Hard Wired For Exceptional Customer Service

This week, I welcome Cathy Missildine-Martin, SPHR as a guest blogger. She also happens to be my business partner and Co-founder of ICC!

I have been traveling on business more than I usually do this year. I have really been exposed to the best and the worst of customer service. I find it fascinating how some companies ALWAYS get it right and some companies ALWAYS get it wrong.

I went to my client's preferred car rental company instead of where I am a "preferred member." I was on the bus from the airport on my way to the offsite car rental facility. The bus drive was happy, greeting everyone, almost whistling while he worked. I thought, "That is refreshing." The next week, I come back, he greets me, "Hi, Ms. Martin, how was your flight from Atlanta?" Wow, he saw me one time. I said, "How did you know that?" He just smiled and said, "It's my job."

I wish more employees felt that knowing the customer, "was just their job."

Contrast the experience below to the one above:

I went to my gate to board my plane; the airport is jammed packed at 6AM. The agents begin boarding and are calling rows and zones. I pass by 2 gate agents, 3 flight attendants, 1 captain and no one even says good morning. I know it is impossible for them to know my name, but is "good morning" too much to ask?

When I returned my car back to the rental car facility, I was greeted by yet, another eager, friendly employee just waiting to check me in. I couldn't help myself to ask this employee about why everyone is so friendly around here. He just said, "I guess we are all just WIRED that way."

How interesting is that? I think there is a lot of truth in his revelation. People can be hard wired for customer service. So, how do the companies that always get customer service right, find people that are hard wired?

I know there is a lot of upfront work that has to happen to make sure we hire for that "hard wiredness" but how to you keep those types engaged and more importantly keep them on board?

What is your experience? Please leave a comment or an example of a company that understands the concept of Hired Wired for Customer Service.

What Business Are You In? Really.

I’ve got a whole key ring full of bar-coded plastic tags that designate my “loyalty” to a particular store; I’ll bet you’ve got fistfuls as well. Are they an indication of my loyalty? Can you measure my loyalty with that piece of plastic?

Companies like Southwest Airlines and Zappos know they are in the customer service business; they just happen to fly airplanes and sell shoes. We all are in the business of serving our customers and that is a tall order when, for years, we organized our businesses around products.

I don’t know about you, but I have a list of criteria that my brain churns through in the midst of a buying decision. If someone wants my business, they have to demonstrate that they know me, respect my needs and provide an experience that suits me.

If you say you’re customer focused, show me. Nothing wears me out faster than marketing messages that bear no relation to the actual experience. Who thinks of this stuff?

Have you ever listened to your own voice mail or help desk systems? Finding the balance between efficiencies and customer experience is a challenge but there is no excuse for making it so hard to talk to a human that we have to Google to find out how to do it. What’s more important than a customer anyway?

Your web site may be great but your (fill in the blank) department lets you down. There are so many ways I can touch your company and if all the touchpoints aren’t designed for my buying experience, I may be leaving and you won’t even know it.

Why can’t the person I’m talking to make it right when there is a problem? As Mick Jagger said, “I try and I try and I try but I can’t get no satisfaction.” Why is there more chain of command in Customer Service than the Pentagon? If your customer strategy spells out how you’re going to deliver a customer experience and the culture supports it, employees should have the tools and skills to make the decisions.

Why are your marketing “campaigns”, coupons and emails so generic? Is it that you don’t really know me, or that you don’t care? You collect so much information from me with that plastic tag and yet you don’t connect the dots.

Please do not expect me to complete a survey foisted on me by an employee who is asking me to give him top marks. This is no way to reward employees or to gather valid customer data.

Loyalty programs are part of customer relationship management but they don’t guarantee that you have hearts and minds. I don’t think loyalty is bought; it’s earned over time by designing the experience customers tell you they want and ensuring the company is aligned around it. What are you doing to earn the loyalty of your customers? Is it more than another piece of plastic for my keyring?

Let's Get This Party Started: Winning the War for Customers

I’m officially declaring the Gloom and Doom funk over! I think we’ve all spent too much time examining the lint in our own navels and have found it much too interesting. Maybe it’s the minute-by-minute access to disasters or the endless shouting by talking heads that has us paralyzed but we won’t get better if we don’t get busy.

Business always has been tough, even when everyone said we’d never had it so good. Finding good people; finding great customers; finding terrific ideas: haven’t these always been our challenges? Sure, the pace of change is much faster and there are a lot more consequences to our global business network. There’s always something so why not acknowledge that it is what it is and let’s get going to find new customers and keep those who have selected us as their provider of choice.

So, what’s on our To Do list? I can think of a few positive things to perk up our customer focus:

Paint a Picture: what is your vision of your ideal customer experience and how are you measuring up? Gather information and insights directly from customers and employees (who are very good predictors of how things really are with customers) and indirectly from web searches. There is a lot of comment in cyberspace and some of it could be about you. Ask your customers about all aspects of the experience including, for example, first call resolution, ease of self-service and access to information on your web site and so on.

Get a Plan: close the gaps between what you want your customer experience to be and what your audience says it is. And, execute it! A plan is not action and hope is not a strategy. You might be surprised at how galvanizing it is for your employees to experience the momentum of putting ideas into action.

Tell a Story: current and prospective customers are more engaged by success stories than by product features, brochures and fact sheets. Buying is an emotional experience and stories tap into that reservoir.

Give Them Something to Talk About: Engage in authentic conversations in ways that your customers prefer: social media, your web site, guest blogs, anywhere. Ask them to write reviews and participate in online focus groups. People are flattered by the invitation and most of the time, are happy to provide feedback (note: just don’t overdo the frequency) IF it’s done in a personalized way.

What else should be on our To Do list? Let’s get busy and start the party. End of funk.

Five Things I Learned From the Men on a Submarine

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog about customer (no)service during a recent buying experience and it prompted some interesting discussion with Adrian Bashford in Ontario. People who responded to the blog were unanimous in their agreement that leadership is accountable for the customer relationship. That led to the question: where do leaders learn skills other than finance, marketing and operations? Adrian suggested that the lack of military training in our leadership ranks over the past few decades might be at the heart of the problem. My first reaction, was “heck no” but it got me thinking about an experience I had a few years ago when I spent two days with the officers and men of the USS Nebraska at the King’s Bay Nuclear Submarine base in Georgia. Adrian might be on to something.

• Values Guide Every Decision: every man knew the Navy’s core values and the expectation that behaviors and decisions were guided by those values.

• It’s About the Mission: The purpose of each 3-month trip under the ocean was well understood by all men on the boat; it was the plan of execution.

• Train to the Mission: training was embedded in every task during a voyage and was reinforced during dry dock periods. Every training session included an After Action Review. Nothing long or drawn out, just What Happened? What Was Supposed to Happen? What Accounted for the Difference? What Will We Do Differently Next Time? During those days and nights at sea, the men were engaged in learning and studying for their exams to move to the next position.

• Only Warheads Exist in Silos: the men worked in cohesive groups, teaching their jobs to others and learning new jobs from more experienced men. The most dangerous element of a voyage is fire and each man not only knew what he was supposed to do but how to do another man’s job if necessary.

• Every Man is a Leader: rank did not preclude a man speaking up if he felt that a decision by a superior went against either the Navy’s Core Values or the Mission. This was an expectation that was constantly reinforced by the Captain and the Chief of the Boat.

It's a lot easier to run a business or manage one when people know what the expected behaviors are and act accordingly; understand why they are doing what they are doing; cooperate to achieve common results and are confident that if they speak up, they will be heard. If you’re aligned with Mission and Values, everyone is a Leader and everyone understands the accountability piece.

Isn’t it better to build the foundation at the front end instead of trying to fix things in the organization that should never have broken? Is your mission inspiring? Have your values retained their meaning over time? What do you do to learn the hard(er) skills of leadership?

Making Customers Matter: Eight Things You Can Do Right Now

We are all trying hard, I think, to get back on track with employees and customers after a particularly difficult time over the past 18 months or so.

In my video blog, I discuss a unique concept that you can apply today to create a positive environment for employees as well as a great customer experience.

Do you see The Spillover Effect in your companies? Are the eight drivers some of the behaviors and outcomes that you focus on for better results?

5 Things Your Customers Should Never Hear

I'm shocked at how some companies seem to have divorced the word "service" from the word "customer". What has happened?

Just recently, my customer experiences with a well-known brand have been frustrating and unpleasant. Here are the five comments I heard from this company that finally drove me to a competitor. And, I was thrilled to be paying twice what I would have paid otherwise because the experience was so incredible.

It's Not My Job: I don't care about your job description. If you are speaking to me and I didn't get through to the night watchman by mistake, at least make an attempt to be helpful. Your voice mail system is friendlier but it can't help me.

Those Are the Rules: I'm the profit center or hadn't you noticed? I'd like to give you $1000 but your rules are getting in the way.

That's Another Department: Your silos don't interest me. Your web site said I could have that color.

We Don't Know When That Part Will Be Available: Then why did your web site let me build a configuration with that part?

My Supervisor Will Just Tell You the Same Thing: Let's see what s/he says when I Twitter and blog about this experience.

Somewhere along the line, this company thought it could get by with third-class service but no one can afford to do that these days. Maybe it was a cost-saving measure but skimping on service is a losing strategy.

Clearly no one at my former technology supplier thought to connect those moments of truth that roll up into a customer experience otherwise the web site would have been in sync with its supply chain. How can you let that happen when you've promoted a build-it-yourself-you-can-have-it-in-three-days experience as your competitive advantage?

I don't blame the sales/service representative. After all, those are the rules. And, he sounded as dejected as I felt by the end of our painful encounter. Someone at that company lost two customers; never to return. I wonder when the higher-ups will notice that a rush for the door is impacting earnings. I cannot be alone by the looks of their competitor's store when I walked in to buy my new laptop. People were stacked up like cords of wood.

Service isn't something that's nice to have: it will make or break all of us who sell something (which is all of us). What are YOU doing about your service? What are the things you never want to hear from your customers? Here's the one thing I don't want to hear: Good-bye.