Age actually can be a good thing!

In my youth, I wanted to be “all things to all people” or at least “most things to most people.”   Slowly and sometimes painfully through my customer experience consulting career, I have aged (or as I like to call it – gained wisdom).  Particularly, as it relates to honing in on a few core aspects of the experience that make sense for brands and customers.

Rather than attempting to be a moving target that addresses all the needs of all those who happen upon your business, success comes when you identify what you authentically care to deliver?  Once those dimensions are defined and executed with passion -  people who value those deliverables will come calling

For example, my company seeks to “make other people successful,” “provide worry-free solutions,” “have fun along the way,” and “be grateful.”  There are so many other things that tempt us – but in the end, customer experience excellence hinges on knowing our competencies, simplifying our customer experience deliverables, and demonstrating the discipline to be who we authentically can be on behalf of our customers.   So who are you at your customer experience core?  How are you tempted?

Frequently, I think of the dog on the bridge who is holding a bone in his mouth only to see the larger reflected image of the bone in the water.  How easy it is to reach for illusions only to lose that which you possess.

Are you a coupon clipper?  How about your customers? What role do coupons play in customer experiences?  Do they lead to commoditization or are they a component of interactive engagement?

Enough with the questions lets look at the data on couponing. According to NCH (Marketing Services), the number of coupons distributed by consumer product goods companies has remained stable from 2011 to 2012 (right around 305 billion coupons issued).  While the numbers remained the same the way coupons are used and redeemed did reflect changes.  Thanks to my friends at MediaPost Communications, I am ready to offer you some insights on those changes. In summarizing the NCH’s August 2012 Consumer Survey, Mediapost notes, “79.8% of consumers regularly shop using CPG coupons, similar to the 80.6% prior year result, and well above the 63.6% in the pre-recession 2007 study.”  Conclusion – couponing plays a key role in the experience of most consumers these days.

MediaPost goes on to note that “Of the 305 billion coupons issued by CPG marketers in 2012, non-food categories comprised 4.4% more of the available coupons than the prior year, with items such as medications, personal care and other household products all distributing a greater quantity. CPG marketers increased the coupons available in non-food categories where consumers tend to delay purchases or have a multitude of national brand and retailer private label choices. Conversely, there were 6.5% fewer food coupons, including products that are purchased frequently.”  The NCH study went on to demonstrate that marketers were increasing the distribution of coupons to introduce new products into the marketplace.  Take away – coupons can decrease the resistance of customers for trying something new.

Finally digital couponing has not reached critical mass with less than 1% of all coupons distributed being downloaded to loyalty cards or mobile devices. By contrast, print-at-home coupons are now nearly 6% of all coupons redeemed in the United States.

So what do these results mean to you and your customers?  How might coupons fit into your new and existing product offerings?  Clearly, coupons have become staples in the life of most consumers.

My vantage point on customer service and customer experience have certainly grown in the past 5 years. Much of that growth comes in the form of empathy gained from encountering complex healthcare delivery. In the past series of days, for example, I have run the all too familiar gauntlet of being with a close family member for 10 hours in an emergency room followed by a transfer to a coronary ICU unit. Along the journey we have endured less than pleasant moments including disputes between insurance providers and health systems that require transport from one facility to the next, variable levels of kindness from nursing professionals, and a sea of specialists who often view the world from such a sophisticated perspective which makes it difficult for them to coordinate efforts.

All that said, I continue to be impressed by the small yet substantial differences individuals do make. The respectful entrance into a patient room made by a phlebotomist, an extra gentle touch of the shoulder by a dietary staff member, a nurse who shares his or her smile – all serve to tame what can otherwise be a hostile and mechanical world of human care delivery.

There is much wrong about complex healthcare today but there is also much right about the power each of us has to humanize our provision of service experiences. What will you do differently today to not only deliver service but to enhance the human experience?

Thank you for your patience with my less frequent blog posts.

I have two bits of  good news and then on to this weeks blog…

1) the first draft of my upcoming Starbucks book is done (working title The Starbucks Connection) freeing me up to return to blogging soon

2) a couple of bloggers have kindly stepped-up to share their expertise in the void between now and when I restart my blog writing in January.

This week enjoy the writing of Ashley Verill.  Ashley a CRM analyst shares her insights on the subject of my The Zappos Experience book.  Here’s Ashley….

Zappos is renowned worldwide as the model for customer-centric culture, in part for the e-retailer’s unique approach to performance management. The company invests in the call center not as a cost, but as a marketing opportunity.

Recently, I sat down with the company’s Customer Loyalty Operations Manager Derek Carder. He said the company’s whole strategy is to create loyalty through incentivizing ‘wow’ moments and emotional connections. Here are the four KPIs they use to monitor, track and improve performance:

Measure Total Call Time, Not Time Per Call
Instead of valuing quick time to resolution or processing high call volumes, Zappos looks at the percentage of a time an agent spends on the phone. Agents are expected to spend at least 80 percent of their time in customer-facing communications. This measure – called personal service level – is a way to empower the team to utilize their time how they see best promotes customer loyalty.

Quantify and Reward Wow Moments
Zappos measures calls against a 100-point scale called the “Happiness Experience Form.” This is based on answers to the following questions:

1.    Did the agent try twice to make a personal emotional connection (PEC)?
2.    Did they keep the rapport going after the customer responded to their attempt?
3.    Did they address unstated needs?
4.    Did they provide a “wow experience?”

Agents are expected to achieve a 50-point average or higher. Agents earn incentives for meeting their goals, while under performers are required to take extra training.

Zero in on Idle Chats
Zappos monitors “abandonment time,” or periods when an agent has a session open even though the customer already disconnected from the chat.  Carder said sometimes agents do this purposely to avoid responding. This strategy of looking for idle chats zeroes in on the cause of unproductivity. When agents aren’t productive, customers wait longer. And the longer they wait, the more apt they are to abandon the session.

Make Attendance and Punctuality a Priority
Zappos uses a program called Panda to combat absenteeism. Employees receive a point for every day they miss work or come in late. Staff with zero points in a given period receive a varying number of paid hours off. These hours can be accrued and stacked for an entire paid day off, Carder explains.

The primary take away is that Zappos created metrics that emphasize creating a relationship with the customer rather than rushing them through the call. At the same time, these KPIs still successfully improve performance and make employees feel appreciated and rewarded.

Ashley Verrill is a CRM analyst for research firm Software Advice.

Thanks Ashley!!!!

First a personal note…

Please accept my apologies for not blogging more regularly.  Every waking hour  (that is not dedicated to consulting, speaking, or family) is being and will be spent writing my newest book about Starbucks.  I hope the smoke will clear to blog more regularly in early 2013.

On to a quick blog

“Authenticity” beats “trendy” when it comes to customer experience creation!

You are looking at several photos I took during a recent trip to Los Angeles.  They depict a restaurant that has graced downtown since the mid-1920’s  – the Original Pantry Cafe.  The Pantry, which is currently owned by former mayor of Los Angeles – Richard Riordan, is unpretentious and unglamorous.  However, the line you see outside the door is a consistent testament to it’s “craveability.”  The Pantry delivers large portion sized meals, reasonable prices, and impeccable speed all  in a timeless setting.  Many flashy restaurants have come in gone in Los Angeles since the 1920’s and even since I completed my doctoral program at USC in the late 1980’s.  However, The Pantry keeps that line forming outside its door – despite  24 hour service demands.  It does so through excellence in branded, authentic, customer experience delivery.

Do you remember Jack Nicholson’s character in the 1992 movie, A Few Good Men, Colonel Jessep, delivering that powerful line “You can’t handle the truth”? Well, I suspect for some of you today’s post will carry a similar challenge as it relates to a hidden truth about success and social media.  That truth is brought to you courtesy of Herb Schaffner, my first editor at McGraw-Hill.  Herb points out, in a recent blog post, that social media influence is not the only predictor of success.

Responding to a recent article in Businessweek magazine, entitled “How to Write a Bestselling Business Book, Herb shares the following keen insights , “Yes, social media traffic and influence are important—but with limitations. With so many experts—including me—evangelizing online promotion and smart content marketing, authors can’t be blamed for thinking this is the whole ballgame now. Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and Pininterest are very important for many reasons, but only in rare cases does a big Klout score really drive book sales. My advice: Authors, get your Klout score up, but keep your expectations modest–and do a social media reality check against your business or book goals.”

In response to Herb’s challenge to do a “social media reality check JoAnneh Nagler, author of the upcoming book The Debt-Free Spending Plan, notes
“… a handful of people in America have used it to make it big and now we’re all a bit chained to it for the same reason… it’s a great tool. … Sure, social networking feels URGENT, but what’s IMPORTANT, to me, is the writing. I think we’ve put the cart before the horse a bit lately and we’re hyping the online presence more than the content of what we have to offer. If it’s about being of service (which I believe it is), then our message has to be the first priority.”

WOW!  So where is your content and where is your hype?  In today’s world it takes both!  But, in reality, that has always been the truth.  Can you handle it?

In an interview recently, I was asked what is the biggest “small detail” business leaders overlook today.  How would you answer that question?

For what it’s worth, here’s my response:

“I think many business leaders fail to teach their staff that true success hinges on emotionally engaging and not merely satisfying customers.  Few leaders inspire their teams to go beyond “getting it right” and “making it right” so that staff members are also striving to  ”make authentic connections” with consumers. Customer loyalty and advocacy today is dependent upon having a team that not only “cares for” customers operationally but “cares about” them as people. As a result of this opportunity, I spend a lot of my time consulting with leaders at medium and large companies as they build cultures, strategies, and tools that result in high levels of customer engagement and profitability much like that enjoyed by businesses about which I have written (Starbucks, Zappos, Pike Place Fish Market, The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, UCLA Health Systems). When leaders build a “culture of connection”, people take care of people and ultimately the profits take care of themselves. From my vantage point, the biggest missing detail is the creation of a culture of connection.”

It’s been said that “when you have a hammer everything looks like nails,”  so I must concede that my perspective is colored by writing a new Starbucks book that focuses on “connection.”  Even so, what are you doing to maximize the product, people and planet connections for those you serve?

Have you ever been shadowed?  Have you ever shadowed?  I am talking about customer shadowing of course and if you are not doing it, you might want to add it to your toolkit.

Imagine not only asking your customers what they want or need from you but also getting permission to watch your customers as they go through the functions for which you might be of service.

While most commonly used as a service or product design technique in the business-to-business space, customer shadowing has application in business-to-customer circumstances as well.

So here’s a 30,000 foot view on the whys, whats and hows of customer shadowing:

Customer shadowing is a process of naturalistic observation and inquiry that explores how your customers actually do their work – so  you can design service or product solutions that will make their work easier, problem free, or more productive

So how do you go about the process of shadowing – after you get permission to “shadow” your client?

• In as unobtrusive manner as possible, observe the work processes that connect to the problem you will try to address for your client.
• After making initial observations, begin to ask probing questions to understand the rational behind the way tasks are done.
• Document observations.
• Analyze findings to create an interface between your business and your customer’s needs so you can decrease your customers errors, effort, waste etc.

Let me give you one simple example to get you thinking.  Let’s assume the way you bill your clients hasn’t changed for 10 years and it seems to work fine for you.  Assume you now go out and shadow the payment processes of 3 of your key clients and determine that  your billing methods are cumbersome to all of them.  These shadowing observations will allow you to make key changes that are client-centric even though your clients have never asked you to change.

For the cynics out there who might say, “why would I want to put all that effort in to fix a process for my clients when they haven’t even complained that it’s broken,”  let me simply say you should definitely NOT try customer shadowing.  Instead, your focus should be rapid acquisition of new clients to make up for all those slowly churning out your back door.

For the rest of us, I ask who are you going to shadow today?

How often do you say “no” to a lucrative business opportunity?  I have come to believe that excellence requires a willingness to pass on those opportunities where you are likely to be mediocre, or where those new opportunities will take your focus away from where your attention is needed to maintain or achieve excellence.

That said, I frequently get asked to work for businesses where the senior leaders will effect my efforts in the direction of mediocre results.  In some cases those leaders lack a passion for genuine customer experience excellence while in other’s they lack an understanding of customer experience objectives.

For example, one senior leader asked me to help make his service offering, in his words more “entertaining, kinda like that fish market in Seattle you wrote about.”  As we explored his possibility more, it became increasingly clear that he was looking for me to help him create some scripted activities that would entertain guests while they waited in line at his retail establishment.

As much as I tried to explain the differences between “engaging” customers and “entertaining” them, he was committed to a desire to entertain and I elected to pass on the opportunity.   From my perspective, he would have been better off talking to customers about the satisfiers and dissatisfiers of their experience before we started trying to think of  ways to “amuse” them.  I was certain that he didn’t need to teach employees “magic tricks” to perform for the guest in line until he understood if, from the customers perspective, they needed to think about getting rid of the line in the first place.

Since 2004, researchers like Poulsson and Kale have shown that “amusing” customers has limited perceived value in terms of their overall impression of an experience and that entertainment alone does little to drive customer loyalty.  All of this served as a reminder to me of the basics of perceived customer value:

listen and observe your customers,

remove dissatisfiers,

enhance satisfiers, and then

sprinkle in positive engaging elements (which draw customers in through novelty, surprise, and learning)

In other words, putting good frosting on a bad cake does not a positive experience make.

In addition to my regular blog post later in the week, here is a bonus guest blog from Heidi Hanna.  Heidi and I have worked together for a shared client and I trust her expertise in human performance will offer a refreshing spark: particularly, as you strive for creative customer experience solutions?  Enough of me and on to Heidi…

————————-

A few days ago I found myself having an interesting conversation…with myself. Yes, as you become more aware of your mental gymnastics throughout the day, including the stories you tell yourself, you can find yourself listening in on a conversation in your own mind as if you were an eavesdropper. Odd, I realize…but true. And I don’t mind because awareness is the first step towards using the power of your brain to create the life you want.

What I discovered in this internal dialogue was that what we think is often very different from what we know. My thoughts that morning included “I’m too tired to exercise”, “I really need to rest”, “My knee will hurt more”, “I’ll start tomorrow”, “I don’t need to do it”, and “I don’t want to do it”. But what I knew was I did need to do it, my knee was fine for moderate exercise, if I didn’t exercise my anxiety would have increased even more, and I was on the verge of a potential anxiety attack (unfortunately, something I’ve had to manage from a very young age). I know that feeling, and I know it usually happens in this exact situation – one part injury or illness, one part lack of exercise, one part stress, one part a case of the “blues” = system wide break down.

Fortunately I focused on what I knew to be true and pushed myself to go to the gym, thinking worst-case scenario I’d at least walk. I ended up getting a 45-minute workout in, chatting for a bit with a friend, and my day immediately shifted for the better. I was still in a bit of a funk, and tired, and a tad overwhelmed…but it had become manageable. And had I not exercised I am certain that things would have gotten worse.

This experience just reinforced something I wrote about in my upcoming book, The SHARP Solution (available February, 2013): our operating system consists of two fabulous leaders – our heart and our brain. While our heart provides passion, purpose, and motivation our brain controls the resources we allot to each of those things. When we’re running on empty, whether it’s physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually, our brains can shift us into conservation mode, triggering thoughts that encourage us to conserve energy. What that means is that we slow down metabolism, crave foods high in calories, consume too much food, and don’t want to move more than we have to – making eating right and exercising an outright battle between what we want to do to reach our goals and what our brain thinks we need to do for survival. If we want to make healthy choices it’s critical that we fuel our system strategically, using techniques such as the Brain Recharge I talk so frequently about or other self-care practices, so that we keep our system running at its best. Try to practice awareness of how your thoughts, guided by your brain, may sometimes be trying to protect you but end up moving you in the wrong direction – away from your goals. In those moments, tune into what you know to be true, and try to listen a bit more to your heart.

———–

As a performance coach and keynote speaker, Heidi has trained thousands of individuals on practical ways to incorporate nutrition, exercise, and positive psychology strategies to improve their health, productivity, and performance. Her vast coaching experience and passionate coaching style help motivate individuals and teams to develop sustainable success at both a personal and professional level. Heidi is CEO and founder of SYNERGY, a coaching and consulting company that specializes in customized health and wellness solutions for individuals and organizations. In the spring of 2011, Heidi authored her first book, SHARP: Simple Strategies to Boost Your Brainpower, and will release the follow up titles, The SHARP Solution and The SHARP Diet in 2013.

From 2003 through 2011, Heidi worked as a trainer, coach, keynote speaker and consultant for the The Human Performance Institute in Orlando, Florida. As an experienced speaker, Heidi has been featured at many national and global conferences, including the Fortune Magazine Most Powerful Women in Business Summit and the ESPN Women’s Leadership Summit. Heidi has fundraised, trained, and served as a mentor and nutritionist for several non-profit organizations, including the Leukemia Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training, Livestrong Foundation, and the Challenged Athletes Foundation. She also is an advocate and volunteer for the Alzheimer’s Association.

Heidi holds a bachelors degree in communications from Penn State University, where she competed on the Big 10 softball team and received academic All-American honors. She holds a master’s degree in mental health counseling from Rollins College and a Ph.D. degree in holistic nutrition from Clayton College of Natural Health. Clients have included Johnson & Johnson, PepsiCo, Cisco, Dell, Intel, Proctor & Gamble, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, Merrill Lynch, ESPN and Starbucks, as well as professional and amateur athletes. Since 2006 Heidi has partnered with Janus Capital to deliver the Energy for Performance program, which teaches financial advisors how to better manage their personal energy, particularly during periods of stress, and the BrainWorks program, based on her SHARP book series. In 2011 Heidi was named a Fellow of the American Institute of Stress.