The survey also found that 20% of the brands we interact with have a positive impact on our lives.

Which list would your company make? (You can see two Top 10 brand lists at the end of this article.)

Umair Haque, director of the Havas Media Labs, explains the difference: “Did this brand make you fitter, wiser, smarter, closer? Did it improve your personal outcomes? Did it improve your community outcomes? Did it pollute the environment? We’re trying to get beyond ‘did this company make a slightly better product’ to the more resonant, meaningful question: Did this brand actually impact your life in a tangible, lasting, and positive way?”

I’ve written before about corporate social responsibility and how companies are embracing it to gain a competitive advantage (here and here), which is one part of the conclusions drawn by the Meaningful Brands survey and Haque. The other part is that companies are creating enduring brands by creating value for their customers, making them “fitter, wiser, smarter, closer,” to use Haque’s description.

This is where integrating the Baldrige model can help. The Baldrige Criteria ask key questions about understanding who your key customer groups and market segments are, what each requires, and how you meet and exceed those requirements. The Criteria ask how you build and manage relationships to acquire new customers, build market share, retain customers, and exceed their expectations throughout the customer life cycle, and how you measure your performance in these areas to increase satisfaction and engagement.

Creating value for your customers requires, first, a rock-solid understanding of what they value and, second, effective processes for delivering that value. As Baldrige Award winners have shown, companies that integrate Baldrige demonstrate their ability to create value for their customers by industry-best performance on key measures of customer satisfaction and engagement.

The ten most positive brands identified in the Meaningful Brands survey and the Center for Positive Marketing index are shown below.

Meaningful Brands: (1) Ikea; (2) Google; (3) Nestle; (4) Danone; (5) Leroy Merlin; (6) Samsung; (7) Microsoft; (8) Sony; (9) Unilever; (10) Bimbo

Center for Positive Marketing: (1) Wal-Mart; (2) Facebook; (3) Google; (4) Visa; (5) McDonald’s; (6) Yahoo!; (7) Coca-Cola; (8) Amazon; (9) Microsoft; (10) Kellogg’s

Your organization needs processes for:

• Identifying customer and market requirements
• Identifying and innovating products and services to enter new markets, attract new customers, and expand relationships with existing customers
• Enabling customers to seek information and customer support, conduct business with you, and provide feedback
• Determining and deploying the key support requirements for each customer group
• Determining which market customers and markets to pursue
• Using customer, market, and product/service information to improve marketing, build a more customer-focused culture, and innovate
• Build customer relationships and market share
• Manage customer complaints to resolve them promptly and address the causes of the complaints

Best practices to consider:

• Since people in the organization deal with customers daily, they assume that they know what customers require but have never validated their assumptions, which is a critical first step to improving customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• New product and service development processes involve customers in evaluating ideas and features.
• The organization also involves customers in identifying support requirements, which are then deployed to all employees who interact with customers, with measures of performance on those requirements in place and reviewed.
• Determining which customer groups and markets to pursue and which products and services to provide is an ongoing, strategic process that builds on core competencies and innovation.
• Understanding that very satisfied customers are much more loyal than satisfied customers, the organization identifies exactly how to deliver high levels of satisfaction at all stages of the customer life cycle.
• Customer complaints are sought, captured, and analyzed to improve processes and increase customer satisfaction.

Common problems areas:

• The lack of a rock-solid understanding of customer requirements produces a shaky foundation upon which to build customer relationships.
• Customer support requirements are not identified, validated, or systematically deployed, which leads to support failures and lost customers.
• Companies settle for satisfied rather than very satisfied customers, which makes it harder to retain customer and build relationships.

To read more about building customer relationships, click on these articles:

• Meaningful Innovation
• A Baldrige View of Customer Experience
• Seeking Very Satisfied Customers
• Kano Satisfaction Model
• Bottom-Line Value of Customer Engagement

The company owns four Rudy’s Country Store & Bar-B-Q stores and three Mighty Fine Burgers, Fries and Shakes, all in or around the city of Austin, Texas. Co-owners Brian Nolen and Ken Schiller started the company in 1993 after a successful partnership in the insurance industry. They went into the restaurant business because they liked the idea of a business where you could distinguish yourself from your competitors—which they have certainly done:

• Gross profit exceeds the industry standard
• Overall guest satisfaction ratings of 4.7 exceed the best competitor’s rating of 4.0
• Order accuracy rate of nearly 100% compared to the industry average of 87%
• A 92% record of passing health department inspections compared to 86% for competitors
• Food costs as a percent of sales 3% below those of similar restaurants
• Turnover rates better than the industry averages
• Absentee rate slightly more than 1% exceeds the 3.5% of benchmarked organizations

K&N Management’s search for excellence led them to Pal’s Sudden Service, which won the Baldrige Award in 2001. To help share the secrets of its success—a requirement of Baldrige Award winners—Pal’s established Pal’s Business Excellence Institute (BEI), which provides training and consulting. You can learn more about the Institute here.

K&N Management brings its entire management team to Kingsport, Tennessee, the home of Pal’s BEI, every year. “It’s something you have to see and experience to appreciate,” says Ken Schiller in a video on the Pal’s BEI site. “If you tell somebody about, it they really don’t believe it until they see it for themselves.”

Although several food service companies have taken Pal’s BEI training, nearly 60% of the participants in 2009 came from healthcare. “We haven’t done anything on food service in healthcare,” says Clay Rolston, marketing director at Pal’s BEI. “They’re focused on things like patient flows through the ER and how to improve patient satisfaction scores. Pal’s is recognized as a well-run business and they want to see first-hand how it works.”

K&N Management partnered with Pal’s BEI to accelerate its Baldrige journey to performance excellence. As Schiller says, “We’ve averaged about 12-14% a year in same store sales growth over this time and part of that’s in a down economy, the quality of our people is up substantially, and Pal’s really allowed us to know where the bar can be set. It gave us a benchmark that we otherwise wouldn’t even know was possible.”

To learn more about K&N Management, Pal’s Sudden Service, and other Baldrige Award winners, click on these articles:

• Seven Win 2010 Baldrige Award
• Ready to Go Big
• First Engineering & Architectural Firm Wins Baldrige Award
• Application Summaries of 2009 Baldrige Award Winners Available
• Small Wonder
• Heartland Health’s Grand Unifying System
• A Role Model for Public Education
• The Only Baldrige City – So Far

CDW had been using Net Promoter to measure customer satisfaction and brand health. You get a Net Promoter Score by asking one question of your customers—How likely is it that you would recommend your company to a friend or colleague?—and then grouping the responses by promoters (those who answer the question with a 9 or 10), passives (7-8), and detractors (0-6). You subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters to get your Net Promoter score.

This has been a leading edge measure for many companies because it helps them identify opportunities to improve customer satisfaction. CDW decided that Net Promoter was too one-dimensional so, with the help of the person who developed Net Promoter, it went to a three-question approach that, according to Calvin Vass, CDW’s senior manager of research, looks at “different dimensions of the relationship; what the customer plans to purchase with us, if they are committed, and what they would do if we went away.” Vass is quoted in “Is Net Promoter Really the Ultimate Question?” by Drew Neisser (Fast Company, October 20, 2010).

CDW segments its market into two groups, Active Customers and Less Active Customers. It surveys the first group quarterly, receiving more than 100,000 surveys per year. It surveys the second group monthly with more than 800,000 inquiries annually. “We are always trying to bring [the second group] more deeply into the franchise,” said Vass.

CDW’s senior leaders review customer feedback quarterly and act on their analysis to improve performance, such as launching new customer retention initiatives in 2009. One initiative involved asking customers what types of technologies they were interested in rolling out in the next couple of months. “Through this research,” Neisser writes, “CDW identified 12,000 customers interested in specific offerings that were passed onto the sales team. These leads were turned into 200,000 quotes and 108,000 orders placed, amounting to a whopping $230 million in additional revenue.”

CDW responds to any negative feedback or problems identified by its customer surveys. It’s quick and positive response to more than 7,300 complaints has helped boost customer loyalty.

Another initiative involved the formation of three customer “communities” comprised of 300 small, 300 medium, and 300 large business customers. CDW asks each group for input on advertising, product, and operational issues, and it encourages members to communicate with each other. “They can ask another member about a specific type of technology,” said Vass. “It is a very vibrant back-and-forth conversation, certainly not one-way at all.”

The goal of any customer satisfaction measurement system is not the score: It’s using the information from the survey to improve customer loyalty and bottom-line results. CDW offers innovative ways to do both.

To read more about customer loyalty, click on these articles:

• Seeking Very Satisfied Customers
• Kano Satisfaction Model
• Recommendability Boosts Revenues
• Be Careful How You Measure Customer Satisfaction
• Bottom-Line Value of Customer Engagement

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 reviews on blogs and social networking sites (57%) than in positive ones (48%), but the percentages are close enough that positive and negative reviews are both important.

The Baldrige Criteria ask several questions about how you build customer relationships including how “you create an organizational culture that ensures a consistently positive customer experience.” The Criteria ask about your processes for listening to customers, managing complaints, and determining customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Sound, systematic customer processes are the key to producing very satisfied customers, which the American Express survey shows will spend 9% more with your company than they will if they receive less than excellent service.

To read more about delighting your customers, click on these articles:

• Kano Satisfaction Model
• Fast Food Customer Focus
• Be Careful How You Measure Customer Satisfaction
• 9 Ways to Get Closer to Customers
• Bottom-Line Value of Customer Engagement

If you’re wondering how “gamification” might apply to your company, consider Mangalindan’s examples:

• Mint.com made personal finance a game. You can set a financial goal online and track your performance toward achieving it. You can check out your total financial score, which encourages financially responsible behavior. You can even compete with other members who have similar goals. If you think that sounds lame, think again: Mint.com claims more than 1.5 million active users.

• Nike sells a pedometer (Nike +) that you put in your sneakers. It monitors distance, pace, and calories burned and transmits the data to your iPod. The Nike software on your iPod “rewards” you if you reach a milestone. For example, if you run and you best your 5-mile distance time, Lance Armstrong congratulates you via audio clip. Nike has sold more than 1.3 million Nike + units.

• Foursquare is a mobile social network that “rewards” users with virtual badges. For example, check into a location the most and you become that spot’s “Mayor.” Foursquare has more than two million users.

Gaming is the newest form of incentivizing customers to do business with you. Are their aspects of your products or services that can be “gamified”?

To read more about attracting and retaining customers, click on these articles:

• 10 Critical Questions: Your Customers
• Stakeholder Mapping
• Creating a Unique Customer Experience
• Walk in Your Customer’s Body Armor
• Be Careful How You Measure Customer Satisfaction
• Bottom-Line Value of Customer Engagement

• Trader Joe’s is roughly the same size as Whole Foods. It is owned by Germany’s Albrecht family but still managed by its founder.

• The company is very selective about where it puts new stores. It’s only adding five locations this year. It looks at demographics to choose sites in places that fit its distribution infrastructure.

• Trader Joe’s offers a limited selection of products. Typical grocery stores carry 50,000 SKUs; Trader Joe’s sells about 4,000, about 80% of which bear the store brand. “With greater turnover on a smaller number of items,” Fortune writes, “Trader Joe’s can buy large quantities and secure deep discounts. And it makes the whole business—from stocking shelves to checking out customers—much simpler.”

• Trader Joe’s pays its suppliers on time without the extra charges for advertising, coupons, or slotting fees that other supermarkets charge.

• The company buys directly from manufacturers that ship straight to Trader Joe’s distribution centers, which ship daily to stores. The stores don’t carry much inventory so ordering must be precise.

• Store managers can make low six-figure incomes while full-time employees can start at half that, and Trader Joe’s annually contributes 15.4% of employee’s gross income to tax-deferred retirement accounts.

• Trader Joe’s is becoming more corporate. As a former employee observed, “You have to grow up at some point. You have to start following rules. You have to start putting in checks and balances.”

It’s becoming more systematic in its approaches within a culture that has been very successful. As the article notes, “A Trader Joe’s brings with it good jobs, and its presence in your community is like an affirmation that you and your neighbors are worldly and smart.”

So that’s why they put a Trader Joe’s in my hometown.

To read more about successful cultures, click on these articles:

• A Baldrige Leader
• What Great Organizations Achieve
• Zappos and a Sustainable Culture
• Guided by Your Culture
• Sustaining the Culture
• 2009 Baldrige Award Winners