Total CX

Taking Time to Communicate

The other day, I received an email invitation for a briefing on caching technology—“because of the space you cover”—from a PR agency representative. I use to take many briefings on products in the areas of collaboration, workflow, and “groupware,” but I haven’t covered technology products for years (except in terms of how they are used to enhance customer relationships), nor did I ever cover technologies such as caching.

As I wondered what list I’m on that identified me as a prime candidate for such a briefing, and as I was about to delete the message, I thought about the PR rep who was simply doing his job, trying to find analysts who would take such a briefing on behalf of his client. So I spent about 15 seconds responding, “Thanks for the invitation, but I’m afraid you are mistaken about what I cover. I cover customer experience and customer innovation. Not technology.” I pressed “send.”

5 Habits for Customer-Centric Execs

There’s a good interview on YouTube in which Bob Thompson talks about the habits that define the culture of a company. In order to have a customer-centric company, Bob asserts, your executives need to master and practice these five habits. Ronni Marshak summarizes the main points in the interview (and in Bob’s upcoming book, The Five Habits of Customer-Centric Business Leaders), and amplifies many of these points based on our experience working with execs in organizations who are practicing many of these habits.

Exploring the Five Customer-Centric Habits
Necessary Qualities for Executives and Organizations
By Ronni T. Marshak, EVP & Sr. Consultant/Analyst, Patricia Seybold Group, May 16, 2013

What are the habits that successful customer-centric executives share? Rob Thompson of CustomerThink has identified 5: Listen, Think, Empower, Create, and Deliver. We agree, and we add our Customers.com perspective on each of these important habits that should become part of every organization’s DNA.

Read a sample and download the full article in PDF.

Converting Insight into Action: The Operational Debrief

Collaborating with customers to co-design your future products, services, processes, business models, and experiences is no longer a new concept. Heck, we’ve been doing it for over 20 years! But many organizations still find it difficult to act on the insights they gain from working with customers. Even when they have clear priorities from customers, they still don’t seem to be able to gain traction to take action quickly, with the budgetary and people commitment necessary to see it through.

We have been using an approach that we call an Operational Debrief to provide the energy and momentum behind these customer priorities and the resulting projects needed to make them happen. Here we present the barriers to quick action and how the Operational Debrief can overcome these obstacles.

~ Ronni

Turn Customer Co-Design Insights into Action
How to Gain Momentum by Turning Customer Scenarios^® into Operational Scorecards, Recommendations, and Action Items
By Patricia B. Seybold, CEO and Sr. Consultant, and Ronni T. Marshak, EVP & Sr. Consultant/Analyst, Patricia Seybold Group, May 10, 2013

You spend time, resources, money, and sweat and tears to collaborate with customers in a co-design session. But then all the great ideas die on the vine (or stagnate on to-do lists). We offer a methodology for an Operational Debrief that has worked for our clients to get them moving on turning their customers’ insights and priorities into working projects.

Read a sample and download the full article in PDF.

Whither (or Wither) Daily Deals

Only a few years into its existence, the entire online coupon business is struggling. Over 800 daily deal companies closed their doors in the last two years. I turned my focus this week to coming up with strategies and enhancements to daily deal sites, and offers that might renew the excitement consumers felt when these deals first started showing up. Some of the main ideas include:

• More personalization of offers

• Wish list fulfillment

• More information on merchants

• Flexibility of offer details

• Longer window before offers expire

• Allow merchants to “own” the relationship with the customers

Groupon Gets Clear About Its Recommendations for You

I always assumed that the Groupon offers I was sent every day were based on location: these were the offers for my neighborhood. But I was surprised, and pleased, to see that Groupon is using a recommendations engine to determine offers I would find appealing. The primary daily deal in my in box now includes a statement saying, “Suggested for you because you purchased XXX.” (See illustration.)

I am, however, confused. The offer below is for a Tex Mex restaurant, whereas the recommendation is based on my purchase of a deal for an upscale Italian restaurant in a different town.

By coincidence, the new deal is for a restaurant down the street from me that I quite enjoy. However, I don’t really follow the logic of the recommendation criteria.

Nevertheless, bravo to Groupon for showing customers why it is highlighting specific offers.

Eliminating Customer Anxiety

In this week’s report, I talk about paying attention to customers’ emotions as they do business with you. How fortuitous to receive an excellent example of how one financial provider thought about customers in a crisis situation and made a strategic decision to take one burden off of them as they face the storm—literally.

As a Chase credit card customer, I received the following email on Monday, 10/29/2012 at 7:14 PM, shortly after Hurricane Sandy violent hitting the Massachusetts shore.

We hope you, your families and your customers are safe. Natural disasters are very stressful and we want to help where we can.

This week, we are expanding our efforts to help you and all of our customers in Massachusetts and Rhode Island as you manage through the storm.

• We are waiving the following Chase fees through Wednesday, October 31st for customers in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Please know that you'll have until the end of business on Thursday to make a deposit or a payment to bring your account current and avoid the fees.
  • Overdraft Protection Transfer, Extended Overdraft, Returned Item and Insufficient Funds Fees for deposit accounts.
  • Late fees on credit cards, business and consumer loans, including mortgages, home-equity, auto and student loans.
• Please visit chase.com frequently and check our branch locator for details on the branches near you.

Let Me Choose My Help Channel!

I have a new customer experience pet peeve: being bullied into using online help.

How many of you have experienced the following: you have called a company’s 800 customer support line only to be on hold for…well, practically forever…and between the nondescript elevator music, you are told that you can get support on the company web site. The implication I get from this is, “you moron, there are answers there, and, besides, we don’t want to talk to you.” I admit, my strong negative reaction is probably because I’m in some sort of customer crisis and am feeling negatively about the company anyway.

This message is particularly annoying when you’re calling your ISP because your internet access isn’t working well, or your calling a merchant because its etailing site isn’t responding. Speaking with other customers, they have the same reaction. “How the heck can I go online to get help when my problem is I can’t get to your site?”

CX Audit: My Sears Community’s Facelift

By Patty Seybold

How do you evolve your customer-facing e-commerce and customer service site(s) and your online customer-community in synch with one another? That’s the question that must be facing Sears’ management as they brace themselves for another brutally competitive holiday retail season. We don’t know how Sears has organized its staffing and reporting structure to support its various web properties, but, based on Ronni Marshak’s customer experience audit of Sears’ newly updated online community site(s), Sears to have a fragmented, rather than a unified approach to content, commerce, and community.

MySears Community Gets a Facelift
Community and Commerce Are Still Too Separate!
By Ronni T. Marshak, Executive VP and Senior Consultant, Patricia Seybold Group, October 18, 2012

Be Nice to Your Merchants and They’ll Be Nice to You

I recently did a nice thing. Someone I cared about (my ex-mother-in-law) was in the hospital, and I wanted to send flowers. And I wanted the bouquet to be memorable. I went online to view arrangements, but, even on different online florist sites, the arrangements all looked very similar.

(Click on image to enlarge.)

My ex-mother-in-law on the mend with her new dancing and singing friend.

So I looked up florists near the hospital where they would be sent. I chose one for no particular reason, and I called. A very warm woman answered, and I explained what I wanted and how important this person was to me. She asked a few questions about what she liked and made a few suggestions (including sending a stuffed duck that sang “If You’re Happy and You Know It” and flapped its wings and jumped up and down). When I gave her my budget, she assured me that she could send the duck amidst a nice basket of flowers. We continued to talk for about 10 minutes about how healing laughter can be. By the end of our conversation, she said that she enjoyed our conversation so much that she was going to upgrade the level of the flowers in the basket. I gave her my credit card, and we said goodbye.

Customers’ Moments of Truth

We add to our Customer Scenario® Mapping Guidebook by delving into the details and subtleties of capturing Customers’ Moments of Truth (MoTs) and related success metrics. Although MoTs are a part of our Customer Scenario Mapping methodology used in our Customer Co-Design practice, understanding your customers’ scenarios and the potential showstoppers to customer success should be part of your customer experience strategy outside of any specific methodology.

Getting at Customers' Moments of Truth
The New CSM Guidebook: Part 6: Identifying and Measuring Moments of Truth
By Ronni T. Marshak, Executive VP and Senior Consultant, Patricia Seybold Group, September 20, 2012