Creating the Ultimate Customer Experience: A Little Freedom, A Lot of Responsibility?

Freedom—it’s a truth we all take way too much for granted.  Freedom to___ : Fill in your own blank. It’s what we all want, at some level.   Freedom to book a vacation anywhere, never mind the cost.  Or just to take a midweek day off, no questions, no guilt. Freedom from a specific corporate mindset has been the goal of everyone who ever started a business. Your cubicle-bound friends sigh in frustration / admiration, wishing they could be free to do whatever THEY want, too, using their own splendid ideas instead of answering to the Boss of the Year, Evil Variety.  YOU have the freedom to be your own boss and answer to no one.

As they say in New Jersey, yeah right.  Freedom in business means you’re at the epicenter, but you’re often answering to a hundred bosses, better known as customers. The freedom to pursue your own instincts has to balance with that demon bottom line. You already know that if you really want that day off smack in the middle of a workweek, you’ll do more work in advance, and endlessly check emails or messages while you’re ‘off.’ That freedom comes with a price tag.  If you crave some extra freedom, in the form of family time, or taking a class, how much responsibility are you willing to bear in exchange?

Reba McEntire, the entertainer, once told an interviewer that although she loved skiing and riding horses—she’d been a rodeo champ as a teen—she no longer indulged in either hobby. “I’m responsible for too many people trying to make a living,” Reba said. “If I get injured, it’s not fair to all of them.”  Instead she’s chosen a new freedom from routine: designing business casual clothing for women. Her outfits are aimed squarely at those who buy her CDs or watched her TV series. She’s responsible—there’s that word again!—for choosing the colors and fabrics, calling it more fun than she imagined.

Seeking some freedom from your routine? Sometimes the price tag comes with the bonus of new creativity. Worth its weight in responsibility.

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Creating the Ultimate Customer Experience: Does the Image Match the Message?

From lipstick color to slick new marketing efforts, we’re always conscious of our image, both personal and professional. If the New Year has inspired you to take the measure of your business, you’ve probably scrutinized your image from all angles, determined to be as glossily perfect as possible. It’s inevitable:  even the least paranoid among us secretly wonder, “What do they think of me?”—that great “they” being anyone from longtime clients to in-laws to postal workers.  We can’t help it. Like actress Sally Field, we want to be liked. Really, really liked!

And if our image is key to getting attention, the message is crucial to keeping that spotlight.  You’ve parsed and played with the message, too.  Is it concise and clear, letting customers, and potential customers, know just what you’re offering, promising and delivering?  Like many of us, you may tweak that message year –round. Perfecting that wording, adjusting the tone, and reminding staffers to keep it center stage.

And the ultimate check on the endless check list:  how does that message line up with your overall image?  Think about those car commercials so ever-present during the holidays, the ones where a shiny new car sits in the driveway, adorned by an enormous red bow on the roof. Wow, what a great gift. Who wouldn’t want one? (The car, not the bow, although the bow is certainly impressive enough that you MIGHT get away with giving that on a gag gift.) That’s the message, right? The ad campaign has been around awhile, so you’ve seen it, but honestly, do you remember what car it’s pushing? We recognize the bows—the packaging—but not the brand. At least I didn’t. I guessed and was surprised how way wrong I was. The indelible image of the gigantic red bow made an impression, but the message of the ad— Buy a (your guess goes here!)—was lost in the snow.

In tallying your new year, new-you expectations, take an outsider’s view of what you’re seeing, and what you’re saying. If you’ve got a matched set, you’re on the road to 2010 success, even without a big red bow.

PS Just in case you’re wondering…that big red bow is wrapped around a Lexus in those holiday commercials!

• Wondering if your image matches your message? Mystery shopping will provide you with the answer!
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Creating the Ultimate Customer Experience: Make It a Garden Party!

You may have heard of that old ballad by the former teen idol Ricky Nelson. The tune, called “Garden Party,” told of a concert at Madison Square Garden, where Nelson was jeered by displeased fans who preferred his old songs, not the new numbers he performed. “You can’t please everyone, so  you gotta please yourself,” Nelson sang.  Easy for him to say: he got a solid gold hit record out of a mocking swipe at his former fans.

In business, as in life, you really can’t please everyone.   If one customer likes a chatty, friendly approach, another wonders why you can’t  just “cut to the chase.”  Another may need nonstop maintenance while his opposite is practically hands-off.  And there YOU are, like a den mother taking a troop of Cub scouts to the zoo.

So who are YOU trying to please, and can you serve all of them well? Naturally the answer isn’t easy.  If it was, we‘d all have Donald Trump’s bank account (please, keep his hair!).

It’s like when the oxygen mask drops on the plane. You put it on first, and then help your child or seatmate.  As long as you can breathe, you can function, and juggle. If you aren’t pleasing yourself first, you can’t possibly cope with anyone else’s wants and needs. You’ll be too unhappy to see that one business associate needs nurturing, another needs a good joke and a third needs a crisp, just-the-facts rundown.

The cliché tells us the customer is always right. Our daily reality tells us that, sometimes, that is true. But without you staging the show, there is no customer.  And if you’re unhappy while trying to appease too many others, customers will pick up the signals and head for the exits.  Borrow Ricky Nelson’s songbook and make your theme “Me First, Then How May I Help You?”

• Want a fresh perspective on what your customers are thinking about your operations? Let Angela’s company, Market Viewpoint, help you see your business through your customers’ eyes. ”
  

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Creating the Ultimate Customer Experience: Sounds of Smiling

A friend who worked in radio once told me how she achieved what she called her “radio voice.”  As soon as she entered the studio, “I said oh, this’ll be fun, and started smiling,” she said. She kept the smile in place so her face felt relaxed, no matter what the content of the news or feature story she was about to read into a microphone.

“The audience can’t see you, so that’s a great advantage in working on how you sound,” she said.  “I listened to tapes of myself speaking on the air and I always sounded better if I was smiling. Tension or fatigue comes through in your voice, either on the air or on the phone. If you smile, you can rise above that.”  The very act of smiling sends a message to your facial muscles, and your mindset instantly improves:  something fun is afoot!

How often have you made a phone call in a hurried manner and the person on the other end says, “What’s the matter?” Your tone, your distracted mindset, travels loud and clear, whether via Verizon, AT&T or even a string and tin cans.  It’s not natural to smile all the time, so we don’t. But the smile in your voice warms your tone, relaxing your listener, inviting real attention.  Something to sell? Great, they’re on board.  It takes energy, especially if you’re tired, or dreading a call, or distracted by something unrelated. Do what my radio friend did: wave a hand in front of your face, to symbolically banish everything else but this.

Think fun, put on that megawatt smile—you’ll sound like a friend. And your customers will stay tuned.

• Want to know how your employees are coming across to your customers on the phone? Mystery shopping can help!
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Creating the Ultimate Customer Experience: Promises, Promises!

If you made a resolution by the dawn of January 1’s early light, it was likely a self-improvement promise. To walk another mile a day, or hit the gym twice a week.  To cut the caffeine, learn to love green tea, and bypass the fast food.  These promises to ourselves usually come after some overindulging prompts us to start a new, healthy habit.  If we’re vigilant, we’ll carry through for at least a few weeks. If we’re really determined, we’ll turn a resolution into a regimen.

Did you make any similar promises in business?  Even the most successful among us—you know who you are, lucky you!—can always improve the bottom line.  The simplest way is communication. Customers love to know you’re not only listening to what they say but looking at what you can do about it. The promise by auto-email to ‘get back to you within 48 hours’ is standard communication-speak for most companies now. Customers who are really frustrated will continue to simmer for those 48 hours, and be ready to unload anew when they finally hear from you.

But what if you ditch the standard pitch? Instead of the random blanket promise to “get back to you,” freshen up the wording, and the emotion behind it.  Promise to examine their concerns, address their individual ideas. Remember on the show “Frasier” when Kelsey Grammar’s character would sincerely say “I’m listening” to his radio callers—while doing something else? Not multi-tasking, just Frasier-tasking.  Good for sit-com laughs but not for business.

If you promise customers a new level of attention, not just to the details in your day-to-day dealings, but in their concerns and suggestions, you’ll open a dialogue that adds weight to your promises.   And if you’re honest about what you’re promising—that a concern will be addressed and there will be follow-up, no matter the outcome—the customer will be inclined to make his or her own promise to you. The promise of continued business.

• Want to know if your staff is following through on the promises your business makes? Consider mystery shopping as a way to accomplish this task!
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Creating the Ultimate Customer Experience: The Complaint Department

When you read a newspaper article or something in a magazine that you disagree with, do you whip out pen and paper (or Blackberry), dashing off a note to the editor? And do you then wait to see if your insightful letter—edited for space of course!—appears in print? Not likely! Now it’s almost too easy to register an instant complaint. Click on the comments button, let them know how wrong they are, hit ‘publish.’ You, and every other reader with a gripe, get an immediate forum. You can forward your comments, and the offending article, to everyone you know, on Facebook or Twitter, or via email.

If you promote your business on one of these sites, you know how fast word travels.  Reaching customers in great numbers, at high speed, is a gift. But if an unhappy customer wants to tell the world, complaints travel even faster than instant coupons.  And if his gripe is not quite accurate?  Too late: the truth may be out there, as “The X Files” proclaimed, but it’s competing with dramatized inaccuracy.

In this New Year, many of us are still finding our way around the social media universe. It’s tempting to instantly fire off a volley of defense when someone floats something wrong or unkind.  But a fine whine can strike a sour note.  If you rise above the complaint, tactfully setting the record straight without maligning the complainer, your classy ways will outshine the gripe. And if the gripe has merit, a calm explanation beats a war of the tweets.  Okay, the complainers are still out there. But if they know you’re paying attention, maybe their next tweet will be a compliment instead.

Creating the Ultimate Customer Experience: You Say You Want a Resolution?

Making New Year’s resolutions is as traditional as watching the Rose Parade. Breaking New Year’s resolutions is as predictable as the turn of a new calendar page. How many bright promises made in January are still going strong by Valentine’s Day? When Easter rolls around, is that exercise habit still happening? How about the plan to touch base with random customers by phone, just to chat, once a month? Or the plan to mystery shop this year to see how satisfied your customers are?

The experts probably have plenty of data to show why we so often fall on the path toward improvement. Boredom, lack of time or self-discipline, easy access to Oreos, all share the blame.  And the guilt over letting a resolution slide adds to the defeat, no matter how many excuses (reasons) we cite.

Yet NOT making a resolution seems somehow wrong. Of course we’re all looking to improve in some category, from offering more frequent feedback to drinking more water.  But there’s a way to minimize the whole resolution revolution. Instead of that top-10 January 1 To-Do List, spread it out.  Go for a “new month’s resolution,” easing the stress over too much too fast.  A new behavior needs about three or four weeks to become a habit, or so the experts tell us. Our daily routine and inner system needs that time to accept this change as part of the scenery.

By time you’ve incorporated the first resolution into your life, you’re energized by your success and ready for more. Bring it on, you’re up for it!  If you’re planning to handle payments more promptly, that’ll be in place by time you tackle a new emailing list.   Instead of the wreckage of too many failed resolutions, you’ve built on bite-size progress toward your overall goal.  Who needs Christmas in July (or is that Happy New Fiscal Year)? By then, yours will be the only working New Year’s resolutions in town.

• Wondering how well your staff is sticking to the customer service goals they set? Mystery shopping can provide you with the answer.
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Creating the Ultimate Customer Experience: Blank Pages

The clean, blank pages of a new calendar can be dazzling. Empty space whiter than a snowdrift, poised for the possibilities that will fill the days, months and year.  After the holiday frenzy of too much intensity, expectation and just plain busyness, no wonder we crave a fresh beginning. School kids cling to September as the time of new starts—hey, it IS the season of new backpacks and binders!—but for the rest of us, January’s promise sparks   those resolutions. Perhaps especially because 2009 was such a rocky roller-coaster year for so many of us, with uncertainty and depressing headlines following us everywhere. Get it gone, we say, close the door on it—along with all our own extra pounds, that credit card habit and all of last year’s mistakes.  And we’ll be better for it.

But will we?  What about all the accomplishments of the past, ready to build on and expand? And customer partnerships, forged over time—they need to be nurtured and brought along for the ride into the new decade.  Maybe last year offered a chance to make one small change—a new method of seeking  feedback,   or a surprising idea that snowballed, so to speak, into a team-building exercise.  Instead of relegating it to the 09 files, fine-tune the feedback machine, and look for a new variation on the idea.  The year itself may rank high on the gloom-and-doom scale. But the lessons learned during the dark days, when customers were scarce and hopes for new business faded, can color this new year’s pathways.  A little extra kindness and attention, a new focus on an individual’s business, a more efficient way of getting the job done, all because the uncertain past forced us to adapt and adjust.

So fill in the blanks with new hope. But take along the leftovers for some added flavor.

• Angela’s company, Market Viewpoint, is dedicated to “Helping you see your business through your customers’ eyes. ”