Customer Loyalty: Pre-Conference Summit

Cross-post from Customers Rock! by Becky Carroll

Today was my second day here at the NACCM Customers 1st Conference, and it was filled with pre-conference summits and the official kick-off to the event by Kevin Carroll, author of Rules of the Red Rubber Ball. Here is an overview and some nuggets from Disney Institute, nGenera, JetBlue, and of course, Kevin. (Note - if you follow me on Twitter, you already have a taste of what went on at the summit!)

Disney Loyalty

The day started with Bruce Kimbrell from The Disney Institute who keynoted with a great speech on Disney and their keys to customer loyalty. Bruce asked a great question: Who are you loyal to and why? Some of the answers included the following:

• Nordstrom - they treat you like you matter
• Keen shoes - high quality product, and solid customer service if there is a problem
• Sports team - get a sense of community
• State Farm Insurance - they are there before the police!
• Kroger Foods - great customer service experience

Each responder had their own reason for being loyal. Bruce shared that at Disney, they believe the greater the connection, the greater the loyalty! Relationships are built when two things happen:

1. Customers want to associate with your brand beyond the transaction
2. Your customers and employees interact positively with each other

Disney gets 80,000 people at their parks in one day. How do you positively interact with all of them? On average, each guest (Disney speak for customer) has 60 interactions with Disney cast members (employees) per day. This is 60 opportunities to make or break the experience; they are the face of Disney! If 59 are great, but number 60 is a jerk, what do I go home and talk about? Disney uses experience mapping to identify all points of contact with customers, look at the experience through the customers' eyes, and then align Disney strengths to "moments of magic". Key takeaway: plan it out! Identify and prioritize key opportunties in the customer experience, match specific tools to each opportunity, select partners to involve, then go make it happen! Thank you, Bruce, for all of your Disney insight.

Swarming the Magic Kingdom

I spent most of my day in this highly interactive activity, led by Frank Capek of nGenera (Don Tapscott's company). He laid the foundation for the day by discussing the next generation customer experience. In other words, with the potential for collaboration found in social media (such as blogs, wikis, social networks, YouTube, etc), how can we enable customers to actively co-create their own experiences? This isn't experience by intent (improving service levels) or experience by design (creating based on customer needs and priorities) but experience on demand (engage and co-create).

After talking about this for awhile, Frank set us loose in Disneyland to take a closer look at what customer experiences are taking place there - down to the smallest detail. We rode rides, analyzed Main Street USA, and listened to Christmas music being aired in the park. We observed what it felt like to be a first-timer, what it felt like to stand in line, and how easy/difficult it was to get around the park. At the end of the day, we came back together and used our collective thinking to brainstorm ideas around not just improved customer experiences, but specifically how customer experiences could be different for those who are "digitally connected" (especially young people who live on social networks). Ideas included the following:

• "Log in" at the park to learn about wait times in lines, get a personalized experience
• Have Disney "follow you" around the park (opt-in, of course) via your mobile phone or simply your park ticket (inserted at various attractions) to log your activities and create a "storybook" of your day that could be emailed/link sent to you. You could even opt to have your log update your Facebook or MySpace status throughout the day, sharing your experience with your friends.
• Using texting/Twitter to share issues with Disney in real-time

It was a great session to get out in the sunshine, look at things from a different perspective, then take and apply it back to our own companies: Walk in your customers' shoes. Innovate the customer experience. Don't forget social media!

JetBlue and "Jetitude"

Rob Maruster, Senior VP of Customer Service at JetBlue held a great session to share how they are bringing humanity back to air travel through servant leadership. Here are some tidbits:

• JetBlue administers 35 customer surveys each flight (regardless of how full they are); 8% of customers give their feedback (a decent response rate)
• They use Net Promoter Score (NPS), rather than just customer satisfaction, to gauge how well they are performing and look for opportunities for improvement. It seems to be directly correlated to whether they are running flights on time in a particular month!
• If something doesn't go as planned, JetBlue invokes their Customer Bill of Rights and, within 7 days of the flight, they send out flight vouchers to help make up for the inconvenience. "Please, let us try again!"
• You have to be relevant to customers in order to drive customer loyalty.

I liked the way Rob shared about JetBlue's customer-focused thinking as he discussed one of the key inputs to their Balanced Scorecard: Drive a Low Cost Culture. He was quick to point out that it is important to be smart about costs, but not to be cheap! "Don't touch the things that touch the customer." Great motto, Rob!

Rob also talked about their JetBlue attitude, or "jetitude". They have five "Be's":

1. Be in Blue always (you are always on stage - see my related post!)
2. Be personal
3. Be the answer (don't pass the buck; execs, please walk the talk)
4. Be engaging (reach out to customers; don't wait for them to come to you)
5. Be thankful to every customer (actually thank them for their business)

Finally, Rob talked about the importance of "servant leadership". Leadership brings all of the above together to serve the employee and, in turn, the customer. They need total transparency, and they need to be willing to get their hands dirty in order to help make it happen. Great talk, Rob!

Oh, by the way, JetBlue collected business cards from everyone in the summit and gave away 2 JetBlue travel vouchers! Wow! Great way to show appreciation.

The Red Rubber Ball

Kevin Carroll opened the official conference at day's end with his inspiring speech on the importance of play. Per Kevin,

"Play is serious business!"

Kevin encouraged all of us to harness the power of sport and play in everything we do - including our jobs. What inspires you? For Kevin, a simple red, rubber ball (like a playground ball) inspired him to live differently, with purpose, passion, and intention. In fact, he has an amazing life story that took him from a difficult childhood to the military, the NBA, to Nike, and ultimately to being a speaker/author who helps others reach for their dreams. He is a life-long learner, and he shared his "lessons from the playground":

1. Commit to it (find what you are passionate about and commit to it)
2. Seek out encouragers (surround yourself with people who give you permission to dream big)
3. Work out your creative muscle (need to reawaken our creative side)
4. Prepare to shine (create your vision, make it clear)
5. Speak up (stand up for something, what you believe in)
6. Expect the unexpected (be forever curious, you never know where you will end up!)
7. Maximize the day (live each day to the fullest - don't try to get to tomorrow too soon)

Kevin was inspiring, entertaining, and unpredictable. He even tossed out balls into the audience and shared a video of playing "tag" at Nike - with 4,000 coworkers! He challenged us to get the most we can out of each day, as well as out of this conference.

After his talk, Yemil Martinez (Director of New Media for the conference) and I had the opportunity to video Kevin's discussion with Joanna Brandi, conference co-chair, as they discussed the future of this country and how play can help. I will upload that video later this week. Kevin then freely gave me a nice gift for my older son to encourage him to find his passion in life. Thank you, Kevin!

Kevin was also nice enough to give me two minutes of his time to share his thoughts with my Customers Rock! readers (and you) on the importance of building community with customers. Thank you so much for your time and energy, Kevin! We will be following you.

(Photo credit: nruboc)

Virtual Contact Centers

Leslie Nelson, responsible for customer management at Bluefly a retailer that strives to be the store of first resort for designer fashions, gave an exciting talk about their experience with virtual contact centers.

Why do they go the virtual route?

- quality problems
-costs were spiraling out of control
- problems with attendance
-trouble with training
- "superagents" were training, even though they were not trained as trainers

They tried adding call centers, but then they quickly decided to outsource as they are NOT an expert in call center management. They looked at many different potential partners.
They selected a firm, VIP Desk, known for their virtual approach to customer service and their hosting support for luxury brands

Now Bluefly has people who, because they are virtual, have a much better worl/life situation. And they don't have to fill up their tank on the way to their office! So, Bluefly has a 95% retention rate. They are several KPI's the Blue "Brand Ambassodors" are assesed on and the better they do the more flexibility they have.

Results?

1st six months. Cost per contact down by 18%.
Year to date: cost per contact down 32%
Year to date, sales conversion has doubled.
Scale is now easy and fast.
Set up of new of new queues for promotions in days.

Team structure? Service leaders are responsible for quality and training only and they have a defined team.

Keys to managing outstouced virtual teams?
- Doing all of the training material in house
- Great service leaders in the outsourcer
- A communication strategy that enables agile knowledge transfer like Daily Huddles and IM, weekly business reviews and forecasting
- Online training in Webrooms allowing two way conversations led by professional trainers
word of caution: virtual training takes 150% to make sure people are engaged
- Online materials like Bluefly's "Flashionista U"
- A passionate desire to assure people on the front line have the information they need to answer the question
- Motiving teams by incentivizing with your products on which they are now more knowledgable

All in all an exciting window into the virtual contact center world!

A Key to Next Generation Quality: Speech Analytics

Erika Van Noort of Bell Canada walked us through the evolution of customer care at Bell Canada and provided a deep dive on the power of Speech Analytics.

Bell is moving from a more fragmented business, built through acquisition, towards a more integrated , optimized environment for the customer. One way to optimize is through mining existing data, including call data.

Here was Bell's wish list of what they wanted to learn from their call data:
- Root causes to why customers call
- What value add vs. non value add
- Get at the true Voice of the Customer
- Reduce what Price called earlier dumb contacts and increase time for value adding contacts
- Customer intelligence (preferences, drivers of behaviors, etc.)

In response to these and other questions, one approach to data mining is speech analytics.

"Speech Analytics, Erika explained, " does not mean you never have to listen to customer call again. Only if you don't care about your customers." But through speech analytics Bell has learned a lot about process, products and service, more than they could have learned from traditional call monitoring, including:

Benefits of speech analytics?
- Root cause analysis
- Real time feedback
- Positive impact on FCR
- Reduced low value calls
- Opportunities for cross selling

And this is using the superset of all calls, not a sample, something you just can't do with traditional call monitoring.

An analytics tree - how Bell looks at each call
- a call we want?
- routed correctly?
- resolved well?
- a church opportunity?

Speech Analytics: What Bell does

- take all calls
- break them down by reasons why customers call
- look at trends and outliers
- get at root causes
- identify real time call back opportunities

Results were great: FCR up, Sat. up, escalations down, productivity up, revenue way up

And employee feedback was very positive. "At last you have realized a dish that goes at 2Am is not my fault."

Making the wins real:

- 1 customer event took 3 and 1/2 months.
- 6 customer calls and transfers
- 1 hour and a half of call time
- Cost? $400

Now multiply that by all the repeat calls and you are talking real money!

Understanding length of call by call type enables Bell to set thresholds for talk time based on what is really needed to get the customer's work done right the first time.

Finally, this information drives changes to process, product and service design based on a systematic analysis of true voice of the customer. And this VOC is used at the highest levels of the company.

All Hands on Deck

Empowering Agents to Use Tacit Knowledge and Exceed Customer Expectations

Dr. Susan Reisinger of the US Navy's Global Distance Support Center

"If you don't give them the opportunity to fail, you won't give them the opportunity to succeed."

With these words, Susan explained how management just has to get over the risks that empowered service agents might make mistakes, might go too far...because this is the best way to get FCR up, employee morale up and turnover down. In her talk she described how the Distance Support Center gets the job done well often in complex circumstances connecting elements of the Navy family around the globe.

The cornerstone of their success in empowering their agents? Use of Tacit Knowldge.

What is tacit knowledge? "It's our agents know, but don't know they know," explained Susan.

The Support Center systemtically captures and shares cases describing how tacit knowledge is used...but does not try to turn these cases into cookie cutter scripts. The goal is to expand the scope of what an agent can and knows how to do.

Results are clear -
Their customer sat ratings range between 92 and 95% every month and
FCR averages 96%!
And agent satisfaction is up and turnover down.

Keys to this approach:

• Go beyond a scripted, procedural approach -Use cases for training - real-life scenarios
• Use a WIKI to share these in real time -Goal is to share what works
  
• Consider peer review as a way to evaluate what works and what does not
• Delineate when it is okay to go outside the box and when it is not, and how far they can go.
• You can get to these guardrails through trial and error

Empowered agents like their jobs better and do a better job for the customer. Not a surprise, perhaps, but how the Support Center gets there is something special.

Best Service is No Service - Bill Price

Insights from our Contact Center 360 Summit today:

First up "The Best Service is no Service." - with Bill Price, formerly of Amazon.Com

- "The best service is no service," was Bill's response to Jeff Bezos' question about his philosophy of customer service when interviewing for a job leading Customer Satisfaction for Amazon. Bill gives voice to something many of us have been thinking about for years - think of a call to a contact center as a breakdown in the service model.

Bill calls non value adding calls "dumb contacts."

• Dumb contacts are ones that are not valuable to the customer or the business.
• If a contact is dumb it should be automated.

Companies that get this are measuring there % of Self Service. Many target as high as 90%, but Bill suggests using 80% as a workable goal. % Service provides a much better focus for service program than FCR or other traditional contact center metrics.

Bill relayed great examples of how self-service adds value based on knowing the customer's needs: Two struck me as wow:

• The Autobahn breaking into your FM radio program with an automated message warning off raffic ahead and then activating your GPS to show you where to get off

• MM's allowing online requests of personalized candies for special occasions.

Each example drove home the need for innovation in service design.

Here is a real gem about dealing with an age old challenge at call centers - How to melt "snowballs." Yes, snowballs. Snowballs are repeat contacts because once they start rolling each call comes in with a bigger and bigger AHT Key to "melting them?" Unlimited Handle Time allowed for specific question types to do as much research as required, as long as it takes...to get to a First Call resolution.

Bottom line on Bill's talk:
Great service is table stakes.
Value comes from innovating ways to take the service call out of the equation.

Making Magic Every Day - Lessons from the Disney Institute

"Service is tough, " so said Bruce Kimbrell our facilitator from the Disney Institute.

Yep. But the way Bruce talks about service makes it infinitely fascinating and fun!

We got the basics on loyalty you would expect. Lifetime value. Know your markets. The relation of the employee's satisfaction with the experience of the customer. But there was so much more...

Some takeaways from Bruce's delightful talk:

• "I just work here." The enemy of customer loyalty is the company where "the rules" are a disincentive to customer satisfaction and the culture is "we just follow the rules."
• "What little bump does it take to notice service?" Disney pays attention to the details.
• Loyal customers feel ownership of the brand, "it becomes part of how they send messages about themselves."
• "Seamless process - start to finish." This is a favorite of mine. Thinking about what happens before, during, and after each individual transaction gets at the whole customer experience.
• Why do customers leave? Bruce's answer. It's the "Yeah, what?"...the "you're bothering me" look from a service person communicates "I don't care."
• Then there was a real life letter from a customer with accompanying pictures of their stay in Disney World. "Thank you for adding magic to our stay." Wow. A housekeeper moves Mickey around, posing him differently each day when she cleans the room and a grandchild experiences a vacation she will remember fondly - forever. You could hear the "awww's" fromt he audience at the last photo of Mickey at the window...waiting for the family to return to the room.
• The challenge? "Once you have bumped it, that becomes the new level, the new expectation."
• Identity - Value- Relationships...these in balance build great loyalty.
• Experience Mapping - way cool. Disney uses these to break down the elements of value and see what drives the quality of every experience. For each they define what would meet and what would exceed expectations. The goal is to exceed.
• "What do you want to be known for, then make that connection at every point."
• And there was that clip at the end with the girl dancing with a cast member. I teared up, more than just a bit. “We have the opportunity to make magic every day.” Yep.

Thanks, Bruce, for an inspiring journey into the magic of Disney service.

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

NACCM 2008: Off To The Races

Good morning everyone, we are live here from the 2008 NACCM: Customers 1st Conference. We're very excited to bring to you regular updates from the conference that will include photos and interviews with many of the great speakers who are here presenting. Our goal over the next few days during the conference is to provide daily updates. You'll be able to check back here and the event website and see the latest from the conference.

We're off to a fast start with posts by our chairperson, JoAnna Brandi, CEO & Publisher, The Customer Care Coach, who has been regularly blogging in the weeks leading up to our conference. She joins us with a few early posts as she prepares for the conference to begin. And this morning she has some early thoughts for everyone getting ready to network and participate in some great presentations from a wide-range of companies and presentors.



Also, Becky Carroll of Customers Rock! is on hand and will be posting her own experiences during the conference. She gives us this great perspective to begin with. She will be actively updating everyone on twitter so be sure and follow her here.

Now I had the chance to quickly catch up with Amanda Powers, Conference Director of NACCM: Customers 1st. She had a few minutes to stop and share with us a little about what has gone into this year's event as well as some details of what to expect during the next few days.



Finally, we are very proud to have The International Service Excellence Awards at this year's conference. I had the opportunity to speak with Brett Whitford, Secretary-General, of the International Council of Customer Service Organizations and Christine Churchill, Executive Director of The Customer Service Institute of America who will be hosting the awards ceremony tonight. Hear from them as they tell us about these renowned service awards. Remember, if you are here, you can still purchase tickets to this great event.





Over these next few days there are so many people to meet, and great presentations to watch. We'll be updating you throughout the conference, so be sure and subscribe to our feed to get our updates and check our website for even more detail from the conference.

Stay Beautiful

This is co-posted on JoAnna Brandi's blog.

I once had a boyfriend who used to end every phone conversation and every email with the phrase, “Stay beautiful.” At first I was delighted by it, but as time went on, I have to admit, occasionally it annoyed me. At that time in my life I was certainly not used to taking compliments gracefully (I’ve gotten over that) and there were many days where I felt far from anything that resembled beautiful.

So one day I talked to him about it. I explained that it made me uncomfortable – that I didn’t feel beautiful all the time (in fact I felt it rarely) and his saying it so often had the effect of me feeling “less than.”

Oh, I was so off base.

“Beautiful,” he explained from his perspective, was a state of being. It was a graceful way of interacting with the world. It was a consciousness, rather than a thing. The phrase, “Stay beautiful,” was a reminder to put myself into that way of being and operate from there.

Oh, that’s different.

Time has gone by since he was here to remind me, but that phrase often comes to me as a reminder that I do have a choice how I show up in the world. I ask myself if I am creating beauty in my relationships, my work, my attitude. I think about my clients and the people I teach – am I encouraging them to create a vision of what beauty, caring, and positive interaction can be in their organizations? What does it take, especially in tough times, to stay beautiful in the eyes of your customers?

Today I’m in Disneyland, just hours away from premiering my latest workshop, The Positive Leader, at the NACCM Customer’s First conference. I’m in a restaurant surrounded by pictures of Walt Disney. Before sitting down I had a delightful conversation with 5 year old Tara who was dressed up as Cinderella. She’s been here for three days, and I suspect been wearing the dress just as long. The excitement in her voice and the twinkle in her eyes lead me to believe that Walt knew how to teach his “cast members” the quality I know as “Stay Beautiful.”

Stay tuned this week to the NACCM website where we will be broadcasting live podcasts, and interviews with speakers and guests. http://www.iirusa.com/naccm/event-home.xml

I’m the conference chairperson this year – I’d love to know that all of you are getting to share in the excitement and the learning – even if you can’t be here in person with us.

Remember, stay beautiful.

Visit JoAnna Brandi's blog and website.

Walk Like A Dancer

This post is cross posted on JoAnna Brandi's blog.

I was schlepping myself and my luggage through the airport this week feeling tired and old when I heard my friend and teacher Scotty’s voice in my head. “Walk like a dancer JoAnna, walk like a dancer.”

I have to tell you that at that very moment I felt myself grow taller, I felt my gaze rise from the moving sidewalk to what passes for a horizon in an airport, I took a deeper breath, I lifted my head and heart and then exhaled. I thought of how a dancer might move her body through an airport pulling luggage. I figured it had to be different than the way I’d been doing it. So I made up, in my mind, a vision of how I thought a trained and graceful dancer would be moving herself through the tunnel between terminals A and B – a mighty distance.

Scotty, tries to teach me to dance, and once in a while succeeds. (That is, if I’m in town when he’s in town and there’s space in our schedules.) I’m a tough student. And if I never learn to dance that’s okay. Scotty taught me how to walk – forward and backward – across a stage, down the aisle forwards and backwards with confidence, poise and grace. I’m not sure of the score he would give me if he actually saw me work with an audience, but I know that I can continue to improve if I allow myself to keep hearing Scott’s voice in my head. “Walk like a dancer, JoAnna, walk like a dancer.”

What a beautiful reminder for me of a principle I teach (and sometimes forget to practice myself) Act “As if.” I wrote about it in my first book “Winning at Customer Retention, 101 Ways to Keep ‘em Happy, Keep ‘em Loyal and Keep ‘em Coming Back”

Here’s an excerpt on that wonderful practice.

“Service providers can’t be expected to be nice all the time, to be polite all the time, to care all the time, can they? No —not human ones, anyway. However, there’s a skill that’s easy to apply that can bridge the gap between the times you feel genuinely, positively involved in your interactions and those you don’t. I call it acting “as if.”

What if you’ve had a tough day? Can you act “as if’ you haven’t? Or, if you feel confused about solving a customer’s problem, ask yourself how you’d act if you weren’t confused. Suppose you’ve just heard some not-so-encouraging words from a supervisor about the status of your big project, and now you have to get on the phone with a customer. Can you act “as if’ the interaction with your supervisor didn’t take place, muster faith in your ability to overcome adversity, and go on to help the customer? You have a headache; can you act “as if’ you don’t?

As a performer, [and you ARE] you’ll be called on to perform when you simply don’t feel like it. Skilled performers — actors, speakers, service reps, and salespeople — have developed great confidence in their ability to “do what they have to do.” Many know the act “as if’ secret.

As a performer and frequent traveler, I can assure you there are many times when a delayed flight, a night of fitful sleep in a hotel room, overwork, or a cold threatens my ability to do my best in front of an audience. But what are my options? Cancel the perfor­mance? Resign myself to giving a bad show? Beg the audience for forgiveness? I’ve never considered any of these acceptable alternatives. With faith in my ability to rise to the occasion, I act “as if” — as if I had a good night’s sleep, as if I were feeling terrific. Very often, I find myself starting to feel just that way.

When I’m nervous, I remind myself how it feels to be at ease —how my voice sounds, how my face looks, how I stand. I try whatever I can to affect that other feeling. Very often, by changing something in my body, by acting “as if,” my mood changes and then my attitude and state of mind follow suit.

Begin right now to act “as if’ you have faith in your ability to succeed as a performance specialist and relationship expert. (Of course, this includes taking action, not just harboring positive thoughts.) Remember, if you act helpless, you’ll be helpless.

If you act creatively, on the other hand, you’ll be creative. Acting resourcefully can make you resourceful. Cultivate the habit of acting like a first-rate, best-in-your-class customer-care expert, and it will be so.”

Well said, even if I say so myself. So there I was standing tall, breathing deeply, pulling my luggage through the strangely psychedelic underground tunnel in the Detroit airport, acting “as if” I was one of those people on “Dancing with the Stars.” The experience was fun. It gave me energy, It stretched the muscles in my body and it put a smile on my face. It simply had to be healthier then schlepping through the airport with my head down and my shoulders bend. .

“Act as if,” is a simple and powerful concept used by people in all walks of life. When Billy Joel is struggling with writers block he puts on a particular set of clothing – relaxed and easy – goes down to the coffee shop where he has successfully written things before, buys the same kind of beverage, and takes out his old familiar notebook and pen. He puts himself in the same spot – “as if” the words and music were flowing from his fingertips. Because the body and the mind are so connected, he knows that when he puts his body in the same place, his mind will follow.

Where will you find the opportunity this week to “Walk like a Dancer” and act “As if?”

May you have many opportunities to excel!

Visit JoAnna Brandi's blog and website.

This post is cross posted on JoAnna Brandi's

Disney Service Discovery

This posting by conference blogger Becky Carroll is cross-posted both on the Customers 1st blog as well as on Becky's blog Customers Rock!

Looking to learn more about what it takes to give great customer service? Look no further than Disney! I am here at the NACCM Customers 1st Conference being held at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, and today the event kicked-off in style. I chose the “Disney’s Service Challenge” pre-conference workshop, led by Bruce Kimbrell of The Disney Institute. This workshop focused on teamwork and taking care of employees (a critical part of taking care of customers is to take care of employees!). Bruce is also the keynote speaker tomorrow at the Pre-Conference Summit talking about “Loyalty Disney Style”.

Today, Bruce invited us to spend several hours discovering the service opportunities that Disney gives to their guests in “Pluto’s Pursuit”. I took the challenge, along with about 30 other attendees.

Bruce started us off with a great ice-breaker activity, with the promise of a PPR (positive plastic reinforcer - in this case, a small plastic statuette of Pluto). He had seven of us get into a circle and toss a ball back and forth in a set pattern. He then kept adding balls to the mix until we finally fell apart, balls flying all over the room! It was a great way to start talking about teamwork as well as multitasking (something we obviously didn’t do well). We then talked about what the necessary ingredients are for a team; they included sharing a common goal, cooperation, and interdependence. (Customers Rock! note: great customer service organizations have highly efficient teams that operate on trust and work well together.)

He also introduced the notion of different personal goals for different types of people one might find on a team, contrasting those who are motivated by achievement (goals - wanting to get to a “destination” with the team) vs. those who are motivated by affiliation (friends and enjoying the journey to the goal). More on this later. We were then split up into teams and given a common goal to achieve in a 90-minute time period, a sort of “scavenger hunt”. We had to go into Disneyland Park and find answers to a long list of questions. Some of the questions had to do with cast member (Disney employee) behaviors; other questions were about signs it the park or park attractions. We also had 2 challenges we could attempt as a team (of the puzzle variety).

Into the Park

Off we went on our hunt, where we relied on each other to look for the details in everything from the cast members and their on-stage behaviors (no sitting or smoking while on-stage!), their uniforms (name badge, please, and be well groomed), as well as trivia questions (do you know how much the piece of petrified wood in Frontierland weighs?). We covered the entire theme park, from Fantasyland to Adventureland to New Orleans Square to Frontierland - and beyond! Interesting observation - we were so busy looking for our scavenger hunt items, we didn’t get to stop and enjoy the park.

A few notes. All of the attendees at this conference are customer-focused, so when some of my teammates saw a woman at the park trying to navigate a curb with her stroller, four of them went over and helped her! That’s customer service. Also, Bruce is a veteran Disney guy; he has worked for them for nearly 30 years. As we were walking back to the conference from the theme park, he stopped and picked up every piece of trash he saw on the ground, throwing it away when he got the next trash can. He didn’t make a big deal of it; it just came naturally. I could see real pride in working at Disney.

Team Success Factors

When we returned, Bruce discussed more about the differences between the Destination teams and the Journey teams. We discovered that 3 of the 4 teams were “Destination” teams and were all vying for the fabulous prizes offered. The fourth team was a “Journey” team - they took their time, ate some food, did some shopping, and enjoyed their activity. One of the key areas we went over was employee rewards and recognitions. Bruce told a story about a long-time employee who had 32 years of perfect attendance. They decided to throw a big party for him to celebrate. He didn’t show up! Turns out he wasn’t comfortable with that kind of attention being showered on him, so he stayed home. The team had forgotten to find out what kind of recognition he might like; they just assumed he would want a party.

Taking Care of Employees

At Disney, they foster a culture of reward and recognition because that fosters other good things (like employee loyalty, which leads to great customer service). We need a little bit of that “destination” mentality to get things done, but we need to balance it with the “journey” mentality to make the job more fun!

The Conference Nuggets Are Just Starting!

I am blogging this conference, both on my blog Customers Rock! as well as on the Customers 1st Conference blog. During the sessions, I am not able to blog but will be updating you via Twitter; I am @bcarroll7, and the conference tag is #naccm. I am also posting any photos I take on the NACCM conference flickr group.

Taking care of your customers

A great article at the Customers Think blog, they discuss how one company is not increasing their fees for their customers. They realize that everyone is currently going under an economic burden. Currently, everyone is cash strapped, and they realize that hiking prices now could increase revenue now, but there is no incentive for customers to stick around in the future.

Do you see it this way?

Customer service and technology

Bruce Dresser ponders what the effect of the new president-elect on the goals of customer service and technology for the businesses of the United States.

Within the contact center industry, we’re likely to see an acceleration of hosted contact center deployments that require no capital expense yet let firms compete better and still focus on providing high levels of customer service. And the example being set may not be just other companies that have already seen the benefits of this type of hosted technology deployment, but from the new regime in Washington.

What effects do you think we'll see on customer service now that Obama's in office? Do you believe technology will take on a significant role?

Personalize the customer service experience

Service Untitled recently proposed one way to personalize your customers experience when they're dealing with your customer service representatives. Give them your email. If you give them an experience that they feel confident in, then they're more likely to contact customer service with a problem. But after you've given them your email address, encourage them to continue using the normal methods for contacting customer service, and that if that doesn't work, contact you through your personal email. This way, they'll feel better about another person to contact, and you'll have provided them a trusted name in the company.

Customers in an economic downturn

I found a very interesting post at CustomersThink by Mark Hunter. He discusses the situation when customers call and complain about your price increase, and threaten to switch to your #1 competitor. He points out that this only ends up happening about 10% of the time, however, if you're prepared during the initial conversation with the customer, you'll be set. It's important that sales representatives do their homework, and can talk through the process with the customer. Yes, the cost of switching is incredibly high, but be able to inform the customer as to how long it'd take for them to get the anticipated savings back, and how long it would be before a return on investment is to be seen. Be prepared to give the right answers to your customers, and it'll result in customer retention.

Wake Up Call

This is posted on behalf of JoAnna Brandi. It is co-posted on the Customers 1^st Blog and JoAnna Brandi blogs.

Monday morning, like many mornings, I woke up in a hotel. A brand spanking new Comfort Inn Suites in Tampa , Florida. Like many mornings the phone rang at 6:30 and stirred me out of a deep sleep.

“Beeep -beeep - beeep -beeep,” was the first sound I heard.

Dumb-dumb-dumb. Here was the hotel’s opportunity to make a “first impression” on me this morning and they did a poor job. You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

As I was getting ready for the day I recalled the full spectrum of wakeup call experiences I’ve had in all the years I’ve been waking up in hotels.

At one end of the extreme is the call I received today - at the other end the LIVE bright and cheery voice of a hotel employee actually talking to me and telling me what the weather was and how happy they were I was in THEIR hotel.

In between is the automated call that gives the date, the weather and any other topics of interest (perhaps a breakfast special in the coffee shop, or free coffee service in the lobby.)

As I was reviewing all these messages in my head, I realized that there is a full spectrum of touching going on in any activity.

Pretend there is a scale. At one end of the scale is Hospitality with a big “H” – warm, friendly, inviting. At the other end of the scale rudeness, abruptness and maybe even contempt (thinly veiled of course.) Now take a look at all the touchpoints in your organization and see where you rate on that scale.

Find any wake up calls?

Wake up because in THIS marketplace – if you snooze, you lose.

If you’d like to see more of Joanna Brandi’s blogs, and comment on this post, visit JoAnna Brandi’s Blogs. You can also find out more by visiting her Customer Care Coach website. Joanna Brandi will be a keynote speaker at this year’s North American Conference on Customer Management, and has already been profiled on our Customer 1^st blog. Stay tuned for her posts on the Customers 1^st blog!

Communicate with your customers

Communication is key to customer relationships. There's a need for you to openly communicate and be honest with what they should expect from your company. Service Untitled recently gave a few areas of communication to properly communicate with your customers.

They are:
Contact them through different mediums.
Be clear and honest with timelines.
Communicate what is being done and why.
Be prepared to answer questions.

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!

What Makes YOU Feel Good at Work?

This is posted on behalf of JoAnna Brandi. It is co-posted on the Customers 1^st Blog and JoAnna Brandi blogs.

According to my informal research people who feel good at work are more productive, like their jobs more, have better performance, are more likely to be creative, enjoy "going the extra mile," and have more energy at the end of the day when they go home to be with their families or pursue hobbies and outside activities.

Help me with my research - every body has their own "Feel Good At Work Factor" and Amanda Levy and I are writing about it. Please help us understand more about yours.

Please go to our comments section after this blog entry and finish this sentence. "I feel good at work when....."

If you’d like to see more of Joanna Brandi’s blogs, and comment on this post, visit JoAnna Brandi’s Blogs. You can also find out more by visiting her Customer Care Coach website. Joanna Brandi will be a keynote speaker at this year’s North American Conference on Customer Management, and has already been profiled on our Customer 1^st blog. Stay tuned for her posts on the Customers 1^st blog!

Are employees customers?

Satisfied customers are more loyal, spend more, refer other customers, and are overall more profitable than the average customer. But where does the satisfaction come from? Probably from a good interaction (experience) with an employee who was able to handle that encounter in a professional, accurate, and timely manner. So why is it that some companies don't invest enough time and money in employee satisfaction? Aren't all employees customers as well?

Employees have to be committed to the organization in order to deliver great service; they need to buy into the culture to sound authentic and share this authenticity with the end customers. Customer satisfaction does not happen by chance or simply because a manager tells his/her employees to treat customers well. Great customer service is a matter of attitude and this behavior is a direct result of how satisfied employees are with the organization they work for.

Keeping the workforce well informed of what's going on, providing timely and accurate feedback, and rewarding & recognizing superior performance are a few things that organizations can do to maintain a high level of employee satisfaction. At a deeper level employees must have meaningful and challenging work; a continuing learning environment and opportunities for growth will also go a long way in maintaining a healthy level of satisfaction.

Next time you get a customer survey showing that the satisfaction level is low or dropped from a previous high, don't go too far looking for answers. Look within your workforce and more often than not, you will understand what happened...

Using Social Media to Grow Customer Loyalty

If you have customers that are actively using social media, there is a potential to use that communication channel to deepen customer relationships. Social media tools are especially effective at building two-way conversations with customers, either consumers or businesses. There is certainly a lot of talk about marketing with social media!

I teach a class at UC San Diego called Marketing via New Media. We discussed the top reasons that businesses should consider using social media; I have summarized two of them for you here.

* Social media marketing strengthens customer relationships. Customers don’t want a relationship with a company or organization. They have relationships with the people that work for that company or organization. Social media tools such as blogs and Twitter allow customers to get to know the people inside the company. They get to see real people with real personalities. Tara de Nicolas from the Washington Humane Society shared with me that the most popular part of their website is the link to their Flickr photo stream! Their clients and donors love to see the faces behind the operations, and they seek them out when given a chance to attend a face-to-face event with them (such as a fundraising dinner). Friendships are formed online and brought into the offline arena! Customers that have positive interactions with the people in the company feel a stronger sense of trust with that organization, a key factor in building customer loyalty.


* Social media marketing is great at keeping customers informed and involved. While traditional media is also good at keeping customers informed, social media excels at getting customers involved. Nearly one year ago, we had devastating wildfires here in San Diego. One of my students this quarter works for the San Diego Zoo, and she shared that zoo members and other San Diegans greatly appreciated the zoo blog updates on how the fire had impacted the park. It allowed them a “look inside” to see how animals had been affected, and people’s passion for the animals drove additional public involvement to support the zoo’s efforts in caring for the wildlife. Customers that are more involved and engaged tend to have longer and stronger relationships with organizations.

Bottom line: In order to cement customer relationships, companies need to interact with them in more ways than simply advertising! If your customers are using social media, go and find out where they are interacting, listen to them there, then join the conversation!

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.