We love the power of social media and how it connects the good the bad and the ugly in customer service and experience. Just look what can happen when you get your message out. We picked this message up re @Kia_Motors who apparently according to tweets are not listening to their upset customers but are perceived by one Twitter users @MissNG12 as spending too much time Tweeting pointless comments . Here’s a brief glimpse at the start of the Tweets.

— Sabrina Wallace (@piripiriturtle) January 24, 2012

@piripiriturtle @MissNG12 thks for mention re @Kia_Motors they haven’t got it have they.

— The Customer’s Shoes (@Customers_Shoes) January 24, 2012

@piripiriturtle @kia_motors @customers_shoes Shame that they don’t care enough to actually read your tweets tho!! #KiaAreCowboys

— Nicola Gardner (@MissNG12) January 24, 2012

So are you using social media to connect with your unhappy customers and then engage with them to understand their issues more deeply?

Congratulations to Heather Miller at London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham for winning our December competition. We look forward to helping you achieve your customer experience objectives in 2012.

Heather entered our survey and was selected at random from over 100 entrants winning her organisation a day’s worth of consultancy from one of the range of services we offer to clients:

• Inspirational Training
• Strategic Guidance
• Research and Emotional Measurement
• Conference Engagements
• Team Workshops
• Customer Journey Mapping
• Management Foundation Workshops

60 Inspirational Quotes collated by Evan Carmichael at TelusTalksBusiness. Enjoy them over a coffee (Nespresso of course) and reflect upon coming up with your own quotes to inspire others and then post them on your noticeboards or mood board.

We all like quotes at some level or other because they connect with us at an emotional level – the heart and soul of any great experience.

The best customer expriences come from emotionally connected and engaged employees and often these are people with high levels of emotional intelligence or a deeper understanding and experience of the human condition. What I mean by this is that a business that employs the same type of employee with the same broad technical experience or skills set year in year out will develop over time a certain culture and way of doing business.

This will have an impact upon all areas of the business, across all departments and in every interaction that goes on. Meetings will be run in a certain way, designs will be created through a certain narrow lens and customer interactions and experiences will be filtered through the same old same old way of doing things.

Steve Jobs said it best:

“A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.”

Consequently by being very selective in the recruitment of talent they are able to appoint employees that have a broad perspective and better design follows. Apple are able to develop outstanding products.

I recently overheard two elderly ladies sat in a coffee shop discussing their recent purchases of iPad 2′s. Both these women were well into their 70′s perhaps even older. They chatted with enthusiasm about the way these products worked, how brilliant the graphics were and how much time they were spending on them connecting with their families and friends. One described her product as “beautiful”. Steve Jobs would have been proud to have heard that.

Courtesy of http://p21chong.wordpress.com

So how broad is your employee experience (that’s experience of the human condition)?

What have they been exposed to in their lives beyond the technical skills and competencies they have developed in previous jobs?

Are you recruiting purely for competency or are you looking for a deeper experience of life too?

Take our survey. We’re trying to get a handle on how people generally deal with surveys.

“Anybody can be a waiter, not everyone can be an excellent one” said the waiter as he set our drinks on the table and arranged the small bowls of nibbles alongside.

This was the answer I received from a waiter named Pepe, serving me on a cruise I took recently. I’d chatted with him to find out a little more about life aboard his ship. I’d asked him for how long he’d been a waiter and his answer included the comment above. And what a great observation too, one which applies to all walks of life.

I met Pepe three weeks ago when I spent five days aboard MSC Fantasia,

the recently launched flag ship of Italian cruise line MSC Cruises. My time was spent conducting a customer experience audit for the brand, part of a process I’m going through in order to become a provider of training and consultancy services. See it as part of my induction. My

brief was simple – “explain how the customer experience can be improved, where are the opportunities, what’s being missed, where are the WOWs?”

Trying to find ways to improve the experience of a premium brand is always going to be difficult. If you were carrying out an audit of your own business or brand where would you begin? Well start by standing in your customer’s shoes.

Pepe told me how he was passionate about doing his job and serving guests the best way he could. But Pepe wasn’t alone in his eagerness to please. Elton my cabin steward also adopted a positive and helpful attitude throughout the trip. In fact Elton went beyond expectations.

Passionate Pillow Talk!

I was not alone during the trip as my wife and business partner Cheryl accompanied me and assisted in the process of standing in the customer’s shoes to review the MSC brand experience from a female perspective.

Before we go any further let’s be clear, it’s not that sort of pillow talk!

One of the first things Cheryl checked out when we arrived in our cabin were the pillows. Were they too soft, too firm, too thick, too thin – it was like traveling with Goldilocks. As it happened even I found the pillows to be too soft so we asked Elton if he could replace them with some firmer ones.

Now I was surprised when Elton said they had no alternatives but he would see if he could find a way around the problem by asking his supervisor. But later that evening he returned to our cabin with a frown on his face only to tell us that his supervisor had failed to find anything better. So Elton suggested we fold some towels around these soft pillows in an attempt to firm them up.

We tried this improvisation but it didn’t work. An uncomfortable night’s sleep left us both waking with stiff necks. Once again we spoke with Elton who was very empathetic but could offer no alternative.

During the night the ship had arrived at Naples so after breakfast we disembarked for a tour ashore. We were not the only ones. We didn’t know it at the time but Elton had also left the ship as we learnt later that evening when he explained how he’d found four new pillows for us.

This young cabin steward had decided to take the pillow problem and own it himself. With some time off that he was due he left the ship and purchased the pillows ashore in Naples. He was able to claim back the cost from his supervisor.

WOW!

To say that we were impressed would be an under statement especially as it was Elton that had initiated the errand not his supervisor or the ship’s Guest Services Dept. Elton had bothered, because Elton cared.

Another great example of AOK in action (attitude, observation, know how).

In Conclusion Then…

So consider these three questions:

1. Who are the ‘Eltons’ in your organisation and how do you reward them? I made sure Elton’s work was reported to the ship’s master and in the feedback that will go to MSC Cruises in the UK when I meet with them.

2. When was the las time you looked at the customer’s experience and stood in their shoes to feel what they feel as a result?

3. If one of your employees were faced with an opportunity to resolve a customer’s issue, would they be empowered to do so, could they act without referral to their supervisor or manager?

If you’d like to fill your tank with great ways to improve your customer experience and need to rev the team up then why not invite us in to run a session for you to kick start the process – just get in touch!

To help you get to the ‘Heart & Sole’ of all things customer related, we’ve compiled our very own customer experience magazine! In the first issue we’ve taken a look at the concept of ‘going the extra mile’ for the customer, with examples of how easy it is to do and a look at organisations who have been seen to get it right:

Want to read it later? Download the PDF here.

Cut & Step is a simple activity to challenge your team and energise them at your next team meeting. We have used this activity many times ourselves when we have been exploring the subjects of problem solving, creativity, communication and teamwork with clients. It’s fun, it’s quick and it can deliver some real insights into how your team goes about problem solving and generating ideas.

The preparation involved is very straightforward and the items you need can be gathered from your office area.

Download

The customer can never be wrong surely? The customer can not always be right surely? Is either of these really true? Can the customer literally be described as never being wrong, or always being right?

Well of course they can be wrong, and of course they are not always right, but they are always the customer. We did some research to explore the origins of these statements to help answer the questions we have raised and  credit goes to the handy website over at http://www.phrases.org.uk for their help in the matter.

The meaning behind the saying “the customer is always right” is the position the organisation makes to demonstrate that the customer is placed at the heart of the organisation’s activities. It was never meant to be taken literally.

It has been a slogan used by many retailers particularly in the US. According to http://www.phrases.org.uk Marshall Field’s department store in Chicago first coined the phrase. And in the UK Harry Gordon Selfridge (1857-1947) the founder of London’s Selfridges store is credited with bringing the phrase into his store. Coincidentally Selfridge worked for Field from 1879 to 1901 so potentially either one of them could have been the originator of these well known customer service words.

So if the saying was never meant literally what was it meant to say? What they were attempting to do was to make the customer feel special by developing an approach towards customers where staff attitude and behaviour demonstrated that the customer was right even if in certain circumstances they were not.

From http://www.phrases.org.uk

The trading policy and the phrase were well-known by the early 20th century. From the Kansas City Star, January 1911 we have a piece about a local country store that was modelled on Field’s/Selfridges:

[George E.] “Scott has done in the country what Marshall Field did in Chicago, Wannamaker did in New York and Selfridge in London. In his store he follows the Field rule and assumes that the customer is always right.”

Whether the phrase was coined by Field or Selfridge it is fair to call it American. What we can’t do is credit them with the idea behind it. In 1908 César Ritz (1850-1918), the celebrated French hotelier is credited with saying ‘Le client n’a jamais tort’ – ‘The customer is never wrong’. That’s not the phrase that people now remember, but it can hardly be said to be any different in meaning to ‘the customer is always right’.

So How Does This Relate to Modern Customer Experience?

We think that the meaning is still as relevant to day as it was as far back as Field, Marshall and Ritz. When you believe that creating happy customer relations in all important then you place the customer at the heart of everything you do. You go the extra mile, you find ways to ensure the customer doesn’t suffer from your inadequacies as an organisation, product or service. You look for ways to make the customer’s life simpler, easier requiring less effort to do business with you.

And when things go wrong and the customer is actually wrong you don’t immediately follow company policy but you weigh up the situation customer by customer, assessing the issues at hand and err on the side of the customer because as Field, Marshall and Ritz knew the only customer you need to worry about is the one you are dealing with there and then and sometimes you need to swallow your pride and your righteous belief in the policy and just to the right thing for the customer. Because the customer may not always be right, but they are always the customer and they always have a choice.

We say your people come first as the employee experience is intrinsically linked to the customer experience. Get your people fit first and then follow through with the customer experience.

Of course you can’t necessarily wait until the culture is developed; it’s a question of having to work on both at the same time, employee experience and customer experience. US airline JetBlue is quoted as saying that it hires comedians rather than train employees to be funny. There’s a big difference in the customer experience that either approach would give.

And once software giant Google had learned that those middle managers who created compelling and engaging internal cultures far outperformed those with greater technical expertise it forged ahead with a comprehensive study to identify the performance drivers that can deliver increases in performance.

Paying attention to the employee experience is critical because employees:

1. Are far more savvy than they used to be. They know their employee rights and they have high expectations of the organisations they commit to working for.
2. Often they seek out better cultures, speaking to family and friends and share work experiences soon recognising when they are not getting the best deal or working in a great environment.
3. They connect via social media and learn from their peers and from other organisations they see and hear Tweeted or FB’ed about.
4. Increasingly they demand better pay and conditions.
5. They recognise poor management when they see it and will migrate toward an improved culture even if the pay and rewards are less.
6. And they use their discretion wisely and carefully when it comes to adding value to any organisation. If they are not motivated and actively involved in what the organisation is about their levels of engagement soon drop so that end up turning up at work just to do the minimum in order to receive their pay.

Employee Experience – A Winning Strategy

Zappos is the currently touring the US with their Delivering Happiness format to doing business and if ever their was a prime example of employee engagement there’s none better than Zappos. Check out YouTube for a host of videos on the subject and get a real flavour of how they treat employees, how they recruit and develop. Importantly the most employee engaged organisations will recruit for attitude and train for skills.

JetBlue focuses on recruitment and strong induction programmes to drive engagement within the company. If you have an employee turnover of 15% attrition/year you’ll replace your entire workforce in seven years. In three-and-a-half years you will replace 50%. Hire for culture because you can train for skills.

So slow down the recruitment process and select for attitude and fit with the desired culture first. Then provide new recruits with ample time to acclimatise themselves with a thorough  induction (on-boarding) programme that gives employees the best chance to hit the road running. Then train and develop further as time progresses, empowering staff to appropriate levels.

When people love what you do they’ll sacrifice a degree of pay just to work with you. It is said that it is harder to get into Zappos than it is to enter Harvard University. That’s some feat for an online retailer!

If you’d like some support in reviewing your employee engagement levels contact us now so we can help you to pave the way to great employee experiences.

This post was submitted by an unhappy LiveDrive customer that has clearly developed a perception of how LiveDrive values its customers. We have no experience of LiveDrive services but clearly based upon this feedback you would certainly dig deeper for further feedback. How much more credibility could LiveDrive have developed had they have been up-front with their customer? Have you similar experiences? Let us know and add your comments to this post. From this case alone we think LiveDrive deserve our One Odd Shoe Award for a peculair way of looking after a customer.

“Hi,

something about an online storage company called LiveDrive.

I have been a customer for years. The following describes what happened to me and supposedly to many other – often still unaware – customers.

LiveDrive offers the possibility to have files uploaded to their servers. You can than safely delete the files on your computer (that’s called “Briefcase” at LiveDrive). Files on my computer were marked as having been uploaded correctly. With LiveDrive that means that you can safely delete those files locally and have only pointer files remaining on your computer. If you need those files again, they will be downloaded in the background from LiveDrive’s servers.

However I had a lot of files that couldn’t be downloaded as I needed them because they were simply not on LiveDrive’s servers anymore (or have never been there at all). But each and every file scan (something there software offers to ensure data integrity) told me everything is fine. But LiveDrive lost their customers data. I’m definitly not the only one experiencing such a loss.

And than there are those constant lies. I’ve been a customer from almost their very first month of existence. I even participated in their beta tests. There were more bugs than plain software. They went public without fixing many of the known bugs. I complaint about their statement, that there’re not beta anymore. Finally they admitted their fault and told me: Beta or not, let’s move forward. OK, fine with me.

They promised a secure data transmission (SSL). That was a blank lie! In the first year or so of their existence data transmission from and to their servers were not encrypted. So they openly lied to their customers about data security. Just imagine that!

Some customers made tcp dumps and proved that point in their web forum. LiveDrive never answered those allegations and finally closed their open forum to any non-customers. About a year ago the upload speed suddenly dropped to a consistent 2.2 Mbit/s. Upload speed used to be unlimited (I have a 10 MBit/s upload bandwidth and maxed it out). Customers began complaining and are being told to this very day that LiveDrive do not throttle uploads.

I had a private chat with one of their main employees. I asked him about the throttling. He denied it. I confronted him with the very facts and he finally admitted LiveDrive is throttling bandwidth. Telling customers the opposite is a lie!

There are still more. But this should suffice.

I’m quite sure I will drop my subscription. I can tolerate bugs. I can tolerate technical problems (they were once offline for a week because of a database problem). I work in the IT business myself and have the technical background to know more or less what is going on at LiveDrive. But I cannot and will not tolerate if a company or its employees openly lie to customers.

BTW: They tell us they have been overwhelmed by the need for support. LiveDrive is not a new company. They saw it coming a long time ago. They know the limitations and bugs of their product. An open and customer oriented way of dealing with it would probably cut the need for support in half.”

By: S.B

As I write this post I’m sat in my local car dealer waiting to have some work done including the fitting of two new tyres. The service so far has been very good and the dealer in question makes a promise to its customers that it will not keep customers waiting unecessarily.

This reminded me of an article I read on the CNN website recently about how some US doctors are beginning to compensate their patients for waiting. The original article can be found here. Essentially a patient billed her doctor for the two hour wait she had sat waiting through before her doctor dealt with her. What a novel way of sending a message to your ‘service provider’ that the level of service provided is unacceptable. As she said to CNN “whay should she wait for free?”.

This got me thinking about my wait at the dealer – if the really promise not to keep their customers waiting maybe they should pay for the time wasted in cases where customers do end up waiting beyond an agreed time.  Put your money where your mouth is!

The average wait time at doctors’ clinics in the United States is 24 minutes, according to a report released in 2010 by Press Ganey, a group that researches health care performance. In the UK that’s close to my own experiences.

When a customer or patient experiences unnecessary delays or shortfalls in the service levels they experience it has a direct impact upon how they feel. There is always a combination of the tangible needs and expectations and the emotional needs and expectations and unless both are addressed in any experience there’s a risk that how the customer felt will lead to destroying the loyalty you are trying to build.

Organisations that focus on both the emotional dimension as a critical element of the customer experience set themselves apart form the competition. Ultimately how you are making your customers feel will determine your success.

At The Customer’s Shoes we call this effect your Emotional Footprint™ - every organisation has one – a unique emotional experience that leaves customers feeling a range of emotions. For more information on how we can help you improve your Emotional Footprint™ and drive customer loyalty contact us.

Recent experience with very.co.uk was a shambles. EVERYTHING I tried to do with them failed and they seem overrun with over-complicated processes. The agents tried desperately to be friendly but couldn’t do anything to help at all!! Please give your agents the information and empowerment they need to do their job!

Today was the last straw – I rang back to cancel a driver turning up UNNECESSARILY next week to pick up a return that has already gone back. Apparently there is no way to cancel this so the driver will turn up anyway????

The worst thing is that they call themselves the “online department store” but the online experience is effort heavy and I don’t seem to be able to login to their website with the details they sent me!! In the end I’ve only done business with them over the phone because the website just doesn’t support what I want to do!

I hope someone is looking into it!

By: Emilie smith

When you are next reviewing your complaints management processes then use this checklist to ensure you maximise the opportunities for reducing customer issues and for resolving them quickly, effortlessly and with the aim of reducing them to a minimum.

1. Review your existing feedback and complaint management practices and decidewhat is working (keep or modify this), and what is not (adapt or dump that).
2. Gather in, and learn from best practices within other organisations, and study relevant National Standards. Don’t just transplant others’ good ideas and procedures without considering whether or not they will fit your organisational culture.
3. Do all you can to develop within the organisation a genuine belief that a complaint  truly is a gift. This may require considerable time and visible senior management commitment.
4. Do what it takes to educate and inform your managers and front-line staff in particular about the purpose, benefits and management of your policy.
5. Understand that to shift from the current position to the desired one will take time, and that many will be cynical or downright opposed to the new ideas. Criticism and concerns need to be listened to, but you may need to confront direct opposition with firm action to ensure the changes for the better are not thwarted.
6. Recognise that a lot of ‘complaints’ are not officially made, and encourage front-line people to record and pass on all issues that cause customers to feel irritation, and/or inconvenience. This means regular and serious questioning of front-line staff who know what annoys customers, but who are rarely if ever asked about this.
7. Don’t just sit on complaints and feedback. Have a regular review of the issues that irritate your customers, involving sufficiently senior people to initiate corrective actions.
8. Accept that many staff at all levels will be reticent to seek, record, and pass on complaints, for fear of being personally blamed for customers’ irritations, or for highlighting the deficiencies of others. Always go hard on your processes not your people, and don’t let ‘blame cultures’ become established.
9. When a complaint initiates a change for the better, or when corrective action has been taken in response to one, make sure the customer knows what their complaint prompted, and keep all relevant front-line staff informed too.
10. Recognise that internal customers (colleagues) have legitimate causes for complaint and feedback, so don’t leave them out.
11. Make certain that a very senior individual has specific, personal responsibility for the management and development of the complaints procedures.
12. Train and develop all appropriate staff in the skills of complaint management and processing, and accept that it’s not just something that they should be left to deal with as part of their job. They need support and help to manage this well.
13. Recruit and select your key customer-facing people with great care. The ‘right’ people make all the difference when it comes to the sensitive and professional management of complainants.
14. Remember that the vast majority of legitimate complaints are not made. The most credible research on this suggests that only 1 in 26 customers with cause to, can be bothered to make the effort to complain (Lee 1990). So expect the level of complaints to rise as you are felt to take them more seriously before if at all, they decrease.
15. It is true that what starts out as a negative experience for a customer can, via professionally managed service recovery, be turned into a positive one, converting would-be ‘terrorists’ into really useful ‘apostles’.
16. Treat written complaints with particular concern and urgency, as these require time and effort few are prepared to invest, thus indicating the complainant is very serious about the issue/s in question.
17. It can help to ask the complaining customer what they want by way of redress. Such a request can take them aback somewhat, as many haven’t even thought about this. Unless you ask you may not know, or assume incorrectly just what they want – if anything.
18. Ensure your customer-facing people are genuinely empowered to take appropriate decisions on their own initiative, and that they will do this confident of the support of management.
19. Make it easier to complain by looking for, and removing barriers that inhibit customer feedback. This may for instance mean relying less on paper processes.
20. It’s not easy, but try to genuinely see complaints as clear messages from your service users that point out where, and often why, the standard they expect has not been delivered. This gives the opportunity to precisely target improvements and enhancements.

From time to time we are all privileged to experience truly great customer service. When it happens it is so refreshing it can stay with you for years to come. Today was one such occasion and I wanted to share it with you.

It took place this afternoon Saturday 22nd October at around 3pm in the Food Hall of Marks & Spencer, Cribbs Causeway near Bristol. Having finished my shop with laden trolly I queued for a few minutes in an aisle waiting for my turn at the checkout – in this case number 8. I was greeted by a rotund woman named Carolyn. Carolyn demonstrated perfect levels of attention and efficiency as she scanned the products one by one.

What struck me about Carolyn’s service were the following:

• Before she began scanning she passed to me a money off voucher for items she could see that I had in my trolly which meant that I would save money today. Doesn’t everyone like to save a few pounds? She spotted an opportunity to serve me.
• At one point some products that should have provided a discount 3 for £10 failed to do so. I didn’t notice, she did. She doubled checked multi-pack 3 for 2 offers actually provided the relevant discount. She found one that hadn’t and called for assistance and explained to me exactly what had happened and that she would correct it. In the meantime Carolyn continued scanning the remaining items on the belt and chatted away commenting upon certain items. The level of engagement was enough to show interest but not so much that it was an intrusion. The supervisor came and they both dealt with the faulty transaction with their system. The problem sorted without delaying either me or other shoppers. She spotted the opportunity to serve me.
• As we neared the end of the process of scanning and packing she mentioned that in the Daily Mail there was a £5 money off voucher for M&S food and she pointed to the newspaper stand behind me telling me that the paper itself was just under a £1 so I could still save a few more pounds. She even told me the page number where I would find the token – page 32.
• Finally as I handed over my card to pay the bill she inquired whether I had a M & S Credit Card. I don’t neither do I wish to have one as I’m a keen cash payer or use a debit card. I avoid the monthly statement that way. Carolyn then informed me that I could still take out a card and pay the balance off immediately at the Customer Service Help Desk avoiding the credit, any potential charges but still win my M & S loyalty points on the purchases made on the credit card. Smart thinking!

Carolyn demonstrated conversation skills, rapport building and empathy. She adopted a caring and friendly attitude, spotted an opportunity to delight the customer by using her product knowledge and the level of empowerment she had been given.  Perfect examples of what we call A-O.K the three magic ingredients that deliver a great experience.

Well done Carolyn and thanks.

The Rugby World Cup is on this month as if our rugby fan followers need telling. So what does this have to do with customer experience? I think there is one key similarity based upon the word performance.

Customers expect a performance. They expect you to deliver their product or service against a set of performance standards they perceive to be appropriate for what your brand is promising.

These performance standards may be speed, cost, value for money, quality etc. They will also include the emotional expectations of how the customer expects to feel during the interactions they find themselves having with your organisation.

Defintion of ‘perform’:

• to go through or execute in the proper, customary, or established manner

So customers expect a proper performance.

To help the rugby teams perform properly there are obviosuly all manner of rules and regulations to keep the game safe, competitive and fair. Althoug the decision by the referee to send off the Welsh captain for a dangerous tackle shows fairness isn’t guaranteed however – such is life.

One of the techniques referees employ to ensure a proper performance is Touch, Pause and Engage when the players go in for a scrum.

Touch – The players line up face to face in the scrum format. Before the teams interlock the referee asks the front row players to touch the shoulders of their opponent. This helps the two teams align so heads don’t clash. The technique helps positioning.

Pause – the referee calls out Pause to enable the teams to brace themselves for the scrum down and the push that will follow. This pause triggers a momentary mental  focus.

Engage – the teams are instructed to enage with their oponents and the scrum begins as each side focuses all the energy in pushing over the opposition and winning the ball.

How Does This Apply to the Performance of Winning the Customer?

Can we apply thises three simple techniques to dealing with customers? Of couse and here’s how:

Touch – this is really about connecting with the customer. At a face to face level this could be demonstrated through eye contact and active listening, even a smile on your face. At a strategic level it could refer to capturing the voice of the customer – touching base with your customers to understand their experience.

Pause – this is about preparing and focusing on the task in hand. At a face to face level or contact centre arena this can refer to understanding exactly what needs to be done in order to deliver the result for the customer before action is taken. At a strategic level it means understanding where you are, where you are trying to get to at any point and reflecting upon what needs to be done next to drive toward you goals.

Engage – being there for your customer, putting yourself in the customer’s shoes and demonstrating empathy so that you resolve the customer’s issue first time to their full satisfaction. It’s also about engaging with the customer at an emotional level so that the customer experience isn’t just a transaction. Strategically it’s about ensuring you have a workforce that is fully engaged with you and is striving to achieve your aims, delivering beyond expectations whenever and wherever they can.

So remember Touch, Pause, Engage and you just may win the battle for delighting your customers.

We have a Horsechestnut Tree at the bottom of our garden which supplies us with copious amounts of ‘conkers’ for the annual game of conkers. Each year we have a family quest to see who will reign as the year’s Conker Champ. We take our rules from the World Championship regulations.

There are several similarities I believe between a Conker game and the competition for your customer. Here’s why:

1. To hit a Conker you need to be extremely focussed on the target
2. To crack your opponent’s Conker you need to strike it with sufficient force and speed so that the energy is transmitted throughout the Conker resulting in a crack.
3. To play the game you need to have courage – standing still as your opponent swings their Conker against yours with all the force they can muster takes some courage especially when you have experienced wrapped knuckles on previous occasions.

So how does this relate to winning the customer’s loyalty.

1. You need to be extremely focussed – but not just for a few months of a year as with the Conker season, but constantly, every day, every year, every customer.
2. To crack or to win – you need to place sufficient force, energy, resources, finance and commitment into the challenge otherwise you will never overcome the tough make up of your challenge.
3. The route to success takes courage – there are no short cuts, it’s a long journey that requires personal commitment and the courage to take risks knowing that you may not strike your target accurately, you may end up with some grazed knuckles from time to time as you try new customer initiatives and they fail, or you take on some resistance within your organisation that challenges you.

So as you next take a stroll past the favourite childhood Horsechestnut Tree use it to remind you of the three points of:

• FOCUS
• ENERGY
• COURAGE

Act Now

Give your customer experience initiatives your best swing or call us and find out how we can add these three to your organisation so you too can be victorious. Call us on 01242 269076 or email measureup@thecustomersshoes.com

The 2011 World Conker Championships will be held at New Lodge Fields, near Oundle, Northamptonshire on 9th October 2011. The event starts at 10:30 a.m. and finishes at 3:00 p.m. The first recorded game of Conkers using Horse Chestnuts was on the Isle of Wight in 1848. The tree is not native to Britain, but was introduced from the Balkans in the late 16th century; it was not widely planted until the early 19th century. Previously, children played with snail shells or Hazelnuts until the Horsechestnut became available.

Iit looks like we all have the prospect of a tough 2012 given the latest news on the Eurozone. Thinking ahead into the year what’s likely to be your biggest challenges? Take our survey online and we will send you a copy of ‘The Importance of the Customer Experience in a Down Economy’, International Thought Leader Report first published in 2008 by Customer Futures (an OgilvyOne Worldwide Group Company) as we entered the financial meltdown. It’s a great read and is as relevant now almost four years on.

Please take the survey it takes less than a few  minutes to complete.

Or call us to discuss your challenges.

I’m writing this post a few hours after having checked out of a hotel used on business. I had a quite unremarkabkle experience – typically bland. The hotel was quiet, few guests judging by the lack of cars in the car park and the abscence of people in the bar and restaurants. One of the hazards of my role in customer experience is that I never stop looking at situations where I am the customer and reflecting upon how the service provider could make the experience more customer friendly.

My hotel was no exception. The hotel was ‘tired’, the staff were unengaging and the food was delivered from the hotel chain’s set menu offering. So as I mentally noted all the things that could have made a difference to my experience it reminded me once again that the customer truly is the final inspector.

My questions to you are:

• Are you ready for the final inspection?
• What would you fail on?
• When was the last time you walked in the customer’s shoes and carried out a final inspection?

Answer these questions today before a customer of yours finds reasons to fail you.

Here is one of our favourite infographics from our co-professionals in Zurich, CustVox.

via

Such a relevant question. Why bother indeed? To help you grasp the key reasons here’s a graphic courtesy of Zendesk and Column Five Media. Thanks guys.

by Column Five Media via

Do you want to analyse your customer’s experience? Do you want to build your knowledeg on the subject of ‘customer journey mapping’?

We have gathered together various resources to help our followers understand the subject of Customer Journey Mapping and placed these resources in a DropBox. They have been donated by various associates from our LinkedIn network as well as contributions from our own expertise.

Currently there are over 30 different files in the DropBox, documents and presentations from various authors on the subject. It’s a great starting point that should kick start your projects.

If you’d like access to the DropBox then please send us your email address to measureup@thecustomersshoes.com from where we will then invite you to the resource.

If however you’re at the stage where you want some hands on support then let us know and we’d be more than happy to meet for a discussion to see how we can help.

We thought it was about time to add some simple top tip style blogs to our site for any of you out there looking for quick, no-fuss customer service inspiration. Here are the top 5 things to avoid saying to your customer… unless you are intending to rub them completely up the wrong way – not recommended!

“Well, we never had any complaints before…”

When a customer comes up to you with a problem, it could well be the case that you’ve never had this problem before, ever. From their point of view however, this is irrelevant, and to point it out shows a complete lack of care for their judgement; mistakes happen, standards slip and things that you weren’t expecting to go wrong… do.  Make sure you accept that whilst you’ve never had a complaint about this before, there’s a first time for everything. Respect your customer’s opinion, see that their complaint can be resolved as soon as possible and take this as an exciting opportunity to improve your service or product so that you won’t receive the same remark twice!

“[Automated message] Your call is very important to us.”

If there’s one thing that can frustrate a paying customer, it’s insincerity. People want to know that their money is being well spent, and to hear the words ‘Your call is very important to us’ coming from an automated voice whilst waiting for HOURS to have their call answered is simply taking the micky! Customers understand the need for automated telephone services and queue music, but advertising slogans and disingenuous messages are likely to encourage your customers to go elsewhere. If you do want to tell your customers how important your call is… make sure there’s a real human being doing it and that your customer service matches your sentiment.

“Calm down!”

This one is simple; if your customer’s angry – let them be angry (within reason). Of course, abuse is not acceptable and should be dealt with appropriately, but sometimes a customer may need to vet their feelings and… as someone who strives to provide excellent customer service, you need to just stop and listen. Adding the comment “Calm down!” will simply exacerbate the problem.

“That’s against company policy…”

Policies are there for a reason, so it’s understandable that sometimes you’ll hit barriers in the form of: terms, conditions and regulations. If a customer has a request that’s outside of your normal practices, take the time to offer any alternatives or take the problem higher up to someone who may be able to bend the rules. This is a phrase that’s too easy to fall back on and should be avoided at all cost. Demonstrate going the extra mile by finding creative ways around the barriers.

“Sorry, that’s not my job”.

In a similar vain to ‘That’s against company policy…’ your customers will hear this phrase as a perfect example of staff laziness! Ok, so it’s not your job to do that, but use your initiative and help find your customer someone who’s job IT IS to deal with the query or task at hand. It probably won’t take you long and rather than aggravating your customer, you’ll find you delight them by showing that you’re actually helpful!  Take ownership and you demonstrate empathy, a critical element for developing trust with customers.

Getting the customer service help you need doesn’t have to be complicated, check back to our blog for further customer service tips or get in touch to see how we can help your business on a more one-to-one level!