February 18, 2013 · 12:00 pm

Andrew Konoff: Customer Experience Can Learn Lots From Design

Andrew KonoffThis is a guest post written by Andrew Konoff, Community and Marketing Manager at GoInstant. Find out more about Andrew and his blog at the end of the post.

 

For whatever reason, my family has always cared a lot about design. I grew up surrounded by people who were obsessed with making something work best for the people who would use it. It took probably twenty revisions for my parents to settle on what the stairs should look like in our house, but when they were built, there was no question: it was worth it.

You should spend the time on good design.

Now that I work in customer experience management, I’m often reminded of the complex world that designers have learned to navigate. I think that designers might have something to share with us, because ultimately, we’re all tasked with building experiences that delight people. The quotes that follow offer a taste of the way that talented designers bring beautiful solutions to the world.

“There is no design without discipline. There is no discipline without intelligence.” – Massimo Vignelli

Here’s a fun hypothetical: you’re the CEO of a 10,000 person company that serves millions of customers. You have to improve the customer experience to staunch the flow of dissatisfied customers to competitors, or you risk irrelevancy and then bankrupcy.

By now, you probably have a couple questions: where do we start? How much will it cost? What counts as a better experience? When do we know we’ve done enough? What are the complaints people currently have?

You can’t answer these questions without data – without intelligence. And without constantly consulting the right metrics, you’ll be undisciplined in your changes. Your customer experience improvements will be haphazard, temporary, and doomed to fail. There is no hope for customer experiences without discipline.

“People ignore design that ignores people.” – Frank Chimero

Let’s not forget who we’re building our companies for: the people we serve.

Well, that might be presumptuous – you might think your company is just meant to make a quick buck. And that’s fine. But there’s a boatload of evidence that better customer experiences drive far more revenue. It’s what can differentiate a business in a competitive space, and lock in customers once they’ve tried you once. If you want your business to last, you can’t ignore the people you serve.

“Design is about making things good (and then better) and right (and then fantastic) for the people who use and encounter them.” – Matt Beale

Good, better. Right, fantastic. These are normative terms, because design asks you to make decisions based on certain values. If you’re a moral, competent designer, you do what makes life good for people.

Are you a moral company? If you have any customers at all, it’s probably because you fill a need in your customers’ lives. They depend on you for something. It would be profoundly bad if you made your customers lives suck just because they thought they could rely on you.

Enough businesses make things good and right these days – they’re reliable, they’re safe. If you’re committed to customer experience management, then that’s not enough. It wouldn’t be enough for your customers, and you wouldn’t feel like it’s enough for you. You should want, within the confines of your budget and mandate, to do as good by your customers as you can.

They’ll remember, and they’ll even pay for the privilege. That’s because people really do value the things and the companies that even small parts of their life fantastic.

Design and customer experience are about people

Just as a chef has to spend a large amount of time with a kitchen knife, everyone spends a big chunk of time interacting with corporations. If a knife dulls too soon, or is uncomfortable to hold, you’d want a better knife, right? Same thing for companies: bad experiences send a huge percentage of people to find a better alternative.

So treat customers like people. Understand them, care for their needs, and deliver things they didn’t even ask for. That’s what the best designers do, and it’s what customer experience professionals need to understand to make truly wonderful experiences.

goinstant-logoAndrew writes about customer experiences for GoInstant, makers of co-browse technology. He’s interested in the intersection of design, tech, and good old-fashioned customer service. You can find him on Twitter as @andrewkonoff

7 Comments

Filed under Customer Service

November 26, 2012 · 8:30 am

Stefanie Amini: How to Sell to Customers the Way They Want to Buy

This is a guest post written by Stefanie Amini, a fellow customer service blogger.  As she describes it, her blog “is focused on Customer Service for the Instant Gratification era.  The ‘I want it now’ mentality. The faster the results, the better for everyone.” Find out more about Stefanie and her blog, I Want it NOW at the end of the post. 

My blog has been aimed at an audience of customer service professionals intent on delivering the World’s Best Customer Experience in person.  Stefanie’s blog offers insight for e-commerce retailers and service providers. As you read her post, you will see that whether you are selling face-to-face or on-line, her customer service advice would work well in either the bricks and mortar or virtual retail environment. 

Time is money. Time is short. Customers don’t have the time or inclination to mess around on a web site when they are intent on buying something. Purchasing patterns, needs, desires, and behavior are changing rapidly and getting customers while they are “hot to trot” is the trick.

There are a number of triggers which get customers to walk into a brick and mortar store. They are:

  • Curious about the store and its merchandise
  • Attracted by what they see in the window
  • Enticed through promotion
  • Acting on a recommendation by others who had a good experience  – service, price, quality

Store assistants – if they are doing their jobs properly – are attentive, helpful, polite, knowledgeable, and efficient. All this leads to a satisfying customer experience, the developing of customer relationships and of course, ultimately profits for the store concerned.

Exactly the same principles apply to customers entering a virtual store on the Internet. But people who shop on the internet have less time to wander around, have less inclination to wait at the checkout, become very irritable very quickly if things are not clear and easy to understand and activate…and will very soon “walk out” of your web store, by clicking on someone else’s. Result? Lost sales.

How do we ensure that customers get what they want? How do we even know what customers want? Let’s crawl inside a typical customer’s head and take a look around. We’ll soon find the most important things for customers when they fire up their computers intent on spending money in cyber-space – hopefully in YOUR cyber-space store. Here are a few keys to good customer service. If the service is good, the customer experience will be good:

  • Customers want to feel that you care about them: that you care about their needs and requirements, that you’re concerned about their problems. Gratification of expectations – the quicker and more efficiently the better – will see an immediate spike in the “like” index for your on-line store….and that means more sales and a better reputation
  • Faster delivery is vital: the faster you deliver, the happier your customer. That means he or she will come back for more.
  • Courtesy and friendliness are vital elements: customers expect to be treated well, they expect courtesy, they expect politeness and while they don’t necessarily want to be your “friend” (unless it’s on Facebook), they will NOT come back if the treatment – virtually or otherwise – is offhand and dismissive.
  • Deliver on your promise: and the promise starts the minute the customer walks in the virtual door. Fulfilled promises are key to customer satisfaction.
  • When people go shopping, they don’t just want to clutter up their homes or lives with “stuff” – they need something to solve a problem. Whether it’s a professional service or booking a holiday flight, they have needs that must be fulfilled.
  • Product knowledge is probably one of the most important elements in developing good service and good customer experiences. Ignorant sales people – or “ignorant” web sites, that don’t help users get the information they need, will not succeed. Users need to feel that they are talking to people or using sites that are experts in their field. A site that promotes and sells green widgets had better be an expert in green widgets. It’s what customers pay for. It’s what implied and expected when you promote your cyber store.
  • Go a step beyond voicemail and automated responses. Customers want to believe that a live person is behind the site – but they don’t necessarily want to do their sale with a live person…as long as support and more in-depth information is just a click away. Live chat caters for this and gives the customer assurance that their queries will be answered (although it can sometimes take time to get a rep online). But there are other “assistants” – such as WalkMe – to hold the customer’s hand and lead them to the checkout.  Taking this all into consideration may seem a daunting task: it may even appear to be overwhelming.  But WalkMe’s “live” ever-present “assistant”, in the form of little pop-up bubbles over various points, solves the ever-present fear of wandering through a web site alone. Users and customers can be easily led through an often complex and confusing interaction, be it a bank website or a complex social tool.

The fact is that you just need to be able to understand your customer and who they are.  Then only can you truly sell to them the way they want to be sold.

Stefanie Amini is the Marketing Director and Specialist in Customer Success at WalkMe, the world’s first interactive online guidance system.  She is chief writer and editor of I Want It Now, a blog for Customer Service Experts. Follow her on Twitter @StefWalkMe

5 Comments

Filed under Customer Experience, Customer Service

Tagged as , ,

November 19, 2012 · 9:00 am

Ashley Furness: The Secret to Ritz-Carlton’s Customer Service Mojo

Prior to my present position as resort manager for Marriott’s Ko Olina Beach Club, I served as the charter general manager for The Henry – Autograph Collection (Autograph Collection is Marriott International’s exclusive portfolio of independent hotels) when it was reflagged after 21 years as the Ritz-Carlton Dearborn, MI (Ritz-Carlton is  a wholly owned subsidiary of Marriott International). Almost all the associates were former Ritz-Carlton “Ladies and Gentlemen”. Last year The Henry was recognized as one of Marriott International’s Hotels of the Year. I am convinced that while they are now The Henry associates they still would bleed Ritz-Carlton blue.  And if you’ve every stayed in a Ritz-Carlton hotel you know there is something extraordinary about the refined delivery of customer service by its associates. So when fellow customer service blogger Ashley Furness offered to share an interview she conducted with Diana Oreck, vice president of the Ritz-Carlton Leadership Training Center, I quickly accepted. You can find out more about Ms. Oreck and Ashley at the end of the post. But for now, here is Ashley’s inside look at how Ritz-Carlton educates its associates to deliver its world-class brand of exceptional customer service.

The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company is known worldwide for it’s “legendary service.” So much so, Apple uses the luxury hospitality brand as a model for its owner customer support traditions. For both, it’s all about anticipating the customers’s expressed and unexpressed needs.

These practices have not only increased word of mouth and brand loyalty. Ritz-Carlton also boasts among the best employee retention rates around. To create raving fans, they start with inciting brand enthusiasm from their team.

Recently, I had the privilege of interviewing Ritz-Carlton leadership training center Vice President Diana Oreck. I asked her about customer service training, retention, performance measurement and more. Here’s what she had to share about Ritz’ super service sauce:

What sort of questions can you ask someone to find out if they’re caring and can anticipate customer wants and needs?
Well what you want to make sure you do is not ask yes or no questions. You’re not going to say, “OK Ashley, are you a caring person?” Because obviously, you’re just going to say yes, right? So what we do is we ask you in the interview, “Ashley give us a specific example of how you’ve cared for someone in the last month.” “Give me a specific example of anticipatory service that you have extended.”

Ritz-Carlton puts a lot of emphasis on successful new hire orientation. Why is this important for customer service training?  

A lot of companies have a notion that employee orientation really needs to be a data dump of the company, and statistics and who’s doing what. It really isn’t. What we are looking for at orientation is passion. We want to make sure that that new person gets the feeling they made the right decision in joining us.

It’s all about them and it’s all about culture. We feel that orientation needs to be significant emotional experience. Because think about it – you are making  a very big decision in your life to either start a job or change a job. So our two days of orientation, they are solely revolving around our culture, which we call the gold standards. And the reason we do that is we know that the culture creates passion advocates of our employees. Raving advocates of our brand and we don’t think that it’s realistic to ask that your customer be passionate, raving fans if your employees aren’t first.

Is this also something that helps with customer service employee satisfaction and retention?

Yes, it’s about engagement. I will give you an example. The lodging industry as a whole tends to run a 60-70 percent turnover in a year. Here at Ritz Carlton we run in the low 20s. It’s a huge difference.

What else do you do to promote retention?

We’ve got a vast list. Rewards and recognition is huge. Ranging from first class card, which is the most popular form of recognition at Ritz Carlton. Talk about less is more, it’s just a card that says “first class” and we give it to each other to thank each other. It can be peer to peer, peer to manager, employee to president, president to employee. And then we have things like birthdays, we give gift certificates. You can become five-star of the quarter. We don’t do employee of the month, because we find it’s much for meaningful if it’s the quarter. We are also one of the only hotel companies that still provide meals for their staff. We have gorgeous picnics in the summer and the holiday party and it goes on and on.

What metrics or qualitative data does Ritz-Carlton use to measure customer service training success (How do you know it’s working)? How do you collect this data?

Oh yes, we poll our guests once a month. The Gallup organization sends out 38 percent of guests that stayed the month before. It’s done randomly with the hope we will get 8-10 percent return. We live and die by that guest engagement number. This is the sum of responses to about 30 questions, including How likely is that guest to recommend Ritz Carlton? Were they delighted and satisfied with their stay? If there was a problem, did we take care of their problem? We know that if that guest engagement number goes up, we know that our training programs have been successful.

What are the biggest mistakes companies make when training customer service staff?

There not being specific enough. They’ll say things like “Give great service.” Well that’s nice, but people need a road map. Never assume anything, make sure you have your service standards written down and allow people to observe you in action. Don’t assume that their mother or father, or previous employer taught them what really great service looks like. Have a written service strategy.

What other successful customer service strategies have companies adopted by studying Ritz-Carlton?

It’s all about empowerment. The thing that our guests are most wowed about is that every single employee has $2,000 a day per guest to delight, or make it right. But we never use the money because that money is just symbolic. We are saying to our employees we trust you. We select the best talent. Just help the guest. We do a lot of training around empowerment. So I would say this – you need to empower employees. You also need to make sure that you are inspiring employees to bring their passion to work everyday and to volunteer their best. And you do that by reinforcing their purpose, not their function. Not the how to do your work, but the why of the work you do.

About Diana Oreck
Diana Oreck is Vice President, Leadership Center and leads The Ritz-Carlton’s two-time Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award-winning corporate university.  She brings more than 30 years of experience in hospitality to her role and was named as a 2011/2012 Woman of the Year by the National Association of Professional Women. Under her leadership The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company was named the best global Training Company in the world in 2007 as ranked by Training Magazine.

About the Author

Ashley Furness is a CRM analyst for Software Advice. has spent the last six years reporting and writing business news and strategy features. Her work has appeared in myriad publications including Inc., Upstart Business Journal, the Austin Business Journal and the North Bay Business Journal. Before joining Software Advice in 2012, she worked in sales management and advertising. Currently, her research focuses on various topics related to CRM software, sales, customer service and marketing strategy. Follow her on Twitter @AshleyFurness.

3 Comments

Filed under Customer Loyalty, Customer Service, Training

Tagged as , , , ,

October 29, 2012 · 11:59 am

Martin Kramer: The Six Forms of Service

This is a guest post written by Martin Kramer, a fellow hospitality professional. Find out more about Martin and restaurant-academy.com at the end of the post. If you are a restaurant manager or server, I strongly recommend you follow his blogto learn more on how to create the World’s Best dining experience for your customers. You can also follow him on Twitter @R_Academy. For the rest of us, his blog is great insight about dining out from the inside. 

In the past, I have written about using the CASE Method to improve your personal delivery of customer service. What can you CASE from Martin’s insight on the six different forms of service?
 

Recently, I fell over some interesting ideas from the European psychologist, H. G. Haeusel. He explored 6 different forms of service that are appealing to our guests these days. I would like to share them with you, plus some ideas on how you can put them into action in your restaurant. Here we go:

With the “Happy Service” the guests are experiencing a little unexpected surprise, which are triggering happiness and joy within the guest.

  • It doesn’t matter in what kind and style of restaurant you work, arrange very small dishes to be served in between. It can be a soup in an espresso cup before the starter or a small sorbet as a refresher before the main course. Always a nice surprise and also serves as an up selling tool, when your guests are coming back next time. Of course, please confirm that with your manager.
  • Offering an umbrella service on the way to guests’ the car when it is raining, a shawl in case someone (most likely ladies) feels cold in the restaurant, offer reading glasses are just some examples for added surprises.
  • Also, providing attentive and special service to family with kids with little surprises keeps the kids occupied and the parents can enjoy their meal. Makes everyone in the restaurant happy!

“Easy Service” makes life for the guest easier. Things to do and decisions are been taken away from your guests, which might have been difficult or would have caused worries or even troubles:

  • Helping guests with the menu is always a nice touch. Often, they don’t really know about certain dishes, but are afraid to ask. Just explain a bit about the ‘tricky’ and uncommon dishes you have on your menu.
  • Hanging coats, pulling chairs out, escort to (or at least half way) the bathrooms might be common, but hardly carried out. Help your guests!
  • Also, if guests need to leave the restaurant during their meal for whatever reason, ask if you could keep the food warm in the kitchen. Guests usually appreciate that.

“Care Service”, it is important to recognize the guest and to handle the concern or request between human beings friendly and personalized way.

  • Notice your guests and stay focus when you talk to them.
  • Listen to your guests! This sound easy, but it is actually a skill that needs to be learned and practiced. Start today!
  • In case someone has a problem, show true empathy and that their concern, issue or problem is important to you.
  • If you can, solve the problem for your guests or pass along the issue to the person who can solve it. Just make sure, you are explaining the situation so the guest doesn’t need to repeat him or herself. At the end, ensure that the issue has been solved.
  • Sometimes guests forget something on the table, bench or bathroom. Make sure, you keep it, when you find it. In case you know the guests phone number, call them. If you have no information at all, keep it safe.

With “Trust Service” you build trust and make sure that this trust is justified constantly. Not only reliability needs to be part of it, trustworthiness and transparency are a must. In addition, in case something goes really wrong, a certain degree of fairness has to be shown.

  • When guests are visiting your restaurant, they trust the company, the kitchen and you that everything will be at least to their satisfaction. Show them that they can trust you.
  • Especially, if you have guests with certain food intolerances or allergies, it is a must to write down the requests, confirm with your kitchen and/ or let the guests know honestly, in case the request can or can’t be fulfilled. That builds trust.
  • In case of a justified complain, everything should be done (involve your superior) to handle the problem with sincerity and fairness, so that everybody is at least ok with the outcome.
  • Back to the topic of forgotten items; especially wallets, credit cards and other valuable items are very delicate to handle. Inform your superior immediately when you find something like that. Remember, building relationships with guests through trust, are usually the ones that lasts the longest.

Implementing “Power Service” means to fulfill guests’ needs, desires and demands as fast and efficient as possible, so nobody needs to wait or has to find solutions by themselves the hard way.

  • Observe the way you work! Is it fast, efficient, organized? Are there procedures, set-ups or changes you would need to be better and faster? Talk with your superior to implement them!
  • Ensure you are staying focused. If you are trying to do everything at the same time, the ‘disaster avalanche’ is rolling.
  • Understand your guest’s desires, needs and wishes. Find them out through observation, listening and asking!
  • Let’s be specific; once you know what the guest wants – go and get it done! Fast, smart and efficient! That’s what makes your guests feel special! Don’t loose time!

Very important is also the “VIP Service”, where not only celebrities and other high profile guests are counted to, rather then giving every one of your guests the feeling and assurance he or she is the most important person. If a guest is getting even just a small fraction of being categorized into the ‘unimportant’ section, all efforts of delivering any kind of service are loosing its sincerity and meaning.

  • One of the most often carried out behaviors showing no interest in guests is to look at the next table, screen the restaurant or just daze away while placing a plate in front of guests or taking the orders. Honestly, this is horrible and unacceptable! Stay with your guests, look at them, give them a smile and maybe even pronounce the dish shortly and friendly. Makes even the food tastes better…seriously!
  • Eye contact and focus is the key again.
  • Mostly guests feel categorized unconsciously, especially when they are seen as ‘not so important’ and you can pull your leg out trying to make them happy again, it won’t work.
  • You want to make your guest feel like a VIP? Remember them when they come back next time and pay full attention to their needs, everytime. It’s not always easy, but a lot of fun!

I am quite sure, you are doing a few of those ‘services’ already anyway, but I think it is interesting to become aware of them and use them more consciously to improve your services and grow yourself.

All forms of service mentioned are holding a huge power in themselves individually, but if you combine all of them into your way of service and find more things you and your colleagues can do in each ‘category’, the results in terms of guest satisfaction will soar!

Even though the examples I pointed out above are for restaurants specifically, however, if you have a very close look at the general descriptions of the forms of service, I bet you get ideas what you could implement in your environment and business almost instantly to greatly increase your customer service.

Also, have a look in which areas you already succeed and where some improvements could be necessary. No matter if you are the boss of the company or an employee; sit down with your colleagues and brainstorm ideas to increase your service within these ‘categories’ to add more value to your customers. That would mean you are adding value to the company and therefore to yourself and your team!

Give it a try and enjoy the ride!

About Martin

My name is Martin Kramer, born in Hannover, Germany. So far, I worked for more then a decade in luxury hotels and resorts in Germany, the USA, Thailand and Indonesia. A Bachelor degree from a well-known hospitality management school in Heidelberg, Germany, majoring marketing, could have led me into several departments of hotels, but I love Food & Beverage and restaurants, so I decided to stick with it and apply as well as increase my knowledge in that area.

Recently, I started my own website www.restaurant-academy.com to provide useful information for waitresses and waiters to become more successful and satisfied with their job – keeping in mind that guest satisfaction and exceeding guest expectations are the key ingredients for any successful restaurant operation. In short; happy staff = happy guests and happy guests are leading to a successful restaurant operation.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Customer Experience, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Service

July 23, 2012 · 7:55 am

Nick Meiers: Using Kano Analysis to improve guest satisfaction

If you have ever heard me speak about customer service, you know that I believe you should CASE (Copy and Steal (or save) Everything) from your competitors or from a business in another industry to find some idea that you can incorporate into your business to Deliver the World’s Best Customer Experience.

Having had a 30 year career in luxury resorts and hotels, I feel that the hospitality industry can offer strategies that can help B2C businesses improve their delivery of customer service. To that end, this guest post is written by Nick Meiers. Nick writes about leadership, team development, and service excellence in the hospitality industry at his blog, Essential Hospitality. For other customer experience CASE ideas from hospitality, be sure to follow Nick on Twitter @HospLeader.

In this post, Nick explains how the Kano Analysis method can create an exceptional guest/customer experience. 

The expectations, requirements, and demands of our guests don’t all carry the same weight; they’re quite different from each other. Leaders must realize that:

  • There are some things demanded by guests that they will not go without.
  • The quality of some elements will either make or break the guest experience.
  • Guests want a lot of things they don’t even know they want.
  • Some of what you do doesn’t impact the average guest at all.

Confusing these different attributes of the guest experience can lead to:

  • Eliminating the wrong things from the guest experience.
  • Spending too much money on things that don’t matter to guests.
  • Failing to differentiate one’s operation from that of a competitor.

This is a long post, but I’m going to show you how we can sort out guest demands and prioritize appropriately. This is a process, and if you skip to the end none of it will make any sense.

Kano Analysis is a tool used to determine which attributes of a product or service are most important to guests. Knowing which are most important will allow you to prioritize improvement efforts that will result in greater guest satisfaction.

Imagine you’re looking for ways to examine what is important to guests at your resort, specifically in your casual, full-service, tropical-themed restaurant.

First, let’s look at the five attributes of customer satisfaction. You need to understand these to apply the tool.

Understanding different attributes of guest requirements

“Must-Bes”

These are the basic requirements of your guests. You don’t get bonus points for having them, but you don’t have a chance without them. When was the last time a guest at your restaurant said, “Finally, a restaurant with chairs!” Of course you have chairs. Adding more tables to the restaurant wouldn’t make the experience any better if the kitchen can’t support them. Getting tables made out of the world’s most expensive wood wouldn’t provide an appreciable increase in guest satisfaction. Some things, you just need to have.

Other Must-Be (without these at a restaurant, you’re dead): Food, waitstaff, utensils, plates

“Satisfiers”

The more satisfiers you have, the better. Customers generally demand satisfiers—they’ll eat a restaurant with more satisfiers. If your food is good that’s great…if it’s reasonably priced that’s even better. If your waitress is friendly that’s great…if she knows the menu and makes good recommendation and tells some jokes that make your family laugh, all the better. But, it goes both ways. If your food is bland and expensive, and the waitress is boring then your guests will be less satisfied.

Other Satisfiers (make sure you’re doing a good job on these things): wait time, ambiance, comfort, pace of meal, accuracy in preparation, food temperature, proper use of music

“Exciters”

These are the unexpected surprises that meet your guests’ unspoken desires and make their experience great. Imagine you put little umbrellas in the drinks or deliver a birthday cupcake upon overhearing that the family is celebrating Dad’s birthday. The family didn’t ask for a celebratory cupcake—but they did (indirectly) ask for a good time—and you surpassed their expectation. Note that the absence of exciters doesn’t decrease guest satisfaction, since they weren’t expecting anything anyway.

Other Exciters (sprinkle these in and satisfaction improves): anything unexpected that meets a guest’s unspoken desires

“Indifference”

The indifferent elements are those that don’t directly influence your guest’s satisfaction or their decision to do business with you. For example, your guests don’t care about the brand of quarry tile in the kitchen; it doesn’t impact their experience in the slightest. Frankly, they wouldn’t care if you were cooking on a gravel floor.

“Reversers”
These are the extra processes that your guests don’t like. Obviously, you want to keep these to a minimum.

(And remember— Exciters evolve into Satisfiers and Satisfiers evolve into Dissatisfiers. Paying by credit card was once an Exciter—a novelty. It became a Satisfier and is now a Must-Be, especially for the younger generation, as you know if your restaurant doesn’t accept credit cards.)

Now that you understand these different attributes, let’s consider how we would design a customer service survey to determine into which categories guests would place certain aspects of their experience. You may think you know what your guests think, but you want to be sure.

(Note: The Kano Analysis process is complex and out of the scope of this blog; we’re going to look at this on a basic, practical level.)

What do MY guests think are Must-Bes, Satisfiers, and Delighters?

Good question! You might not know if something is a Must-Be, Satisfier, or Delighter. This is where surveys come in handy.

Imagine your jungle-themed restaurant has jungle-themed live music every night. You’re wondering if this is worthwhile. When designing your survey, you’ll ask the question in the functional (positive) form and the dysfunctional (negative) form:

1.) How do you feel when live musicians are performing during dinner at our restaurant?
a) I like it.
b) I expect it.
c) I don’t care.
d) I don’t like it.

1.) How do you feel when live musicians are not performing during dinner at our restaurant?
e) I like it.
f) I expect it.
g) I don’t care.
h) I don’t like it.

You’ll use this chart to see what your guests’ answers mean. I’ll tell you how to read it below.

Negative Question
How do you feel when live musicians are not performing during dinner at our restaurant?

Positive Question
How do you feel when live musicians are performing during dinner at our restaurant?

Like it

Expect it

Don’t care

Dislike it

Like it

?

Exciter

Exciter

Satisfier

Expect it

Reverse

Indifferent

Indifferent

Must-Be

Don’t care

Reverse

Indifferent

Indifferent

Must-Be

Dislike it

Reverse

Reverse

Reverse

?

What can we learn using this table? Let’s suppose that guests responded that they expect to have live music and they dislike it when it’s not there. What would you call this? (Look at the chart). It’s a Must-Be. What if guests responded that they like it when the musicians are performing, but they don’t care when there is not live music. This points to an Exciter. In a large-scale survey, you’d setup a table like this and see where most of the results fell. You can even separate the data by age, sex, or other demographics. Certainly, everybody doesn’t see things the same way.

What do I do with these categories?

Great, you understand your guests’ preferences. What’s next? You might start by making a chart that divides elements of the guest experience into their categories. For example:

Element

Requirement Type

Silverware

Must-Be

Live music on evenings

Delighter

Great waitstaff

Satisfier

Clean dining room

Must-Be

Of course, the list would continue…

Now it’s time to design a Voice of the Customer survey that will show how you’ve been doing on these things. Questions would be in the format:

How was the cleanliness of the dining room?
a.) Very Good
b.) Good
c.) Neutral
d.) Poor
e.) Very Poor

If the data were to show that guests are not happy with your dining room’s cleanliness and you know cleanliness is a Must-Be, you’ve identified an area where you might be losing market share. Improving this won’t dramatically grow your business, but it’ll keep you from losing ground. If your waitstaff aren’t friendly, you will know that investing more resources in training your staff will result in increased guest satisfaction, since this is a Satisfier.

That’s a start. I hope you now have a better understanding of this powerful tool, or at least a new way to see what your guests are really thinking.

6 Comments

Filed under Customer Service

July 16, 2012 · 7:56 am

Micah Solomon: Why don’t the old ways work in business and customer service anymore?

This is a guest post written by Micah Solomon, a customer service and marketing speaker, strategist, and author of the new book, High-Tech, High-Touch Customer Service.

Find Micah at http://www.micahsolomon.com or visit his blog: http://www.collegeofthecustomer.com

 
“Why don’t the old ways work with customers anymore?” … I hear this question frequently when I’m speaking at a business event or starting a new  customer service consulting engagement.

First off: in certain, important ways, the old ways do still work.  Let me explain. What makes you great at social media and online customer service are very often the same skills that made you great before Facebook (sorry:  TheFacebook) was even invented. In other words, social media is a dramatic amplifier of the positive, and of the negative—and if what you do for customers in your business is positive enough (great product, great problem resolution process, consideration of the emotional aspect of every interaction with your customers), the word can get out on a much bigger scale than ever before.

But the context of our work has undeniably changed, because of the recent changes that have swept through the world of commerce. Changes of which social media is only one. Since the advent of the internet, and, most specifically, the broad use of the Web starting in the mid-1990s, there’s been a dramatic transformation of the competitive landscape. The changes brought on by these new communication and distribution channels are in many ways revolutionary, and they’re causing disruptions akin to those of past revolutions.

For example, our sense of timeliness: What was plenty fast this time last year feels draggy now to the very same customers because of changing expectations brought by mobile technology, social media–induced restlessness, the incredible efficiency of vendors like Amazon.com, and other factors.

For a parallel, look at the changes of the mid-nineteenth century. During this period the stability of rural and village life was thrown into disarray due to a host of technological advances, including those making it possible to preserve and transport food. Customers could now purchase edibles from across the country or around the world: The farmer in New England who had been able to count on a captive local market for whatever would graze or grow in his stony fields was now competing against topsoil-rich Illinois and lamb-friendly New Zealand. The result was a mass abandonment of farms throughout the region.

The transformation was striking: Go for a walk in the woods of New Hampshire or Vermont and you’ll still see the proliferation of old stone walls and foundations that attest to the abandoned farms and homesteads of this era.

Or just remember your high school poetry. This New England exodus is the backstory of Robert Frost’s stuck-in-his-ways neighbor still trying to mend a fence: He doesn’t realize times have changed and the fence, at most, is now preventing runaway trees. There are no cattle to contain anymore.

You can’t afford to be similarly left behind by today’s transformational technologies. It’s crucial to invest brain cells, time, and money to keep up with what it takes to hold on to your customers, now that we’re all playing on a global, digitally connected field.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Customer Service

July 8, 2012 · 7:55 am

Don’t settle for the “Customer Service Checklist” – Buy in to the philosophy

This is a guest post written by John-Paul Narowski, founder of karmaCRM. Find out more about John-Paul and his company at the end of the post.

Recently I purchased a book from the local bookstore.

On the way in, I got a friendly “Hi, can I help you find anything?” from a passing employee. I asked where I could find small business books, and she gave me quick directions to the right spot. Perfect. I smiled.

As I approached the checkout counter with the book in one hand and my wallet in the other, the cashier greeted me with a warm smile and a friendly “Hello, I can help you right over here. How are you today?” As I handed over my credit card, the cashier even took note of my name. “Thank you, John. Would you like to sign up for our rewards program?” I smiled again. The service so far was outstanding – it made me feel like my business was truly appreciated.

I normally avoid rewards programs because I don’t like having all of the extra cards in my wallet. But on that day, the service I’d received put me in a great mood. I said yes. Not only did I say yes, but I also imagined returning to the store for my next book and using my loyalty card. After all, this local store was right down the street and everyone was so friendly.

But when I agreed to take the loyalty card, the happy customer service facade came down. It was as if the switch had been flipped off. The cashier (Claire was her name) stopped smiling immediately, and started typing on her computer, presumably bringing up the page where she could enroll me in the rewards program. Then Claire, the very same cashier who smiled, thanked me by name, and asked about my day, scrunched up her eyebrows. She gave me a puzzled look and asked, “what was your name again?”

I’m sure many of you have experienced something similar. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that Claire had been trained to follow a standard “customer service checklist” – one of those 3 step magic bullet systems designed to, in this case, get me to sign up for the rewards program. Smile, say thank you, read the name off of the card, and ask to join. I’m not the only customer that can see right through that – especially when it becomes obvious that the employee wasn’t really listening.

Let it be known – customer service is not a checklist. It’s a philosophy. Each customer deserves special treatment. Checklists don’t make anyone feel special. They just reinforce the fact that we are all treated the same. Checklists are what I like to call “doing the minimum.”

To Claire, forgetting my name was no big deal. To me, Claire represented the local bookstore. As Bill is fond of saying, “To the customer, YOU are the company.” When she forgot my name after her canned 3-step loyalty card checklist, it made a big difference. It was as though the bookstore had already forgotten about me, my money, and my choice to support their local business.

As a small business owner myself, customer service is one of my passions. After all, the customers pay for the employees, the store, the product, the lights, the counter, and everything else. But here’s the kicker. The customers aren’t thinking about all of that. They pay for their experience, not yours.

So why shouldn’t we focus on customer experience? I call this business philosophy customer-centricity. I’ve made it the focus of my entire business. Every decision I make, from hiring and training employees to refining my product, is designed to provide the customer with a better experience.

Next time you catch yourself or your employees following a checklist, ask yourself if the customer feels special. Then do something extra and see if it makes a difference. Grow out of relying on the checklist. Put in that extra effort to make the customer feel special. Trust me – the customer does care, and they are paying attention.

John-Paul Narowski is a customer-centric thought leader and founder of the Ann Arbor, MI-based karmaCRM, a small business software solution designed to help manage sales teams and build strong relationships with customers.

John-Paul, or JP as his friends call him, is fanatical about customer service and the customer-centric business model. Improving customer relationships is his passion and his business. Every decision JP makes at his company, from hiring employees to developing new features for his software, is based upon improving the customer experience.

 JP was recently interviewed by fellow customer service expert, Shep Hyken, where he discussed further his customer-centric philosophy. You can read that post here. Find out more about JP and karma at http://www.karmacrm.com. You can also follow karmaCRM on Twitter. 

Leave a Comment

Filed under Customer Experience, Customer Loyalty, Customer Service, Training

Tagged as

July 2, 2012 · 7:50 am

Don’t expect C-level execs to get the value of customer service

Often after one of my presentations, an attendee will approach me to tell me of a terrible customer experience with one of the big brands.  They ask me, “If they say that customer service is so important, then why is it so bad? Corporations are people, too. And if they are people, then aren’t they customers at some point? Don’t they experience what we experience? Don’t they get it?”

I respond to them by saying that no matter how much those companies say they value customer feedback, don’t expect their delivery of customer service to get better any time soon. While C-level executives must be customers and experience service for themselves, they experience it like they do in the first class section flying on a plane. Since they are not personally paying for the ticket, they do not worry about getting their money’s worth. They do not weigh the experience with the expense to assess value like we do. Going to the front of the line and with ample leg room and access to whatever their needs might want, they are blind to what we real customers must endure behind that first-class curtain. As we complain about cramped leg room and rising baggage fees, they simply do not hear any of it through their noise-cancelling headphones.

When they are back in the office, they do what they were hired to do which is to maximize profits. While executives have a base pay we would envy, they are moved to maximize profits to earn their incentive pay of bonuses and stocks. And if sales are flat because customers can’t afford to spend much, then to protect their profit margins, executives dictate layoff and other cost cutting measures, oblivious to its impact on the customer experience. To them, customer centricity measures do not quantify with an ROI on a profit statement. So I understand why they do what they do. I understand it. That doesn’t mean I agree with it.

Unfortunately, customers don’t hire the people who serve them. Companies do. And companies, led by those executives, don’t care. The fish stinks from the head down, but the head does not know it’s stinking.

I believe the real question is “How does a customer service representative who wants to give exceptional service survive in a company that doesn’t care?”

If you are one of those C-level executives: Don’t wait for Undercover Boss to call. Make it a part of your daily leadership regimen to get out of the office to find out what is really going on in your operation. You can’t build the business without sales. And you can’t build sales without satisfied customers. If you don’t know what’s going on, one employee could kill your business and you won’t even know it when it happens. I can tell you that every C-level executive who has been spotlighted on Undercover Boss finds out that the company isn’t performing as well as he/she thought it was. I can also tell you that any viewer of Undercover Boss who is an employee in any company can tell you that they saw it coming.

If you are an employee: Theodore Roosevelt said, “Success, the real success, does not depend upon the position you hold but upon how you carry yourself in that position.” You do not need a CEO title to act like a leader. Know this: At the moment that the customer is interacting with you, you have as much ability to build customer loyalty as your CEO. Make the difference for your customer. Your goal: When the customer walks away from you, he says to himself, “Wow! That’s the best thing that has happened to me today.”

4 Comments

Filed under Customer Service

June 25, 2012 · 8:00 am

Six Major Customer Trends from Customer Service author and speaker Micah Solomon

Learning to treat individual customers as individuals is a key to business success. But being aware of underlying trends in the marketplace is also essential for the success of any business that relies on significant numbers of transactions and forward-looking planning. Here are six major customer trends I identify in my new book, High-Tech, High-Touch Customer Service.  Continue reading →

Leave a Comment

Filed under Customer Service

June 4, 2012 · 8:00 am

Viral Wisdom by James Lawther

In a minute I will turn over this post to James Lawther, this month’s guest blogger. But first an introduction.

Charlie “Tremendous” Jones said, “You’ll be the same in five years as you are today, except for the people you meet and the books you read.” And one of my professional development mantras is “Commit to lifelong learning.” The internet and social media gives us all the opportunity continue learning from others, meeting new people on-line to stimulate and continue a discussion about topics that are important to us. I enjoy reading and exchanging views about customer service, leadership and operational excellence. In that pursuit, I connected with James via Twitter and subscribed to his blog immediately after reading his bio:

James Lawther is a middle aged middle manager.

 To reach this highly elevated position he has worked for numerous organisations, from supermarkets to tax collectors and has had several operational roles including running the night shift for a frozen pea packing factory and doing operational research for a credit card company.

 As you can see from his CV he has either a wealth of experience, or is incapable of holding down a job. If the latter is true this post isn’t worth a minute of your attention.

 Unfortunately, the only way to find out is to read it and decide for yourself.

You’ve got to agree that someone with that kind of broad professional experience and sense of humor about it is well worth following. Since subscribing, we have exchanged comments on each other’s blogs and via Twitter  and I have really enjoyed the dialog. If you are intent in driving continuous improvement for your business, I’d recommend learning from James by visiting his website.

So, without further ado, James Lawther:

Today I am going to infect you with some viral wisdom.

If you haven’t been struck down yet, viral wisdom is the plague of the 21st century.  Victims suffer with assorted symptoms including lost time, vague fleeting thoughts and exasperated looks from their husbands.  The infection passes from friend to friend via the links they post on facebook, and the e-mails they send.  The wise realise that the most contaminated place in the world is the twitter stream sitting on their very own iphone.

The most contagious strain of viral wisdom cloaks itself cunningly.  It appears to be very sensible, creates a palpable “a-ha” moment in the mind of the reader, is a little bit (but not too) clever and compels you to read on because you never know, it could be really informative (unlikely, but possible).

The first piece of viral wisdom I have for you came from my twitter stream:

Modern Art = I could do that + Yeah but you Didn’t

It is hard to be wise in 140 characters but I’m sure you can take some meaning from that, did you feel the “a-ha”?

The second piece of wisdom came form an e-mail a friend sent me.  It was an interview with Will Smith.

Before I share it, I need to set the record straight, I like Will Smith, I used to watch the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air avidly and Men in Black has to be one of the world’s greatest movies, (well the eight foot tall cockroach was worth seeing) but let’s be honest, Mr. Smith isn’t exactly remarkable is he?

  • He is funny, but he isn’t Rowan Atkinson
  • He is talented, but he isn’t Lawrence Olivier
  • And as for looks, well George Clooney has the edge

Having said that he is an extremely successful man, and by his own admission, he didn’t get there off the back of raw talent.  So how did he do it?  In his own words:

“I’m not afraid to die on a treadmill.  I will not be outworked.  You may be more talented than me.  You might be smarter than me.  And you might be better looking than me.  But if we get on a treadmill together you are going to get off first or I am going to die.  It’s really that simple.  I’m not going to be outworked.”

And there is the second piece of viral wisdom.

If you want to be successful there is no substitute for hard work.

What does that mean for you?  Simply this…

Delivering great customer service isn’t really that difficult, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to:

None of it requires genius, massive insight, immense personal presence or super human strength.  It just requires hard work.

Or to put another way:

Great Service = I could have done that + Yeah but you Didn’t

Now would be a good time to stop stumbling, digging or reading blog posts, and give Bill a phone call so you can make a start.

Alternatively, if you want a little more quasi wisdom, you should read my blog about service operations.  It is quite infectious.

1 Comment

Filed under Customer Experience, Customer Service, Training

Tagged as , ,