Highlights of Jeff Bezos buying The Washington Post

(Photo courtesy CNNMoney)

The news world is abuzz with news & conversations about the Jeff Bezos buying The Washington Post. Here are a few points in the announcements that caught my attention:

• Bezos’ first communication to The Post'’s employees elaborated clearly where the priority lies – the customer.
• “The paper’s duty will remain to its readers and not to the private interests of its owners.”
• “We will need to invent, which means we will need to experiment. Our touchstone will be readers, understanding what they care about – government, local leaders, restaurant openings, scout troops, businesses, charities, governors, sports – and working backwards from there.”
• How often do we get to hear about an individual’s decency as a deciding factor in world of mergers & acquisitions? In the case of Jeff Bezos, it seems quite often.
• From Donald Graham’s statement: "Jeff Bezos’ proven technology and business genius, his long-term approach and his personal decency make him a uniquely good new owner for The Post."
• As seen in earlier cases earlier (like when Zappos was acquired by Amazon), values finds multiple mentions in Bezos’ communication.
• “When a single family owns a company for many decades, and when that family acts for all those decades in good faith, in a principled manner, in good times and in rough times, as stewards of important values – when that family has done such a good job – it is only natural to worry about change.”
• “The values of The Post do not need changing.”

It will indeed be interesting to see how Bezos will try & innovate The Post out of its financial misery. What kind of innovations will we get to see in the world of news publishing? After the medium, is it now the turn of the content to play a role in Bezos’ & Amazon’s vision?

Suddenlink | Customer Experience Lessons

(Photo courtesy flickr | Dex Encarta)

In his post FastCompany | 7 Timeless Ways To Improve Customer Satisfaction, author Drew Neisser filters out the following success factors for customer (satisfaction or experience – call it what you may) initiatives based on Suddenlink’s success. In a struggling economy & in an industry with a questionable reputation for bad customer experiences, Suddenlink has shown improvements in multiple industry measures – $ terms & otherwise. 

1. Put someone in charge – having someone responsible for customer interest makes customer initiatives more focused
2. Measure. Measure. Measure. – rely on multiple measures of how your business has performed in the customer’s perspective
3. Fix the real issues – measuring is a starting point; addressing issues that are identified as part of the measurement is the REAL deal
4. Link metrics to evaluation – to make customers a priority, link metrics to performance evaluation & even compensation
5. Detractors are an opportunity – unhappy customers or detractors should be viewed as an opportunity for positive conversion
6. Use social media to understand & serve customers (not sell more) – social media is a great listening tool to understand needs & respond to issues
7. Continuous improvement – customer initiatives should never have an end, they are always work in progress to achieve even better customer outcomes

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Related Posts:
~ Amazon – World’s Most Customer Centric Company
~ Tony Hsieh – Delivering Happiness
~ Volvo’s Quest For Customer Centricity
~ Customer Service Champs 2010

Tony Hsieh – Delivering Happiness

With Tony Hsieh’s new book Delivering Happiness hitting the stores today, there is a buzz around about Zappos, Tony & his book. One of the first write-ups I have read about the book is a Fast Company blog post.

The Happiness Culture: Zappos Isn't a Company -- It's a Mission

Some quotes I like from the write-up are as follows:

But today Zappos has an employee culture that seems very much of one mind, focused on customer service and not in some sort of cookie-cutter corporate way. Zappos really cares that you're happy, and it's baked into their beliefs, their customer interaction, and even the way they hire.

“It's not me saying to our employees, this is where our culture is. It's more about giving employees permission and encouraging them to just be themselves.”

As you read Delivering Happiness, it's clear that Hsieh is talking about customer happiness, but also employee happiness, and even his happiness. He says the goals of Happiness aren't mutually exclusive.

“There's three types of happiness and really happiness is about being able to combine pleasure, passion, and purpose in one's personal life. I think it's helpful and useful to actually think about all three in terms of how you can make customers happier, employees happier, and ultimately, investors happier.”

Volvo’s Quest For Customer Centricity

Here is an interview of Volvo’s Stuart Lennie where he shares some of the thought processes behind Volvo’s quest to become customer centric.

Customer Centricity: It's Not Easy, But Worth It

In this interview with Stuart Lennie, President, Volvo IT, North America and VP, Volvo's Global Sales to Order Solutions Unit, we get the opportunity to learn from another company that is not just talking about the customer, but actually implementing the significant strategic shifts required to become customer centric. Volvo has developed a vision, a strategy and a methodology to keep existing customers by understanding what is important to them.

Pay For Customer Service

Airtel - a leading Indian cellular service provider has (supposedly) announced that it will start charging customers for service calls to its call centers. Though a nominal amount, the first reaction to the news has been indignation. Here below is my take on Airtel's move.

(Image referenced from Livin’ On Tulsa Time)

From being one of the most expensive countries to make cellular calls in (and from), India has fast progressed to being one of the most economical. Its not only the fastest growing cellular market, but also very competitive. Multinational service providers from all over are swarming into the 'market of tomorrow' by the dozens. Whereas the mature markets are all about maximizing margins per customer, India has been about maximizing a customer base with very low margin per customer (profiting from the bottom of the pyramid). With increasing competitive & stock market pressure, managing costs is understandably a high priority for cellular businesses in the country.  From this perspective, the move to charge for customer service does sound like a logical step. 

Calling a service desk is a rare scenario in which a customer initiates direct contact with a business. Do you see this as an opportunity to charge customers? Or, as an opportunity to develop better customer relations?  Proponents of customer centricity will argue that this is the best opportunity to better understand customer's needs & to delight her.  But what is Airtel doing? Instead of wooing customers into this channel of interaction, they are going to shoo them away? Isn’t the cost worth the opportunity to stay in touch with customers? Are they trying to convert an operational cost into a profit?

Anything given free looses it value. Suppose Airtel is coming with the line of thought that its customers are not optimally utilizing the service framework it provides. With the nominal charge, Airtel (maybe) just wants to nudge customers into better using this facility (a more efficient cost line in its P&L). Can charging for the service make customers value the service any more? Maybe. But then, if you charge for something, it better provide its money's worth. Else, you stand the risk of turning an already disgruntled customer into a churn statistic.

Players in other industries have used a similar strategy earlier. Computers & peripherals is a segment that comes to mind easily. Such a strategy has resulted in the evolution of an ecosystem of maintenance service providers - an alternative for customers to get their issues addressed.  In many cases, these service providers are better positioned to address customer needs & wants than the parent business itself. Also, it has resulted in increased customer value & satisfaction. I don't believe in this being a strategy for Airtel.

In many ways, Airtel has been a pioneer in the industry & has successfully managed its leadership position. The Indian market too has been known to evolve in surprisingly different ways across industries. Innovative practices & products have come out of the market at a sprinting pace. Dismissing the current move of Airtel's as thoughtless is to be done at the risk of being short sighted. Being an Airtel customer (a life long one at that) & a share holder, I sign off this post with the hope that this is just another ace up its sleeve.

Customer Service Champs

I finally got up to reading the BusinessWeek 2010 listing of customer service champs. LLBean (retailer), USAA (financial services & insurance), Apple (cool gadgets), Four Seasons (hotels) & Publix (retailer) share the spoils at the top of the table. 

Some snippets that caught my fancy amongst the leading customer service champs are :

• Four Seasons Hotel – to beat the recession blues, Four Seasons got human resource managers to take on additional responsibility of manning spa desk. Both roles are about keeping customers happy – one is internal while the other is external.
• Lexus – not only allows its customers to book service schedule online, but also allows them to pick the service representative they trust. 
• Jaguar – is at #16 position. Apparently the exemplary customer service (especially during the sales cycle) remains the same even after the Tata take over.
• American Express - New training programs rolled out in 2009 switched from 70% technical know-how to 70% soft-skills teaching to help agents better relate to customers.
• Dell – is braving its way through social media (has had its share of customer ranting on Dell customer blogs)  & making the best of getting closer to customers. From a social media perspective, this is working as per plan – Dell is creating & sponsoring a platform for its customers to vent.
• Southwest – has a “senior manager of proactive customer service”!

Social Media Lessons From FedEx

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Over the last few weeks, at least a dozen friends have commented on the lack of activity on this blog. This was inspiration enough.
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I came across this interesting post by Matt Ceniceros about how FedEx is using social media to connect with its customers. In the post, Matt explains 5 lessons :

1. Social media expedites your ability to intelligently gather information – gather information about feelings, perceptions, reactions & customer sentiments
2. Social media humanizes a company – establish common ground for your company & brand
3. Social media allows you to engage in in-depth conversations – its about sharing not selling, facilitate customer conversations & influence it
4. Social media uncovers opportunities fast – enable real time relationships with customers
5. Social media simply takes you back to basic – its all about communicating with your customers

Read the original post here. 

Amazon & Zappos on the same tree!

Jeff Bezos mentions in his video that he "gets all weak kneed" with customer obsessed company. Well, I am a sucker too for businesses & business cultures that make customer the focus of their existence. And its great to hear that two of these exemplary companies - Amazon & Zappos - are coming together (link to the news).

In announcing the coming together of these brands, Bezos mentions a short but complete list of his business principles.

• Obsess Over Customers
• Invent
• Think Long Term
  Its always Day 1!

Tony Hsieh (CEO - Zappos.com)takes a typical Zappos fun way to announce the news to Zappos employees.

"Zappos' customer service obsession reinforces Amazon’s mission to be the earth's most customer-centric company."

Update: Check out the sequence of Tony's tweets leading up to the announcement of the acquisition. Interesting.

• Big day! Email I just sent to Zappos employees today about the Amazon acquisition - http://blogs.zappos.com/ceoletter 1:32 PM Jul 22nd from web
• "Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future." -JFK 7:02 AM Jul 22nd from web
• "Some see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not." -George Bernard Shaw 6:08 PM Jul 21st from web

Tony Hseih on Zappos Culture

From ITConversations :

Tony Hsieh

Download Audio File [link]

In this presentation at the Web 2.0 Conference, Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh talks about his first business selling pizza in college, starting Link Exchange after college, and how he eventually ended up leading Zappos as the CEO.  Tony discusses how his experience at Link Exchange influenced him to focus on corporate culture as a top priority, and why he thinks culture is so important to a company’s future growth and success.

Tony talks about the internal vision of Zappos not just to be an Internet footware merchant, but to be a brand that is known for an excellent customer experience.  He goes on to list a number of specific techniques that the company uses to enhance customer service, and explains why he thinks that the telephone is still one of the best branding devices available.

How do you define culture?  Tony talks about some of the core values of Zappos, and why it’s important to have values that aren’t just a plaque on a wall.  These values permeate every aspect of the company, and Tony details some of the hiring and training practices that Zappos uses to ensure that every employee fits into the corporate culture.

I read this good post on Peter Bregman's How We Work HBP blog that made a lot of sense to me on multiple dimensions. 

Some of my take aways :

• More often than not, the secret to customer loyalty lies in the little wows that you can generate across the customers' experience of your product or service. 
• The web of little wows across the experience life cycle involves contribution from across your workforce - thus making it harder to implement. And harder to copy & replicate too - thus a sustainable competitive advantage. 
• A CIO I recently met was explaining about how his IT service help desk is the entry point for new IT graduates into his organization. Questioned on how he attracts top quality graduates into a help desk role, he answered that he looks at candidates for what they could be in the future - technical architects, business analysts, etc. - rather than just their fit into the help desk role. This potential based perspective also governs the way these candidates are treated & groomed at their first job. Sounds quite similar at Four Seasons too - potential to grow, potential to move to another resort, etc. 
• Great way to build trust - create an opportunity to fulfill a commitment, even when one doesn't naturally exist, and then fulfil it. This can so effectively be used across the experiential lifestyles of a customer. And when not practiced consistently, could just as easily build mistrust too. 

Nice article. 

Amazon executives on same page wrt Customer Centricity

While talking about corporate creativity, Amazon CTO Werner Vogels mentions about Amazon wanting to be the world's most customer centric company. The same theme can be read & heard in quite a few of Bezos' interviews as well.

Note that the Amazon executive team seems to be on the same page wrt their overarching goal. Once this is clear, as Vogels mentions, all other decisions become more abvious & actions that much easier.

Other posting on the subject:

• Amazon & Bezos put customers first
• Amazon CTO Werner Vogels on corporate creativity

Partnering vs signing deals

From an Ericsson, Nokia or IBM's perspective, this is a fantastic way to commercially partner with customers than just sign multi-million dollar deals.
With the $ spent coming under pressure due to macro economic considerations, this would be a interesting way for service providers to increase their customer base.

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"In keeping with that underlying philosophy, Bharti Airtel in 2003 signed outsourcing contracts with telecom vendors Telefon AB LM Ericsson and Nokia Oyj as also computer and software service provider International Business Machines Corp., or IBM.

The contracts, which transferred the costs of phone and computer networks to these firms, focused on cutting down costs while at the same time throwing in incentives for better utilization of the infrastructure.Ericsson and Nokia would get a base payment that would be linked to the voice traffic carried by the base stations and exchanges which are the core of a phone network, and would be a paid a pay-per-use incremental charge on that. “This way, there was both an incentive to perform better and a disincentive (that helps) to keep costs down,” chairman Mittal told Mint last year, reviewing the outsourcing deal for Mint. Besides, he had said, “there was no way we would have been able to add 20,000 towers a year (in fiscal 2007) if (we) were doing it ourself”.

An almost similar deal was forged with IBM, which received payments as a percentage of Bharti Airtel’s revenues. The arrangement, according to insiders, has sparkled for IBM — netting it revenues of some $2 billion to date. “Bharti is the most convincing case study (Sam Palmisano) can present to the world,” Mittal said earlier last year, referring to IBM’s chief executive. The vendor has since signed similar deals with India’s Idea Cellular Ltd and Vodafone Essar."

Source: http://www.livemint.com/2008/05/07235634/Sweat-the-buck-more-is-Bharti.html

Over the last couple of weeks, a business trip too me across 4 time zones / 10 flights / 9 cities in a period of 2 weeks. I have to mention to you an air hostess experience on one of these flights -

A passenger seated next to me was asleep when the air hostess made the "beginning decent - buckle up" announcement. In a few minutes, an air hostess walks up, wakes up my neighbour & tells to buckle up as already announced. Just as he was buckling up, he is curtly told that the announcement also asked passengers to straighten the seats.

A couple of days later, I was on the same airline & came across another similar incident.

This time an air hostess walks up, apologetically wakes up the passenger. Requests him to buckle up & straighten the seat. When the passenger forgot to straighten the seat, the same air hostess returns to courteously requests him to straighten the seat again. She quickly adds that some of the seats have a problem of tilting on their own at times.

Which customer experience do you think will result in the customer having a positive feeling about the airline?

Factually, the air hostess in the first case might be correct. But does anyone want to be reminded about it? How many of us are purely rational?

BW Customer Service Champs

Business Week has recently released its annual list of customer service champions.

Some of my notes & observations -

• The list is dominated by car manufacturers & hotels.
• When anyone mentions car rentals - Hertz is the first name that comes to most people's minds. But Enterprise seems to be ahead in quite a few lists - including this one.
• Some adopted tips & tricks - 24 hour service chat on the web; freebies - especially car servicing; happy employees leading to superior service; focus on customer's overall experience; involvement of the top execs; etc.

Even Goliath embraces customer centricity

In this CNET article, Tom Krazit explains how Intel is turning a new page (a page out of its competitors strategy book) & becoming more customer centric. Even the behemoth recognizes the need to be customer centric.

You would think Intel with its market share & clout can push its way through. Pushing did work for a while, but then things changed - competitively & in their customers' markets. Intel is now going out of its way to understand how it can help its customers win by differentiating themselves.

It becomes interesting when you realize that the PC manufacturers are all trying to differentiate themselves using the same chip maker - Intel. What a position to be in - partneirng with all players in the PC market & helping them all compete against one another - whichever PC maker wins, Intel always wins.

When customer feedback goes awry

Over the last couple of years I have got my Mahindra Scorpio serviced at the same service station (Vijay Auto). The fact that this service station actively sought customer feedback (the mere act ...let alone how they responded) was actually a source of satisfaction for me all along.

Until, a couple of incidents changed my opinion -

• Quite a few of the cars that come for servicing are driver (chauffeur) driven. Accordingly, the cars are dropped & picked from the service station by the drivers. On a recent visit, I found that the service agents were treating the drivers extra nicely. The reasoning behind this nice gesture became apparent when I saw the service agents cajoling the drivers to fill in the feedback forms. No efforts were spared to gain maximum mileage of the drivers providing feedback on behalf of the owners.


• It was then my turn to provide feedback. This time it was their call center. Thanks for your business ...hope it was nice ...would like a couple of minutes of your precious time ..rate 5 different aspects of the service on scale of 1 (worst) - 10 (best). All fine so far. The issue started when I responded with a rating of 7 to the first question. I was quickly reminded that the company average was 8 & they were trying to increase the rating. I was given a chance to change my rating. No thanks ..lets proceed to the next question. My next response was a rating of 8. I was reminded all over again about the company average ..and an improvement needed a rating of more than 8!!

A very good example of good intent ... being put to action too ..but teething problems in proper implementation would mean that the true benefits to the organization start accuring very late. Hope someone from Vijay Auto or M&M read this soon.

How could this have been avoided?

• In all probability, the initiative has meant that maximizing customer feedback has made its entry into employee's KPIs. Sadly the focus has been on feedback ratings only & not the true intent of the feedback mechanism.
• It would be a great idea for sponsors of such initiatives to actually experince the feedback mechanism every once in a while.
• I was pretty surprised by the number of hits when I Googled Vijay Auto. Obviously a lot of people are providing feedback here. Vijay Auto need to periodically monitor this space.

Apologies from a CEO

(Photo from stockxpert)

Thanks to global sentiments & a mega local IPO, the Indian stock markets witnessed choppy times over the last few days (it still continues in the same vein for now). The market swung crazily between new highs & lows. Accordingly, investors had a hectic time on the floor.

Here is an example of the cheif executive of an online trading portal apologizing to its customers about loss & lack of its service during various points the last couple of weeks.

+es

• Who doesn't falter!! But how many accept they falter!! This is the difference that an act like this highlights. Publicly accepting the short fall is the first step in one's efforts to avoiding the same being repeated.
• With this note, the CEO is setting a good example to his team - its oki to say sorry as long as there are genuine attempts to avoid repeats. This is also a public affirmation that the business values its customers.

-es (could've done better)

• Going by my experince, many have had monetary losses of varying magnitude due to Sharekhan's loss of service. Maybe Sharekhan should have explored material ways of compensating - even if it were to be a token act. Maybe a brokerage free day / hour / transaction, or a gift hamper, or a charge free service from the Sharekhan portfolio.
• I would be delighted to see a Tarun Shah follow up mail a few weeks from now enquiring on levels of service. And Sharekhan should try & ensure there is a marked improvement in service during this period.

Have to say though that I am glad I am a Sharekhan customer. And glad to see a services organization raising the bar wrt customer focus in this space.

A lot more Indian services companies need to cover a lot of ground in this area - not because their service is bad, but more so because this segment intends to be world beaters.

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Dear Customer,

The last few days took all of us off guard. To make things worse, a lot of you faced issues with our service levels. Some of the issues faced by customers were trading system downtime, customer service cell not responding, fund transfer not happening etc. We don’t want to offer any excuses on why this happened as there can be no justification for the hardship you have undergone.

We apologize for the inconvenience caused to all of you. We will strive to make amendments in all the areas concerned to improve the service delivery to you. We exist because of you- our customers. It’s the confidence that you have placed in us that has resulted in us doing more than 4 lacs transactions per day and adding 45,000 new customers this month. We accept that we were found wanting on service delivery due to the sudden spurt in transactions/queries caused by this fall. We commit to improve upon the same in the days to come.

Warm Regards,

Tarun Shah

CEO

Sharekhan

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Bose delivers customer delight

Just came across this post on the Fast Company blog about how Bose is delighting their customers individually one after the other w/o the hype & hoopla around product recalls.

My thoughts on this incident -

• Anyone rooting for companies to be more customer focused should be spreading the word about such positive actions taken by any company.
• What Bose has done here is to introduce an excitement factor (from Prof Kano's Customer Satisfaction Model) into their customers experince. They proactively took reinforcing action that most customers wouldn't have expected. Any organization focused on their customer initiatives ought to be treating product shortfalls as opportunities to try the excitement factor & thus increase loyalty.
• Bose not only replaced free of cost the product short coming, but have also promised additional goodies to make up for the initial pain. Now how many companies that we regularly buy from would do this!! Good gesture - but they have to deliver on their promise. If they don't, this would be a good example of someone digging their own grave.

Also check an earlier post with more information on the Kano Model.

Get the basics right

Had a McD experience that I had to share.

Being just about 2 weeks old, I guess the staff at this McD outlet were pretty new to the systems. The agent who was taking my orders wasn't conversant enough with the combo offers. I was pleased when a supervisor quickly stepped in, took control, showed the agent how she could group items in my order to reduce what I had to pay & gave me a smile too. Reason enough to be impressed.

Got home, told my wife about how McD had just delivered a great experience. Soon though, we realized that my take away had one item missing & a milkshake was half filled!

The experience they had delivered was all of a sudden questionable. If the basics of what needs to be delivered is not delivered, all the additional effort to get it right just gets washed away.

Ways to delight your customers

For all your cricket lovers there, I don't have to explain how exasperating it is to have the match being interrupted by ads - either immediately after an over or when a wicket falls. The exasperation is a amplied multifold in the 20 over version of the game.

And for all the verbal support that the ESPN Star commentators provide against such a behavior of the channels, I felt they this channel too sold out to the advertisers during the ongoing T20 world cup. Whoever is deciding on when the ads come on is so trigger happy ....

But the channel did come out with a master stroke recently. The second semi-final between Australia & India was a true humdinger ....being decided in the very last balls of the game. Every single moment was worth grabbing on to. And in this situation, the channel decided to skip (I hope this was a conscious decision) ads between the 19th & 20th over of the Australian innings. And even after the win, they continued showing the joyous celebrations on the field off it without showing the ads. ESPN-Star managed to delight me with this.

• They knew exactly what their customer base values the most.
• And they decided to positively affect their customer's experince when it mattered the most.