Shouldn’t they be warm and inviting and give me a sense of confidence? Shouldn’t they make me feel comfortable talking to an enthusiastic and knowledgeable floor staff who can demystify some of the techo-babble? Instead (in my opinion) they appear angry, condescending and don’t want to be bothered.

First impressions count. Whether you’re the size of Sears or a solo-preneur, your business needs to make a good impression from the top all the way down to the front lines.

So when was the last time you observed how your customer facing employees present themselves to prospects and customers? Not lately? Then why not conduct some secret observations to check how your business comes across to those who want to do business with you? Make some some blind calls or inquires through the website. Evaluate common points:

• Time to respond
• Enthusiasm
• Knowledgeable
• Attentiveness
• Was your problem solved to your satisfaction?

Document it. Share the results (and your expectations) with your staff. Then do it again next month.

What else would you suggest?

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Topic #1 – Find a need, fill a need

Do you honestly know what your customers and prospects really want? Perhaps your stubborn attitude is the reason why your sales are down.

Are they really happy? Ever survey them?

• Use customer comment cards? (How was the experience? Would they recommend you?)
• Go out on the streets and literally ask people in the neighborhood what they think? (Ever heard of you? How do you compare to the competition?)
• Put a sample in their hand to see reactions.
• Ask them to complete an online survey (or paper survey if necessary).
• Invite them to your office for lunch.
• Invite them to participate in an advisory board.

Be prepared for honest criticisms:

• Functional (Overly complex? Too simplistic? Opportunities for improvement.)
• Aesthetic (Butt ugly?)
• Cost (Overpriced? Underpriced?)
• Value / ROI (As compared to competition. Both factual and perceived.)
• Quality (Have standards been slipping?)
• Service (Too little? Too much?)
• Lack of support

What are the right questions to ask? Well that’s a topic for another time. Just don’t overwhelm your customers. Ask straightforward, meaningful questions.

Topic #2 – Tools to find out what your customers really want

Some of my marketing research colleagues might be gagging on the simplicity of these suggestions. But reality is, most small+mid-size businesses cannot afford formal methodology based research. They need directional info quickly and cheaply.

Free polling software:

• Survey Monkey free up to 100 responses
• Zoomerang free up to 100 responses
• Poll Daddy
• Linkedin

If you are already using an email marketing service, some have built-in survey applications:

Vertical Response
Constant Contact

Having difficulty with fielding customer support inquiries. Checkout popular paid services like:

• Get Satisfaction
• Zen Desk

This is part 4 of my series: Run your business like Gordon Ramsay. We’ll break down key observations on how to turn a failing business into a success. Chef Gordon Ramsay has successfully launched several restaurants and in his popular show, Kitchen Nightmares (Fox, BBC America), he helps failing business owners identify their weaknesses and implement significant positive change in the way their business is operated. Love him or hate him, his keen business skills and insistence on high standards have made him a success.

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• Online ticket marketplace, StubHub, angered this father by switching the row and seats he originally paid for. Dad retaliated with a video on YouTube.
• Many claim that DomainUSA scams Churches and non-profits by submitting invoices for services they were never engaged to perform.
• We all know how awful it is to wait for cable/utility guy to show up sometime between 8am-5pm. But if the Comcast cable guy sleeps on your couch, grab your video camera and post it on YouTube.
• Did the mechanic really try to run over this guy’s wife?
• The news media loves to publish and broadcasts stories about big companies that irritate customers to the point of violence. Check out the grandma with the hammer who was treated rudely by her cable provider.

Marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Epinions provide feedback mechanisms to praise or trash their transaction experience. So be conscious of your reputation.

• Make sure your customer representatives are treating customers properly.
• Always provide a solution. It’s unacceptable to say that nothing can be done. Offer choices, a discount, or a credit — anything as a means of trying to reach a compromise.
• Do your best but realize that not everyone can be satisfied no matter how hard you try.
• Try to be proactive at relationship building, not reactive.

Please share your thoughts or horror stories.
-Roland

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Consumer writes to Customer Service.
> Customer Service Rep forwards to Customer Service Supervisor.
>> Customer Service Supervisor forwards to Associate Marketing Manager.
>>> Associate Marketing Manager forwards to Marketing Manager.
>>>> Marketing Manager forwards to agency Account Manager.
>>>>> Agency Account Manager forwards to me.

Along the way, each person tacks on a message about how urgent this is, get back to me right away, yada yada yada.

By the time I see it, the email thread is fairly lengthy. When I scroll down to the original message, it typically says something like this:

“Your web site doesn’t work.”

[sigh...] I take application bugs seriously, but it never occurs to anyone that this is not enough information to make a guess as to what the problem was. So I’ll spend a half hour reviewing the site, testing functionality and forms, and looking at our Web Analytics to see if there were any traffic spikes or periods of no data that might indicate there was a problem with the Web hosting. 100% of the time I find nothing wrong. So I say nothing wrong could be identified by the information we have.

Of course clients want to hear that something was wrong because “the customer is always right.”

Then I have to reeducate everyone again that the user did not report any details that could help identify what the problem might be. It could be any number of things:

• User didn’t say what he was tying to specifically do.
• Maybe the user is not waiting for a Flash movie to play.
• User may be on slow dial-up connection, not broadband. Or possibly sharing Internet connection on a network that is congested due to heavy use by other users.
• User might be using outdated operating system and browser version we are not currently supporting. (e.g. Windows 98 and IE 5)
• User may be using a computer that is very old/slow, loaded with many applications or malware that freezes from Flash, video or other functionality.
• The user may be impatient and clicking everything and causing the browser/computer to freeze.
• We don’t know if user only tried once. If user tries again, it might be fine.
• Maybe the site is blocked by the military/school/company/organization that the user is accessing the Internet through.

Having someone say the Web site doesn’t work is too vague to confirm if it is a Web hosting issue, programming issue, database issue, hardware issue, software issue or user issue.

It is critical to try to educate the Customer Support team to ask more detailed questions when they get obscure comments. The following is the minimum amount of information we need to recreate and identify problems:

• What type of computer being used: brand, processor specs, memory (e.g. Dell Latitude D610 Intel Pentium M processor 1.86GHz, 2 GB RAM)
• What Operating System (e.g. Windows XP Professional)
• What type of Internet connection (i.e. DSL, Cable, T1, Dial-up)
• What Web browser and version (e.g. Apple Safari 2.0.4, Firefox 2.0.0.4, Internet Explorer 7)
• Specifically what day and time (including time zone) did the user try to access the Web site?
• What specifically did the user try to do?
• What happened as a result of the user’s actions?

Also, design contact forms to capture useful information. Clients tend to ignore this, but as a result, we waste a lot of time down the road troubleshooting vague claims.

The user was kind enough to report a problem. But without details, it’s unlikely any problem can be identified.

Please let me know if you found this useful.
Thanks.
-Roland

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“Nordstrom, for example, has a reputation for delivering extremely personalized and attentive customer service for people visiting their stores. That high-touch attribute is quite difficult to replicate online, setting the company up to disappoint online visitors. Those disappointed online visitors could then potentially punish the brick-and-mortar locations.”

“Retailers have been very slow to understand that, to the consumer, it’s one brand.”

“The retail brand today transcends the channel. When [customers] have a poor Web experience, as in poor page loads [or] unsuccessful transactions, it’s taken out on the storefronts, too. Consumers don’t understand the complexity of delivering an optimal Web experience.”

Key take away: A company must work hard in both the physical and online worlds to deliver a consistent message and high user experience. Failing in one environment will discourage the consumer to interact with the brand in the other.

-Roland

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Collecting user requirements right the first time is critical in terms of defining project scope, managing to budget, managing time invested and ultimately delivering a successful project. Needless to say, if you get it wrong, your client and team may loose confidence in you.

I wish I knew who to credit for this original image, but I found it on this blog.

When the client first proposes a project, I like to ask for a project brief. If I can’t get that, I summarize the scope as I understand it and make the client review and confirm. Another kickoff exercise I like to use is to have the client fill out a Marketing Questionnaire and/or Technical Questionnaire with many questions about what the client wants to accomplish and how it will be measured. This homework assignment is good to get the client thinking about the project. Then I’ll follow-up with more probing questions.

In summary, take the time to do the due diligence and get the user requirements accurate the first time. Your project and reputation may count on it.

Good luck.
-Roland

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We waited patiently for an hour to get in. We took their 5 minute “rocket ride” to Mars. Inside, the atmosphere is awesome. It looks like a futuristic restaurant inside a cavern (in the 2 story basement of a Manhattan office building). The kids loved it. The waitress who took our order and the roaming “aliens” were friendly. Everything was fine until a server with a nasty attitude dumped our food on the table. While the kids didn’t notice, the 3 adults at the table wouldn’t stop talking about it.

To leave the restaurant, customers get to “beam” back to the lobby using their teleporter. You enter a room, door closes behind you, lights flash as you are demolecularized and reassembled back on earth. Then another door opens and you exit to the lobby/gift shop. Unfortunately they choose to leave both doors open and the kids could see straight through from the restaurant to the gift shop, which ruined the illusion. The kids would not stop talking about how disappointed they were.

This week I ordered a dehumidifier from Lowes.com. During the online order process, the Web site clearly promised me that I could pickup the product in store 2 hours after I received a confirmation email. The email arrived at 2:14pm. I arrived at the store at 5:45pm. They had 3.5 hours to pull the product and queue it for pickup. The store was not busy. The customer service rep immediately found my order in the computer. Yet it took 40 minutes for them to find the product and get me out of the store. There were a dozen employees in blue smocks standing around talking to each other. While the employees were friendly, my time was wasted.

What to do? COMPLAIN!

I filed complaints. I wasn’t nasty or angry, but I clearly explain that the company failed on a customer service promise.

Chances are you wont get anything more than an brief apology, but it is critical to bring things like this to the company’s attention. Otherwise, the company will blissfully go about business as usual.

How to complain:
1. Set your tone. Don’t be nasty or angry.

2. Do not nitpick about stupid things. Instead position them as suggestions for improvement.

3. Clearly explain the circumstances and why you think your expectations were not met.

4. Provide details (i.e. store info, product info, day/time, names of people you talked to, etc.) so the company can easily figure out what went wrong and who was responsible.

5. Post product reviews online to share your experience. But be fair and wait until after the company has had a reasonable chance to respond to your complaint. Then be sure to explain in your review what went wrong and how the company may or may not have tried to correct the problem for you.

Be sure to imagine yourself in their shoes. If you got an angry complaint with no details, how seriously would you take it? But if you get constructive criticism with details, then you can take meaningful action.

I hope this helps. Go get ‘em!
-Roland

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I’m a conscientious marketer, so I really wanted to make sure I did a good job. I greeted each customer with a smile, repeated the order to make sure it was correct, asked for their money and counted out the cash I gave back to them. Finally I wished them a nice day.

I was glad when my volunteer shift was over. The experience did make me think about how easy it becomes to assume others are doing the job they are supposed to. For example, I didn’t need to be courteous or helpful. Sure it’s part of my nature, but I wasn’t being paid or incentivized to do so. My motivation is that I like to treat people how I would prefer to be treated by them.

Marketing Managers: How is your Customer Service Team doing? Have you ever tried to call/email/visit to experience for yourself how the average consumer is treated by your brand? It’s a good exercise, especially since consumers are more likely to remember and speak about a negative experience.

You might also benefit from a day spent working with the Customer Service Team. You may uncover opportunities to improve a product feature or canned responses that need to be updated.

Plus, I bet the Customer Service Team would be highly impressed that you take interest in their work and would be motivated to deliver high quality work if they knew you recognized and respected their work.

-Roland

About me…
Twenty years ago, in the mid-80′s, I spent 2.5 years working at Burger King. At first I learned all the secrets of sweeping and mopping, cleaning the parking lot and washing trays. Soon I was trusted to make shakes, sending meat through the broiler, and deep frying various munchables. Eventually I was given store keys, an Assistant Manager title, an 80 cent raise and “responsibility.” More importantly, I got to trade in my maroon corduroy with yellow collar crew shirt for any plain short sleeve shirt and tie combo I chose. Back then, looking half way important was better for my morale than the title and responsibility.

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Keep it.

Try to position yourself as a marketing partner, with a vested interest in the success of your client’s programs. Keep an eye out for what your client’s competition is doing. Look for opportunities to cross promote the brand. Try to bring news to the client before they learn about it elsewhere. Eventually you will be recognized as being a valuable contributor.

-Roland

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