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When Booking a Flight, Customers Must Confront the Airlines’ Extra Baggage
Author: Bill Cusick
February 1, 2010
A couple months ago, after yet another flight in which I had to plot just how I was going to get my carry-on bag into an overhead bin that was in the same zip code as my seat, I’d had enough. I told my wife that I was going to get “around the system” on my next trip. I would feign ignorance, and then, when my group (I seem to always be in Group 5), was going to finally board, I would request that they just check my wheelie at the gate. I’d noticed others doing the same on past flights.
When you think about it, it’s abeautiful plan: you wander on at your leisure; the airline throws a tag on you bag and it’s last into the plane’s belly (which means first out); and with most commuter flights, you simply wait a moments upon deplaning in the jetway, obtain your bag, and stroll away…all without paying an extra cent!
Well, apparently the airlines are on to my plan, since it seems it wasn’t just my plan. But given the growing frustration of harried travelers (and flight attendants), there’s got to be a better way. Surely the different airlines have the ability to look at this from the customer’s perspective, but the cost pressures override other considerations.
As for me, whether I have excess baggage or not, I check Southwest first. It’s the principle of the thing.
Dear Apple: my iPhone had a fatal coronary, but I’m still happy
Author: Bill Cusick
November 16, 2009
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.
A 98 Year-Old Woman Tears Her Bank a New One…With Style!
Author: Bill Cusick
October 26, 2009
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
Customer experience is built on every little process
Author: Bill Cusick
October 6, 2009
If you want to increase customer retention, referrals, cross sales, etc., you need to drive certain customer behaviors. To drive those behaviors, you must build a certain customer perception (i.e. an idea in your customer’s mind that your business is…fill in blank).
To build that perception you need to build a customer experience. Some companies understand this. But what many organizations fail to see is this: the customer experience is comprised of EVERYTHING. That is every interaction, communication, and process. It all matters. Look at your customer experience not as one grand process, but as an integrated series of processes, each with the goal of building toward an ideal customer perception.
So I ask you: What do you want your customers to do? What do you want them to think? Are each and every customer “moment of truth” consciously created to accomplish that? If not, it’s time to get to work.
Psst…your customers make you money
Author: Bill Cusick
September 24, 2009
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.
Want customers to help your business succeed? Start at the end.
Author: Bill Cusick
August 29, 2009
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.
Stop Thinking Short-Term
Author: Bill Cusick
June 24, 2009
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.
4 Ways Real Companies are Dealing with Customer Experience TODAY
Author: Bill Cusick
June 11, 2009
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.
Guest Blog: Great Service vs Passable Completion
Author: Peggy Entrop
February 27, 2009
From time to time, Jason Dabrowski (a good friend of Vox) sends us his relevant and often hilarious customer experiences. He just sent us this story about dealing with Bodybuilding.com and the US Postal Service. You can read the full story on his personal blog.
Having spent a lot of years in one type of customer service job or another, I know a lot about how badly the experience can go. When I notice good customer service, I have to say something.
Today I’m talking about bodybuilding.com
Despite the name, bodybuilding.com isn’t just for bodybuilders. I’m no bodybuilder, and you don’t have to be one to find lots of useful information at bodybuilding.com. It’s part store, part fitness information supersite.
Wanna find a routine for cardio? Wanna find out what a deltoid is and what exercises build it’s strength and endurance? Wanna know what glutamine is for? They’ve got articles explaining all of this, and even have guides to show you which related products are the best value…
I ordered some protein powder and some vitamins over the weekend. Wednesday I decided to check my tracking information (Provided by bb.com in handy emails). The USPS website said that at 9:04am my shipment status was “arrival at unit.” My mailman never shows up at 9am. I’m lucky if our mail arrives by 2pm, and the zip code listed in this tracking page was wrong. No package outside, either.
So I emailed bodybuilding.com and asked for help. Having had trouble with other shipments in the past it always seems like UPS, FedEx, etc., don’t want to help the recipient and are more inclined to listen to the shipper. I also tried calling the USPS hot line. They had no tracking information (guess online is not connected to phone setup, bad bad idea) and not only that when I tried pressing zero or saying “Customer Service” i was rudely greeted with “this system has updated and accurate information, customer service is not a selection at this time.”
Bodybuilding.com responded with a different number, but I had the same result. After informing them of the same result, something occurred to me. ”Arrival at Unit” doesn’t sound like “Delivered” to me. A search of USPS.com revealed nothing (big surprise), but a Google search revealed that “Arrival at Unit” translates into English as “it’s at your local post office now“.
I had overreacted.
Seconds later Bodybuilding.com responded with an apology and letting me know that had already put in a reshipment order, and threw in a shaker cup for free for the inconvenience.
I wrote a profuse apology and explained that I had overreacted, that if I need any more assistance, I would let them know and that I would try to be more patient in the future. They responded that it was okay, gave another apology and said to contact them if there was more trouble.
Later in the evening, I decided to check USPS again to see if they had an estimated delivery date or something. I assumed it would be Thursday. Well, unfortunately the website said this:
“Your item was undeliverable as addressed at 2:33 PM on February 25, 2009 in OAK PARK, IL [redacted zip code]. It is being returned if appropriate information is available.”
Super. I had overreacted, bb.com reshipped, and I had just told them earlier they could cancel the reshipment. It would appear that I now needed that reshipment. So I passed the info on to them, and they said they would not only reship the items, but were now waiving my shipping fee because of the mess. They apologized AGAIN.
So many apologies from the company that’s actually doing the right thing, and yet “customer service is not a selection” at the business that is at fault. But don’t fret, it gets BETTER!
This morning I went to the gym, came home and was working on some job application stuff when the buzzer rang. Yep, you guessed it. I pressed the “talk” button and said “yes?” and the response was “Package for Jason?” You’ve got to be kidding me. Went downstairs and sure enough, a box for me from bodybuilding.com. Took it upstairs and yes, it’s the original order I placed.
So now, I’m feeling like a complete moron. The CS people must think I’m an a-hole.
Yet they stepped up to the plate, consistently, on this order. There was no questioning me or trying to tell me to calm down and be patient, nope.
- They immediately apologized, and started a reshipment.
- Their communication was quick and efficient.
- They added value to the order by throwing an additional, related product (protein powder needs shaker cups), at no charge. They’re probably less than 5 bucks, but still, nice touch.
- When it looked like the shipper was failing to deliver on purpose now, they waived shipping altogether and did the reshipment again.
When you look at it, with the cancellations and waiving and trying to give me more products, they probably spent more time and effort on me than they were going to make on this one sale. And remember, none of this was THEIR fault. This problem all started when a overly eager customer (me) overreacted and involved the poor service and communication of USPS, two things that are not the responsibility of bodybuilding.com. Things that bb.com couldn’t have anticipated at all.
But now, I, the silly customer, have my products. I also know that I am buying products not just from a great store with great prices and loads of information on fitness, they also have the kind of customer service you wish you could get elsewhere. Wouldn’t it be great if, say, Comcast was this responsive? I think I would die of shock if my cable company was this dedicated to customer service. Course, they need all the money they could be spending on keeping customers happy to make moderately humorous commercials with talking turtles and overblown puns.
Why I Hate Focus Groups, and You Should, too
Author: Jeannie Walters
February 19, 2009
When discussing customer experience with our clients, we always start from discovery. How much do we know about your customers? How much can we learn? Inevitably, two words pop up as a means of gathering information: Focus Group!
Focus groups seem so appealing. They are inexpensive in time and money; they appeal to the voyeur in us; they seem to offer a glimpse into what our customers want.
I hate focus groups, and do everything in my power to get away from them. You can learn SO much more from one-on-one conversations or testing, depending on what type of information you’re gathering.
A podcast of Chicago Public Radio’s This American Life got me thinking. The premise of the show was a question: can one bad apple spoil the whole bunch? Can one person ruin it for the rest of us?
I believe that the answer is a simple, straightforward YES.
In a focus group, the bad apple (and there’s always one) ruins it, and makes the rest of us behave in ways we normally wouldn’t.
According to Will Felps, (a professor who researches “bad apple teammates” featured on This American Life) one person can highly influence others’ behavior. He proved that in as little as 45 minutes, others will adopt the bad apple behaviors - spoiling the whole bunch.
Well, Felps separated the bad apple behavior into 3 categories:
1. The Jerk - attacks and insults others
2. The Slacker - doesn’t do as much as others
3. The Depressive Pessimist - complains; doubts group success
The end result of introducing one of these bad apples into a group was that people communicated less and did not share ideas.
Imagine what this implies for focus groups. When you’re trying to learn about customers, the LAST thing you want is to prevent people from communicating. If a bad apple personality is present, others will clam up, just get through it, and leave feeling frustrated not only about the experience but also about what they were evaluating - YOUR product, brand, site, etc.
One-on-one interviews, user testing, and even customer surveys (when done well) can lead to intelligent data about your customers’ wants and needs. Combine this with behavioral data and you have powerful information to build a better experience.
Just like those bad apples - focus groups just lead to rotten results.
Follow Jeannie on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jeanniecw
