Business 2012

 Three Reasons to be there…

There has been much comment on Twitter in the last 24 hours about the Business 2012 event being held at the O2 Arena in London.

Some of it has been justified, it was badly organised, it was cold it was a tad shambolic and yes there were some pretty barbed comments..one exhibitor said that it was badly organised on biblical proportions..

The feeding frenzy was by no means justified as many visitors actually enjoyed it,how do I know? Because I asked many as I went around, its sadly what I do..some were even planning on a return visit.

Customer satisfaction was not high for some but customer loyalty will see the event though to success.

Why?

Because at the heart of this event there are some fantastic speakers and motivators..the Three B’s in particular, Branson Burton and Botterill..all three are a huge success and all three have done so on the basis of being single minded and turning adversity into positive outcomes.

Learning from mistakes and being single minded epitomises the approach these three entrepreneurs take. You cannot be successful by wallowing in what has happened you have to learn, improve and move on.

That is exactly what the event will do, learn, adjust and deliver a better customer experience from today onwards.

Worth Visiting..Yes

If you have any doubts about visiting then talk your self into it rather than talk your self out of it..

There are some great exhibitors and the speakers are all on form..

Brad Burton was full of his normal enthusiasm and forthrightness, Get off Your Arse and get on with it..when in full flight the Meet, Know, Like Trust message is compelling, check out the speed networking section that 4N are running, not many gaps in that line of thirty chairs all day long.

Nigel Botterill’s 18 Points talk…you are the only person to blame when things go wrong,.. Botterill talks such common business sense that its hard not to listen..so many in the first talk of the morning were running out of pages to take notes on..the Entrepreneurs Circle area was busy all day..

If these two could share a stage tickets would sell out, it would be the cosmic event of all business motivational speaking…would they ever agree to such an event?

These were by no means the only speakers of note,my point is that mistakes can be made good, look to the positives of the day and learn to keep your eyes open to what is around you and keep Listening..these speakers made the event despite the first day hiccups.

Would love any feed back on day two of the event..

Listening to your biggest customers is so important

Getting asked about how effective Mystery Customers are can sometimes be frustrating..

We help many companies understand the Customer Experience which helps in overall profitability and growth. Simple on this level,good solid customer research and Shopper Marketing.

Problem

The difficulty is that we don’t provide a standard Mystery Customer response because all clients are different and hence our response and approach are always going to be unique.

There are huge differences in customer profiles amongst a companies customers and these have to be taken into account.

Too many Mystery Customer companies have surveys the length of your arm with a zillion Yes No questions on them. A host of boxes that ask for rankings and ratings and reasoning…

All this has its place but often the wrong customer gets sent to the wrong place or is clearly not nor will be a customer of that business..its mystery shopping because the use of the feedback is a mystery…why listen to someone telling you how to improve your business who never uses your shop, restaurant,pub,cafe or firm? A person who has no idea of what you do or why you should improve.

Solution

The solution is not to bus Mystery Shoppers in but to talk to customers directly…we think we have the best possible solution that avoids the mismatch of “shoppers” not being profiled and forgetting what happened on their way home to fill in the huge survey..

Customeyes advocate being on site and talking to as many customers as possible making sure that all customer profiles are covered…it avoids getting selective feedback and ensures accuracy. The answers are genuine,it allows proper profiling of customers and it gives certainty.

By asking about Expectations, actual versus preconceived it’s possible to get a clear ROE measure – Return on Expectation which when linked to Advocacy and propensity to recommend produces powerful insights. A better picture emerges.

This picture tells you what really happened and what needs to be done to improve the customer experience to enhance Advocacy and brand awareness.

Customeyes report on solid Red Amber Green platforms and have corresponding Resistors, Acceptors and Generator customer tags to identify who is promoting and who isn’t.Where is your Social Media platform being promoted and where isn’t it? What can be dome to improve that Footprint?

What about Exit Polls? Why did they go into that shop,cafe,Estate Agent, restaurant? Was it destination or impulse? Where does this leave them in terms of Advocacy? Would they recommend based on this visit alone?

The Gift..

This approach takes the nonsense out of dull surveys that are lists of boxes that ticked without feeling or knowledge. It removes the absurdity of surveys being used to tick marketing boxes giving useless percentages that seek to flatter…

The gift is customer gold dust – real views real feedback the building blocks of solid business improvement.

Shopper marketing

Recently Shopper Marketing has emerged as the new way to understand customers motivators of purchase.

It is far more focused on a strategic approach to marketing and less concerned with the short term gains of promotions and trade marketing.The long term is the objective, to increase sales but on a sustained basis.

A key plank in the thinking is that it is about selling to the shopper and not the consumer…

Radical approach given that the broadcast method of advertising and promotion has been used up until now. Generally everyone gets to hear about every offer…OK you could argue that loyalty points target your past purcahses but do they predict future decisions?

Current economic conditions make it even more imperative to make sure that customers are treated as individuals and that we are not all the same…we all have different routes to that till and getting underneath the skin of shoppers is where gains will be made.

Customer research is changing,mystery shopping and the mass of statistical information that retailers have plays a part but the approach is decidedly more shopper focused on the customer experience.

How many of us go out with the intention of buying X and come away with Y? We are brand fickle and cost concious…

This thinking is beginning to become more mainstream..O2 Rewards are catching on to the Shopper Marketing approach.

New services will undoubtedly emerge quickly but one innovation caught our eye..it’s called Beep Treat ..

It essentially allows customers to scan a Beep Treat poster and get a treat, discount etc, that can be used straight away..it also lets you post a Like to the Facebook page of the shop that you are in..

Smart technology that uses Social Media to drive sales and create brand advocacy as well as deploying new thinking…shoppers are not all the same and have differing purchase motivators..choice is important

View Angus Grady ✩Customeyes Research✩0845 6885272′s profile

Tesco seem to think that Berkhamsted is a town of single person households.It is not…there are more families in the town,its a fact,you only have to look at the number of schools to confirm it.

Tesco deny consumers a choice in Berkhamsted by dictating what they can or can not purchase.

A six pack of bread rolls used to be available …not any more

It appears that the limited choice customers have is to buy 4 for a £1 …a saving yes given that each bread roll is scandalously priced at 35 pence…

If you need 6 rolls for the family that you don’t have in this town, then it costs you a mighty £1.70  for 6 rolls…

Why the fuss you might ask?

Simple…customers should be given the right to exercise choice and in this case we cannot.Tesco are more concerned with getting as much dough from shoppers as they can rather than offering food staples at a price that is accessible to family budgets.

The store manager was unable to offer a rational explanation as to this lack of choice merely saying that it was a central decision to de stock the cheaper 6 roll pack option.

Several shoppers agreed that it was a scandal and were vocal in their views that customer satisfaction was dwindling and that they were spending more money than they wanted to. If they had cars,these were elderly, they maintained that they would drive to a superstore where they could purchase that 6 pack of rolls…

Now Tesco have spent millions on an advertising campaign that tells us that “Every Little Helps”…I am guessing that this means every little squeezed out of customers by over pricing their bread helps to pay for the ad campaign…

Doubtless the response, not yet forthcoming from Twitter, will be along the lines of how wonderful Tesco are in terms of their range of offers…

All well and good but please make sure that the basics are taken care of….on that note why is the Basics range not available in the Berkhamsted store?

Don’t tell me…it’s a single person household town and the Basics range is aimed at the family segment of shoppers…

Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5 has a great chrous..

It’s all takin’  and no givin’

They just use your mind

Is the Voice of the Customer,Voc,really a pointless way to spend money? Does it tell companies anything?

Having recently read this article I’m beginning to get the feeling that some companies don’t have trust in what their customers are saying.It also makes me wonder if the process of understanding the customer is in itself not understood.

The argument that Voc is a rational response to an emotional issue is exactly right.What this article misses is that customer feedback is one part of the equation and not the total answer.There are multiple messages that are being sent by customers.

Customer experience and journey get overlooked.Surveys capture but one part of what they are trying to tell companies.Often that one part is customer satisfaction.

What is needed is more empathy with the customer,correct.

Surveys should if done in isolation look at satisfaction,loyalty and propensity to recommend.These are by far the better metrics to employ.

To understand customers there needs to be a variety of capture methods – groups,interviews and an awareness of  the market context of that customer experience.By taking into account the competitive environment it is then possible to get a better understanding of what the message is.

Surely the point of customer feedback then  is not just to benchmark customer satisfaction? The main point should be to identify your brand advocates and understand them? These are your revenue generating customers after all and the ones that will help to grow your business.

Brand evangelists will propel the brand,satisfied customers just take care of it.

Is that too simplistic a view?

One thing that I have learnt in nearly 30 years in business is that you have to look after your customers because if you don’t somebody else will!  In the ever-automated world that we live in, larger businesses have rightly used technology to help them provide their products and services to their markets, quicker and with fewer mistakes and at lower cost to them and their customers.

BUT…

Oh yes there is a but, in recent times I have seen technology being put in charge of managing the client relationship more and more and let’s be honest in most customer situations it plain doesn’t work.  We will all have stories of getting stuck in a virtual circle in some large corporate companies phone system only to be back at square one 15 minutes later despite being told “Please continue to hold your call is important to us”!

A slick technology based customer facing system can work for some of the “New World” businesses, Amazon is a great example of this, great customer delivery system backed up by an astonishing personal marketing strategy that sells you stuff you never knew you wanted!

I sometimes feel that businesses of all sizes lose sight of what is important to their customers, conversations tend to exist on a transactional level and little or no time is spent these days on understanding customers and where their business is going.  As face to face account management has become less common being replaced by more remote forms of customer care can we still maintain that all important relationships with customers?

There is no doubt the Internet is a powerful market but if your model is more traditional how do you best serve your customers?

• Make your best customer feel special, if you have a new product or fresh service offering make them feel special by offering it to them first and ask them what they think and how you can improve your service.

• Have a regular opportunities to call or visit clients, in sales a “Reason to call” is one of the most powerful marketing tools, bring your customers into your business introduce your key staff it all helps to strengthen the business-to-business relationship.

• Make sure you have a process for dealing with a customer complaints, take them seriously after all is often said that the very best customers to have are the ones who forgive you when you make mistakes!

The reality is none of us own our customers but we do share them with other suppliers.  The real challenge is to make the service we offer stand out.  Make them feel special, help them out when they are stuck and most importantly value their custom!  Use technology to serve your customers but be careful not to replace the all-important personal touch.

About the Writer

Clive Mulligan is the Principal of Simply Consulting, a Sales & Marketing Development Consultancy focused on helping small and medium sized businesses grow their businesses by developing a strong sales & Marketing Strategy.

A Sales Professional since 1984 Clive has been described by colleagues, business partners and colleagues as being “Challenging and Supportive”, being a “Knowledgeable professional and a pleasure to work with” and as having “wealth of business development experience across a number of sectors”, Clive harnesses this experience to work with forward thinking business owners to help them realize their full business potential.

For Further information please visit the website at www.simply-consultancy.co.uk or to contact Clive at clive.mulligan@simply-consultancy.co.uk or call 01923 831 725

Is the Light finally on?

Last night was the end of the series of Secret Shopper the Mary Portas TV event that has opened our eyes to the changing customer service for the better.

It was a great series with some cringe worthy examples of blatant poor customer service coupled with some pretty memorable lines,”West facing is the new South facing”from last nights show…

Sharp practices were exposed,rude assistants shamed and arrogance dispelled all in the name of better customer service.

Did it achieve anything? Does a high profile TV show over 4 weeks change the way we are served? Is it the start of something big?

Sadly I would argue that the answer to all the above is NO because the change needs to be based at a more grass roots level.

There is pressure to make profits which is not always consistent in the short term with achieving operational goals. Slim staff budgets often mean that training is a secondary option,new recruits get a condensed training period which means condensed customer service.

Sales training looks at the “close” not the “Listen”…get the sale at any cost-the sofa and mobile phone shows being prime examples.

There needs to be an understanding that the customer experience is vital to sustained profit which translates to improving the customer journey and Listening to the customer before someone else does…

It would be great top think that a revolution in service standards has begun…the reality is that it will be short lived and many operations be they retail,hospitality,leisure and commerce will gravitate back to shorter well trodden paths…customer needs avoidance….

Black Horse...should be faster

Lloyds TSB has had some problems over the last year or so what with the economy and being bailed out by tax payers.

It strikes me that they should really be making more of an effort to display at least a modicum of customer service skills.

Over the last two months I have been trying to get another company credit card.I have filled in all the forms and the new person has given their details  and off they were posted.

Last week a letter arrived instructing both of us to go to our nearest branch and sign so different forms along with presenting ID.

Today was that day…problem was that it didn’t go well.

After an age we were told that we had been sent the wrong forms and that new ones would have to be dispatched and that we would have to come back again…I was screaming by this point..

The people behind me waiting to be served were screaming louder…not one of the people behind the glass who were all standing arounding chatting moved a muscle to help.

Eventually I presume the Manager came out and helped with people who just needed to pay money in.

Currently Customer Service is all the rage and will be more so when Scary Mary hits our screens on Wednesday.It seems incredible that in a bank the size of Lloyds TSB that you can wait fro nearly ten minutes and no one takes control and smiles and apologises for the delay.Staff seem to have been trained to look down,over or through customers rather than at them.

Come on Lloyds lead the way and stop ignoring us…

Not the best award Talk Talk have had

Next week sees the new Mary Portas series Secret Shopper starting on C4,Wednesday 9pm.

This will be a must watch because it seeks to show warts and all the lack of customer service that seems normal in this country.

Scary Mary gathers the evidence and confronts the chiefs to show them just how bad things are.

Brilliant…it’s about time that customer service was elevated to where it belongs, to the top of the customer experience.

At the same time the Daily Mail today delivers the results of it’s worst customer service award…and the Wooden Spoon goes to Talk Talk..

Other contenders were Santander,HMRC,Ryanair,Nationwide and the Royal Mail.

It seems that Talk Talk have done very little Listen Listen and customers have been treated in the most appalling manner….Calls not returned,staff that were rude,and dishonest claiming that faults would be fixed and lying about tariffs to get customers to change to a higher one.Some customers have had no phone or internet for months and still could not get anything done to sort it out.

Chasing new customers is one thing but failing to deliver on service standards to existing customers is unforgivable.

We need to stand up for ourselves and insist on good service as a given and not fall over backwards when we encounter a helpful,friendly and smiling face that makes our encounter truly great.

All companies in what ever sector may just be about to get the Portas treatment from a lot more people…about time….