Customers 1st Speaker Profile: Dan Hill, Author, Emotionomics

Dan Hill

Saving Customer Ryan:
The Power of Emotional Brand Equity
Author, EMOTIONOMICS & President, SENSORY LOGIC, INC

Dan Hill is the President of Sensory Logic, Inc., founded in 1998 as a scientific consumer insights firm that specializes in gauging both verbal and nonverbal, subconscious reactions to advertising, store environments, and product design, packaging and presentation. He has also provides executive coaching for sales force training relating to interpersonal communication skills.
Prior to launching Sensory Logic, Dan held positions in business and state government. In business, Dan was the director of Executive Communications for the Newark, New Jersey based utility company PSE&G. There he co-chaired a branding task force, organized the annual employee meetings, and was responsible for creating one of the top 11 annual reports in Financial World’s 55th Annual Report Competition. While serving as a regulator at the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs, Dan was honored by the state senate for negotiating one of America’s first car leasing laws and spearheaded the creation of a 29-state task force on car repair reform for the National Association of Attorneys General. In academia, Dan earned a Ph.D. in English from Rutgers University and a Masters in Creative Writing from Brown University after undergraduate studies at Oxford University and St. Olaf College.
His award-winning creative writings have been published in The New York Times and noted with distinction in the 1994, 1991 and 1989 editions of The Best American Essays. Since the release of his business book, Body of Truth: Leveraging What Consumers Can’t or Won’t Say, published by John Wiley & Sons, he has been featured in Business 2.0[1], on NPR’s Marketplace, and quoted in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. Dan’s second book, Emotionomics: Winning Hearts and Minds, published by Beaver’s Pond Press, will be released September 18, 2007.

Dan's biography courtesy of Wikipedia.org.

Verizon tools help you fix FiOS yourself

The Technofile.com reports today that Verizon has implemented tools to help customers fix their FiOS services themselves.

The New York-based telecom unveiled its Verizon In-Home Agent, a computer program subscribers can download to help them trouble their own television or Internet connections without having to call the company’s customer service.

The application, which for now is only compatible with the Windows operating system, gives users the ability to run the same troubleshooting applications technical service agents run when customers call them. In addition, the program can help users set up their Wi-Fi connections, configure e-mail accounts, set up voice mail.

Will Verizon fix its customer service woes by allowing customers to fix things on their own--or will it be more of a disaster for the telecommunications giant?

Verizon creates one number for customer service

In an effort to better serve their customers, Verizon has created one number for customer service, 800-verizon. This idea isn't too new has large U.S. cities have been using 311 has an all inclusive information hotline from noisy neighbors, civic programs to homeless outreach. The idea makes it very easy for customers or citizens to get the help they need. Do you think more companies will follow Verizon's lead?

Bank of America Using Twitter to Solve Customer Problems

Bank of America has taken a new approach to customer service--Twitter. The banking giant, now in a bit of hot water thanks to Merrill Lynch, has decided to reach out to the masses in with help in only "140 characters." Many readers on Consumerist.com have reported quick help with the website, refunds in fees and cancellations. Check out the Twitter helper at: twitter.com/BofA_help

We're all Twittering (Everyone's Doing It)

In July, we posted about the role of “digital care manager,” a position Mr. Eliason from Comcast Cable filled in order to proactively search for complaints and problems in twitter. Since that time, several other companies have joined the bandwagon and are now doing the same. The brightkit blog has posted a huge list of all the companies that now use twitter to track what their customers are saying about them in real time. Here are companies that already have their own twitter pages Southwest Airlines, Dell Computers, Comcast, Starbucks, Jet Blue, Home Depot, Whole Foods, H&R Block, Zappos, Kodak, General Motors, Pandora. And the list goes on for companies that have also responded to problems and complaints on twitter.

Has your company joined the revolution?

Customer Service and Cloud Computing Make Service Cloud

According to ZDnet.com, Salesforce.com has unveiled its Service Cloud, a customer service application that’s designed for cloud computing and plugged into conversations that occur on Google, Facebook and Amazon.

Customers can use the Service Cloud as a community on these websites and social networking sites to talk about specific products--a more 2.0 version of the message board. The goal of the Service Cloud is to "absorb information into a corporate knowledge base," i.e., find out when and what people are talking about and use that to enhance their customer service and understanding of consumers.

Also, Salesforce.com promises that Service Cloud results will be ranked near the top of Google results and multi-channel–phone, email and chat–support hosted in the cloud.

It seems that these online retailers are looking to be a "friend" with the consumers online and will try to engage the consumer about products on a candid level.

Post your thoughts on Service Cloud here or on our LinkedIn group.

Enhanced Customer Service through Text Messages

The worst part of taking a car to a service center in my experience is the time you wait for a call back on the status of the job, price of repairs, or whether or not the mechanics even got a chance to look at the car. According to this post TMC.net, many auto dealers are looking to improve on the customer experience by delivering text messages to customers during the service appointment lifecycle.

The amount of text messages sent and received on a daily basis exceeds the total population of this planet. Astounding numbers! This is a great way to get quicker response times and avoid wasted time on approvals and chasing voicemails all day long.

With Customer Service, Email is #1

Charlie Gaffney's article in CIO Today talks about the measures that companies must take to survive in this economic climate. One of the most cost-effective ways that companies can save money is to use email. He claims that email has now surpassed telephone service and its a valuable tool to reach the customer. What do you think? Should customer service be more, if not all email driven? We'd like to hear your thoughts.

We are off and running!

It's great to be here at the NACCM Customer 1st Conference representing Fidelity Investments. Now, more than ever, we are aware how essential customer loyalty is to the continued success of our businesses.

Blogging will be a great way to share best observations and insights from sessions throughout the conference. Amanda just kicked us off so we are off and running...

Gregory North
Fidelity Investments

All Customer Feedback is Not Created Equal

This morning I came across this post on the Call Center Café in which Curtis Bingham explains that customer service representatives must carefully analyze and rank the customer according to value prior to doing too much to satisfy them. Here are 3 things that Curtis recommends companies doing to protect the best customers and profits:

1. Prioritize customers according to value
2. Tier the service offering
3. Address disgruntled customers according to their priority and service tier

Make sure to use your CRM system to rank your customers according to value; sometimes it’s better off if you send your customers home packing if they are causing too much trouble and money. Secondly, tier the service offering to reflect 2 different segments, the low-price segment and the high-value segment. If the customer is a low priority than do enough not to tarnish the company’s good reputation, but if the customer is a high priority then do everything you can to resolve the customer’s complaint and keep their loyalty.

Do you agree with these methods?

10 Tips for Great Customer Service

Paul Clark, the CEO of Charter UK which is the foremost provider of Enterprise Complaint and Feedback Management software to the World’s leading companies, has recently posted 10 key areas which impact how good your customer service is in this latest post at the callcentrehelper.com blog. Here they are:

1. Effective customer intelligence
2. Have faith in your front line customer service staff
3. Understand how customers think
4. Work for and with people who believe in service excellence
5. Master the art of organisation design
6. Make the link to the bottom line
7. Make everything a little better every day
8. Understand that the future will be different
9. Learn from your mistakes
10. Make things easier for customers

Personally, I think #9 learning from your mistakes is the most important. Companies must not only learn from their mistakes, but accept that will not make the right decision each and every time. Do you agree?

Take some time to view the whole post here.

Customer Service Beyond the Traditional Marketplace

There are many traditional marketplaces that have a “take it or leave it attitude”, like take for example your local library, government agencies, and even health care. Tom Vander recently posted about his wife’s horrid experience at the hospital when the doctor ignored her pain and told her that it could be almost anything.

Later that night, Tom browsed their website and sent a disgruntled email to the patient representative detailing their bad experience at the hospital. The following morning they received a call from the representative and she apologized for their bad experience and told them that she would take the necessary steps to address the situation. The doctor ended up calling later that afternoon to personally apologize and agreed on a followup to address the discomfort she was having.

This is an example of how customer service should not just be a concern to those businesses that are selling goods to the marketplace. Ideally, any business or organization that has human interaction must apply some sort of principle customer service basics in their day to day endeavors.

The Customer Bathroom Experience

Becky Carroll brings up some interesting perspectives on the customer experience at the bathroom, which seems to be a forgotten space in her latest post at Customers Rock! Her thoughts…keep restroom signs simple and easy to understand. After all, we want to avoid embarrassing mishaps when customers can not differentiate between the two restrooms.

She also posted this video of the beautiful fixtures of the public ladies room at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. An important lesson here is to carry the image of your brand everywhere, and that includes the bathroom. Enjoy!

Customer Service Basics

Have companies forgotten about how simple and effective thanking customers can be? This post on Get Elastic discusses how appreciated Philip Mikal felt after he received a hand-written thank you note from Rackspace hosting. He even mentions, “A handwritten note and cow bell to celebrate their recent IPO; Rackspace understands that customer service is the new marketing.”

Businesses will have to revert to basic principles this holiday season in order to keep customer loyalty high, especially because of our current economic situation.

Using Twitter for Customer Service

We’ve posted a while ago about how Twitter has made “customer service proactive rather than reactive.” This morning I came across this post from Search Engine Guide in which Paul Jahn reminds us that businesses, especially those who have e-commerce sites, should be using Twitter as a customer service tool.

Customer service reps can simply do a quick search on Twitter for their company to see what people are saying about them. The result, reps will find either good feedback or bad feedback. Representatives can go above and beyond by thanking happy customers and help unhappy customers using Twitter as a medium. Tony Hsieh of Zappos, Frank at Comcast, and many others are just a few examples of people who have used Twitter to improve customer service practices within their company.

Outsourcing Call Center Operations

I came across this article that explains how the outsourcing of customer service functions is not only seen as a short term cost cutting tool, but it is also a strategy for long term competitive advantage.

In order to get closer to your customers, you must engage a fully functional center that supports telephone, e-mail, the web, and social media (which was not mentioned by the article). Companies are always looking to reduce costs to increase revenue, but the reduction of costs should not affect the quality of customer service.

Social Media Wake-Up Call

I came across this post on ReadWriteWeb that discusses how a recent study published by Opinion Research Corporation for Cone shows us that contrary to popular belief that social media is simply a fad, 85% of Americans who use social media believe that companies should have a presence in the social media environment. Also, the findings show that users want companies to interact with them via social media.

Here’s some interesting data provided by the study:

This desire for business-to-consumer interaction goes beyond simply offering customer service via Twitter. Although 43% would like to see companies offering customer service through social media, 41% would like companies to solicit feedback and 37% would like companies to provide new ways to interact with the brand via social media. These numbers could not be more clear: these consumers are practically begging for businesses to get involved in social media.

Is your company going above and beyond expectations by using social media? What are some networks, other than Twitter, that your company has used to improve customer service?

Live-Blogging at NACCM

Live-blogging is becoming more and more popular at events because of the constant updates bloggers are able to provide the general public. It’s a great way for attendees to recap on sessions and also a great way for those who could not make it to learn a couple of key points from presentations. For this year’s event, Becky Carroll from Customers Rock! will be live-blogging at the NACCM event, bringing us up-to-date information on speakers, presentations, and other gatherings from the event as they occur.

We look forward to reading Becky’s posts in November, and take advantage of the discount being offered to Customers 1st readers. Register for the event and save 15% off the standard pricing. We’ll see you in Disneyland!

How do you Create a Remarkable Customer Experience?

Eric Brown founder and Owner of Urbane Apartments recently guest posted on Customers Rock! in which he gives us some perspectives on key ingredients of a Remarkable Customer Experience. He starts off with a definition of the term “remarkable” from none other than the marketing guru Seth Godin:

• Remarkable doesn’t mean remarkable to you. It means remarkable to me. Am I going to make a remark about it?
• Being noticed is not the same as being remarkable. Running down the street naked will get you noticed, but it won’t accomplish much. It’s easy to pull off a stunt, but not useful.

Now here are some examples of how this small boutique apartment management company has created remarkable experiences for their residents.

1. The company does not send out paper leases. They give out all the lease information in a thumb drive in which residents can carry in their pockets and also use to store additional information. This wouldn’t work well with seniors, but because of their demographic it resonates well.
2. The company has embraced this motto, “Urbane Loves Pets”. Their method of thinking is that great residents will have great pets, and so they own the segment of pet lovers in their locale.
3. Urbane has created “Freedom Lease” which allows for greater living flexibility. The company has realized that many residents are consultants, and so the standard one year leasing contract does not work for them. This added flexibility creates a greater experience for the resident.

MarketWatch: An Assessment of the Growing Customer Relationship Management Market - CRM as an Effective Cost Saving Tool ....

Check out this great article on MarketWatch, it discusses how Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Customer Relationship Management Market Assessment 2008" report to their offering.

The article discusses how CRM has seen growth through cell phones, Web 2.0 strategies and new software serving both big and small organizations. It’s a great booster to any CRM professional. I highly suggest that you check it out.

Do you agree that CRM is growing and ever changing industry?