All Posts Tagged With: "customer listening"
Smart Question #3: Who Are Our Customers and What Do They Require?
(This excerpt is from The Baldrige Edge, an e-Guide from Baldrige.com. You can learn more about the guide by clicking on the black-and-red box on the right.)
Your organization exists to serve people, as does your department and your work group. Without customers, external and internal, you don’t have a job. Without satisfied, even delighted, customers, your job—and your organization—may be in danger.
In the course of a day’s work, it’s easy for the customer to disappear from the discussion, and that is an opportunity for you. We’ve already talked about process thinking (Smart Question #1) and the fact that everything you do, and everything your group, team, or department does, is part of one or more processes. The final step in each process is the delivery of something to the customers of that process. I’ll give you a few examples:
- You deliver end-of-the-month financial results to leadership. The leaders are the customers of this reporting process.
- You deliver training to employees. The employees are your customers, as are the leaders responsible for developing your workforce.
- You deliver products to customers through distributors. Both the end users of your products and the distributors are your customers.
- You deliver information to people who contact your call center,…
A Baldrige View of Customer Experience
The Baldrige Criteria ask: How do you create an organizational culture that ensures a consistently positive customer experience and contributes to customer engagement?
Adam Richardson defines “customer experience” as the sum-totality of how customers engage with your organization and brand through the entire arc of being a customer. In “Understanding Customer Experience” (HBR, October 28, 2010), he suggests three layers of customer experience to consider:
- Customer Journey. The journey a customer takes with your organization from first contact to providing a product or service to supporting that product or service and extending the relationship with the customer.
- Touchpoints. All of the points where the customer interacts with your organization.
- Ecosystems. By Richardson’s definition, the integrated ecosystems of products, software, and services that offer more than isolated touchpoints.
Have you ever used Zipcar? It’s the largest car-sharing company in the United States (it’s also in Vancouver, Toronto, and London). Here in the Twin Cities, the Zipcar locations are all in or near the University of Minnesota; college students are big Zipcar customers. Richardson touts Zipcar as a great example of a company that used its understanding of the entire arc of the customer car-renting experience to turn car-sharing into a mainstream business—and help the environment in the…
1Nov2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedSeeking Very Satisfied Customers
According to a recent survey by American Express, most Americans are willing to spend an average of 9% more with companies that provide excellent service. The American Express Global Customer Service Barometer survey suggests that not many companies are taking advantage of this opportunity: Nearly half of the respondents said companies are helpful but don’t do anything extra for them, while 21% believe that their business is taken for granted. A little over a third think that companies have increased their focus on providing quality service in the current economy, which is higher than I would have expected considering all of the layoffs and the added pressure that puts on the people who remain.
One of the adages about customer service is that people are much more likely to talk about a bad experience than a good one. The survey contradicts that notion, finding that consumers will talk about a good experience 75% of the time but complain about a bad one 59% of the time. If that’s the case, companies should be investing more in delighting their customers rather than just avoiding a bad experience.
When it comes to your online image, the survey found that consumers put more stock in negative…
28Sep2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedBe Careful How You Measure Customer Satisfaction
In a recent webinar conducted by ActiveStrategy, Mark Graham Brown, author of a number of Baldrige and performance measurement books, talked about key customer metrics. He advised people to be wary of the most common measurements such as customer surveys (usually fail to ask the most important questions and employees figure out how to “game” the survey), customer complaints (only about one in ten unhappy customers complain), customer loyalty (based on faulty assumptions since loyalty is driven by many factors other than satisfaction), focus groups (expensive and time consuming), and net promoter score (satisfaction doesn’t equal loyalty and the people in the middle aren’t addressed).
Instead, Brown suggested two great customer metrics:
- Customer Aggravation Index. Use focus groups to identify the things customers hate, rank them according to severity, and keep track of how you perform on them. It’s a meaningful metric that predicts loyalty and it’s being used by such companies as FedEx, DTE Energy, and Midwest Airlines.
- Matrimonial Index. Rate customer relationships on a scale of 1 to 10 based on how “married” they are to you or to your competitors.
According to Brown, you can consider a number of factors for an index including satisfaction levels, aggravation levels, length of relationships, level…
24Mar2010 | Steve George | 2 comments | ContinuedServing Customers through Shopper Marketing
Shopper marketing is a relatively new concept that is changing how consumer package goods companies and retailers market their goods. According to the UT Shopper Marketing Forum, available here, “shopper marketing refers to understanding consumers while they are in shopper mode, regardless of the brand, category, or channel and leveraging these insights to create better shopping experiences, superior brand equity, and more loyal shoppers.”
The catalyst for shopper marketing seems to be the need to spend marketing resources more efficiently and effectively. As a result, companies and retailers “are shifting millions of dollars within their marketing budgets from traditional media to shopper focused and specifically in-store initiatives”—yet another nail in traditional media’s coffin.
In addition to consumer goods companies and retailers, shopper marketing involves brokers, advertising agencies, data management companies, and consultants. It affects market research, segmentation models, collaboration programs, pricing structures, packaging, demonstrations, displays, store layout, and floor level execution.
According to IndustryWeek, 73% of consumer product goods manufacturers and 86% of retailers rank shopper marketing as the number one activity that delivers meaningful return on investment (“Shopper Marketing Is a Supply Chain Partner’s Next Marketing Frontier,” Marcel M. Zondag, January 18, 2010). They are embracing shopper marketing because the Internet and social…
22Jan2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedMy Personal Baldrige: Customers
You have a job because you provide something that someone else needs. Could be external customers. Often it’s other departments in the organization. Maybe it’s your manager. Whoever your customers are, if you serve them well, you’re making your organization more effective and your contributions less dispensable.
First, a caveat: You can’t personalize Baldrige without a little learning and effort. Second caveat: The Baldrige model is not designed to prescribe an individual’s role, so we’re taking some liberties in doing so. We welcome your feedback on whether you think we’re on track.
As the Baldrige Criteria state, “performance and quality are judged by an organization’s customers.” Your performance and quality are judged by your customers. That being the case, you need to know who your customers are, what they require, and how you can meet and exceed those requirements.
Here are steps you can take to apply customer-driven excellence to your job:
- Identify your customers. Your boss is a customer. Coworkers are often customers. Other departments may be customers. Look at who gets the output of your work—they are your customers—then consider who is served when your work comes together with the work of others in the organization. Which external customers use the output of…
Creating a Positive Customer Experience
Few companies face the levels of customer dissatisfaction that Comcast confronts every day. Web sites have been created solely to document the horror stories of aggrieved customers. In June, Comcast ranked second in MSN Money’s Customer Service Hall of Shame, and it ranks second to last among cable and satellite TV companies on the American Customer Satisfaction Index.
After years of poor performance and faced with growing competition, Comcast decided to take customer satisfaction seriously. It started by monitoring blogs and Twitter to find and assist unhappy customers. Next, as a StarTribune article documents, it developed a new Customer Care program that features:
- Giving Comcast technicians handheld devices that can test a home’s entire network
- Expanding technicians’ hours to include working on Sundays
- Giving employees “Make It Right” cards to a hand out to anyone with a complaint; the cards have a phone number to call for priority assistance
- Training technicians and call-center agents to listen and be respectful and to help solve problems the first time
- Promoting a new customer guarantee that promises to handle problems quickly, respect the customer’s time, and offer a 30-day money-back guarantee on all services
Listening to the Voice of the Customer is the first step to improving satisfaction and building loyalty.…
26Aug2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued
