a tight table next to the kitchen. Curious, but we tried to overlook it, and just wandered over to another empty table. I noticed that everything the waitress said to us was perfectly civil, but both my friend and I perceived a barely concealed hostility. We went out of our way to be ready to order our sandwiches, and to politely say please and thank you (that’s just how we are). Yet at each interaction the waitress (who never introduced herself so I can’t give you her name) would say something like “great” or “sure” and then roll her eyes.

Not sure if this is an object lesson or I just wanted to get it off my chest. What we preach to clients is that everything matters - not just the words you use, but how you say things. Attitude is everything. And that means who you hire will determine what your customers think about you, not processes or scripts.

Without processes, it’s tough to run a business. Things fall through the cracks. So you create processes (or as you’ve probably seen, they create themselves).

But as you think for a minute about your customer processes, here’s the question you must ask yourself:

“Are our processes designed to empower good employees, or to control the damage of bad employees?”

Great customer service companies have processes. But, as a rule, those are typically designed to help their employees exceed customer expectations. They provide options and flexibility, they let  great employees be great.

So take a look at your customer interactions. If it’s possible for employees to use processes as a crutch (”I’m sorry, sir. Our system doesn’t allow us to do that), you’re probably not a great customer service company.

My iPhone crapped out on me last week. I marked the time of death as 2:10 PM Thursday. It’s tombstone would say: 2009-2009. It was the day before I was heading to Boston. I called into the service line twice and, despite everyone’s best efforts, it would take a couple of shallow breaths and then, quickly, dash any hopes of resucitation.

Ironically, my 18 year-old college son, who has a Zune, scoffs at my Apple products. Maybe he has a point about their planned obsolescence, but maybe it’s just my bad luck.

So anyway, the next morning, I went into the Apple store in Oak Brook, Illinois, where I met with a “genius.” Not sure if that was an accurate description, but he looked smart enough. The long and short of it was he was pleasant, listened (as opposed to acting like he was listening) and tried a couple of possible solutions. When those didn’t work, he took about 90 seconds of rummaging and programming, and handed me a new iPhone. The whole process took about 10 minutes. No paperwork to speak of. All my contacts and apps were right there – a freakish clone of my first iPhone.

I tried to imagine the same thing happening with T-Mobile, and I laughed to myself.

This was passed my way through email the other day. You may have seen it, and I can’t claim for its veracity, but I’d like to believe it’s real. It’s the letter of a 98 year old woman to her bank after they dinged her with a penalty. Apparently it was published in The Times in London. Real or not, it’s a great lesson to businesses who want to serve customers the right way (i.e. as humans), and also for not underestimating the intelligence of your customers, no matter who they are:

Dear Sir,

I am writing to thank you for bouncing my cheque with which I endeavoured to pay my plumber last month. By my calculations, three ‘nanoseconds’ must have elapsed between his presenting the cheque and the arrival in my account of the funds needed to honour it.. . I refer, of course, to the automatic monthly deposit of my Pension, an arrangement, which, I admit, has been in place for only thirty eight years..  You are to be commended for seizing that brief window of opportunity, and also for debiting my account £30 by way of penalty for the inconvenience caused to your bank.

My thankfulness springs from the manner in which this incident has caused me to rethink my errant financial ways.  I noticed that whereas I personally attend to your telephone calls and letters, when I try to contact you, I am confronted by the impersonal, overcharging, pre-recorded, faceless entity which your bank has become.  From now on, I, like you, choose only to deal with a flesh-and-blood person.

My mortgage and loan payments will therefore and hereafter no longer be automatic, but will arrive at your bank by cheque, addressed personally and confidentially to an employee at your bank whom you must nominate.  Be aware that it is an offence under the Postal Act for any other person to open such an envelope.  Please find attached an Application
Contact Status which I require your chosen employee to complete.  I am sorry it runs to eight pages, but in order that I know as much about him or her as your bank knows about me, there is no alternative.  Please note that all copies of his or her medical history must be countersigned by a Solicitor, and the mandatory details of his/her financial situation (income, debts, assets and liabilities) must be accompanied by documented proof.

In due course, I will issue your employee with PIN number which he/she must quote in dealings with me.  I regret that it cannot be shorter than 28 digits but, again, I have modelled it on the number of button presses required of me to access my account balance on your phone bank service.  As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Let me level the playing field even further.  When you call me, press buttons as follows:

1 – To make an appointment to see me.

2 – To query a missing payment.

3 – To transfer the call to my living room in case I am there.

4 – To transfer the call to my bedroom in case I am sleeping.

5 – To transfer the call to my toilet in case I am attending to nature.

6 – To transfer the call to my mobile phone if I am not at home.

7 – To leave a message on my computer (a password to access my computer is required.  A password will be communicated to you at a later date to the Authorized Contact..)

8 – To return to the main menu and to listen to options 1 through to 8.

9 – To make a general complaint or inquiry, the contact will then be put on hold, pending the attention of my automated answering service. While this may, on occasion, involve a lengthy wait, uplifting music will play for the duration of the call.

Regrettably, but again following your example, I must also levy an establishment fee to cover the setting up of this new arrangement.

May I wish you a happy, if ever so slightly less prosperous, New Year.

Your Humble Client

I’ve been in a few networking gatherings in the last week. When I hear other professionals describe their companies and talk about their issues, it’s amazing how rarely the words “customer” or “client” come out of their mouths. I hear “sales” and “marketing” and “product” and “pricing” but not “customer.”

As the late great Marshall Field said, “Your customers are your only profit center.” Yet most businesses are not set up with that as a core part of their philosophy. The businesses that do focus on the customer relationship, and build processes, product and service around it, seem to also be the companies that continue to succeed in down economies, which, last I checked, we were in right now.

Something to think about.

What do you really want?

For most businesses, there is a business goal. Maybe it’s to maximize profits. Or it could be growth: increased revenues or a larger customer base. But at the core, you have a business goal. The mistake I see companies make when they decide to start paying attention to their customers is that they don’t start with the business objective. Instead, there’s a vague “improve” customer service or some such mantra.

If you really want to effect change that will impact your bottom line, there’s an order of attack that will increase your odds of success. Think of it as a logic problem:

1. What’s the Business Goal? Yes, this seems obvious, but humor me. You can’t accomplish your goals unless you know your goals, and everyone on the team agrees just what the goal is. Start here.

2. What’s the Desired Customer Behavior? In order to achieve your business goal, you must define a “desired customer behavior.” For example, if your business goal is to increase the size of the customer base without increasing your marketing budget, you need to drive your customers to refer your company to others more often.

3. What’s the Desired Customer Perception? To drive a desired customer behavior, you must create a desired customer perception. That is, you  must convince your customers to think about your company in a certain way, so that they will act in a way to achieve your business goals (e.g. tell others about you; stay longer; buy more).

4. What’s the Desired Customer Experience? In order to create that perception, you must provide a customer experience that delivers in a specific, positive way, everytime. That means each communication, each interaction, each channel must consistently leave the customer with a desired impression or emotion. What that impression is depends on your business goal and brand promise. Any experience, big or small, that doesn’t deliver will reduce your chances of achieving your business goal.

5. What’s the Current Customer Experience? Only after working through those issues of business goal, brand promise, desired customer behavior and desired customer perception is it time to get moving on your existing customer experience. Now is when you must take steps to objectively analyze your current customer experience, and begin to incrementally improve upon it in order to achieve your business goals.

I’ll talk more about the actual analysis and improvement steps in another entry. The important thing here is to first take a breath and figure out just what you want to have happen before you start down the customer experience path.

Have you ever been in a conversation where the other person was very eager to tell you about himself? To let you know about his life and his opinions? Maybe he was very nice, and even interesting, but slowly it sinks in: this other person seems to be engaged with me, but really I’m just an audience, not a participant.

When that happens, how eager are you to approach that person the next time you see him at a party, or at the coffee machine at work? Probably not so much. The reason, of course, is that we all like to be entertained, but a much more powerful need is to feel we belong, and that we’re valued. We’re social animals, and a primal force that drives us is a sense of connection with others.

And yet, when you think about the different companies you deal with, and the way in which they set up their processes, services, and communications, what is usually missing? In my experience, and our research, the ingredient often lacking is that connection.

Businesses like to disseminate, not discuss, to promulgate policies instead of engage in discourse with customers. And I’m not talking about just the poster children for bad customer service. Even companies that mean well avoid dipping too far into activities like listening and interacting with customers because, let’s face it, it can get messy.

But for businesses who want to change the dynamic and elevate the customer relationship to a new level, to a plane where customers have a real voice, and feel connected, with your company, the effort pays off exponentially. The reward for you is not just short-term gains in retention but a fierce loyalty – not just because of your products or services, but instead because of the more powerful emotions that drive human behavior: friendship, caring, and belonging.

I had the privilege of attending the all-city Chicago Vistage meeting last week. While it was great to meet other like-minded business leaders, it was most compelling because of the speaker, Alan Beaulieu. Alan and his twin brother are economists who provide forecasts for companies, organizations, and even governments through their company, the Institute for Trend Research.

If you’re thinking “you lost me at ‘economist’” then we are kindred spirits. It’s not my thing. But he was powerful in his predictions, and I’ve been thinking about the discussion ever since. I admit, when he first began speaking about 2011 and the future, I was growing uncomfortable. What about NOW? What about TODAY?

But his focus was on beyond. What happens beyond Chicago, beyond the United States, beyond 2011, beyond this economic turmoil in which we’ve been immersed.
It’s so tempting to think short-term. So many organizations are focused on the immediate realities of our world today. Even the “unsinkable” companies of past generations are looking at how to make the next payroll; how to pay off the latest debt; how to cut the costs FAST.

When it comes to customer experience, it’s easy to fall into short-term thinking. Here are some examples:

• Promotion without strategy – customers can smell desperation and often exploit it. Know your limits and understand your desired pay-off before promoting something too quickly. (KFC!)
• Talking without listening – Executives who decide what to say to customers without talking to them first will have a hard time appealing to them. (MotrinMoms learned this the hard way.)
• Sacrificing current, loyal customers for the sake of acquiring new customers – AT&T recently retreated on their original iPhone policy in response to the outcry from current customers.
• Finally – this one is a personal favorite – treating social media as the end-all of customer communications. Social media is a fabulous tool, as I discuss here, but it’s just that – a tool. It’s part of a larger strategy of connecting with customers in powerful ways to naturally create loyalty and retention. If there is no larger strategy at work, social media will be a way to possibly connect with a segment of customers, and that’s only if it’s executed well. If not, it’s just another tool being underutilized.

So, as hard as it is, I believe we all have to start looking at beyond. Take a minute, map out where you want to go with your experience strategy, and then take the steps to get there. I feel better already.

Yesterday at a conference, I was peppered with questions about WHY small and growing businesses should enter into social media. This video from a few weeks ago helps answer some of those questions. But it’s important to note that it’s always wise to think of the WHY prior to jumping into the HOW.

Let’s not whitewash it. It’s a scary world right now. Everyday, we’re absorbing news via all our devices and witnessing low quarterly earnings, uncertain futures, and friends and family being laid off. It’s easy to just keep going through the motions of cutting expenses, limiting focus to “critical” activities, and just making sure the boss is content.

And yet some companies are innovating right now. Here’s a sampling of how some of them are working on the customer experience (and action you can take) TODAY.

1. Take one small step. A client of ours is focusing on their e-commerce strategy. With limited resources, they are making small changes to their e-commerce process to ensure customers have a better, faster checkout process. This has led to improved conversion, cross-sell and up-sell numbers via the web site.

2. Unite! One organization asked us to come in and rally the troops around customer experience. Summer is their big season, so we are helping every person at the organization - from the CEO to the janitorial staff - understand their place within the customer experience. It’s helped them create a common language and improve their own service standards.

3. Focus on the future. One client in a very hard-hit industry is creating a 3-year plan to get ready for the future. Dabbling in new ways to connect with customers, testing theories, and gathering feedback, they’re able to set the stage for success instead of stagnate where they are.

4. Communicate. Many industries have been hit hard, resulting in difficult times for customers and employees. The focus right now for a client in such an industry is on engaging their employees to deliver a superior customer experience. How? By implementing ways to stay connected through dialogue and communication that’s honest, compelling and relevant. They’re asking employees to celebrate each other and their little victories in new ways.  Engagement is up and customers are remaining loyal, even through bad news cycles.

These aren’t costly, cumbersome projects. These are lean and flexible in response to the times we’re in. Anything you can take away here to get started? Let me know.