Customer Insight

CSM Thinks…

“Customer Service” not a JOB TITLE, DEPARTMENT or NUMBER

It’s a “culture” – small word – BIG impact.

Having worked in the Customer Experience space since 2002, we have seen a steady repositioning of the term “customer service”.

Although customer service is evolving, UK organisations are still lagging, departments often work in silos, focused on department goals, missing the organisations raison d’être i.e. shareholder value through value-add.

There is no easy answer, no quick fix. No single person or department owns the customer; success in terms of wow customer experiences is reliant on leader vision and application from the sum of the parts. Unfortunately this model is more concept than practice in the UK.

Steve West of Percepta put it really succinctly following ECEW:

“Companies whose foundations are built around customer experience from inception are able to be flexible, fast and focused on implementing process change that is customer centric………  However, companies whose foundations have been built on commercial objectives that are not aligned with customer centricity find it very difficult to change the legacy of their ingrained attitude and culture.”

In other words US brands are ahead of UK actions. 

What does an audience with Zappos feel like?

Well believe  it or not, it feels wow!

I met two Zappos folks at the European Customer Experience World (ECEW) conference… and they really walked the talk, let me explain.  By the way, if you haven’t heard of Zappos, Google: Tony Hsieh, and read how he sold his 1st company to Microsoft for $265M in 1998, then started a journey with Zappos.  Zappos was acquired by Amazon in 2009 for $1.2B.

Zappos started as a shoe retailer, and today their daily customer interaction is circa. 6,500 inbound calls, 1,500 online chats, 1,300 emails and 300 tweets!

Zappos has a culture of LOVING customers, and UK metrics like call time go out the window, the longest call at Zappos was 8hrs 23 mins! Honest…

Here are some metrics that matter: Repeat customers make up 75% of daily orders, and repeat customers spend 2.5x more than 1st time buyers.  Which answers the question: How important is it to wow customers so they return?

Why service improvements won’t deliver WOW customer experiences!

Why is it that magic works? You know as a member of the audience that you are missing something, but however hard you watch, it’s just wow… the experience relates to the way our brains are wired.  We base our experiences on previous experiences, in other words we “skim”.  Our brains make connections and fill in the blanks.  Ever felt “life is flying” – welcome to modern life!

How does magic relate to your customers experiences?  Well let’s take an example of a coffee shop; your customers have probably purchased a few coffees in their time. Their brains kick into auto pilot as they go through the purchase and experience process.

Leading customer experience thinker Frank Capek suggests that small incremental changes are missed by customers, as their brains skim over the details.

Frank W. Capek

How does Disney engineer exceptional customer experiences?

The answer: They think of the details that matter to your customers, and build the answer into their service delivery.

Here is a great example of how the obvious can be transformed into a great customer experience for free:

Imagine how many times customers ask Disney staff what time the 3 o’clock parade is. Yes, they actually ask that question. It’s a genuine question, Mum and Dad are deep in the experience, and the obvious can sometimes be missed. Staff could say 3pm, or reply with a cynical answer… but that doesn’t help the customer experience. Nope, they take the question as a prompt to add value to the experience.

A typical answer might be:

Well the parade is at 3 o’clock, which is in 10 minutes, and if you stand just over there by the pop corn vender, Mickey will pass right in front of your family. And from that position, when you take your photo the castle will be perfectly framed in the background.

So what did this answer do? Well the cast member (staff) answered the obvious question, but also answered a number of other questions sitting in the back of the customers mind. How much did this cost? Perhaps an extra 10 minutes in the cast member’s training – almost nothing.

Walt Disney Institute

Are your staff briefed on how to deal with these un-asked questions?

The Walt Disney Institute run courses on how you could learn their tactics to deliver wow customer experiences, just Google them.

Framework for exceptional customer experiences

Following the Disney case study, How Disney engineer exceptional customer experiences, I wanted to share a process outlined by a thinker within the Customer Experience Management (CEM) space – Frank W. Capek.  Frank has a simple framework, which I believe will help you execute wow customer experiences; it’s a three point review:

1. List your required business outcomes.

2. Identify the customer experiences needed to achieve your objectives.

3. Identify the required actions needed to achieve the right customer experiences.

Frank W. Capek