Customerspective

Smart Customers are Loyal Customers

What did your customers learn from you today? Find out why having solid answers to that question is becoming critical to meeting and exceeding customer expectations in Serge Chepurko's blog.

Growing Organically

Given savvy markets and more competition, financial service organizations need to find new ways to differentiate themselves to achieve “organic growth,” according to new research from TowerGroup.

The research finds that institutions that provide a superior, one-to-one customer experience are able to “reduce customer attrition and see their asset growth outpace the competition by 30% -- representing more than $360 billion dollars in assets.”  Check out some highlights from the research.

Are Tracking Numbers Hurting the Customer Experience?

It was my understanding that “tracking numbers” on shipments improve the customer experience by allowing one to follow their package. In my experience, this has not been the case.

      

I recently ordered a cord online for my printer. On May 30, I received a confirmation email stating “A package is shipping to you on 05/30/2006 via U.S. Postal Service First Class.” I was also given a number to track my package. After waiting a week, I decided to check the tracking number to see where my package was, but there was no update. I waited more time, but still no information. On June 21, I emailed the help desk to find out where my package was. I was told to check my local Post Office. When I asked why the package was not scanned at the Post Office, I was told “Our packages are not shipped thru the local USPS office (too many packages) so they only get scanned when they are delivered.” Apparently ‘delivered’ to the post office is not the official delivery so there is still no tracking information. The package will only be scanned as ‘delivered’ when I personally receive it.

      

Why are there tracking numbers when the only information available is the ‘shipped’ and ‘delivered’ dates? Doesn’t “tracking” mean more than this? Are tracking numbers hurting the customer experience?

      

BTW: After several frustrating emails between the company and myself, I was finally told that I would be sent a new package. I will be receiving a new tracking number shortly.

Brand Stormtroopers

The World Cup is in the news and so are the "Brand Fascists". FIFA, the international organization overseeing the world cup, is aggressively protecting its sponsor's brands. So aggressive are they that over a thousand members of the Dutch contingent watched one of their latest matches in their underwear because of a non-sponsor beer logo on their lederhosen.

No joke! A Dutch beer, Bavaria, produced these patriotic orange shorts in a marketing push in the run up to the world cup. On June 16th, as Dutch fans lined up for the Ivory Coast match, FIFA ordered ticket holders in the queue to throw their shorts away before entering the stadium.

I really wonder if Anheuser-Busch's Budweiser marketing team (Bud being the official beer sponsor) was closely in the loop on the FIFA decision. If they were, then that's a really bad call on their part. If not, they should be complaining as loudly as the fans to try to set things right.

If you're not providing the event free to the public, sponsorship should only mean prominent name placement, not a ban on competing messages. The repercussions of being perceived to be "brand fascists" must far outweigh any effort to stop brand dilution. The thing to remember is that brand expressions by the attendees wearing/carrying/consuming competing products are usually an indication of personal preference, and not a systematic attack by another brand.

When you start tangling with restricting attendee preference expressions, you're in essence trying to dictate personal behavior - which wasn't the core reason you sponsored the event in the first place. Even if another brand has been smart enough to piggy-back their message on something that an attendee might wear, the downside of negative customer experience isn't worth it.

So, be a "brand fascist", and be remembered sharply negatively as such by the people both directly and indirectly touched by your policies. That's in sharp contrast to the soft, positive message you were trying to achieve by the sponsorship.

Gas Stations & Customer Loyalty?

I found this interesting simply because with the prices of gas having been so high within recent months- supposedly, at this BP in New York, customers maintain their loyalty.  The article talks of "top-down" and "bottom-up" approaches that execs can use to maintain customer loyalty. The article ends with:

"In the end, the work we do - call it branding, innovation, customer experience, or anything else - has to improve the lives of customers ...or it doesn't mean anything. And you can't improve someone's life without getting to know them first."

Click here to read the full article.

Getting Back to Basics

Recently, a federal judge in Tampa ordered a game of "Rocks, Paper, Scissors" for two opposing attorneys to handle a dispute in court.

It reminds me how we need to get back to basics in life and business.What if we went back in time when a live person actually answered the phone when you called a business? Or companies actually listened and catered to their customers' needs?

What a radical, yet pleasant idea!

Seeking Loyalty from Your Online Customers? Just Do This One Thing Well...

Two recent studies cited in Customers See One Path to Online Loyalty, from 1to1 media, identify the one - and only one - thing that customers care about when it comes to their online loyalty: Customer Experience.

"Online, high customer satisfaction scores -- how happy people are with all aspects of the online experience when they visit a site -- have been proven to correlate directly and tightly to likelihood to return, recommend, and buy," says a report released in mid-January by ForeSee Results. However, the only online retailers who rated excellent scores (a customer satisfaction index above 80) are Netflix, Amazon, L.L. Bean, and QVC.

Keynote Systems' study, completed in December 2005, praised Google, GEICO, Washington Mutual, Apple, Williams-Sonoma, Vonage, and Virgin Mobile as masters of customer experience with a correlating loyalty result.

Now that this single determining factor of online loyalty has been determined to be Customer Experience - do you understand it?

Learn more here - The Customer Experience: What is it?

'Tongue in Cheek' Customer Experience?

Great restaurants in Chicago's Chinatown came up in a recent discussion here at work, and the conversation reminded me of the best and funniest experience I'd ever had in Chinatown.

I used to be part of a group that went out to dinner in Chicago every week or so. A couple of years ago, we decided to poke around and look for someplace to eat we'd never been to before. We found a restaurant tucked away up on the second floor of a building on the back streets of Chinatown. The place didn't look like much but it was packed with people. Most of them looked like locals rather than tourists. Checking out the menu, we found an extensive list of items, many of which we'd never heard of.

As we were ordering, my friend Jeff noticed Tongue on the menu and ordered it. The waiter took one look at him, and told him (in broken English) "No, no, you no like." We spent several minutes explaining that Jeff was experimenting, he really did want to try it, and that we'd ordered enough other food to not be displeased or go away hungry if we (he) didn't finish it.

When our food came, the waiter was accompanied by a helper, who was carrying, among other things, the plate of Tongue. His English was better than the waiter's, and when he got to the Tongue on his serving platter, he immediately apologized for the mistake and told us he'd take it back. We went through the whole explanation again & finally convinced him that we wanted to try it.

At the end of the meal, most of the food was gone (except for the Tongue). Most of us tried a bite, but as it was extremely chewy, and not very flavorful, we didn't really make a dent on that dish. The waiter, seeing the leftover Tongue, offered to take it off our bill. We told him not to bother, it was an experiment, and we were happy to have tried it.

Getting to the cashier, she started ringing up our bill, and, you guessed it, saw the Tongue on the bill, looked at our non-Asian faces, and immediately tried to take it off the bill. Well, as I said in the beginning, this was one of our best experiences ever in a restaurant. The staff was friendly, courteous, and fast. The food was excellent (barring the Tongue). And they really showed that they were devoted to us having a great experience. Based on past experience, they knew that most 'tourist' diners didn't like certain dishes, and they were determined to not let us have an unpleasant surprise.

When's the last time you saw someone bend over backwards to prevent you having what they thought might be a bad experience? My dinner group has since broken up, but every time one of us is down in Chinatown, we always stop in there for a meal.

Talk about understanding your Customer

The Microsoft Research campus showed off a faster way to search the Web and easier ways to share Web links with your friends.

Their latest invention is known as the Wild Thing, a search technology so dubbed because it allows for wildcard searches on MSN by using only a few characters. For example, if you find it difficult to spell the last name of California's actor-turned-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, entering "ar* sc*w" will find him. An entry of "ar* sc*w mo*" will find films from the former Terminator.

Whatever will they surprise us with next?

Call Centers and a Positive Customer Experience

How can a company insure that its contact centers, and the technology surrounding them, enhance the customer’s experience? The company has to look at the initial customer experience, customer satisfaction and the end goal – customer loyalty. Too many companies are satisfied with metrics that tell them a designated percentage of calls are answered within 10 or 20 seconds. They assume that customers are happy if there are no customers on hold and all of the call representatives are on the phone. This approach overlooks the real question: Is the customer’s question resolved?

Some companies have developed a system to answer that question. Churchill Insurance, for instance, makes sure customer calls are answered quickly by live agents and uses the call center to review all of its customer touch points such as when a customer changes their car or their insurance details. It then makes a connection between its call center and the high retention rate – 84 percent - for its insurance customers. Another company uses interactive voice response (IVR) technology to give its representative much needed help in solving customer queries.

To learn more about customer service issues related to call centers visit www.wisemarketer.com and read “The Importance of a Positive Customer Experience”.