Creating the Ultimate Customer Experience: Generational Motivation

Have you ever wondered what it takes to get and keep a staff motivated? We are hearing from more and more clients that it is becoming a challenge to keep individuals interested in their jobs and motivated to achieve high levels of performance. Your customers know which employees are motivated and which aren’t, so from a customer satisfaction perspective, it pays to focus on this issue.

Many of Market Viewpoint’s clients ask me how to keep their staff, especially their superstars, engaged and excited about their work. Most managers, if they truly see themselves as coaches, will take responsibility for motivating their staff. But this can be a difficult task. What works for one individual doesn’t seem to work for another. When I am asked why this happens, my question back to the manager is, “Have you ever really considered who you are trying to motivate?” Employees come from different generational groups – all inspired to achieve by different things. Is it possible that you are taking a “one size fits all” approach to motivation?

Consider these steps. Segment your staff into generational groups (Traditionalists, Baby Boomer, Generation X, or Millennial). Know that the motivational hot buttons are different for each group, so be prepared to be flexible with your approach.

The Millennials on your staff are motivated by tangible and intangible rewards that represent immediate satisfaction. Think gift cards and free meals.

Generation X values rewards that give them freedom. Think relaxed dress codes and flexible leave policies.

Baby Boomers, on the other hand, are motivated by financial rewards and job recognition. Think bonuses and corner office space for this group. While the Traditionalists, or World War II generation are motivated by things such as abbreviated work weeks and alternative work schedules.

All of the generations are motivated by recognition. That pat on the back that lets someone know they are doing a good job is important for all.

Meet with your employees on an individual basis to understand what they value and where they are at this phase of their lives. Use your mystery shops to determine the things people are really good at and explore these areas in depth.

To find out more about how Market Viewpoint can help you motivate your employees, contact us today. A motivated staff is just a phone call away!

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Creating the Ultimate Customer Experience: Do You Want to be Right or Do You Want to Keep the Customer?

Millions of viewers tune in each weekday to watch the Dr. Phil show. This psychologist and author appeared on nationally syndicated television with his own TV program in 2002, and he continues to bring his own brand of pop psychology into homes across the country each weekday. Known for his witty comments, and amusing ways of expressing his thoughts, Dr. Phil often asks a conversation stopping question of the couples who appear on his show who are experiencing marital discord. I love the question because it literally stops the squabbling couples right in their tracks. He asks, “Would you rather be right, or would you rather be happy?”

As business professionals, we often deal with customers who can be demanding, difficult, and sometimes downright angry. Think about how you can apply the wisdom of Dr. Phil as you train your employees on the finer skills of dealing with difficult customers.

When an angry customer is in your midst consider taking the following action:

1. Stop what you are doing and focus all your attention on the situation at hand. Like a bomb, it has the potential to explode so focus and be careful.

2. Take a deep breath. This has a calming and centering effect on the employee who is being attacked.

3. Tell the employee to remind themselves that altercations present opportunities to discover not who is right and who is wrong in each situation but for finding solutions to problems that can lead to the creation of positive experiences for customers. Borrowing from Dr. Phil, the employee should ask themselves, “Do I want to be right, or do I want to keep this customer?”

4. Instruct the employee to ask what the customer sees as a reasonable solution to the problem. All too often, we are ready to give away the store when sometimes, all an angry customer is looking for is an apology.

5. Finally, let the employee know that they should always apologize for inconveniencing the customer. This is not an admission of guilt or blame in the problem, but an acknowledgment that, for whatever reason, the customer experienced some level of inconvenience. Saying, “I am so sorry you were inconvenienced by this,” in a very sincere manner can go a long way to calming down that irate customer and getting everyone in a space where problem solving can occur – and isn’t that where you really want to be?

So don’t shy away from those difficult customers. Use conflict situations to create positive customer experiences for your clients.

Do you have a favorite way of handling difficult customers? I’d love to hear about it! Leave a comment!

And in keeping with the spirit of Dr. Phil…..”Let me know how that’s workin’ for ya.”

Creating the Ultimate Customer Experience: When I Was a Kid…

It’s happening. I am becoming one of those people who looks back in time with fondness and wishes we still did things certain ways. I’m not saying I’m not open minded and willing to change with the times. No, I’m not saying that at all. What I am saying is that we are losing sight of some of the things that make for strong business relationships and great customer experiences.

When I was a kid…

If you placed a call to someone and left a message, they called you back, usually the same day. Today, I am lucky if I get a call back at all. We seem to be playing a game of professional hide and seek. The important point here is that business can only be conducted through good communication, productive conversations, and mutual agreement. When we don’t connect, the business process gets stalled and frustration sets in.

When I was a kid…

People made eye contact. They sat in meetings paying attention and looking each other in the eye. Today, we find professionals slouched in their chairs, eyes downcast and focused on whatever electronic device they happen to be “plugged” into. Business is about trust and, as humans, we establish this on a very basic level with our ability to make and maintain eye contact and our use of body language.

When I was a kid…

People cared about their appearance. It was a sign that they respected themselves. I know that corporate casual is in vogue and I am not saying that I need my business meetings to be black tie affairs but at least be clean and neat with an appearance that says you care.

Do you ever wish we did things the way we used to? If you could turn back the clock, what business behaviors would you bring back that seem to be missing today?

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• Market Viewpoint …helping you see your business through your customers’ eyes.
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Creating the Ultimate Customer Experience: Piece of Cake with the New Media

A pale pink truck glides to a halt outside a downtown building, while a cluster of people push forward, clutching dollar bills.  Eager for an afternoon sugar fix, the office workers quickly snapped up cupcakes, from key lime to plain chocolate, happily parting with $3 for the privilege.  The cupcake craze,  hugely popular in some cities, has a new flavor in Washington, D.C., where one entrepreneur opted to keep it moving  instead of opening a standing-still store. What a nice twist…the product coming to the consumer!

Besides a distinctive truck, this cupcake business relies on instant communication to, excuse the pun,  drive traffic. Tweeting her locations and the day’s flavor choices, adding a personal touch—“don’t cry, Joan, you didn’t miss us and we’ll see you very soon”—the cupcake provider brings her sweet wares to  customers  hungry for more.

They could choose a vending machine,  a nearby coffee shop for a pastry, into a deli or drugstore for a packaged snack—for less cash. Why head for the cupcake van, like kids chasing an ice cream truck on an August day?  “When I want a fresh cupcake, I can tweet her and run out to get just what I need,” said one woman. “I was at off-site meetings last week and felt I really l missed something. Not just my cupcakes, but someone catering to ME.”

There’s the key.  By interacting with customers, making them part of the process—“We’re offering red velvet and vanilla tomorrow, what’s your favorite flavor?”—the cupcake maker pulls in support and enthusiasm.  Advertising reaches out, but the new, two-way connection pulls in, as a speedier way to take the pulse. Need to add stops to your route, or cut a slow-seller? Those tweets and texts will tell you.  Customers may offer suggestions, or place advance orders, and feel you’re doing them a favor.

Tapping a simple want and adding trendy twists baked up in a business boom.

What’s the fresh ingredient in your own taste for success?

Creating the Ultimate Customer Experience: Simply the Best?

A business acquaintance recently told me she dreaded having to fire an employee.  “She’s the best assistant I’ve ever had,” Leah said. ”Except that she has no business sense. She argues with the suppliers, and tells them they’re overcharging us.  She tells customers to write a letter, or to call back next month.  And two years after I asked her to file our monthly reports in a new format, she’s still using the old one, so I have to go back and correct them all. She wanted more responsibility, so I let her handle two new accounts,” Leah continued. “But she ended up losing both of them. That was right after I gave her a bigger raise than all the other assistants got.”

Wait—this is the best assistant ever? Imagine the worst one! Why did Leah call her “the best”? “Well, she is a very nice person, eager and pleasant to be around” was the answer.  Suppliers and customers might have a different description. “Really, she tries very hard, and I think eventually she’ll learn more about dealing with people,” Leah said. “The other assistants have been there longer and don’t show as much promise.”

I wanted to double over in pain. Leah’s view of her “best assistant” said as much about her as it did the person she needed to terminate.  This was not an unpaid summer intern absorbing life lessons about the workplace, but an employee drawing a regular paycheck—with a recent raise.  Imagine how many suppliers have soured on Leah’s company, or what her former customers say, thanks to her “best assistant.” What about the other assistants—the “internal customers”— who see someone fumbling the job and being rewarded.  Think they’ll embrace a serious work ethic, or start dissing the vendors?

If the customer is always, or often, right, how about those customers closest to home, the employees? They’re the most obvious selling point for any business.  Keeping them in the loop, showing how pleased you are by their effort, reinforces pride and ensures they’ll do it right.  And their positive attitude will attract and bring home those paying customers.

What kinds of behavior are rewarded in your organization?

Creating the Ultimate Customer Experience: Business Plan

Unless your work takes you to the far side of the moon, you recall how the late-night talk show shuffle turned Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien into players in a melodrama.  Whether you prefer Jay, Conan, or an early bedtime, you know the fallout was ultimately about business decisions. Bad business moves are easy to see in hindsight, but sometimes, they’re defended as “taking a chance on a new idea.”

It all reminded a reporter friend of what her former newspaper tried. “For some reason, it was decided that merging three distinct, successful, weekly sections would be a great idea,” she said. Each section—separately featuring travel, food and entertainment– carried ads skewed to a specific readership.  The paper’s sales force fretted over pitching the new product, advertisers protested the blurring of their niche markets, and focus groups suggested that the paper might lose readers.

When prototypes of the “super section” appeared, staffers from every department offered feedback. ”But management didn’t want critiques, just compliments,” said my friend.  Negative comments were brushed aside and the new section was launched, amid expensive, extensive promotion.

The super section was a super disaster, disliked by readers and shunned by advertisers. Less than a year later, after tweaking its format and shrinking its staff, the paper quietly dropped its “great idea.”  The disappointment could have been dodged, along with resources saved. Yet those in charge ignored all instincts but their own.

Ever been so wedded to an idea that you overlook the caution flags from colleagues or customers? One last look before taking the plunge may bring an early glimpse of welcome hindsight —and the foresight for success, not regret.
Consider using a focus group of your customers before the launch of a new idea, product, or service, or survey customers to see if there is a need and interest in what you are trying to sell. Your customers will be happier and your bottom line, more robust!

Creating the Ultimate Customer Experience: Booked for Success

A bright magazine ad caught my eye, drawn in by a familiar name.  I’d first come across this company long ago when it offered mail-order craft patterns.  Colorful but slim mailers appeared sporadically and I idly wondered how the place survived.  Cute items, but minimal selection that catered to a specific, if limited customer base.  I’d have described the company as a small business with a definite niche.

So how’d they end up with a full-color, prominently placed two-page ad,  dotted with descriptions such as “exclusive”  and “exciting”,  in a national, mass-appeal magazine ? The ad was not for the old reliable craft products, but a new, “captivating series” of original mystery novels—published by the company I recalled as the small craft business.
The books, shown with handsome covers and intriguing titles, employ a crafting theme, and invite readers for a free preview of these “exclusive” stories.  The combination of crafters— always on the lookout for something new—and mystery readers—who readily embrace “series” characters and adventures—added up to a fresh product for the company.  Steady customers will be ready to pre-order, and the allure for new customers is enhanced by a “special introductory half-price” offer.
Whether the books are page-turners or merely pleasant diversions, they’re already “must-haves” for curious customers.  They’re lured by the promise of continuing diversion in a pattern of “what happens next?” That could almost be a theme of the company’s move. Instead of just a new line of patterns, or affordably priced supplies, it went for an unexpected challenge, publishing original books. No matter that even big publishers and booksellers are in a quandary these digital days, the crafting mysteries, catering to a select and eager audience, are now reality.
Can you offer your customers something unexpected yet welcome, whether a product or a surprising service? Look to their interests, and yours, to plot that offbeat chapter.  It could become your new best-seller.

Tell us about something you did for your customers that was unexpected yet welcomed!

Creating the Ultimate Customer Experience: Share Some Sunshine

With spring in the air, who wouldn’t welcome a little extra brightness? If only we could bottle sunlight and shake out a handful or two.  But if natural sunshine is in short supply, offer some of your own, by sharing something new that you’ve done.
Excitement over any accomplishment is contagious.  Just hearing about someone’s long-sought promotion or a great new business deal makes us feel energized, almost as if it’s happened to us, too. Oh, but you hate to brag about your business savvy or personal smarts, right? What would people think of someone who’s so full of himself?  So channel a favorite celebrity.  Bold-face Hollywood names are masters at sounding sweetly modest while blowing their own horns. When they talk up their most recent roles—even if it’s in a box office bomb headed straight to the DVD bargain bin—they’ll sing its praises as if it’s an Oscar-contender, a forgotten Shakespearean masterpiece.  And they’ve always got a ready-made answer when asked “What have you done lately?” No self-effacing doubters on the red carpet. They’re always eager to shine that light, giving themselves, and their listeners, a lift.
When you let others know what you’ve done and are doing, you’ll get an instant boost of confidence in yourself, crowding out any little doubts that edge in.  Focusing on what you’re proud of sparks others’ confidence in you, too.  About to add a new promotional slogan? Solved a thorny problem, big or small? Even if you baked a cake that drew compliments all around—congratulate yourself, out loud!  And then let others know, from your staff to your customers.  They’ll feel special upon hearing it, and glad they’re wise enough to do business with you. And they’ll carry that sunny state of mind forward, recalling what you described, and perhaps tallying some bragging rights of their own..

So what accomplishments have you realized lately? Let us know! We want to be as excited as you are for your success!

To learn more about how spreading a little sunshine translates to your customer service efforts, give Market Viewpoint a call and we’ll be happy to help!

Creating the Ultimate Customer Experience: Customer Communication and Spring Cleaning!

Believe it or not, spring cleaning and customer service have something in common. The urge to purge, to spruce up and air out winter’s doldrums hits all of us this time of year, from critters thinking of nests to homeowners pondering paint.  Even the phrase “spring cleaning” evokes images of fresh breezes and crisp organization, as blessed by Martha Stewart.  Why limit that sweep to the basement storage bin or linen closet?  Sometimes business benefits from a little springtime shakeup too.

For several years I’ve been on the mailing list for a monthly e-newsletter. Except it’s no longer monthly, more like bimonthly, or quarterly. Or whenever it pops up.  The publisher always slips in a slightly apologetic note explaining its late arrival, or lack of a promised article. She thanks readers for their patience and promises that the next one will arrive right on time. But it never does. The latest, for January, came more than a month late. It includes a discount coupon good though Feb. 1. And in her haste to get this first newsletter of 2010 out, the publisher neglected to change the template, which is still dated 2009.

When it launched, the e-newsletter held promise, with easy updates and timely tidbits. Because it came via email, it never cluttered a mailbox or wastebasket, thus saving trees and postage. But its publication became just one more chore for the harried editor putting it together.  She allowed it to grow stale instead of updating its look and promoting it via more current avenues.  Instead of a business tool, it stagnated into an antique, largely ignored. The editor admits to rarely receiving feedback.  And her monthly discount coupons? Unused.  In this economy, a customer skipping the chance to save money, because he didn’t see it? Definitely, time to spring clean that e-newsletter out of there.

Maybe you’ve got an outdated “newsletter” of your own that worked just “then”.  But a fresh approach will give you a better handle on “now.”

Give Market Viewpoint a call and we’ll be happy to take a look at your newsletter and offer suggestions for how you can spring clean and spruce up the most important vehicle for staying in touch with the most important people in your business- the customers!

Creating the Ultimate Customer Experience: Be the Action Hero of Problem Solving

When your customers want action, you’re on the case, focused on getting results.  It should be so simple and basic, but sometimes, in the crush of too much, too fast, the basics get overlooked.  Not to malign any industry, but we’ve all spent too long on hold, or dealt with a rep who parrots a response without hearing our plea.  One company lost me for good last week, a  reality-check reminder of What Not To Do.

What does a customer hope for? Okay, a full-scale Congressional investigation, triple refund and lifetime discount may not be the best answers! But there are others…

A calm oasis: some customers themselves are so agitated, they’re loud, confusing, annoying. Instead of escalating to match their tone, take it down a notch. Let their waves of frustration wash out, and respond in the calmest, “I’m-a-supervisor-and-I’ll-fix-it” tone.  Oh, and please turn off the speaker phone, where the volume feels aggressive and less than personal.

Yes, the personal. The friendlier you are,  the easier it is to find out just what’s wrong, and make a connection. Simple way to do both: use the person’s name. In a respectful but friendly tone, remind that customer that you not only know his demand, you recognize his value.

The solution to his or her demand may be elaborate or easy, but instead of waiting for the customer to tell YOU…propose your own course of action. “I’d recommend we do this to resolve it,” you say. Once you state exactly what you believe will make that person happy, you’ve become the problem solver who saves the day.

If they hesitate, bring their input into the process.  “What would YOU suggest to take care of this?” puts them in the position of agreeing with your proposal, or telling you why they won’t. The dialogue gives you an added chance to personalize the solution—and keep them as a future customer who recalls the individualized attention of someone who believes in basic good business.

For more information on Dealing with Difficult Customers and Action Hero Problem Solving, contact Market Viewpoint.

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