Tag Archives: Customer experience

February 18, 2015 · 12:57 pm

CX

Maybe this customer-centric thing is starting to sink in.  I’m encouraged by the results of a study put out by the eConsultancy folks in conjunction with SDL which explores how retailers are addressing customer experience, or CX for short.  From the results it seems that many retailers have figured out that price is just one factor in the purchase decision and that it is outweighed these days by how customers interact with the brand.  In fact, the report states that providing an exceptional customer experience is the single most important strategic choice that retailers can make now and in the years ahead. 89% of the retailers surveyed for this report agreed or strongly agreed to the statement “Our customer experience is our brand.”  It’s a good point for any business, retail-based or not.

Think about it.  A quick visit to a search engine can usually produce pricing comparisons but that same search engine tells you little or nothing about how the customer is treated.  If you’re researching a product, how complete and truthful are the product listings?  If there is a problem with your order or you have a question as you purchase, how helpful and responsive is the customer service?

Every business (even mine!) has customers of some sort.  Their experience with you begins with their first encounter: maybe your website, maybe some content you’ve issued, maybe the response to a form they filled out or maybe someone answering a telephone enquiry.  There is one thing I found surprising in the study which is that only 12% said “company culture” is a barrier to successful customer experience management.  If that’s true it’s incredibly encouraging and represents a big shift.  I’m not sure I believe it however.  Many companies still put way too much emphasis on pushing merchandise that provides the highest margins or which is aging over the needs and wants of the customer.

If your product has been commoditized (read that as “if your primary selling point is price”) than you are going to have a hard time competing from my perspective.  A great customer experience differentiates your brand.  I’m glad to see that way more folks are agreeing with that and investing in that differentiation.  Is that something you’re doing?

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January 30, 2014 · 11:44 am

The Devil You Know

The folks at Forrester issued a study on marketing and customer experience the other day and it makes a number of interesting points.

Image representing Forrester Research as depic...

Image via CrunchBase

Maybe “interesting” isn’t the right word; maybe it could be more like “disappointing” or “confusing.”  Entitled The Convergence Of Brand, Customer Experience And Marketing, the study deals with the intersection of brand, marketing, and customer experience.  One might expect those three areas to be operating in sync.  One would be wrong.

Forrester found that 63% of Chief Marketing Officers consider customer acquisition their number one priority, while only 22% give precedence to retention. Kind of a silly choice, because there is a lot of  evidence that shows that generating loyalty and holding onto existing customers is better for a brand financially  than spending resources to bring in new customers.  In fact, the 22% statistic represents a decline in the focus on retention.  In 2011, the number was 30%.

What’s a little strange is that many of the CMO‘s do believe that they are, in fact, highly customer-focused.  The research found, however, that they are highly transaction-focused and are trying to foster conversions, not conversations.  Lifetime value is only a concern to a little over a third of these folks while two-thirds focus on segmentation studies to pursue new customers.

It’s almost as if there are two completely different experiences – one for prospects and one for existing customers – while it seems obvious that those experiences should be united into a vision that derives from the brand itself.  Otherwise, as the study found, there is customer confusion, dissatisfaction and departure.

No one likes to be treated like royalty when they’re being wooed only to be given short shrift once the deal is sealed.  Even worse, if a brand is a promise to the customer, no one likes to be confused about what that promise is or how it is to be kept.  Heck, even accounting recognizes that and puts something called “goodwill” on the balance sheet.  The disconnect cited in this study is disturbing and the trends it recognizes are even more so.

I’m a believer in “the devil you know” and the value of doing everything I can for existing customers.  I’m a believer in making the brand the source of strategic thinking about customers, current and future and expressing that thinking in a cohesive way.  Are you?

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May 13, 2013 · 10:24 am

Why I Won’t Be Using FTD Again

I hope you all had a lovely Mother’s Day. My Mom is in Florida and I’m not so we celebrated the day separated by distance. In an attempt to bridge the geographic gap, I ordered some flowers for her last Friday from FTD. Frankly, I’m more of a “support local businesses” kind of guy but since FTD uses local florists to fill the orders and since I was in a time crunch on Friday, I used FTD’s site to place the order. Which I won’t be doing again.  Of course, there are a few lessons for any business in the midst of this.

Flower

(Photo credit: @Doug88888)

I asked that the flowers be delivered on Saturday.  It gave them 24 hours and hopefully would avoid the peak period of deliveries yesterday on Mother’s Day.  As Saturday night rolled around and I hadn’t received a phone call from Florida to let me know they arrived (my Mom always calls when we send her stuff), I began to get a little worried.  By mid-afternoon Sunday, we had already called her to wish her a great day but nothing had arrived (we asked).  Time to follow-up with FTD.

Lesson number one.  On what is one of your busiest days of the year, don’t turn off customer service.  When I called FTD’s line, I pushed “2” to check on my order status and was told (more or less) that we’re not answering the phone today because it would be overwhelming so use the web site.  No humans.   Hello?  Learn from Butterball, who adds hundreds of reps to their turkey help line around Thanksgiving.

Lesson number two.  Using the web site, I clicked to “check order status.”  I found my order number and popped it in, expecting something like UPS‘ excellent tracking or Amazon‘s system.  Nope.  Within seconds, I had an email telling me “We have received your request to confirm that your gift was delivered.  When we receive confirmation of delivery, we will notify you via email.”  First, that’s NOT what I was seeking – I knew it hadn’t been delivered (my Mom is faster than your email!).  Second, I still don’t have a confirmation email on delivery and yes, thankfully, the flowers did get delivered two hours after I began trying to get an update (and a full 52 hours after they were ordered for next day delivery).

Lesson number three.  I paid a service fee of $22 for the convenience of not having to find, to call, and to order from a local florist near my Mom.  I had, I think, reasonable expectations in return for that fee:  the flowers would be delivered as promised, on time, in good shape, and that there would be some sort of customer service to support me in the event of a problem.  Hey – we’re dealing with gifts for people’s mothers – buyers don’t want anything less than what they expect and these were definitely mixed results at best.

While digital technology has done a lot to kill local businesses (ask any small, local book or music store), there is nothing like the personal service one can get from using old-fashioned technology:  a phone and a human.  Until and unless companies like FTD figure out how to replicate that experience, I won’t be using them again.  You?

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