Category: Customer service

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Customer service

Customer Service: Is Business Paying Attention?

That’s the question I’m left with after reading Toby Bloomberg’s recent posts: “Social Media’s Influence on Customer Service” followed by “Social Media’s Positive Influence on Customer Service.”

To whet your appetite – or if you’re pressed for time – here’s the story: dissatisfied consumer blogs about her poorly handled experience with Capital One. Fellow blogger and diva marketer (Toby) e-mails Capital One with a link to the blog post & suggests the company respond. Her posts also generate a number of comments and head-scratching about why more companies don’t respond to these types of posts. Either they’re not taking the impact of social media & “word-of-mouse” seriously … they don’t know how … or maybe they don’t care.

[Sidebar: I love Toby’s quote about conveying the message: “You matter. I hear you. I’m paying attention to you.” That’s the true essence of customer service and delight.]

I encourage you to read these thoughtful posts, and I also challenge you & your friends to respond to Toby’s request if you’ve ever posted a positive experience on your blog and received feedback from the company involved.

Categories
Customer service Engagement Marketing

Employees & the Customer Experience: A Question of Motivation

Here’s the last post in my series about Maritz‘s approach to the Customer Experience.

Maritz recognizes the importance of the customer experience as a critical brand differentiator: “ … companies must take a more thorough, local, meaningful, and integrated approach to managing the people who are in regular contact with their customers.”

One point I would add is it’s important to ensure the process also includes non-contact staff; i.e., don’t forget the behind-the-scenes folks and the role they play in taking care of their fellow employees (aka “internal customers”).

However, there’s one excerpt from Maritz’s white paper that I question, and I wanted to bring it to your attention. “Maritz defines ‘the customer experience management process’ as creating greater value for customers by better understanding drivers within the experience, enabling the people who touch customers to act differently, and motivating them to care.” [emphasis is mine]

There’s something about those last few words … I know we can motivate employees to deliver a good customer experience, deliver on the brand promise, etc., but can we really motivate them to care? I keep thinking of the advice from the hospitality industry: hire people for attitude (i.e., those who genuinely like working with and helping people) and train them on the skill set you need.

Maybe I’m just having an issue with semantics here. Let me know what you think.

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Customer service Engagement Marketing

Employees & the Customer Experience: What Companies Can Do

As promised in my last post, here are the findings of Maritz’s 2006 Customer Experience study:

  • Almost half of all customers (43%) who defect do so because of service
  • 77% of these customer blame their leaving on employee attitude
  • 83% of these customers tell someone else.

Maritz’s white paper, “Delight or Defection: The Pivotal Role of People Inside the Customer Experience,” also outlines its approach on how companies can positively impact employee behavior:

  • Better (deeper) measurement of the customer experience:
  • Localized, “grass-roots” intervention (more on this shortly)
  • Meaningful motivation
  • Integrated & aligned action.

I especially like Maritz’s combination top-down & bottom-up strategy to enabling and driving change at the local level: share research results with employees … obtain their input on improving the customer experience … and facilitate action plans based on the research & particulars of the organization at that locale. According to Maritz, “Co-development of learning and action plans with front-line staff generates relevancy, greater participation, and employee buy-in.”

More on Maritz’s approach in my next post …

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Customer service Engagement

Employees & the Customer Experience: Employee Engagement Isn’t Enough

That’s the takeaway I got from D. Randall Brandt, VP of Customer Experience & Loyalty, Maritz Research in his presentation at AMA’s MPlanet

Now that I have your attention, let me put his message in context. Brandt was talking about employee engagement as a variable in research on the customer experience. Most firms measure engagement by asking “what’s it like to work here?” That’s important, but it’s not enough. What’s missing are questions about the employees’ customer orientation; i.e,, how they’re enabled or inhibited in providing service quality.

Effective measurement of the customer experience needs to consider both employee satisfaction AND the employees’ ability to deliver a positive customer experience via customer-focus, readiness & empowerment.

I’ll have more on Maritz’s latest research on employees & the customer experience in my next post.

Categories
Customer service Engagement Marketing

A Guide to Losing Customers for All Seasons

As part of the holiday season, you hear plenty of customer service horror stories – as well as some positive retail experiences. However, the bad experience I mentioned in my last post occurred before the shopping rush.

As did Olivier Blanchard’s experiences, which he wrote about in his great post: How to Lose Customers in Ten Simple Steps. Of particular note in his formula for alienating customers is this step: “Treat your employees badly.”

Many consumers have zero tolerance for managers who demean employees in front of them. The situation is not only embarrassing for those involved but can have negative repercussions on both employee and customer satisfaction & retention.

Good help is not only hard to find, it’s hard to keep!

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Customer service Marketing

Murphy’s Law of Exhibiting is Castaway

It’s every exhibitor’s nightmare: you show up at an event to market your firm, and your booth is missing.

That’s what happened to the folks from SubscriberMail at last week’s Mplanet conference, but company CEO Jordan Ayan and his staff made the best of the situation with grace and good humor.

Wandering the “Discovery Center” (i.e., Mplanet’s name for the exhibit hall), I was curious about SubscriberMail’s display — stacks and stacks of FedEx boxes, complete with a “Wilson“-type ball under a sign announcing an unusual contest: Guess when FedEx will deliver our booth and win a box of Omaha Steaks (delivered by UPS!)

Turns out SubscriberMail shipped their display the prior week and FedEx tracked it to somewhere in Florida, but not at the conference site where it was supposed to be.

Fortunately, a FedEx marketing exec who was attending the conference got involved to recover the situation, including delivering a personal apology from FedEx’s CEO. (I wasn’t privy to any other official recovery that they offered SubscriberMail.)

And then what happened?

The booth eventually arrived near the end of the conference. And without rancor (despite their frustration), Jordan told me that in all his years of dealing with FedEx, this was only the second time they had a problem with them.

But I was impressed with SubscriberMail’s handling of the situation, as was many of the attendees & fellow exhibitors. Ironically, they generated a lot of traffic with people checking back throughout the conference to see if their booth was delivered.

And I’m sure the UPS attendee at the conference also got a kick out of the situation!

Categories
Customer service Marketing

Customer Recovery: A Tale of Two Companies (Part 2)

My last post covered my experience with two different consumer companies and how they handled me as a consumer with a complaint.  The deciding factor in keeping my brand loyalty involved recovery – going the extra step to maintain a customer relationship.

It’s not the same, or is it?

One situation involved my no longer being able to obtain a product (which I learned was discontinued), and the other involved a temporary product quality issue.  Discussing this with my son, Jason, he pointed out that I was comparing apples to oranges in that recovery didn’t necessarily apply in both cases.

Jason’s point was that when Maybelline discontinued making my favorite eyeliner, they took a calculated risk to lose customers.  So there was no need to retain my relationship as a customer via recovery.

I’ll admit that as a marketer I’ve never been involved in a decision to discontinue or retire a product … but I still believe recovery has a role.  Perhaps it’s a result of the professional customer service & sales training I’ve taken (as well as taught) throughout my career: Don’t just tell customers what you can’t do for them, tell them what you can do for them.

I’m open to hearing from others with more experience in discontinuing a product or service – what role (if any) does recovery play?  Please comment on this post or e-mail me your thoughts on this.  Thanks!

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Customer service Marketing

Customer Recovery: A Tale of Two Companies

As a marketer, I know the importance of effective complaint handling and recovery on consumer satisfaction and loyalty.  So I was curious to see how two different companies with well known brands would handle me as a consumer with a problem.

This wasn’t a test for its own sake – I actually had problems with two products of which I’ve been a long-time, loyal consumer.  And surprisingly (or not), my experience was different in each case.

Situation #1

I needed to replace my Maybelline eyeliner pen and couldn’t find it anywhere after trying several different stores.  So I e-mailed Maybelline’s Consumer Affairs and here’s their reply:

“Thank you for your interest in Eye Express Easy Lining Pen.  This product is no longer available, and we have no way of obtaining it for you to purchase.  We suggest you try Line Stylist, which is available at stores that carry Maybelline New York products.

We understand the frustration you must feel concerning the disappearance of a product that you had been using faithfully.  It is never easy for us to make the decision to discontinue any of our products or shades.  We truly regret any inconvenience this may have caused you.”

At least they were empathetic and apologetic.  But that’s all.  There was no link to tell me where to find the suggested alternate product and no special offer or coupon to encourage me to try it.

Marketing Note: OK, as consumers we may be unrealistic in expecting a little extra for the inconvenience.  In marketing, the concept is known as “recovery” – an added incentive to maintain the customer’s relationship.  But the bottom line here is there is no reason for me to continue my brand loyalty.  My favorite product is no longer available, and there’s no motivation for me to try another product within the brand.  So goodbye, Maybelline.

Situation #2

I opened a box of Post Grape-Nuts cereal and it tasted stale.  (Hard to believe, I know … but I eat Grape-Nuts in yogurt nearly everyday, and this time it didn’t taste quite right.)  I opened another box that I had in my pantry, and it was same.  The “best when used by” date was more than six months away.  Maybe I just had a bad batch?

So I called Kraft (who owns the Post brand).  The Customer Service Rep was also apologetic.  I don’t quite remember how she said it, but she managed to genuinely acknowledge my complaint while at the same time reassure me of their quality standards.  And then she offered recovery – Post would send me coupons so I could replace the product.  (A letter of apology, with the coupons, arrived within a week.)

Based on this experience, will I stay loyal to Post Grape-Nuts?  You betcha!

Categories
Customer service

Clueless in Customer Commitment

I watched sadly as my husband & his brothers recently endured a lot of undeserved & unnecessary stress from a bank’s brokerage division’s poor service & staff incompetence.

In trying to close out an account from my father-in-law’s estate, they kept getting the run-around and poor excuses about the paperwork involved … most of it BS.  Attempts to resolve their frustration by trying to appeal higher up were ignored.  So it became customer service’s responsibility for damage control.

And while the situation was handled gingerly by a customer service rep (kudos to her for her personal empathy & professional manner), the brand damage was done.

Unfortunately, this also reinforced the decline in business’s commitment to customers as reported in the Strativity Group’s annual Customer Experience Management Survey.  Results from last year’s study found “companies remained self-centric, transaction-based, and product-focused.”

Based on my family’s experience, you can count SunTrust Investments among the clueless.

Categories
Customer service Marketing

To Be Like Everyone Else, Press 1

In last week’s post, I talked about the quality of an organization’s employees as a critical differentiator.

It reminded me that sometimes it’s the little things that make a difference.

Case-in-point: I recently conducted a nonprofit marketing workshop for social service agencies.  Professionals in this sector face a growing glut of competition for resources (.e.g., clients. donors, volunteers, etc.) from other nonprofits.  They also have to compete for consumer awareness & attention from non-profits as well as for-profit firms.

So, how does your organization differentiate itself?

When I asked this question in the workshop, one attendee responded with the following anecdote.  He heard from a representative of a grant-making foundation who complimented his agency on having real people answer the phone instead of using automated voice mail.  Seems the foundation staff is finding this a point of differentiation among the social service agencies and other nonprofits they deal with.

Why sometimes you need to sweat the small stuff.

As Prophet’s Scott Davis so aptly put it in the title of his recent MarketingProfs.com article: “You’re Only as Strong as Your Weakest Brand Touchpoint.”