Creating a Customer-Centric Culture

John Cushman of AT&T spoke Tuesday at the Total Customer Experience Leadership Conference about creating a company culture centered around the customer. His steps for finding how to best serve your customer: watch your customers, understand their differences, set the foundation to building a roadmap to customer-centric success, make each player’s role clear, encourage employees to work together toward a common goal, rethink empowerment, track diverse success metrics, and prepare for the unexpected.

Pay attention to feedback and market analysis. This will show you what your customers truly want. Divide your customers into segments and find what requirements each needs. Make sure employees know what part they have in ensuring the right experience and encourage them to work together. Give authority to the right people in the right situations. Compile systems-provided data, structured feedback, and unstructured feedback to assess your current situation, then improve it. And always prepare for the unexpected.

Build for the end user. Sweat the little details of the user experience to solve pain points. All this will help you know your customers and discover what they want and what they don’t know they want.

Customer Experience Assassins and Customer Care for Gen X and Y

The North American Conference on Customer Management (NACCM) would like to invite you to enjoy two complimentary resources in the six weeks leading up to the event. First, join us for a complimentary one-hour web seminar: Do You Have Customer Experience Assassins? Investigating geo-demographic differences across sectors.

Are there customers out there who are just impossible to satisfy? That is, those customers who consistently evaluate products and services unfavorably regardless of industry. Response style explanations notwithstanding, this type of so-called, “Customer Experience Assassin” lurks out there and could be damaging not just your brand but others in their path. But who are they, how do we avoid their ire, and what, if anything, should we do about them?

Likewise, there are “Customer Experience Angels”, individuals who float through life blissfully unaware of the poor service and products they endure. They won’t complain about cold soup or the unkempt hotel room. They won’t return things, don’t complain much or at all, and they are generally happy people. Or maybe they just generally get better service for a variety reasons. Either way, as an organization you would want to know, “who are they and how do we get them to have an even greater influence on others?"

To answer these questions, Dave Fish, VP of Client Solutions, Maritz Research, guides you through discoveries found using Maritz Research’s CEBenchmarks study. In this study we track 34 customer experiences in 16 different industries among 263 different brands. Join us for the webinar on Wednesday, October 12, 2011 from 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM EDT.

Register here: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/992023681

Please mention code MWS0042SM when registering

Secondly, NACCM's partner, GfK Custom Research North America, has recently published "The Generational Effect", a white paper that explores the concept of generation and the extent to which various generations are both similar and different in their degree of loyalty, and the drivers of loyalty to companies in the various sectors. GfK compares key loyalty metrics from the benchmark surveys in the banking, automotive, credit card and cell phone sectors to reveal insights associated with this conjecture. To read the paper, click here.

Want to hear more from GfK? Join us at NACCM for the session "Become a Better Leader in Customer Loyalty: Customer Loyalty and Experiences Across the Generations" on Tuesday, November 15th, 2011.

Drawing on GfK Customer Loyalty cross-industry benchmark surveys, this session compares the generations in terms of the delighters that drive customer loyalty and dissatisfiers that drive customers crazy and lead to defection. Explore the similarities and differences between generational cohorts, such as Millenials (GenX) and GenYers, Boomers, Traditionals and emerging GenZ. To learn more, download the brochure.

Plus, you won't want to miss out on this year's keynotes:
Janice Green, Chief Customer Advocate, NATIONWIDE INSURANCE
John Costello, Chief Global Marketing & Innovation Officer, DUNKIN BRANDS
Jamie Noughton, Speaker of the House, Chief Culture Ambassador, ZAPPOS.COM
Michael Hoffman, Author, CUSTOMER WORTHY
Pete Winemiller, Senior Vice President, Guest Relations, NBA'S OKLAHOMA CITY THUNDER

Register today.

We look forward to welcoming you this November 14-16 at Disney’s Contemporary Resort in Orlando.

The NACCM Event Team
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Setting Targets for Measures of Customer Satisfaction: Comparing Results Based on Benchmarking vs. Linkage Analysis

Every company wants to know how they add up against the competition. But how do you measure customer satisfaction and loyalty?

Dr. D. Randall Brandt spoke about three ways to set target loyalty goals: judgment-based metrics, benchmark-based, and linkage analysis.

Judgment-based choosing is when management simply picks a target based on personal judgment. This works best in tandem with benchmarking or linkage. It can be difficult for management to articulate the rationale, and it may not be realistic.

When companies use benchmark-based targets, they define their targets in comparison to some benchmark, be it time, inter- or intra-organizational. These targets are easier to explain and take into account the company’s current state. However, this may promote a false sense of confidence since you don’t know if achieving the target will yield desired business results.

Linkage Analysis is based on strength and creates a relationship between satisfaction and business outcome of interest. It is easier for management to explain, which increases the odds of achieving the desired business result

The objectives of this analysis is to determine and evaluate the similarities and differences among targets based upon benchmarks vs. linkage analysis, then use the results to develop a framework. Frameworks should:

- 1. Drive continuous improvement

- 2. Achieve customer experience leadership

- 3. Realize desired business results

Use these criteria for setting targets for key customer metrics on the basis of business strategies and objectives. Evaluate scores on these metrics using the selected multiple criteria and targets to find out just where your company sits against others in the industry.

Steps to Driving Action on the Front Line in a B2B Environment

Tim Berry from Microsoft spoke of driving your sales force to enhance the customer experience.

Every company should try to become a trusted partner with its customers. Microsoft has gone on a journey toward deeper customer satisfaction. When Microsoft was being perceived less positively, Bill Gates made a decision to start listening to customers. Since then, the company has received more and more positive feedback as it shifted to the Web, and now through the transition to the Cloud.

Understand what your moment of truth is: It’s when a customer is most focused on you and when they make their assessment of how satisfied they are with you.

The goal is to drive change. Use customer feedback to find out how to make the experience better. This can be measure by the Relationship Management Score (RMS). Have a consistent and predictable customer engagement model. This information can be used to create tools and resources to optimize the sales force. Listen to customers to find how they define success.

Create actionable Customer Satisfaction Metrics to hold people accountable – all the way down to the individual level. “What gets measured gets done.” Make sure the data is being used. Here are Tim’s tips to drive relationship health:

1. Consistent Sales Methodology

2. Listening Methods

3. Drive Execution Excellence

4. Close the Loop

You must know the value proposition for all your constituents, whether they be external or internal. The sales force needs to be funneled toward execution excellence. Start with a Strategic Relationship Map. Define which roles and relationships are needed and who can fill them. Be sure to communicate the results to customers and to employees. Create an action plan to improve upon what you learned. Focus on having CPE information stay close to the sales team. Formalize Corrective Action Plans – if an issue comes up, be transparent and open. Create a conversation

Start this movement from the top down. If the CEO isn’t behind it, others won’t come together either. Create a central group that supports the vision – they will drive the overall strategy. Remember that CSAT is a long-term strategy and every internal and external factor has an impact. Tailor the process to each segment. Create actionable CSAT metrics to drive change. Then measure, and do it all again.

Breaking the Barriers in Total Customer Experience

[Full disclosure – You might want to take this with a grain of salt since he’s my dad.]

Joe Pine kicked off Tuesday with an introduction to how experiences are the new offering in this economy.

We have progressed from the commodities market, to an industrial economy focused on goods, to a service economy, and now to a market that values experiences. The value of an experiential offering is based off how much time consumers are willing to spend with you.

The recession isn’t slowing down this progress; instead, it is accelerating the shift to experiences being what consumers truly want. With limited spending money, people are realizing they don’t value “stuff.” They value shared experiences with loved ones. Soon, experiences will become the predominant economic offering and even generate more jobs.

Experiences aren’t always experiences in real time and space. Companies like Layar use digital technology to enhance experiences. There’s been an explosion of this technology – it’s a migration from reality to virtuality. We need to figure out how to use technology to enhance experiences by fusing the real and the virtual and exploring the “Multiverse” (explained in his book, “Infinite Possibility”).

Here are Joe’s tips on designing experiences:

- Make the experience cohesive

o Use the design principle of THEME:

§ Theme

§ Harmonize impressions with positive cues

§ Eliminate negative cues

§ Mix in memorabilia

§ Evoke all five sense

- Make the experience rich – hit the sweet spot of the experience

- Make your experience individual – experiences happen inside of us

- Make your experience authentic – be true to self

- Make your experience compelling

o Embrace dramatic structure of Exposition, Inciting Incident, Rising Action, Crisis, Climax, Falling Action, and Denouement

Measure the success of an experience by how much time a customer is willing to spend with you – whether in real life or in the virtual world.

“With technology it’s limited only by our imagination, and to that there is no end.”

Become a Company Customers Love and Can’t Live Without: The Five Decisions of Beloved and Prosperous Companies

How do you get customers to advocate for your brand? Teach them to love your company.

Jeanne Bliss of CustomerBliss spoke this morning about creating a prosperous company by rallying customers behind it. Customers look to one another to make buying decisions 78 percent of the time. These customers who believe in your company are assets; relationships you need to honor. These customers will become an army for your company, so leverage that by becoming a beloved company with Jeanne’s five steps:

1. 1. Believe

2. 2. Clarity

3. 3. Real

4. 4. Be There

5. 5. Say Sorry

To get customers to believe in your company, you must understand that they are assets. Make sure to hire people who live your core values. Stop letting rules and policies drive a wedge between you and your customers.

Enhance clarity by being reliable. How clear are you on the memories you want to deliver? What story are you trying to share? Have clarity on what you will and will not be.

Be real with your customers and walk in their shoes. Train your new hires to also be a customer of your company, and make sure everyone throughout the company knows what the lives of your customers are like.

Be there for your customers at every touch point. Be deliberate on experience and create differentiating moments. Earn the right for customers to return.

With these steps you can become a beloved company and make sure customers are telling your story.

Curt Carlson on Customer Experience: #2: Customer Experience Management – We forgot about the customer

In this new series of posts, we are joined by guest blogger Curt Carlson, Senior Vice President, Customer Experience Management – TNS North America. Read the full series here.


Hi! I’m back with the second of four blogs leading up to the NACCM conference. In my last post, I talked about the fact that Customer Experience Management (CXM) programs just aren’t working well for most companies today. Flat results and lack of new insights are causing executives to rethink their programs. I attributed this to limited perspectives…a type of tunnel vision that in turn limits practitioners’ abilities to help drive customer experience improvement and the profitable growth that would accompany it. Correcting this defective perspective requires a significant change in how we think about traditional CSAT programs. Not only are such programs not customer-centric, they actually have relatively little to do with the customer.

Santayana’s advice about not forgetting the past suggests a good place to start. CXM can trace its roots back to the Quality era. It started with a focus on process improvement and all these years later is still doing the same thing. (Look at your company’s most recent CSAT survey if you don’t believe me.) While 30 years of focus on process improvement has vastly improved customer experience in terms of product and service quality, the lack of further gains shows it has taken us as far as it can.

All this focus on process improvement is causing us to forget about the customer. What matters is not what process area has the greatest impact on the customer base; it’s about which customers (that is, real people) are most impacted by which processes. Once we understand that it’s about individual customer needs, we start to gain new, wider perspectives. Let’s apply this thinking to some current issues: flat scores and the same ol’ key drivers.

Functional key driver priorities, such as customer service, product quality, and billing, are analyzed and ranked based on the ability of processes (and their attributes) to improve overall customer experience. As we have all learned, they don’t change much over time unless there’s some disruption. Consider, however, that each of the process drivers is the #1 key driver for some subset of customers. Real example… We know that for mobile carriers, Coverage is often the primary driver of satisfaction. However, we have learned that for some customers, Coverage not a key driver, but the Data Plan Offer is. Profiling customers in terms of demographics, products, usage, and spend can provide the additional information necessary to identify which customers are impacted most by which drivers. Your current program is stuck in part because you have been uniformly optimizing experience across your customer base. When you take it to the customer level you have the potential to differentially maximize it, further driving profitable growth.

So this is all about recognizing and understanding the differences among customers. Customers are not all the same; they have different needs. A nice analytical trick, you say, but what strategic potential in Customer Experience studies is unlocked? Top of mind… How about increasing share of spend? Improving competitive position? Increasing the value of the customer database? Improving the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing spend? Building ROI into CXM? All this and more become possible. But how do you turn potential into reality?

Until next time…Please share your experiences in trying to get more from your current CXM program. What worked? What didn’t?

If you enjoyed this post, meet Curt this week, Oct 3rd to 5th, at the Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit in Arizona, or join TNS this November at NACCM for a session on Best-in-class Customer Experience Management.

To learn more about NACCM, click here. To register, click here. Readers of the Customer's 1st blog can save 15% off the standard registration rate with code NACCMBlog.