customer service

You can't hurry love

June 23, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Diana Ross and the Supremes had it right back in 1966:

You can’t hurry love
No, you just have to wait
She said love don’t come easy
Its a game of give and take

Customer engagement is the new marketing. Repeat customers and viral recommendations are based on love.

People love companies like Zappos and JetBlue because they keep the love going, dripping it even after the honeymoon of the initial ‘wow’ customer experience has worn off.

Customers return the love in the form of word of mouth recommendations and over time, everyone wins.

What would people love?

June 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Innovate, don’t imitate.

The problem with taking someone else’s idea and doing it a little better is that it’s just as easy for the next company to improve it a little bit more. Cheaper labor. Faster machines. The improvement becomes a linear asymptote, until making any further improvement is costlier than the benefit gained.

Instead, dream up what people would love. Then create it.

I say dream it because nobody will ask for it. Before they existed, nobody asked for:

- the iPod
- OpenTable.com
- Build a Bear workshop
- Blue Man Group
- online check-in
- Twitter
- FedEx
- The W hotels

Nobody ever said, “wow, you know I really love writing extremely short blog posts. I wish there was a website that limited mine to 140 characters or less. THAT would be great.”

Doing something just a little better can make a few dollars in the short run but if you can tighten the screws, someone else can tighten them a bit more.

Zappos didn’t sell shoes online just a little bit better. If that was the plan, they could have stopped when they offered more sizes, colors and styles than anyone else. They dreamed that customers would love the best customer service they’ve ever experienced, online or in person. They were right (and did over $1B in sales last year).

Whether you are thinking of starting a new business or improving your existing business, ask yourself, “what would people love”?

Then build it.

A sip of Rome

June 8, 2009 | 1 Comment

In the book, The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary Into Extraordinary, Joseph Michelli outlines how the Howard Schultz built an empire around delivering an experience, not just coffee.

Along the way, many small mom & pop cafes were closed. By being remarkably unique, this is one cafe that never has to worry about the Big Green Coffee Monster.

Caffe Latte
When you walk into this small cafe in Dobbs Ferry, say hi to the owner, Basilio. He’s the handsome salt & pepper-haired Italian man who is always behind the counter. He has a knowing smile and a charm about him that makes you feel like you’ve known each other for years.

His small cafe seems fairly nondescript until you notice the small details. The American magazines and Italian newspapers scattered haphazardly at the counter by the front window. The ever-present table of Basilio’s Italian friends cramped at a table just out of the way. The small vase of fresh cut flowers at each of the five small tables (and two more outside when it’s warm enough). The simple vinaigrette on the simple caprese salad. The art, posters and Italian bricabrac that adorns the walls.

Most impressive? The ballet that Basilio dances as he effortlessly handles multiple orders to multiple customers.

And then it hits you. You’re not in Dobbs Ferry. You’re in Rome. Even if just for an hour.

Basilio is a consummate Italian. He’ll make you a damn fine cappuccino, but don’t hurry him. Sit. Relax. Read a magazine. Let Basilio’s calmness be contagious. Enjoy your coffee and the perfect little chunk of biscotti that Basilio puts on the saucer.

Enjoy Basilio’s Italy.

On this particular day, some of Basilio’s regulars brought in two bottles of wine from a recent trip to California. One for Basilio and one for them to share. Beautiful.

Stores up and down Cedar Street have come and gone but Basilio has been going steady for 15 years because he delivers an experience Starbucks never could; Italian vacations, one cup at a time.

Richard Pryor and the Verizon queue

May 12, 2009 | Leave a Comment

In the 1985 movie, Brewster’s Millions, Richard Pryor plays a struggling minor league baseball player who inherits 300 million dollars, subject to specific terms, which form the backbone of the comedic plot. His character, Monty Brewster, must spend 30 million dollars in 30 days, in order to inherit the larger sum of 300 million. Otherwise, he gets nothing.

It’s a good thing Richard Pryor didn’t try to spend his 30 million dollars at a Verizon Wireless store.

[Disclaimer: I am an iPhone user who is very happy with my device, fairly happy with AT&T's customer service and slightly less happy with the network coverage. Since switching over, I try to avoid Verizon stores at all costs but occasionally agree to assist friends & family members and find myself back in a Verizon store, the fifth ring of customer service hell.]

Every time I have been to a Verizon store, (sample size = 14 stores across Minneapolis, Boston, Philadelphia, San Diego and New York), I was queued up for help on their visible in-store digital wait list. I’m sure this was the concoction of some overpaid, misguided marketing team. “Let’s display our customers’ names, in order, on a big screen. Then they’ll know how long they have to wait! Brilliant!”

Fail.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge fan of transparency. The problem isn’t the screen. It’s the pace at which customers are helped. There is zero correlation between your slot on the list and when you get the chance to speak to a Verizon employee. I have been added to the list in the second spot and still waited over 45 minutes for help.

If I have to call a customer service line and I’m placed on hold, the wait is infinitely more bearable if the phone system tells me, “your call will be answered in approximately 8 minutes.” Great. Now I can go make a sandwich.

If Verizon is only organized to deal with such a limited number of customers, they should put their stores in caves high in the mountains and dress the associates in red and black robes.

The other night, we just wanted to buy a new handset. It should have been the simplest of transactions. Instead, we were stuck waiting, digitally immortalized in the “sales” queue. Sales queue! Oh, the irony. Even if I was Richard Pryor, sitting with a briefcase full of cash, jumping up and down, screaming that I wanted to buy every outdated phone in the store at full price, Verizon didn’t care. I wasn’t going to be helped before Kristen J. and Thomas D.

We waited 35 minutes and then left.

Hey Verizon….can you hear me now?

Baked in magic

May 8, 2009 | 2 Comments

Walt Disney didn’t build an amusement park and then decide later to make it magical.

Tony Hsieh didn’t start Zappos and then, in year three, decide to deliver the best service the industry has ever seen.

Herb Kelleher didn’t build and operate Southwest Airlines and then decide to turn the airline industry on its head. (The original flight attendants were chosen by a committee that included the same person who had selected hostesses for Hugh Hefner’s Playboy jet.)

Delivering true magic isn’t something that can be fixed with a half-day training class. Because everyone works in marketing, ‘wow’ has to be baked in to the company’s culture. The larger the company, the harder it is to change the culture.

Frank Eliason and his team are doing great work trying to improve Comcast’s customer service and image using Twitter, but that’s customer support, not magic.

Magic has to be baked in.

Hand them a Sharpie

April 27, 2009 | 1 Comment

Imagine handing your customers black Sharpie markers to scribble their opinions of you all over the stark white walls of your business? Sound scary? Not to Cindi & Rick Hinds.

We recently stayed at the Deer Crossing Inn in Castro Valley, about 30 minutes outside of San Francisco. The nearby scenery is breathtaking, including a beautiful winding drive down Eden Valley Road off of the I-580.

From the minute you drive onto the grounds, you know that this isn’t your typical bed & breakfast. The owners, Rick and Cindi have done all the little things to make their inn stand out from so many others. Rick and Cindi do what great bed & breakfasts always do, they make you feel 100% comfortable and taken care of.

The minute you walk into the main house, you step foot into the large front room with a comfortable couch and knick knacks like a dartboard, letter jackets and a full size scoreboard on the wall.

Then you notice the walls. From top to bottom, and sometimes on the ceiling, the walls are covered in glowing reviews and comments from previous guests. Everyone who wrote their comments on the wall gets to go home with a built-in story to tell their friends & family.

Rick and Cindi converted strangers to friends. Do you?

Would you be comfortable handing your customers a Sharpie?

(Thanks, Cindi and Rick. We’ll be back.)

Green Tea Ice Cream – to go

April 21, 2009 | Leave a Comment

We recently ate at Chow Bar in New York City. The dessert I ordered was excellent . . . green tea ice cream on fresh ginger snap cookies. The flavor combination was delectable.

Last night, we had finished dinner and were talking about desserts when we remembered the one from Chow Bar. As I sometimes do, I decided I needed to recreate it at home. Now.

The problem was, it was 8:30pm. The grocery store had ginger snaps but no green tea ice cream. Other markets that stock green tea ice cream had already closed. Sure, we could always recreate the dessert some other night but once the memory was in my head, the taste was in my mouth.

It was now almost 9pm on a weeknight. Where was I going to get green tea ice cream?

Then it hit me. Sushi Mike’s!

I hadn’t yet been to the popular sushi joint on the corner of our street but I assumed they must serve green tea ice cream. Doesn’t every sushi joint?

So I strolled in and calmly waited. I explained my odd request for take out green tea ice cream to the server. She strolled directly over to the restaurant manager who immediately helped pack up a quart in a generic container for me to take home.

This is clearly not a typical transaction for Sushi Mike’s. They sell sushi to be eaten inside their restaurant, not ice cream to go.

Not a word of English was spoken (by them).

She only charged me $3. (So I tipped her $2 more.)

There was never a moment of hesitation or debating whether selling green tea ice cream to go is ‘against policy’.

Because of this level of service, I’ll definitely be bringing friends to Sushi Mike’s again for a big sushi dinner. For 2 minutes of customer-focused thinking, they just gained themselves a repeat customer. And I’m sure my next bill will be well over $3.

When your customers ask for something outside your scripted playbook, do you accommodate them? Does everyone in your organization have the authority to accommodate them?

Ketchup and Best Buy

April 15, 2009 | 1 Comment

If I asked you how different your service was from that of your closest competitors, many would say, “we’re pretty much the same.”

It couldn’t be further from the truth.

People buy Heinz ketchup, when it is chemically indistinguishable, from the store brand. Same for C&H sugar over generic. By putting a brand around commodities that people used to buy in bulk quantities, from unnamed wooden barrels in Snuffy’s General Store on Main Street, these brands made billions of dollars.

So don’t think your services are the same. Heinz only changed the label and the packaging but by doing so, they changed the story.

Your service is delivered by human beings, who naturally have far more unique qualities than ketchup labels. The tone of voice they use. The confidence they inspire. The rate at which they complete the job. Or don’t. The story they tell and the feeling they deliver to your customer.

As a consumer, you can feel it. Within one minute of entering a business that provides dynamic service, you can tell. If you’ve walked into a Best Buy in the last couple months, you likely felt it. If you’ve walked into a Circuit City in the last couple months………..

Nevermind. You can’t.

You work in marketing

April 9, 2009 | 5 Comments

Everyone works in marketing. Because now, more than ever, it’s all marketing.

Seth Godin has elucidated this brilliantly many times.

HR is marketing.
The salaries and benefits markets your company to prospective employees.

Finance is marketing.
Do you continue to pay invoices late? Why should I keep choosing you?

R&D is marketing.
Ask a little car company called BMW.

IT is marketing.
What story does your website tell? Is it difficult to use or worse, down? I’m gone. (For now, Twitter’s fail whale is the only exception.)

The kid working the cash register is marketing.
How polite is the kid ringing up your products? For many businesses, this is the only touch point with the customer, which makes it the most critical.

Japanese companies get this. More than half of them don’t even have marketing departments because they understand that marketing is everyone’s job.

You work in marketing. Everyone does.

Carpe defect

April 8, 2009 | 1 Comment

Defects are not only OK, they are opportunities to make a customer for life.

Your business should strive to deliver phenomenal service but phenomenal service doesn’t mean zero defects. A wealth of opportunity lies in how you handle the defects.

It may not seem like it, but your customers understand that your business is run by humans and that humans aren’t perfect.

Let’s say you own a new trendy restaurant. It’s the honeymoon stage. Things are good. It’s a busy Friday night. Your restaurant is slammed; there is an hour long wait. In the controlled chaos, three orders from a table of fifteen are made completely wrong.

Option A
The server, cowering in fear from the tyrannical owner, tells the kitchen to rush the fix but tries his best to hide the error from management. The diners whine and complain when the red-faced server finally brings the entrees.

Throughout the week, some of the fifteen diners continue to grumble about the delay and the others simply forget it. It’s a non-story.

Option B
The server, understanding the culture of service that the owner has instilled in everyone from the hostess to the bartenders to the busboys, immediately notifies the kitchen and then the owner. Even before the fixed entrees are rushed to the table, the owner comes by to personally and genuinely apologize for the mistake, delivering a self-deprecating remark about the growing pains of a hot new restaurant, comps the three entrees, gives the slighted diners certificates for a free entree on their next visit and buys the table two bottles of wine.

For a couple minutes of time and very minimal cost, the owner has flipped the story upside-down. Now, throughout the week, all fifteen diners get to spread the story of their favorite new restaurant, where the food was amazing, the service was excellent and how they know the owner. They tell everyone they know the story of how well the mistake was handled.

Perfection is a myth. Seize defects as opportunities.

Subscribe via RSS or Email

Search this blog