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Getting
Customers to Love You
By Jeanne
Bliss, founder of CustomerBLISS
When
I was at Lands’ End, Fortune Magazine
did an article on us called, “Getting
Customers to Love You.” The big revelation
about why we were loved was that we could
be counted on. We established peace-of-mind
with our guarantee. We trained our telephone
reps to not only know the products backwards
and forwards, but to care why customers were
buying them. Our graveyard shift operators
were some of the busiest in the business because
of the calls they’d receive in the middle
of the night from insomniacs who, sure, would
buy a turtleneck, but were also on the line
to hear the friendly voice on the other end.
We had quality standards that customers could
count on because we flew quality assurance
experts to the plants every thirty, sixty
and ninety days throughout the production
cycle to ensure they were on course. Products
were inspected once and sometimes twice when
they came through our doors. And when you
called in your order, it was on its way to
you usually within twenty four hours. Customers
loved us because we respected them and their
time. And we made sure that we translated
that respect to actions they could see and
feel. In the time that’s gone by since
then, I’ve experienced a multitude of
cultures; some close to that of Lands’
End, but most far removed from that respect
that we were able to weave into our operation
and business decisions.
The
fact of the matter is that it’s the
unusual organization that’s set up to
let people think and act collectively on behalf
of customers. We’re stuck in our silos
making independent decisions; taking isolated
actions for the purpose of executing our discipline,
achieving good numbers and earning a good
review. Of course the customer experience
doesn’t happen neatly down each individual
silo. The customer experiences a company horizontally,
across the silos. This is the breeding ground
for the lack of respect customers feel and
the discontent they have with us. The typical
silo structure bumps the customer disjointedly
along to deliver the outcome of its experience.
It’s only when the silos clang and clash
into one another that the total experience
comes together. And the customer becomes the
grand guinea pig, experiencing each variation
of an organization’s ability, or inability,
to work together. Not much customer respect
or love results.
10
Ways to Love (and respect) Your Customers
So
what I’m going to give you here is not
ten tactics on how to execute a great loyalty
program or tips on how to cook up some special
offer or whiz-bang thing to give customers
so they love you. What follows is a list of
hard-work and actions that must be done to
show customers you respect them. Do these
for a while and then you can move on to the
“L” word. By taking care of these
universally challenging experiences you’ll
be well on your way to delivering and earning
customer respect and maybe even someday, love.
1.
Eliminate the customer obstacle course.
If you asked customers they’d say that the
obstacle course for figuring out who to talk to
and how and when to get service is over-complicated,
conflicting and just plain out of whack. We have
forced customers to try to figure out our organization
charts in order to do business with us. Instead
of seamlessly executing a customer interaction of,
let’s say placing their first order from start
to finish, we deliver discontinuity in the experience
where the organizational breaks exist. Sales sells
the product, but Operations is not given the specifics
of what the customer needs so what is delivered
is a little off. Who does the customer call? Sales?
Operations? Customer service? It is in these hand-offs
that customer failures occur, in this customer Bermuda
triangle that we’ve created. Simplify the
roadmap for customers. Make it clear for them how
they can do business with you in a way that’s
actually beneficial to them.
2.
Stop customer hot potato. He who speaks
to the customer first should “own” the
customer. There’s nothing worse that sends
a signal of disrespect faster than an impatient
person on the other end of the line trying to pass
a customer off to “someone who can better
help you with your problem.” Yeah, right.
3.
Give customers a choice. Do not bind your
customer into the fake choice of letting them “opt
out” of something. Let them know up front
that they can decide to get emails, offers or whatever
from you and give them the choice. You may initially
build a bigger mailing list by binding customers
in with the opt-out policy, but I don’t think
it’s something your mom would teach you about
respect.
4.
De-silo your website. Our websites
are often the cobbled together parts created
separately by each company division. The
terminology is different from area to area,
as are the menu structures and logic for
getting around the site. What’s accessible
online is frequently inconsistent, as is
the contact information provided. Even appearance
may vary as strong silos create their own
“look” which extends into their
section of the website. Depending on what
link is clicked, customers feel like they’re
entering entirely different companies. Figure
out collectively what the message is, what
the vitals are that you need from customers
and how you will serve them via your website
and work to deliver an on-purpose brand
experience. Otherwise you’ll continue
to deliver the defaulted brand experience
that’s the amalgamation of the site
your customers are traversing right now.
5.
Consolidate phone numbers. Even in
this advanced age of telephony companies still
have a labyrinth of numbers customers need
to navigate to talk to someone. All of these
grew out of the separate operations deciding
on their own that they needed a number to
“serve” their customers. Get people
together to skinny-down this list and then
let customers know about it. There’s
no big red button to push to make this happen.
It requires the gnarly hard work of collaborating
and collective decision making – but
get it done already! Customers are fed up.
6.
FIX (really) the top ten issues bugging
customers. We have created a kind
of hysterical customer feedback muscle in
the marketplace by over-surveying our customers
and asking (ever so thoughtfully) “how
can we improve?” Customers have told
us what to do and we haven’t moved
on the information. You can probably recite
the biggest issues right now. Do something
about it. Customers read the lack of action
as lack of caring and certainly lack of
respect. We all over-brain what the customer
effort should be. Start by striking these
top ten things from your corporate wide
to-do list.
7.
Help the front line to listen. The
frontline has been programmed to get a certain
output. Sometimes this means closing the call
within a time frame, often it includes some
kind of up-sell or cross-sell goal. It may
be to meet with a quota of customers in a
certain time period. Because we’ve programmed
the frontline, there’s a predetermined
flow of the conversation that makes it one-sided
to the company’s advantage. Yet, this
is what we’ve done. We’ve robotized
our frontline to the customer all over the
world. Let them be human, give them the skills
for listening and understanding and help the
frontline deliver to the customer based on
their needs. Talk about respect. It is not
a myth that if you can solve a customer problem
successfully you have built a more profitable
customer. Crunch those numbers – maybe
it will help you to make your case for the
resources, investment and commitment required.
8.
Deliver what you promise. There
is a growing case of corporate memory loss
that annoys and aggravates customers every
day. A customer calls in a product return
and is promised a mailing label that never
arrives. An appointment is made for home
repair and the workman shows up without
the right parts. A promise is made for exceptional
extended warranty service, yet the process
is sloppy and unwieldy. The customer has
to strong-arm his/her way through the corporate
maize just to get basic things accomplished.
They’re exhausted from the wrestling
match, they’re annoyed and they’re
telling everyone they know. And, oh, by
the way, when they get the chance they’re
walking.
9.
When you make a mistake – right the
wrong. If you’ve got egg on
your face, for whatever the reason, admit
it. Then right the wrong. There’s nothing
more grossly frustrating to customers than
a company who does something wrong then is
either clueless about what they did or won’t
admit that they faltered.
10.
Work to believe. Very little shreds
of respect remain, if any, after we’ve
put customers through the third degree that
many experience when they encounter a glitch
in our products and services and actually
need to return a product, put in a claim
or use the warranty service. As tempting
as it is to debate customers to uphold a
policy to the letter of the law, suspend
the cynicism and work to believe your customers.
Most are going to honestly relay what is
happening to them with your product and
service. And because of all the ‘ifs,
ands, and buts’ in our policies we’ve
conditioned customers to come in with their
dukes up when they have a problem. With
good reason. We’ve programmed our
frontline to be cynical of customers through
the creation of policies that protect the
corporation from the lack of judgment of
the minority. Work to eliminate the question
of doubt about your customers’ integrity.
It will do wonders for the attitude and
actions that your frontline brings to their
interactions with customers.
Remember,
Customers Defect When the Silos Don’t
Connect…
The
outcome of our inability to work together
is the gift we give our customers. We force
our customers into navigating our organization
charts just to get what they need from us.
The end result of their experience is usually
not planned. It’s the defaulted experience
that comes from the customer receiving the
individually planned and executed tactics
and actions of each separate area of our companies.
These come together in a seemingly dim-witted
chain of events that has the customer thinking;
“Do they talk to each other,”:
“What are they thinking,” and
“Why do I have to take this anymore?”
Customers vote with their feet and decide
if they will stay or leave based on their
perception of how much we value them and how
we treat them. And more are leaving every
day just because of our inability to do the
basic blocking and tackling of delivering
our products and services to them.
So,
getting customers to love you has got to start
with showing them the respect they deserve
by making it painless and eventually a joy
to do business with you.
About
the Author
Jeanne Bliss is the
founder of CustomerBLISS (www.customerbliss.com);
a consulting and coaching company helping
corporations connect their efforts to yield
improved customer growth. She is a world-wide
speaker on the subject. Jeanne spent twenty-five
years at Lands’ End, Microsoft, Allstate,
Coldwell Banker, and Mazda corporations as
the leader for driving customer focus and
customer growth. Her book; Chief Customer
Officer: Getting Past Lip Service to Passionate
Action will be out March 30, 2006.
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