Salmon Aren't Very Bright

My thinking on this subject has refined over time since I first wrote this post, encouraging customer service to grab the brass ring and seek its seat at the strategy table, along side marketing.  the main reason?  I think that well-intended message has been distorted.

Just a random guess, but I'm thinking its safe to say there's been thousands of blog posts written over the past couple of years declairing customer service is the new marketing.  I'm also guessing its safe to say that just about zero CMOs or other heads of marketing have since genuflected at the office doorway of their customer service bretheren in a demonstration of submission.  Just a guess.  

In most companies, marketing is king.  Always has been.  Marketing has the big budgets.  Marketing creates the positioning.  Marketing drives revenue (even though nobody can figure out how or why we even need to measure it). 

I'm not talking about a reversion to old internally focused, product centric culture.  No.  Customer centricity and a superior customer experience is still the goal.  Companies like Virgin, Zappos and Amazon will continue to create value through well designed customer-focused experiences.  But, maybe the better way for customer service to deliver on that goal is to work in support of marketing.  Allow each function to do what it does best, while learning the best parts of each others' value proposition.  Customer service serves.  why not serve marketing? 

The role of the Chief Customer Officer has, in large part, been to bring these two functions together as equal partners. I haven't seen an example yet of that one position being effective in accomplishing such a feat.  Two in a box on an org chart never works.  Somebody needs to be the king of the castle. 

How about the customer?

Experience Design Up In Flames

I was feeling cool, special, a little bit VIPish (if thats a word).

A few months ago, I finally forked over my seventy bucks and signed up for Amazon Prime.  I've been a big fan of Amazon for a long time.  And I've spent a fair share of my disposable income with them, a good bit of which has been on shipping charges.

But, I admit, it wasn't until the third or fourth time I saw Mitch Joel talk about it at the SOCAP Annual conference last Fall that I took the plunge.

Then along came the Kindle Fire.  I felt hosed, ordinary, a little bit outcast-ish.

Maybe I'm being a bit over the top, a bit sensitive.  But, what I viewed originally as a well designed experience in my Amazon Prime membership, a membership for which I paid, was now being given away for free to those Kindle Fire buyers.  I'm not one.

I'm an Apple loyalist.  iPhone, iPad, Macbook Air, Airport, Apple T.V.

And because of that, I have to admit I felt a little sting.  I chose my platform.  I'm not buying a Fire.  So, why should that fact determine my value to Amazon.  I'm not the biggest spender.  But, I'm guessing I've funneled more of my income to Amazon over time than many of those Christmas Day Kindle recipients.

A core principle of good customer experience design is the demonstration of respect for and consideration of the customer, first and foremost.

I'll bounce back.  But, Amazon extinguished a bit of my enthusiasm with this move.

Calling All IVRs

Yes.  All the buzz for the past couple of years in customer service has been focused on social.  And by that, many are still defining social customer service as answering inquiries on Facebook and Twitter, but that's a topic for an upcoming post.

The point here is that the dominant channel of both service demand and supply is still voice.  But, while it seems like this channel is ripe for vast improvements in the customer experience and in efficiency, efforts to improve it have seem to become passe.  So, I'm declaring my self Mr Boring in a quest to solve this phenomenon.

I spent last year responding to any and all customer surveys that came my way.  I wanted to see what companies really did with my feedback.  And by in large, the answer was nothing much.  At least from the customer's line of sight.

So now this year I'm on to IVRs and voice response self service.  I'm still really bullish on the potential of this technology.  So I want to call a bunch and peek under the hood. But I need your help.

If you have examples of companies that you think provide a really awesome (or really poor) voice response self service, can you do me a favor and shoot me the name of the company down in the comments?  In return, I'll come back with hopefully some interesting, actionable findings.

Happy dialing!

Marathons Are Way Harder Than The 40 Yard Dash

I have been missing this trusty platform.  I haven't been here in a month.  It's not that I've been hold out in my basement playing Call of Duty eighteen hours a day.  I've been doing what I think is some good work.  Hopefully, somebody else thinks so too. (Santa - if my boss reads just one blog post from me, ever, can you see that its this one?)

But, that got me thinking about responsibility.  Responsibility to all the people that have come to count on you.  For each of us, that list will be different.  So, I won't bore you with my list.  Except of course to say, that everyone that has ever read these musings I consider part of my responsibility to serve.  And this year, I don't think I've delivered the same level of service, the same level of commitment to you at this address as in prior years.

Business, life, customer relationships.  They all grow more and more complex every day.  That's undeniable.  For companies that continue to grow and add customers, your challenge to service those customers like you did when you were first starting out is exponentially more complex.  So, as we hear more about the customer service bar being continually raised; about customers not being satisfied with what made them happy yesterday, I wonder if its not that at all.

I wonder if, maybe, just maybe, what we think is raising the bar is just a request to get back to what we used to do when we first started doing business with that customer.  Have we gotten complacent?  Did we fire out of the gate and then burn out? 

I'm a huge Seth Godin fan.  And through much of his writing, he encourages more people to just start something.  And I agree.  But the infinitely more difficult thing to do is to do that thing you started over and over again, week after week, year after year, for a life time.

The biggest lesson I've learned about customer service (and most other things in life) is you have to, in the words of another rock star Tony Horton, keep showing up, keep pressing "play".        

So, when you're faced with that customer that seems to be complaining more, negotiating harder and generally not being as enthusiastic any more about what you're brining to the table, perhaps a little visit from the ghost of relationships past might give you pause and a sense of recommitment to living up to those original expectations.

I thank you all for experiencing this ride with me over the past three years.  Keep showing up.  Keep clicking here.  And I promise I will do the same.

Peace

We Have Received Your Customer Service Question

...But we're not going to answer it. 

Actually, I'm pretty sure they didn't even read it.

Via a website form, I sent the following email to my local company that supports those auto toll tags:

"I have misplaced my tag so I don't have the tag number or account number.  I need to cancel this account and create a new one"

In reply, I got back:

"To help access your account, please check your EZ-Pass device for the issuing agency's name and telephone number.  Please resubmit your request to that agency via website or telephone.  BE SURE TO INCLUDE YOUR DEVICE NUMBER OR AN ACCOUNT NUMBER"

...thud (my head hitting the desk) 

Don't Trick Your Customers With Self Service

I'm a huge fan of self service.  Like I haven't said that a thousand times.  But, it's worth repeating.  Give me the power.  Give me control.  And, then get out of my way.  Sure, I might call you on occasion.  But don't make me call you because your self service stinks.  And in some cases, I actually prefer the human touch.  The point is that I want to decide.  I want the choice.   

That being said.  I am not John Q. Public (thank God for the public at large).  I am unique.  I'm an individual.  So, when you're creating your customer engagement and channel strategy, make decisions for the right reasons, not because its easier or cheaper for you to stand up an IVR.  Do it because some segment of your customers want it.  And, certainly don't take a page from banks who forced customers to use ATMs in the early days - a channel that was far inferior to the branch teller back then. 

When I was trick or treating with my kids on Halloween, it hit me that many of my neighbors have in fact followed down that misguided path. 

The richness of trick or treating extends beyond just collecting candy.  If that was the extent of it, I could go to Target on November 1st and get my kids all the candy they could stomach, and then some.  No, the experience is made whole by going door to door, ringing the bell, seeing the door open and yelling proudly "Trick or Treat!"

As the deliverer of the candy, there is joy in that experience as well.  Seeing what creative ghouls and gobblins, princesses and pirates show up on the door step.  That's trick or treating.  The value of that experience seems to be lost on a growing population. 

More and more of my neighbors are deciding to either not be home or to not answer their door; replacing that with the self service bowl of candy on the front door step.  The whole point of the night seems to be lost on these folks.  Its not just about the candy.  Its about the mutual experience.  Forcing the kids to self serve robs them of the experience that makes the night so much fun.

Call it what you want.  Customer intimacy, customer relationship management, customer centricity.  Whatever.  Just do us all a favor.  Spend the time upfront understanding your customers.   Thoroughly understand the impact your channel mix has on your customers' experience.  And treat them to the experience they desire, via the channels they prefer.  No tricks.

The Customer Dating Game

I'll assume that nobody so hip and cool under the age of 30 reads these musings of mine (not to suggest if you are reading this, you're old and geeky).  So I'm guessing that the first thing that popped into your head upon clicking through here was the Dating Game theme song.  Come on.  Lets all take a second and hum along. 

Ok now that we got that out of the way, where is this going?  I got to thinking the other day about how many customer-brand relationship challenges might be eliminated if brands where a bit more selective in choosing the customers with whom they do business.  This is especially true in the B to B services world in which I happen to live.

Seth Godin talks about the end of mass in his latest book.  This concept, in my mind, really harkens back to the earliest days of commerce.  A day when local merchants served a local clientele, among whom they lived, played and worked.  Yes, with the web, very targeted commerce can occur today at a grander scale and reach that targeted audience across a wider geography.  But that is not the equivalent of trying to sell everything to everyone.

I think Neil Warren of eHarmony is onto something.  Former eHarmony CEO Greg Waldorf summed up the company's approach to creating matches.  He said "It's not about matching people who like certain hobbies...it's about compatibility.  You go on the site and tell us about you, rather than about what you want."

What if you took that approach the next time you're courting your next customer.  In general, business has done a good job of moving from "what can I sell you?" to "what do you want to buy?"  It's pretty evident though that this doesn't go far enough.

The next time a prospect waves some bucks your way, spend the time to really understand, not what they want, but what they are about; what really makes them tick.  And if that doesn't jive with what's in your core, better off to say "I can't help you".

I'm guessing your customer relationship will be a lot more harmonious in the long term.