When Customers Rule!: implementation

Showing posts with label implementation. Show all posts

25 Ways to Show Loyalty to Your Customers

ThanksYou_Flickr-woodleywonderworks (Photo courtesy flickr | woodleywonderworks)

A business that values its focus on its customers, regularly find ways to show their loyalty to their customers. It is a good practice for your & your customer facing teams to regularly find novel & memorable ways of doing this.

Chip Bell & John Patterson have listed 25 ways of doing this in their Wired & Dangerous blog:

Invite a customer to an important staff meeting to talk about their needs and goals
Arrange for a special learning experience for customers
Name a policy, building, or conference room for a key customer
Start a fund or scholarship in the name of a key customer
Poll your customer for their input on important changes you plan to make

Read the entire list here.

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.

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

Customer Experience Resolutions

“Many companies have customer experience efforts underway and it’s time for them to embed customer experience management into the rhythm of their business — making it a fundamental part of how their organizations operate. Here are my 2011 resolutions for companies that have the courage and resolve to get to that next level.”
- Bruce Temkin

Read the full post here.

Reinforce The Positives

(Photo courtesy Express Photorail)

India is gaining in reputation for being the services & hospitality capital of the world. But, instances of bad experiences introduces doubt if the country & its professionals have what it takes to deliver on this promise. I came across a Vir Sanghvi article today that deals with the issue of service attitude (or the lack of it) amongst professionals in this industry. Causes vary between employee's lack of long term commitment to a job, multitude of employment options, corporations taking customers for granted, etc. - all matters beyond any one individual's control. Overwhelming for anyone wanting to better the situation!

Can such systemic issues have simple individual remedies?

Read the full article here.

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Related Posts:
     ~ Changing Scales in India
     ~ Enterprise IT – Just A Utility?
     ~ When Customer Rule!

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

Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

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.

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 :

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

Read the original post here.

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.

Customer Experience - what lies ahead?

In his article The Future of CE: Post Purchase Experience Creation, Mark Binns brings out an important point -

The future of CE should be in experience creation. As an industry, we will continue to manage customer service and existing experiences, but never get them perfect. I expect the law of diminishing returns will eventually set in on managing existing experiences. So, creation of new experiences will be the true CE differentiator of the future. When something positive and unexpected happens to a customer, it creates instant word of mouth value. People talk about new experiences – they rarely talk about expected experiences unless they were bad ones.

He also goes on explain his theory on opportunities for experience management & creation through the life cycle of the customer interaction.

On similar lines is this posting by Eric Fraterman.

True loyalty happens when there is an emotional engagement with the organization or product. This engagement comes from experiencing the brand or organization in a unique way that creates true value for the customer.

How does this apply to an IT product company (esp an enterprise applications vendor) & its customer life cycle?

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The Ultimate Question - NPS

A few months ago I started off on a NPS adoption journey. All though I have gone through some of the continual negative press on the topic, I have not heard or read anything compelling enough to drag me away from the simplicity & basic idea of NP.

We have started really small & getting together the mechanism to capture responses to the NPS query.

Some questions that I am searching answers for are :

What does one do with the NPS score?
How can NPS help develop & sustain a customer centric culture?
What have been the past experiences (anything specific?) of NPS implementations in B2B situations?
What have been the main grouses against NPS?

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From the Blogosphere

Today, hundreds of companies around the world have subscribed to the Net Promoter philosophy. But many of them still don't understand the true meaning of NPS and what Reichheld meant the question to become: an organizational discipline that transforms your business around the customers.

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Reicheld admitted that companies cannot be driven by scores; it's what they do with the scores that matter most and getting the people in the organization to treat customers the way they'd want to be treated.

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Until companies can move beyond getting their organizations to reach high Net Promoter scores, and help their CFOs to understand how to quantify and increase the number of promoters, then they won't find success with NPS.

Read the complete article at Think Customers: 1to1 Blog.

Product centricity to customer centricity

(Photo Courtesy: Purdue University)

In her blog today, Patty Seybold shares a commentary about where organizations go wrong in the journey from product centricity to customer centricity. In Graham Hill's own words -

"The stages start with pure product-centricity. This typically evolves through the development of internal networks of colleagues who need to work together to deliver the value proposition; to cross-functional teams that formalise the collaboration of the internal networks; to a customer segment coordinator who takes on formal responsibility for collaboration across different teams; to a matrix organisation with nascent segment teams reporting to both product and customer management; and finally to bona fide segment managers responsible for all aspects of segment experience delivery. The vertical silos of product-centricity have given way to the more connected, more collaborative customer-centric organisation."

The key phrases (for me) from the above are :

work together to deliver the value proposition (ought not to loose sight of this)
formal responsibility for collaboration across teams (in the absence of a culture that fosters team work)
responsible for all aspects of segment experience delivery (key enabler - accountability)

As important as the end result is, the journey & the milestones involved are as or more important in ensuring effectiveness & sustainability of the end state.

Quality - The Customer Centric Type

Intangible Quality: Engage in the Third Quality Revolution

(Courtesy: www.istockphoto.com)

Found this interesting article on Intangible Quality on RocketPosts - nice read.

Some of my take aways -

Want to create products that meet the subconscious wants and needs of our customers. We want the customer, upon experiencing our products, to say, “This is exactly what I always wanted. This is what I have always needed. I cannot imagine what life was like before I had it.”
Seeking quality that pleases the customer in ways he never before even imagined.
It is a concept of quality that falls into an almost spiritual realm. It means creating a product, or providing a service, that profoundly affects the customer. It is not only defect-free, but it is exactly what the customer has always desired.
Intangible quality requires a new model of customer awareness— one that includes continuous, meaningful contact, and a spiritual connection with a customer’s needs. In effect, you must become a virtual employee in your customer’s organization—seeing what he sees, understanding what she understands. Then, you must use this knowledge to develop possibilities of which the customer has never before dreamed. In a world where Six Sigma is commonplace, the goal of profoundly affecting your customer is the next quality battleground.

Some of the examples quoted in the article allude to concepts O'Reilly uses for the Web 2.0 definition (usage of data to improve customer experience - eg. Amazon, usage of CRM, etc.

#1 Novartis initiates customer centricity initiative

Bloggers & pundits alike are saying that the tough economic situation would prompt many companies to get onto the customer focus bandwagon. True to their words, Novartis has announced its restructuring plan to implement many initiatives - Customer Centricity being one of them.

http://www.novartis.com/newsroom/media-releases/en/2008/1260877.shtml

to implement a new regional US business model that will better address customer needs and differences in local market dynamics.
is designed to be more effective at driving sales growth by better meeting the diverse needs of multiple customers as well as a more efficient deployment of resources

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:

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

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.

Internal Customer Centricity

An internal customer is "anyone you count on or rely upon to complete a task or a function or to provide you with information so that you can get your job done…and anyone who counts on you to complete a task or function or to provide them with information so that they can get their job done.

--Rosenberger, 1998

The best place to start with a customer centricity strategy is in your own backyard. Below is a sampling of some reasons for the above -

A way to get people to look out beyond the ends of their noses and recognize that they are part of a larger work process
Can dramatically improve the odds that the process's ultimate output will hit the mark
Helps bring organizational focus on partnerships as opposed to transactional exchanges
Internal customers are an integral part of the service delivery system that ultimately effects the external customer.
Outstanding internal customer service is simply good business. Excellent service to the external customer is dependent upon healthy internal customer service practices.
By helping other people within your organization, you enable it to succeed. Great internal customer service improves people's morale, productivity, and external customer service, and ultimately makes your organization more financially secure. Giving great service to your internal customers means that people you work with can see, hear, and feel that they are valued. When employees value one another, the result is increased performance, which contributes to the success of the entire organization, and creates a positive and productive working environment.
While most companies aren’t in the habit of regarding their employees as customers, those seeking to instill a customer-centric culture should rethink their stance. Customer-centricity needs to come from the inside out.
Customer-centric organizations value and respect internal customers as much as external customers. If you’re not serving a customer, you’re serving someone who is.
Implementing an internal customer strategy provides a chance for the external customer facing teams to experience first hand great customer service. This also opens their minds to possibilities of implementing the same to external customer interactions.

Sources:

http://www.qualitydigest.com/oct01/html/value.html

http://customerservicezone.com/Customer_Service_-_Internal_Customers/

http://www.donnaearltraining.com/Articles/InternalCustomerService.html

http://www.amanet.org/LeadersEdge/editorial.cfm?Ed=267

Trusted Customer Relationships

Every once in a while, you come across content that does the job of putting across your point better than you yourself. Since I discovered David Maister's web site, I have been finding a lot of content that I so easily relate to. And I will let his content do the talking.

Following are excerpts about DM's views on building trusted customer
relationships -

Decide upfront on how you want to be marketing - a series of transactions (one night stands) or a relationship based long term engagement
DM brings in the comparison of an expert & advisor. Most people want to take charge (& be experts) rather than an advisor. Both works. Both are different. Just do not pretend to be what you are not!

A comparion between transactional & relation based engagement -

Scaleable, can be codified & disseminated easily across the organization vs Interpersonal skills of relationship building based …are difficult to spread
Appealing to those who find comfort the rational, logical or analytical vs Few are prepared for the psychological complexities involved
Thinking of other person as THEM vs US
You are OPPONENTS vs COLLABORATORS on the same side
All you are worried about is ..Short term benefits vs Long term benefits
There is lot of suspicion vs You are building trust
Goal is to make yourself look attractive vs ..to understand the other party
Negotiate & bargain vs You give & you are helpful
Preserve options & avoid obligations vs You make commitments
Focus on here & now ..present vs Future
Develop detailed contracts vs Comfy with ambiguous understanding of future reciprocity
Main goal is to WIN vs PRESERVE RELATIONS..there are lots of benefits in the future
Style is impersonal & detached vs Personal, engaged & even intimate
Preparational & rehearsal of what you will say & do vs Adaptable & flexible to responses of other person
You listen to the other person vs You listen what they are feeling & why they are saying it
Feeling is tense & animated vs Relaxed & comfy
Interactive style is defensive & protective ..win the bargain vs Open & inquisitive
Exaggeration, misrepresentation & even manufactured appearance is common & many times expected …not really lying, but not completely true either vs Complete integration is required ..exaggeration & misrepresentation is absolutely required