A couple of days ago, I answered a question on a linkedin group that I thought was interesting:

Should we Send Client Holiday Gifts?

Answer: Yes, but having the right motivation and choosing the right gift is key.

Here are some thoughts:

1. If you need to – don’t:
If we feel not sending a holiday gift would hurt our relationship with the customer, then it’s probably too late. The gift should not be seen as a way to improve the relationship, it will not. Ironically, holiday gifts are most effective when they are not needed.

2. The purpose:
the purpose of the gift is to remind the customer we are thankful for their patronage and are thinking of them at this special time.  But the power of the gift is in the opportunity to underscore what our customers should already know and feel about us; that we are aligned with their values; that we care for their success and for them as people. After all, they value us because we add value.

3. The right gift:
Choosing the right gift is not always easy; it should address the purpose above.  If the person in charge of maintaining the customer relationship has not thought carefully about what the gift should be then a card is probably best.

4. Personal gifts:
If we’ve developed a personal relationship with our customer then we shouldmake a personal gift in addition to the corporate gesture, where appropriate.

5. No self serving gifts:
Don’t send gifts that are boldly logo-ed, can be seen as advertising or mild reminders of our presence in the market.  Save those for the trade show. The customer should remember who sent the gift simply by knowing no-one else would have thought, would know or would care enough to send it.  Special offers, pricing are not gifts.  Send them at some other time.

6. Make it fun:
We rarely take the time to choose the right gift for a customer if the process is not fun.  Encourage relationship managers to think out of the box and to know that choosing the gift is important.  Small brainstorm groups for similar customer segments can save time.

7. The same gift?:
There is nothing wrong with sending the same gift to multiple or even all our clients, as long as it hits the mark.  In fact, if we can figure out that one gift that shows the essence of what we stand for as a brand, then sending them to every customer, maybe the best thing we could do.

8. A gift for every customer?
Depending on the business, a gift to every customer may or may not be a reasonable undertaking.  We should also consider than all customers are not created equal.  Some are more strategic and may warrant special attention, while others may suffice with a more generic or less costly approach.  I remember sending Christmas cards to 800 customers, where every employee wrote the card’s greeting for two customers and then asked five other colleagues to add their signature and role they played in providing great service.

Regardless of what we choose to do, our token should be true to our purpose and the essence as our company.  The customer should remember the gift fondly and after the second year of receiving such a gift, should suspect a potential theme or trend in our effort or choice.

The best business gift I ever received was a research project reviewing the best project management programs along with an independent assessment of which would be best for my company.  Beautiful ! – How did you know ?

Happy Holidays !

Committed to XCL
Rudy Vidal

Some Lessons Learned

This posting includes video, please click here to see the post on Xtreme Customer Loyalty Blog

Thank you

Rudy Vidal
Committed to XCL

nothing will change until something changes

One of the most common hurdles in trying to improve the customer experience, is that we view the customer’s situation through our own internal filters which are ladened with our own limitations, policies and generalization.  In effect, we can hear the customer but what we “know”, doesn’t let us listen.   

Those that touch the customer daily know more than anyone about what the customer considers important.  As surprising as it may be however, I find that those that touch our customers every day are not the ones designing the customer experience.  Those that decide are often somewhat removed and rely on their “past experience” to make the right decision.

Some time ago, I gave a contact center manager a challenge to transform the customer experience with the representative by only changing the rep’s greeting.  At first, the feeling was that the greeting could not change the experience.   The content of the experience was so much more important than the greeting that it could not be overshadowed.  Jut to be nice, she played along.  After considerable thinking and word-smithing, the new greeting was surprisingly similar to the original.  The reasons for the measured change were all logical and full of merit, backed by experience and knowledge in customer service.

Because I had done this exercise before and new the results, I pressed on.  However, if i did not have the benefit of my previous experience, I would have likely agreed with the logic and “let sleeping dogs lie”.  Instead, I provided an idea for the new greeting. “Hello, thank you for calling XYZ, my name is Rudy Vidal.  I am committed to resolving your issue today, please let me help you.”  This new greeting was received with raised eyebrows and determined to be “corny”.  I agreed it could be “corny” , but in whose eyes?

 To a contact center person who knows what happens day in and day out, who is aware of all the difficulties associated with actually resolving an issue, it may sound corny.  But to a customer who is having a bad day, who has just gotten escalated and has lost all hope of ever resolving her issue, this greeting could be comforting, perhaps even surprising.  It could disarm a person who is ready to take 2 full minutes to expound, at high volume,  why she is so upset.  At the very least it is unexpected.   We tried it in a small group of representatives. Customer Satisfaction increased by double digits, representative satisfaction did the same, first contact resolution went up.  

Sometimes, it is difficult to put ourselves in the customer’s shoes.  We see their situation, only through our own.  We try to walk in their shoes, but fail to off our own.

By the way, the most surprising aspect of that experiment, was the effect it had on the representatives.  They were more loyal to the customer, more engaged in the solution, more committed.  First call resolution went up, not because empowerment policies changed, but because the representatives changed.  What they said to the customer changed what they did.

Two suggestions:  

• Make sure to include people that directly touch customers in the creation of new solutions.
     Have them represent the customer without regard to internal limitations or
     common knowledge.

• Try new things, after all nothing will change until something changes.

 

Rudy Vidal
Committed to XCS 

All Customers Are Not Created Equal

 

 

 

Your contact center is suffering from unexpected staff shortage.  Two queues are are in trouble.  Michelle, one of your super agents is skilled in both queues.  Where do you place her?

Actually, it doesn’t matter.  The point is you will decide to put the agent in one of the queues, which ultimately means, for whatever reason, you will consider one queue, a set of customers, to be more important than another. 

Because service and the idea of serving people has an ethical taste, it is easy to adopt a general altruistic philosophy towards customer satisfaction.  As a humanist you may believe all customers should be addressed with the same attention regardless of their economic weight on the organization, however, for a business person managing limited resources, some customers are worth more than others.

Depending on your company’s priorities customer may be more important because they purchased a  strategic product or because your company needs quick market share growth in a particular segment to win a positioning battle.  For whatever reason, when in a resource constrained situation, some customers are in fact more equal than others.

Great customer centric organization work hard to avoid this dilemma altogether.  When Customer Centricity becomes part of our corporate DNA, we begin to proactively manage the incessant pressure of limited resources, always including the customer in our business plans, our contingencies and our innovation.

Customers are resources just like cash.  The difference is that customers can appreciate the value we add and the difference we make in their lives, and therefore, can offer long term loyalty. 

The benefits in the transformation of corporate DNA towards customer centricity is not only external in the way customers see us, but more internal in the way we begin to see ourselves; holding ourselves to a different standard for the benefit of our customers, and therefore our own, as a member of a social group.

“Recognizing our responsibilities as industrialists, we will devote ourselves to the progress and development of society and the well-being of people through our business activities, thereby enhancing the quality of life throughout the world.”  – Konosuke Matsushita, 1932

At some point we will all have to make the decision to place super agent Michelle in one queue over another, but our intention to work towards avoiding the dilemma altogether, speaks volumes about our future.

Committed to XCS !
Rudy Vidal

Intention, the source of . . . . . Everything !

 

 

 

I’ve been thinking about intention for a couple of days now.  So, I may as well post.

I think great work of any lasting value comes through intention.  In fact, I believe clear intention may be a prerequisite to greatness.  I read somewhere, ”if you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up somewhere else”.  The place we end up may be a good place, but we will probably not be able to reproduce our results consistently.

Through intention we can transfer the “human-ness” of our effort to another person and increase the likelihood and strength of the potential emotion.  Simply because two people purposefully and intentionally interchanging in a common interest is emotional.  Intentional service.

Some touch-points are managed by technology, collateral materials and other innimate methods, but even then, our intention can be made to show through.

Without intention we run the risk of having our companies feel machine-like and impersonal, even when we do a good job.  Without intention we loose the opportunity to create and be part of a culture that is sustainable, reproducible and proud.

My intention is to serve my customer as I would like to be serviced myself.
Because it feels right and brings positive emotion to all involved.

Committed to XCS !
Rudy Vidal

Difficult Customers are Customers Too.

You know the one.  She or he is a paying customer.  You need their business, but you don’t necessarily want it anymore.  They ask more questions, question your answers, challenge policy and/or procedure, threaten their account or business and in some cases, harrass your staff.

When do you say good-bye? 

My opinion is; unless the customer has blatantly abused someone, Never ever ever.

 

The scenario du jour:

Special order and handling was required, which meant a little research on my part.  When I was making a call for our Special Customer (profile above), one of my team members took notice of the research I was involved in, heard my questions – and even some aggresive negotiating tactics on behalf of our customer.

He asked me, “How can you still be trying so hard for this guy? He’s not very nice!”   The answer was so clear to me, that I thought I should start sending money to the XCS founder, because clearly something is catching on.  What I mean to say is, “there was a time when… “ 

This person is OUR customer, a fee paying bank customer.

We have to be careful to exude the same level of enthusiasm in our work for the engaging, warm and  pleasant people who buy our products and use our services as we do for those who can tend to drain us.  They should be viewed as the same, even when this is something of an effort.

Its about the heart. Put your money away.

A couple of days ago I traveled for the second time on Southwest Airlines. 
It took the second time to fully understand and appreciate the experience.  I think it wasn’t clear to me the first time because I was accustomed to a certain way of flying.  I had accepted the flying paradigm handed to me over the years. 

On the second trip, I read the airline magazine and came across a farewell article from the airline’s president Colleen Barrett.  In the article she explained Southwest’s customer philosophy and how their success was based on a simple premise, an expectation and requirement of a display of “:Golden Rule Behavior” among and from Southwest Employees -

“Do onto others as you would have others do onto you”.

Once I read the article something seemed to click and I began to see things I had not noticed until then.  Flight attendants were fun, helpful, nice, friendly.  More importantly, passengers were the same.  When the captain announced a weather delay, no one made the usual sarcastic comments or eye-rolling sighs.  In stead there were the inevitable jokes about Chicago and its weather.  The next thing I noticed was that the energy on the flights was less hurried, intense and more  . . .I’ll say it, “loving”.

Southwest is not a high priced airline that can afford great customer service,  in fact, they are the opposite, a low cost airline (one of the few making money).  So, how does that work?

Ms. Barrett, understands it, and I suspect the entire culture does as well.  Customer satisfaction comes from a state of mind.  It comes from a caring spirit that needs no funding, no budget nor gadgets.  Loyalty comes from the emotions we are able to create in our customers when they see that they are cared for, as people.

Most executives with whom I speak regarding Customer Satisfaction mention they would like to work on customer centricity but believe they can’t afford it.  We must convince them all to put away their money and put their hearts out where the customer can see them. 
 
Higher quality of life and higher business benefits are just around the corner, ask Ms. Barrett, or fly Southwest at least twice.

RudyVidal
Committed to XCS !

XCS Means Customer First

Yesterday I set out to purchase a car for my father, who just moved to Salt Lake City from Miami (don’t worry dad, the winter is not so bad here . . sigh)

In the interest of fairness and support to our ailing automotive industry I went to a Chevy dealer, in spite of my resent experiences. 

I took some test drives with Christian, a nice young fellow who was very interested in my needs and working hard to address any of my questions, as we drove.  Once we returned, as is expected, I soon met Christian’s manager, who also seemed pleasant and interested.  However, he soon brought up the fact that the currently offered 0% financing was only available until Monday and that I would have to act fast.  He asked me what was keeping me from the purchase and I mentioned that I was hoping to reach $XXX.XX as a monthly payment.  He sent me off on another test drive and mentioned that when we returned, he would do his best to work the numbers so we could reach this goal.  Great, I said, and went off to the next test drive with Christian.

On my return, after some niceties, I asked him “Perhaps we can go inside and see if we can work on those numbers”.  His response, was shocking but not surprising “well, only if you are committed to purchasing the car”.  At that point it became clear that the sales manager was interested in something beyond my best interest; perhaps his time.  I said goodbye.

From there are I went to a couple of dealers.  I purchased a Toyota.  I reached the price point I needed, my dad likes it.  Almost everyone won.

Rudy Vidal
Committed to XCS!

Target is on Target

 

 

 

 

Ed Vallorani’s posting is a great example (see here). 

The key is to understand your customers’ pain points and needs, then its possible.

Committed to XCS !

 

Solution – improve your mindset !

it sounds easy, but the reality is that you can’t impose a new mindset, or a new culture.
What I find works best in creating a fast transition is to create:

1. Understanding of the logic – Why do we need to change or improve?
2. Provide the vehicles or processes that will carry new action and intention.
3. Create an expectation for results, coupled with effective Key Performance Indicators or metrics.

These three components do create change.

I believe the vast majority of people, given the opportunity, want to do the right thing, want to satisfy customers, treating them as customers should be treated.

However, if they don’t have the process, the information, the empowerment and the expectation from management, don’t expect miracles.

Extreme Customer Satisfaction happens when Management gets a new mindset ! 

(Some related posting to doing it) 1 2