Total CX

How To Provide Customers with a 360-Degree View of Their Context

By Patty Seybold

We need your help! Ronni Marshak and I are revising our book, Customers.com, which was published in 1998. We’d like to “crowdsource” this next generation edition. Every few weeks, we’ll offer you a new chapter or section. We’d like your help in making this a truly useful “Bible” for everyone engaged in designing their businesses from the customers’ point of view. Here’s how:

1. Read the chapters that interest you as they appear and add your thoughts, comments, and criticisms here.

2. Contribute your own suggestions about companies or organizations that would provide great examples for each chapter—we’ll do the research.

3. Contribute your own ideas—either customer-centric principles you adhere to and/or lessons you’ve learned that you’d like to share.

In the original Customers.com, the fourth of our eight critical success factors for “Making it easy for customers to do business with you” was “Provide a 360-Degree View of the Customer Relationship.” That mantra has become a holy grail for virtually every organization’s CRM charter. But we think it’s wrong!

“Just Refer Him to Eris in Customer Service”

By Matthew Lees

Last week I took my sons to see “Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief.” They loved it. I loved it, too, although quite not as much as the book. As someone who has always been interested in Greek and Roman mythology — I devoured Edith Hamilton’s “Mythology” and still cherish my copy from high school — I was both pleased and curious in January when my 11 year old son started asking about various Greek gods.

It was because he had recently discovered Rick Riordan’s “Percy Jackson & the Olympians” series. “The Lightning Thief” is the first of five delightful adventure books. The stories take place today, with characters from Greek mythology — gods, demi-gods, heroes, satyrs, centaurs, and other creatures — being part of the fabric of society, with most mortals being largely oblivious to their presence. Riordan wonderfully updates the myths and weaves them into 21st century America culture.

Doing so, he pokes fun at many aspects of modern society. For example, in the second book, “The Sea of Monsters,” there’s an early scene in which Percy is sitting on the beach having a contemplative moment. Who should walk by dressed as a jogger, but Hermes, the god of messengers, travelers, and thieves? He asks if he can join Percy, who says yes, although he isn’t quite sure yet who this odd character is.

Loyalty versus Cost Savings

Although I’ve always been an advocate for remaining loyal to your merchants who do right by you and earn that loyalty, I can’t ignore the siren’s call of saving money, especially on a regular basis.

 

Karen Yau at my local CVS has come to my rescue many times, providing great advice about over the counter remedies for ailments as well as dealing with persnickety regulations and exceptions with insurance providers. She takes good care of me!

 

Then there is Roza (whose Russian last name I can’t remember) who works the register in the Pharmacy, and who always remembers who I am and makes sure to have a personal moment with me. I like going to the CVS; I always feel special.

 

However, I have just switched insurance providers. And the Pharmacy-by-Mail option will save me a third of the cost of my regular prescriptions every three months (three months of pills for the price of two). I’ve used online pharmacies before, and they have worked fine. But, with my former insurance provider, only certain medications were subject to any discount, dealing with the online site wasn’t easy, and it was just so much easier to go through Karen and CVS.

 

The new insurance provider is very clear about the savings, the site is easy to navigate, and it is very tempting to take the money and enjoy. But what of loyalty? Initially, I felt badly that I would be taking business away from Karen. I would miss seeing her (albeit briefly) every month. However, I determined that CVS is unlikely to offer the same discount structure that the online pharmacy can provide. I was ready to succumb to the lure of saved money.

 

But then, before I made the switch, I had another prescription-related problem. Karen wasn’t working that day, but pharmacy technician Shawn Wolf spent the time to contact my doctor as well as the insurance company and straighten everything out. He kept checking in with me, keeping me informed of the status, and made sure that I was satisfied with the result.

 

I know I can’t get that kind of service online, so Karen, Shawn, and Roza will keep seeing me and fulfilling my prescription needs.

 

So this is a thank you to a great provider. This time, I’m choosing loyalty and customer experience over financial gain.

How to Make It Enjoyable for Customers to Get Things Done!

By Patty Seybold

What’s the one thing you can master that will win you more happy customers? Identify the things that customers want or need to get done, notice the context they’re typically in, and design an experience that will make it enjoyable for them to get those things done. We call these Customer Scenarios.

Most customer-centric executives have an innate ability to identify customer-critical scenarios. For example, many retailers design streamlined experiences for the “grab and go” customers. “I just ran out of something and I need it fast.” Staples rearranged its stores to put the printer supplies right at the front so that people who just ran out of ink or toner can run in and get what they need. They worked with manufacturers to ensure that you can quickly find the supplies you need for your particular printer. The paper is right next to the ink and toner. Staples also streamlined the rebate process to make it easy for customers to get a good deal. Staples’ “That was Easy” branding is all about making it easy for customers to get things done.

There are entire industries designed to support particular customer scenarios, like planning and taking a trip (travel agencies and aggregators), investing for retirement (brokerage and mutual funds), and launching a new product (PR firms).

Un-fillable Online PDF Forms--Bad Customer Experience!

We changed insurance carriers recently. To do so, each employee had to fill out a form. The form is available online in PDF. But you can’t fill it in online! You can print it out, fill it in by hand (or typewriter, if you still have one of those), and snail mail it in. Or you can scan the completed document into your computer and send it as an email attachment. And, if you want a copy, you either fill in two paper versions or go the scan route.

 

Why? Doesn’t the insurance company know that people are going to fill in this form? Sure, I understand that the form boilerplate content, itself, needs to be protected. But it isn’t that hard to create a PDF form that can be filled in online. All you need is Acrobat (not Acrobat Reader), although, from what I’ve read online, you need, I think, Acrobat 7.0 or later. There is even a Forms Wizard to lead even the most novice user through the process. Here is an excerpt of what the Adobe site says about creating PDF forms (http://www.adobe.com/education/resources/hed/instructional/connect/collaborative_teaching/pdfs/creating_PDF_forms.pdf):

 

Creating the form

 

You can use Acrobat to create forms by using one of the following methods:

 

• Convert an existing electronic document (for example, an Adobe PDF, Microsoft Word, or Excel document) to a PDF form. (In Mac OS, you can only convert an existing PDF file.)
• Scan a paper form to convert it to a PDF form.
• Create a form from scratch or from a template by using Adobe LiveCycle Designer ES. LiveCycle Designer is a graphical form design tool that contains advanced features and controls. It is a stand-alone application included with Acrobat Pro or Acrobat Pro Extended for Windows.

 

In this section, you learn how to create a form by converting an existing electronic document.

 

To convert a form to PDF:

 

1. Start Acrobat.

 

2. Click the Forms menu, and click Start Form Wizard. The Create or Edit Form wizard appears asking what type of document you want to open as a form.

 

3. In the Create or Edit Form wizard, select An Existing Electronic Document. Then click Next.

 

4. In the next pane of the wizard, you indicate which document to convert. Make sure Import A File From File System is selected.

 

5. Click the Browse button and locate the file you want to open.

 

6. Click Next. Acrobat processes your document, analyzing it for areas that appear to be form fields. Then it opens the converted document with suggested form fields.

 

Heck, according to number 6, the tool does most of the work!

 

I know this little rant is outside my usual blog style, but the insurance form was the third PDF form I had to print out to fill in within the last two months! And my scanner isn’t working, so I have to rely on snail mail or go to visit a friend with a scanner to submit an electronic version. Also, I’ll admit it, my handwriting/printing can be difficult to read. It seems to me that insurance companies, etc. probably spend considerably more time trying to decipher what people have written on forms than it would take to create an online form that can be filled in (and spell checked!).

 

I think it is obvious why I consider this to be a bad customer experience. The insurance company did think about the customer by providing the proper form online with instructions for filling out and sending in. But it didn’t go far enough to think about the experience of filling out that form. 

 

The next time you encounter this situation, why don’t you suggest that the company invest the hour (if that) it takes to make the forms fillable online!

How Candid Should Employees Be?

I had a very interesting customer experience the other day. I received a notification from UPS, sent to me via snail mail, that a package couldn’t be delivered to me because they didn’t have the correct street address. Yet they sent the notice to my correct address. Confused, I called UPS, who said that it was obviously an error and they could arrange for re-delivery. But there is a UPS distribution center not too far from my home, so I told them not to worry; I would pick up the package. (I didn’t want to have to wait around at home on the new delivery date.)

 

When I got to the center, the guys there were very helpful, found my package immediately, and were quite congenial. I told them what had happened, and one of them immediately speculated on what happened: "The driver couldn’t find the package when he got to your house, and when he finally found it, he was across town, so he just wrote down 'wrong address' and went on with his day." The two other UPS workers, who all seemed very seasoned, nodded and laughed. I laughed too. They were good guys. I hadn’t been inconvenienced all that much, so why raise a fuss. But I was also rather appalled that they would be so open about such bad customer service and that it seems to happen often.

 

What do you think? Should they have told me about this negative--and what seems to be a common--customer experience practice? Should I have requested that they do something about it? Should I contact UPS and let them know 1) that the drivers have been known to do something so lazy and frustrating for the customer--imagine that I had been waiting at home all day to receive a specific package! Or 2) that the distribution center personnel was "telling tales out of school," bad mouthing fellow employees, and airing what could be considered dirty laundry to a customer.

 

It seems to me there should be certain internal guidelines regarding employee candor with the public. Employees should:

 

1) Always be honest, but you don’t necessarily have to bring up the dirty laundry when it isn't requested and doesn't change the outcome.

 

2) If the customer asks about something that is broken or went wrong, you can speculate on possible causes, but reassure the customer that it will be looked into--and ask the customer what she thinks could be done to remedy the situation.

 

3) Think through what you are saying to customers--make it second nature--so that off-the-cuff remarks that could be damaging don’t happen.

 

4) If you know about some bad customer experience practices, bring them to the attention of management. You don’t have to name names--nobody likes a tattletale; rather, point out that you’ve noticed some things that could be fixed and offer suggestions for improvement.

 

5) Don’t ever speak disparagingly about colleagues with the general public. Never make your co-workers the butt of your jokes. You can candidly acknowledge that the problem was the result of a co-worker’s error, but keep the laughter to yourself.

 

6) Remember that you represent your brand. Even though you might point out a problem that has nothing to do with you, you can damage the brand image, and this can trickle down to you!

 

Similarly, companies should empower employees to be honest with customers as much as possible. Customers know that there are problems in any organization; they won’t be put off by knowing that things aren't perfect in your company; they will be annoyed if you hide information or make untrue claims. Further, as I have stated in other customer experience discussions, let your customers be part of the solution, thereby engendering loyalty and customer pride.

 

Balancing a Great Experience with Lifetime Customer Value

I had a great customer experience recently with an online backup and storage company, Carbonite (www.carbonite.com). I’ve been looking for an inexpensive online backup site for my home computer, and Carbonite is very reasonably priced (cheap, in fact) at $55 per year. And the service offered the basic capabilities I wanted--automatic backup, only backing up deltas, easy retrieval, etc. Plus, they offer a 15-day free trial.

I decided to try it. But I hit a glitch trying to download the app. I had to close my browser, and I went back to the Web site. There was a button for support via live chat, so I hit the button.

Shirley was the support rep who helped me out. I won’t go into the details, but she stayed in the chat with me for 42 minutes, due to some technical problems with my system, until I was up and running and all my questions (such as, how do I back up only selected files, etc.) were answered. There was no sales pitch or impatience (at least in the tone of the chat).

 

So I left the chat with a warm, cozy feeling towards Shirley and Carbonite. I filled in a feedback form commending her service and persistence. And I was ready to blog a nice post--which would probably have ended here.

Is It Time to “Mystery Shop” Your Cross-Channel Experience?

By Patricia B. Seybold
CEO & Sr. Consultant/Analyst, Patricia Seybold Group

This week, I met with a large potential client with 20 million end-consumer customers and tens of thousands of channel partners. Their quandary is a classic one: how do we improve the customer experience we offer to our end-customers and our channel partners across product lines, customer touchpoints (automated phone systems, Web, contact center, face-to-face) and distribution channels. Among the various approaches we discussed, I found myself recommending a program to both design and test cross-channel customer experiences.

I was reminded of a great experience I had several years ago as a Comcast cable customer. It was so easy, it surprised, and, yes, delighted me! In fact, it made such an impression on me that I’m telling it now, several years later. My cable TV and Internet were down. I suspected that it was a technical glitch, perhaps caused by someone messing with the cable connections in our condo building. But I was worried that maybe I hadn’t paid the bill for a couple of months since I had been travelling a lot and hadn’t gotten to bill paying for a while. Not wanting to take the time to research when I last paid, I decided to brave the 1-800 line to see if I could get the problem fixed.

I was not optimistic. Like all of you, I hate wrestling with automated voice systems and long holds waiting for someone to help, and explaining myself over and over again to different people. But I dialed the 800 number and selected the option on the IVR menu that related to technical difficulty/system outage. After entering some small bit of info on the phone, I was informed that there was an outage and that it had been reported and would be fixed within 30 minutes, but then I was asked, did I have any more questions? Well I did. I wanted to know if my bill had been paid, and if not, how much I owed, so again, I selected that option, was able to quickly hear a) that I was not in arrears, and b) what the amount due was for my next payment.

Satisfied, I was prepared to hang up the phone, when I was asked another question (still an automated system): Would you like to set up automatic payments? Yes!! Actually, I would! At that point, I was transferred to a person who miraculously had all my info in front of her and only needed me to supply my checking account number and routing number from a check. I was a happy camper.

What I noticed about this experience was that the routing on the automated system seemed to read my mind. It seemed to know that someone calling about a technical problem might also have a business-related question, e.g., have I paid my bill, or am I getting the best rate you have available, and make it easy to get information, again, without talking to a person. Then, when I got the information I needed, the system “knew” that I wasn’t signed up for automatic debiting out of my account and that I might want that option, so it offered it. And, finally, when it was time to transact securely, the system passed me on to a helpful person who had all the information at her fingertips to help me quickly and to reassure me that everything would be taken care of.

How do you know how well customers experience your self-service channels (your Web site, your automated phone system)? How do you know what kind of experience they have when they call on the phone or visit a store or office? Monitoring the customer experience you offer on a single channel is hard but doable. Monitoring the customer experience you offer as customers cross interaction channels or touchpoints is much harder.

We think a lot about designing and monitoring cross-channel experiences. When we lead customers through co-design sessions, they always design cross-channel/multi-channel experiences because they’re human beings and they select a channel to start with based on their context and their mood, then they want to switch, again based on context or need.

If you don’t have a good way to monitor the cross-channel experience you provide for the most common customer scenarios your customers want to do, there’s a good way to get started. Try “mystery shopping.” Set up a program to test the customer experience you provide across channels for the most common scenarios. You’ll be able to spot and eliminate many dead ends. Here’s how:

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Identifying the Problems in Your Cross-Channel Customer Experience
Borrowing the “Mystery Shopper” Model from Retail
By Ronni T. Marshak, Sr. VP and Sr. Consultant, Patricia Seybold Group, December 10, 2009

An Unexpected Customer Experience with the Registry of Motor Vehicles

Tomorrow is my birthday. Yay me. Not only am I getting older, but I had to renew my driver's license this year. Like any experienced driver, I was dreading the task. The thought of trying to find a place to park near my local registry (in downtown Boston), standing in long lines, dealing with overworked and under-enthused registry employees, and then having my picture taken was very depressing. I vaguely remembered a friend saying that she renewed her license on the phone, so I thought I’d give that a try.

I went online to find the number, googling "renew drivers license Massachusetts," and the very first result was "RMV - Renew your License." Bullseye!

The link not only led to information on how to renew my license online, but directly to the page where I could begin the process. There were some questions to answer on the page:

Enticed by Discounts; Impressed by Customer Experience

A few weeks ago, I believed I was about to prove the point I had made in earlier blog posts on loyalty programs that discounts and coupons merely encourage customers to "game" the system and try to get something for little or nothing. It doesn’t lead to true loyalty.

A local (greater Boston area) sports bar/restaurant chain, the Halfway Café, seems to be suffering from the lack of disposable income on the part of customers, because it is advertising heavily and offering significant specials and discounts. The most recent was the entire menu for half price on a Monday and Tuesday. Heck, I thought, half price on not particularly expensive pub food sounds like a great deal. I’m in.

 

Although I had been to the Halfway Café a few years ago, I am not a regular customer, so the discount offer did entice me back, but I firmly believed that I was just in it for cheap grub.

 

Well, when a friend of mine and I got there at 5:00 p.m. (we figured we’d avoid the dinner rush), we quickly discovered that a lot of people had the same thought, and we faced a half-hour wait. We decided the half-price offer was worth the wait, and we found a corner where we could hang out and wait.

 

Almost immediately, a waitperson came over with a bowl of popcorn and encouraged us to order drinks while we waiting. We anticipated a long wait for said drinks, but the bartenders served those of us standing quickly and with great good humor. So, with the hunger rumblings eased, and a drink in hand, we enjoyed our wait by people watching. After a shorter-than-anticipated wait, our name was called, and we were shown to a booth.

 

The dining room was packed. I expected that wait staff to be overwhelmed and grumpy, but they were, in fact, pleasant, helpful, and quite speedy given the volume. In addition to trying to drum up new business, the half-price event also introduced a new menu (about a quarter of the dishes were new and at very reasonable prices). Our waitress obviously had tasted all the new items and was happy, and excited, to tell us which were her favorites.

 

Food was delivered quickly and was quite tasty--admittedly, it was good pub food rather than great restaurant fare, but a complete chicken dinner for $5 (with discount) can’t be beat. The dining room was humming as was the waiting area, which now had almost an hour wait, but we never felt rushed or ignored.

 

When we left, the hostess asked if we enjoyed our dinner and said that she hoped to see us again soon. I said that we would return the next day to take advantage again of the discount. She seemed delighted and told us that if we came between 2 and 4:30, we shouldn’t have any wait. So I did, on my own. The hostess recognized me and laughed when I arrived at 4 p.m. the next day. As promised, I was seated immediately in a booth that fit four people. I ordered two meals so I could take one home as leftovers. The waitress thought that was a great idea, and spent some time asking me what I had ordered the day before and how I had enjoyed it. By the time I left, there was, again, a wait for seating, yet I was never encouraged to vacate my booth in favor of a party of four.

 

As a result of two (or, rather, three with leftovers) tasty dishes and the excellent customer experience, I have now put the Halfway Café as one of my go-to dinner spots, even at full price.

 

So, I guess I have to modify my views on discounts not being a great way to achieve customer loyalty. Discounts can be a great enticement for new or renewed business. Then, if it is combined with a great and personable customer experience, it can, indeed, lead to profitable longtime customer relationships.