Customer Experience and Brand Engagement

Making Promises You Can Keep

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the missing link to a customer experience strategy and I believe that brand engagement is a big part of it.

One of my jobs at Boost Mobile was brand education for the organization.  I created a “brand academy” and curriculum for multiple audiences that included the Boost Mobile organization, our call centers, and our vendors.

The goal of the brand academy was to support our marketing efforts by ensuring that anyone who “touched” our brand knew what the brand stood for, and how to deliver the brand promise.

Thinking back now, the brand academy had a huge impact on our overall success at the time, as people who worked for us had a real connection to the brand, and became brand ambassadors. They supported, and became walking advertisements for the brand.

We walked and talked the brand attributes, and our corporate culture was built around the brand.  Internally our goal was to deliver the brand promise to our employees, who in turn would deliver the promise to our customers – and it really worked.

A marketing department can develop a great strategy and advertising program, but if the employee base doesn’t understand it, or understand their role in delivering the brand promise there is a lot of wasted resource because the overall experience will not be consistent with the brand.

I believe that brand education is a real missed opportunity for organizations, and should be a part of any customer experience strategy.

Customer Experience in Challenging Times

Challenging economic times require challenging the status quo.  Even when times are tough there are many low-cost opportunities to build, and nurture positive customer relationships that can help an organization accelerate through, and uphold the brand’s reputation.

When faced with an economic downturn many organizations resort to panic and reactive strategies.  Taking a reactive approach can cause a management team to frame action through a negative lens, and place focus on what’s wrong, instead of what’s right.

The goal becomes survival at any cost — as long as it doesn’t cost any money. Many organizations stray from logic by reducing headcount, cutting back on services, and eliminating customer perks. In an attempt to drive costs down, they drive customers to the competition.

These types of actions exacerbate the issue, and create a vicious circle of compounding problems.  Service quality drops, and customer satisfaction takes a dive.  As customer complaints increase, the cost and resources to handle the complaints increase as well.  Negative word-of-mouth advertising impacts sales, and that leads to additional costs in marketing, and customer retention.

Challenging times impact the employee experience as well.  Organizational changes affect employee morale, productivity, and confidence in the organization that in turn affects the customers’ experience.  Frustration can lead to employee attrition that drive up costs associated with hiring and training replacements.

In the preface of his book The Loyalty Effect author Frederick F. Reichheld states, “the fact across a wide range of industries is that a 5 percent improvement in customer retention rates will yield a 25 to 100 percent increase in profits.”  The key word being retention!  It costs less to retain customers, than to replace them.

In challenging times, think simple, but simple with an impact.  You don’t have to drive up costs to WOW a customer; in fact, it’s just the opposite.  Most customers understand the challenges that organizations face, but they still want value for their money, and to feel appreciated.

The goal is to let customers know that you appreciate and value their business.  A sincere “thank you” from a customer service representative, an employee that goes that “extra mile” to provide outstanding service, a small token of appreciation in the form of a note, an email, phone call, or text message. Many times it’s the smallest gestures that make the greatest impact, and help to enhance customer loyalty.

Imagine receiving a note, email, or text message from your mortgage, credit card, or telephone provider company saying something like:  “We want to take this opportunity to thank you for your continued support,” or “We know that these are challenging times, and we want to thank you for paying your bills on time.”  For a minimal investment, you would get a maximum return on customer perception and good will.  That’s advertising you can’t buy!

The good new is better days are ahead, so go ahead and challenge the status quo! Take a challenge as an opportunity to differentiate yourself by surprising your customers, and building your brand.   Not only will it help you get through the leaner times, it will help you build a brighter future.

Leaving Your Comfort Zone

I have used Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (from The Republic, Book VII) in leadership development courses to help people understand that true leaders tend to live uncomfortable lives because they constantly put themselves out there while most people hide in their caves (read: offices and cubicles).

There are many translations and interpretations and here is one that is from the book The Timeless Leader by John K. Clemens and Steve Albrecht …it’s a great book by the way …I highly recommend it!

“Imagine that you’re trapped deep inside a cave with a crowd of strangers.  They slowly mill around you, transfixed by a bizarre sort of slide show projected onto the far wall.  To your amazement, they seem to have no interest in leaving this gloomy dungeon.

You walk among them, urging them to escape the darkness of their self-enforced imprisonment, but their apathy is impenetrable.  Reality for them consists only of the images of light and shadow that play eerily across the wall in front of them.  It’s hard to believe, but they seem quite satisfied with their lives in this make-believe world.

You alone escape this place.  Fighting your way up the near-vertical rock face, you slip and fall repeatedly.  Battered, bleeding, and bruised, you finally make it out of the cave and into the light of the real world.

The good news is that you are finally free; the bad news is that your challenge has just begun.  You must re-enter the cave and force its lethargic captives to leave the familiarity of the world they know and emerge from the cave with you.”

Most of us have experienced this self-imposed prison in organizational life at one time or another.  We know there is a better way yet we stay in our make believe world afraid to leave our cave.

Leadership is about taking risks, trying new ideas and concepts, not taking the safe path, and definitely challenging the status quo.  A real leader leaves the cave at all costs and encourages people to follow.

I believe we live and work in an over managed and under led world.  Leadership is the exception, and managers are the rule.  We care more about technology than people.  We are losing our competitive edge because we care more about balance sheets than developing talent.

The banking industry appears to be in free fall and I have to wonder what these highly paid leaders have been doing all this time?  Have they been leading or managing their organizations to failure?  Most of them don’t have to worry because they are paid to fail – that’s why there are golden parachutes – no risk.

We have to get out of our caves take more calculated risk (heck, even some un-calculated risk would be better than no risk at all) to learn and grow.  We have to stand on our heads when looking for new solutions because we can’t look at the world the same way day after day.

We need leaders who inspire people to reach higher and not settle for the status quo.  The status quo is the cave and there are a lot of people trapped there who will never see the light.

Maintaining Your Customer Experience “Mojo”

I was reading Rajan Sodi’s blog “Has Starbucks Lost its Cool?” bigmarketing.wordpress.com/2008/09/03/has-starbucks-lost-its-cool/ today and it got me thinking about the realities of maintaining a customer experience strategy over the course of time.

Starbucks used to be my customer experience hero because they were able to create and maintain a level of experience consistency across a vast network of stores, but it appears that they have fallen into the commodity category the past couple of years.

So what’s changed, and why are they losing their mojo?  Lack of focus? Moving away from their core product?  Is the experience stale?  Have customer expectations changed?  All of the above?

There is a lot to be said for consistency.  I remember reading an article a while ago about the success of McDonald’s.  The author’s theory was McDonald’s success was driven by its consistency.  A hamburger at a McDonald’s in San Francisco looks and tastes the same as a hamburger at a McDonalds in Miami, and that is what McDonald’s customers want – no surprises.

I believe that is part of Starbucks success.  Customers are familiar with the product and similar to McDonalds it looks and tastes the same no matter where you buy it but is that enough for the higher end coffee biz?

Rajan brings up an interesting point about his Starbucks experience.  At one Starbucks they started offering new breakfast items of hot oatmeal and whole-wheat buns, and at another Starbucks they still had their old breakfast sandwiches “that make the store smell like a cheap diner rather than a joint for premium coffee.”

I believe that Starbucks original intention was to create an experience of a “premium coffee joint” but now that experience is inconsistent and does not live up to customer expectations (at least Rajan’s!).  That is one major downfall of a customer experience strategy:  not delivering on customer expectations.

I used to frequent the Mermaid myself, but then got bored and frustrated with her.  I grew tired of the lines (especially at airports), and there was nothing different or compelling about the experience anymore.  For the price and hassle of a cup of coffee at Starbucks I could go to a smaller store without the long lines and get a cup that was equal or even better than Starbucks and most of the time less expensive.

Starbucks’s still has a loyal following, but now I’m not sure if it’s purely out of habit, or because of the original experience.

In my opinion Starbucks has veered off their original success strategy; build a simple, relevant, and compelling experience and brand that allows them to charge a premium price for coffee.  When they started to add different product lines (a bunch of food and merchandise) the original “coffee experience” got lost in the crowd.

My guess is that the finance department got greedy and decided to sell more “stuff” as a quick revenue fix instead of maintaining their successful long-term customer experience business strategy.  Expansion has probably added to the mix, as it’s much more difficult to scale a consistent experience across a vast network like Starbuck’s.

To maintain your customer experience mojo means complete focus on your customers wants, needs, and expectations and then have the capability to deliver across the organization.

Organizations have to focus on what they are really good at, and then keep getting better at it.  Diversification is good for a stock portfolio, but it’s very difficult in a business.

Dumb Rules & The Customer Experience

Have you ever been the victim of a dumb rule?  My guess is you have, and plenty of times whether you were aware of it or not.

Dumb rules run rampant in organizations at the expense of the customer experience, and many times drive customers to defect to the competition.

I recently purchased a book (it’s of the self-help type, and it was expensive) from a publisher’s website, and after I received the book I noticed that some critical information I needed was on the book’s website.

To get to the information I had to go through a sign up process and after several pages of personal information I arrive at a page that tells me if I buy the book right now (I had already purchased the book) I can get three (3) months free use of the website or I have to pay to use it.

I didn’t see this offer when I originally purchased the book as it was hidden a few pages in, so I emailed the publisher explaining the situation and requested the three months use of their website.

The publisher got right back to me and asked me for my mailing address for verification.  At that point I thought that they were going to take care of everything for me, but I was wrong.

The next message I received told me that “the rule” is you have to sign up and purchase the book on that specific page, and to get the 3 month free offer now I have to follow a special link, enter my credit card, they will bill my card $1.00, then charge me the full amount at 2 months, then refund my card a day later, and I will have the next month for free.

I wrote back and told them “that is a really dumb rule, and quite a complex process, and if they had advertised the special offer where customers could find it (like their landing page) I would not be bothering them with this issue, and it would save their organization a lot of time and hassle, not too mention their process is a lousy customer experience.”

I received a message back from the publisher telling me “that’s the rule, and they apologize for any inconvenience.”

Now imagine another approach: “Mr. Customer …our apologies for the confusion. Please send us your mailing address we will immediately sign you up for the complementary 3 months access as we want you to get the most out of your new book. Love, The Publisher.” (ok, maybe not love… sincerely the publisher!)

Simple, no muss, no fuss.  It would save the publisher and me a lot of time, trouble, and bad feelings.  I will definitely avoid this publisher in the future.

In one of my previous jobs I challenged a few departments (including the call centers) to come up with as many dumb rules that they could think of and did they deliver!

The groups collectively came up with 17 major dumb rules, and 22 minor dumb rules.  At that point we prioritized them from most annoying to least annoying, then worked to remove the most annoying as fast as we could.   Sounds simple, but it’s not.

What I learned through this process is that people, especially those who created the dumb rule become very attached to it, and to get it changed or removed is a major undertaking.  The rule makers have tunnel vision when it comes to the rule they created and it requires very slick negotiation skills or heavy medication to get the rule maker to see otherwise.

Bottom line: take a dumb rule inventory and see how many you have.  I bet you’ll be surprised!

Then do your customers a favor — get rid of, or minimize the dumb rules to create an improved experience.

Customer Experience and Organizational Capabilities

Organizational capabilities play an important role in a customer experience strategy.  The organization must be capable of delivering the intended experience across each customer touch point that is congruent with the marketing and advertising message.

The marketing department must understand the organization’s capabilities so they don’t make promises in their advertising that the organization can’t deliver.

Systems and processes must be created to support each product, and then every employee must understand their role in delivering the experience.

One of the biggest gaps I have seen over the years is that the employees don’t understand the marketing message, and how they affect the intended customer experience.  They are not capable of delivering a relevant customer experience.

The employees who are responsible for each customer touch point should understand what the marketing department is promising about a product / service, and then be trained on how to deliver the experience.

A few of the organizations I worked at over the years made an attempt to educate the employee groups about the marketing campaigns.  They would set up television sets in lobbies and cafeterias and run continuous loops of the new ad campaigns for a week or two.  That was a start, but it did nothing to actually help employees understand their role in delivering the message to customers.

At Boost Mobile I decided to take that concept to a new level and actually have short training sessions about each ad spot when they were released.

We would show ad spots to employee groups, then have a discussion about the marketing message, the promise the ad was making to the customer, and then brainstorm ideas of how to deliver the promise to customers.  The link from the ad to the real world helped align groups around the marketing message, and also helped everyone understand their role in supporting the brand.

Training front-line employees with an emphasis on marketing is a brilliant way to differentiate from the competition.  It builds employee confidence and morale, educates them about a critical part of the business, and enhances the brand.  It also makes them a more capable part of the organization.

Customer Experience & Service Recovery

I love Apple products and services – I am a true promoter of the brand.  I love going into Apple stores, I love their packaging, I love their products, I love their operating system and software, and I love their service.  I believe they have one of the best end-to-end customer experiences anywhere.

When I need to call their help desk I am always treated well, and rarely wait long on hold.  The people on the help desk go out of their way to assist and are always determined to solve my issue no matter how long it takes.

I use their MobileMe (it used to be called .Mac) service to host my website.  I think it’s a great service so I don’t mind paying an annual fee for the service.

I have not had any problems with the service, but I received an email yesterday from Apple apologizing about the MobileMe service.  Here is the email message:

“We have already made many improvements to MobileMe, but we still have many more to make. To recognize our users’ patience, we are giving every MobileMe subscriber as of today a free 60 day extension. This is in addition to the one month extension most subscribers have already received. We are working very hard to make MobileMe a great service we can all be proud of. We know that MobileMe’s launch has not been our finest hour, and we truly appreciate your patience as we turn this around.”

What I loved about this message is that they came to me – I didn’t have to waste any of my time tracking them down.  Heck, I didn’t even know it was broken and now get three months free too boot!  The message is honest, upfront, and humble …rare in the corporate world.

A lot of companies only look at the financial aspect of the issue.  They wager that only a small percentage of customers will take the time to complain so they wait for the customers to come to them, and then hope the strategy will save money in the long run.

Service recovery is about understanding the issue, taking accountability, and then taking action to minimize the pain for the customer.  Service recovery is not hiding behind the walls at headquarters hoping the issue will go away.

Service recovery can make or break a customer relationship, as well as influence a customer’s perception of the brand.  Be honest and upfront and customers will rally to support you – do the opposite and customers will most likely (and hopefully) defect to the competition.

It takes real leadership to make a decision like Apple.  It takes leadership that places a priority on a long-term customer relationship strategy, instead of a short-term financial strategy.

It takes a culture of truly caring about your customers, and then taking deliberate action to ensure that the bond is not broken.  That’s customer experience at its best!

We can learn a lot from Apple, and I applaud them for doing the right thing.

Call Centers & Quality Assurance

Over the years I have found that typical Quality Assurance (QA) programs are a waste of time, and basically do nothing to improve the customer experience.  The good news is… it doesn’t have to be that way.

When Boost Mobile first started out we didn’t have time to develop our own QA program so we borrowed a program from Nextel and put the Boost Mobile name on it.

It was a typical QA program with a list of call “attributes” that a customer care rep was expected to hit on each call. It was a very linear approach and the customer care reps typically went right down the line so they would not get “dinged” for missing something.

One day I was listening to a call and near the end of the call I heard the customer care rep say “oh, I can help you with that.”  The statement had nothing to do with the current conversation, and in fact surprised the customer who said “are you talking to me?”

Then it hit me, the customer care rep forgot to say #3 on the list at the beginning of the call!

#1 was to open the call, #2 was to ask for the customer’s name, and then ask what they were calling in about, and #3 was the “assurance” statement “I can help you with that.”

So near the end of the call the customer care representative remembered she forgot to say #3 at the beginning of the call, so she squeaked it in near the end so she would not lose points for that category… at the expense of the customer’s experience.

I was not upset with the customer care rep, I was furious with myself for letting something like this happen.  I was driving that type of behavior and at the cost of the customers’ experience.  It was obvious that the customer care reps were paying more attention to a dumb list than giving their full attention to the customer. That was about to change.

I created a program that we called “Boost Camp Personal Trainer.”  We wanted to create something that was totally customer focused, and that removed the negative stigma of Quality Assurance.  We wanted the program to actually develop customer care reps instead of just giving them just a score.

Personal Trainer did not have list of attributes or a linear design.  The customer care reps had total license to create a unique experience based on each individual customer.  The focus was 100% on the customer, not a quality assurance program.

An “Anti-QA” program was very much in line with our brand, brand promise, and culture.

There was a period of adjustment especially for those who worked in the QA department.  QA departments are typically very black and white — they don’t see grey too well, and our QA department was no different.  The Personal Trainer program had a lot of grey so there was a learning curve during implementation.

I wanted the QA group to become true coaches and mentors, and that meant stretching beyond their comfort zone of checking off boxes and adding up scores.  The Personal Trainer program required more developmental writing (the most difficult part of the program) and delivering feedback in a coaching/mentoring context.

Overall the program was a huge success.  It took some time to get there and we had to break a lot of old habits, but most important the customer care reps appreciated the program and wanted to participate.

We had a win for the customer care reps, and a win for our customers, and that was a big win for our organization.  Our customer satisfaction scores increased, and the customers commented on how they liked being treated as an individual.

So if you must have a QA program (and I know call centers are hooked on them!), try a new approach that is customer focused instead of metric focused, your customers will be glad you did!

Customer Experience — Every Touch Point Counts!

A year ago I bought an HP printer for my MacBook Pro and the print drivers never worked.  It was constant frustration so I gave up and swore (many times) that I would never buy an HP product again.

Yesterday I purchased a Lexmark printer (a new brand for me), and looked forward to a totally new experience.

Retail Experience

I purchased the printer at a big box store. The sales person who helped me was not that knowledgeable about printers, but tried to help so that was positive.  The printer was on sale ($100.00 off!) so that made the experience even better, and I got the last one they had in stock.  I’m a happy camper at this point.

Packaging Experience

Nice packaging, easy to open and easy to locate all of the parts that I needed. The printer was easy to remove from the box unlike a lot of products that are held captive in their boxes by those styrofoam inserts.

Set Up Experience

Every piece is labeled, and the start-up manual is easy to understand.  At this point I’m quite pleased with my purchase, and glad that I selected a Lexmark product.

Installation Experience

I insert the CD to install the software.  Everything looks good, and I get the final message that my software has been installed successfully!  A test / alignment page is printed and it’s perfect — life is good.

Product Experience

I open a file, select print, and nothing happens.  I try it again, still nothing.  I reboot my computer, try to print again, and nothing.  A bit frustrated I look in the troubleshooting guide, follow a few of the procedures, try to print, and nothing.

Still just a bit frustrated, I continue to try some of the self-help ideas in my trouble shooting guide but nothing works.  I go to the Lexmark website and download what I think is an updated driver, and get an error message that the latest driver is already installed on my computer.

At that point I see a a flyer in the box that says:

“Congratulations!  You’ve chosen one of the most innovative and easy-to-operate printers you can buy.  STOP!  Do not return the printer to the retailer.  Contact Lexmark in the unlikely event that there is a problem.”

I’m thinking: not that easy and not that innovative Lexmark.

I find a smaller flyer that says:

“Your new Lexmark Professional Series printer comes with PRIORITY PHONE SUPPORT 1-800-395-4039”

I feel a bit better, help is on the way.

Product Support Experience

I call the Priority Phone Support number and get the typical IVR recording.  I press a few numbers and get placed on hold.  No surprise there.  Fairly quickly a women answers (she has a heavy accent and I’m thinking this is an off-shore call center) her name is Amy.

She asks a few questions, then figures out that I use a Mac.  She apologizes and tells me that I called the wrong number (there was only one phone number on the flyer and nothing about Mac or PC) and tells me she will transfer me to the Mac support area.

I’m waiting on hold, and then my call is disconnected.  A bit irritated at this point, I call again.  I go through the IVR exercise, somebody answers the phone, and I get disconnected again.  Even more irritated, I call back, talk to another person who then gives me a case number, and I get disconnected again.

At that point I’m not feeling much of a “priority.”  Over the next hour I call, get hung up on, talk to a few people, and get disconnected.  I’m about ready to put the printer in the box and take it back.

I try one last time, and the man who answers the phone knows my name.  No kidding, he said is this Rich?  That’s when you know you have called way too many times!

He stays with me and gets a Mac tech on the line (Victor) that uses a very slick program that allows him to access my computer and he handles the complete installation.  He tells me the CD that came with my printer is corrupted and you have to download the installation software from their website.  I didn’t see anything on their website about that so now I’m really not pleased.

In about 20 minutes my printer is up and running.  WOW!  I have been trying to figure this out for over two hours and he can fix it in 20 minutes.

A great end-to-end customer experience could have been created by a few simple and inexpensive tweaks to a few touch points, but because of my experience with installation and support I would hesitate to recommend Lexmark in the future.

The lesson:  a good first experience with a new brand gone bad because of a few customer touch points.  Keep focused on the experience at each touch point and you can avoid situations like this, and create new brand advocates.

Organizational Cultures and Customer Experience

I have always been a huge fan and follower of Robert Greenleaf’s Servant Leadership Theory.  I read his book Servant Leadership — A Journey Into The Nature Of Legitimate Power And Greatness while studying leadership in graduate school, and it has been a constant guide and influence in my work over the years.

My leadership style and philosophy has always been to flip the organization chart and put myself on the bottom.  I know in my heart and soul that I am there to serve those on my team, not the other way around.

My job as leader is to influence the vision, make sure it’s very clear where we are headed, how we will get there, and then remove every obstacle to help the team be successful.  At that point my job is to provide the support, inspiration, consistency, and humor to keep people focused, relaxed, and motivated to bring their heart, souls, and brains to work each day.

I think one of the most critical attributes for a leader to have is a deep caring for people.  If you don’t care about people no seminar or training program is going to “make” you a leader.  If you don’t care about people you won’t be able to build a customer-centric culture.

There are two cultures that will destroy a customer experience strategy.  The first is the culture of fear, and the second is the culture of mediocrity.

In a culture of mediocrity people show up for work each day but there is a dead look about them.  They have no inspiration, no creativity, and no expression — everything looks and feels grey.

Then there is the most destructive and evil culture — fear.  People move very slow and quiet. There is little if any talking, mostly whispers.  No laughing, no fun.  Little if any trust, and eyes constantly darting around to see who’s lurking in the halls.  Office doors are always closed, and when the doors open people duck down in their cubes — it’s not good to be seen or heard in a culture of fear.

I have seen organizations with these two cultures attempt to implement customer improvement programs without much success.  They say: “we are all about the customer” but allow these negative cultures to remain in their organization.  It sends an incongruent message the employees who in the end don’t care, or are paralyzed by fear to do anything different.

It’s easy to tell when your dealing with people from these two cultures.  People that follow rules to the letter, don’t take any risks, and see everything as black and white come from a culture of fear. This usually makes a customer feel frustrated, uptight, and angry.

The experience from a culture of mediocrity leaves you feeling just blah.  It’s not good, it’s not bad, it’s not memorable.  It leaves a customer feeling a bit drained and uninspired.  Let’s not forget, as customers we pay to get to feel this way — it’s not free!

An organization’s culture is the most important factor in the success or failure of a customer experience strategy.  To inspire customers you have to have inspired employees, and that inspiration comes from people-centric leadership, and a customer-centric culture.

Think about how many organizations that are known for their people-centric cultures — you can probably count them on one hand. To me that’s pathetic, but it also shows there’s an opportunity for an organization to differentiate themselves from the competition just by changing their culture.

So flip that org chart!  Create a culture that cares about people and customers.  The result will be more satisfied and loyal customers, and a more vibrant and successful organization.