You can beat the big boys....keep trying

A great article in the FT on 23rd November  -”The Value of Being an Underdog” gives hope to those of us who are up against industry Leviathans.

At times all effort seems futile until cracks appear that allow us smaller,leaner outfits to steal an advantage.

Steve Jobs once said “why join the navy when you can be a pirate?”…this approach has allowed Apple to still be seen as a challenger brand,a maverick that delivers great products.

4 key areas were identified as crucial to the challenger approach.

1.Decide what you stand for and stick to it..retain your core principles

2.Craft a compelling story….make sure that you have a consistent bio that grabs attention

3.Build a Lighthouse Identity….Adam Morgans phrase relates to being a thought leader and instigator – don’t navigate by the consumer let them navigate by you..

4.Be Brave…stick with what you believe to be the right way…

There is of course another factor and that is confidence… be supremely confident in the image that you portray and in story you build your company on.

To challenge successfully takes determination and steely nerves and a dose of basic research awareness…

Steve Jobs may think focus groups are a waste of time but the average company can only benefit when undertaking some straight forward business intelligence ground work.

Who is doing what and where?

What does the market place customer have to say about who is in and who is out?

Any nugget can be turned to your advantage…it was after all a small stone that felled Goliath…a small stone that was delivered effectively…

Go get ‘em

At least you know what will happen....

Names are important to any brands success, fruit juice to people.

Some names just don’t travel well, this Polish fruit Juice wouldn’t last long on Tesco shelves.

Some names are embedded in the customer concious and should never be changed or messed about with.It’s part of the brand personality as is the logo that supports that name.

There have been some great examples of re branding going wrong.This site has covered the Coke fiasco.The recent Gap logo saga clearly showing that the customer will fight back if not listened to.

Good re brands could include Aviva…after some time customers have accreted the new name and image…what was the previous name? How many remember or care?

Famous back tracking, apart from Gap, includes the Kellog’s 1998 name change from Coco Pops to Choco Krispies.The company had underestimated the public’s love of Coco Pops and quickly successfully turned disaster to success by starting a publicity campaign using a phone line referendum for customers to vote on the name. Coco Pops made a triumphant return managing to enhance the brands position in the market.

The point of all this is that customers have a voice that should never be ignored.Social media platforms make it impossible to escape the barrage of customer feelings both good and negative.

Loyalty

Consumers  and customers are essentially conservative,early adopters are few compared to those that stay with a brand. Loyalty is all and companies should invest time and effort in making sure that loyalty remains well placed, ie, with you as the supplier.

Listening to the market can prevent mistakes if considering a brand overhaul. Listening to market chatter is also a fundamental requirement in making sure that you understand your customers and those in the market you operate.Research can save the day and should be there to guide marketing decisions.

I’ll just try a small sip to start with….

Research can reveal some interesting things if you look

Not just a tree....let me know what you see

It is sometimes difficult to see what is in front of you,sometimes even harder to act upon what you’ve seen.

It is easier to ignore or sideline issues until we are ready to face them,that normally means we never will really deal with the issue.

This can have very serious consequences, a leaky pipe often becomes a burst pipe which means gallons of expensive water all over your new Axminster.

The same is true when considering research and cost effective approachs to listening to your customers.

Factoring in a regular customer research budget needn’t be expensive or a drain on resources.Would companies rather spend a small amount of money regularly or lose valuable customers?

The answer seems obvious but very few companies seem to follow this simple maxim.

The 1-10-100 rule applies here.

Every pound that you have spent on research is well invested.If you had to correct a problem then it would cost you ten times the amount to adjust had you not have spent the early amount.

Should an issue go totally unnoticed until very late in your  customer experience cycle then you may end up paying 100 times what you could have paid in the research phase to put it right.At this point you would have lost valuable customers and the viral impact could well escalate out of all proportion.

In any recession or turbulent trading conditions the three must haves are Training,Customer Research and Marketing…and customer research is a crucial element.

The full Buisness Week Editors  quote went along these lines

“The customer has become a bloody nuisance whose unpredictable behaviour damages carefully made strategic plans,whose activities mess up computer operations and who stubbornly insists that purchased products should work”

Managing that unpredictability is what makes some companies great and others no so.

Research has shown on numerous occasions that customers don’t always complain, when they do they tell more people than would a customer who has a positive story to tell.

In some ways its good to have complaints as it can engender loyalty.If the issue is put right then waves of positive comments will spread form the once disgruntled customer.It’s important to recognise that no complaints can mean the opposite of good news…customers are unhappy but you just hear about it, they’ve voted with their wallets and gone to a rival.

Theodore Levitt said “Absence of complaints is the surest sign of a bad relationship with customers”.

So how can you have a better relationship with your customers?Get more complaints….

Not exactly…you need to make sure that better is a mechanism for complaints and that you make sure that complaints are discovered when they are niggles and not full blown anger tinged issues…

The easiest way to do this is of course to make sure that you have systems in place that regularly checks the customer experience and that you are in touch with your customers and the market in which you operate.

Research,Listen, Learn and benefit from good feedback…can anyone afford not to?

This mobile is just a bit too big...

Monday has been a phone day and it’s been surprisingly successfull.

No huge global, trans-national or even minor companies have elected to use Customeyes….so far…

There has been no major rush that I can detect to browse my web site and discover more about us.

The plan was to instigate all contact by phone first and then follow up with email or letter.Too often I think that my electronic effort gets lost some where between my keyboard and intended inbox. The sense of frustration that a great message is being sat on and not used can be too much to deal with.

Why haven’t they got back to me yet? Are they there? Did I send it to the right person? All these questions can ruin your day.Often the wrong person who gets your email will not forward it to the right person.

Email is not perfect nor is the phone, but, the phone allows a good rapport to be developed and is a useful intelligence device.

I discovered today that the named person on my contact list was not always the person who has responsibility or decision making sign off.I learnt from many calls of future plans that I can now factor into my new business drive.

Information was imparted from some calls that allowed me there and then to change tack and mould my offering to their needs.

I achieved more in half an hour on the phone with one prospect than I could have achieved in weeks had I have gone the email route to begin the relationship building.. The call allowed me to move the contact from my “suspect” list to my “prospect” list straight away.My lists are now better and more organised thanks to calling.

Go on, set aside a morning,grab your phone and get calling…you can get some new customers and maybe if you’re brave call some lapsed ones…

Having visited a couple of these fine restaurants  at lunch time it was apparent that one size does not fit all…

Being part of a chain you would expect similarities.There were.

The menu was the same the décor was consistent and the atmosphere was similar.

On both occasions there was a distinct lack of other customers which was a shame because La Tasca has a lot to offer.The lunch time menu is very good with a brilliant offer of Tapas for two for just £10. Good food at a good price.

The down side was that the two experiences were so different from a customer service perspective.

On the one hand we had a chatty waiter who could not do enough for us and gave some good advice on which dishes to choose.He was 12 out of 10 and will definitely be going though to the next round of waiter of the year…

On the other hand we had very good service and were heading for another next round finalist when the bill arrived…when we asked for a glass of white wine we had been given the most expensive option on the wine list which made the whole point of a quick and affordable lunch a nonsense.

When asked about this we were told with a cheeky grin that the restaurant needed to make money and that the wine charge went some way to making our lunch more cost effective….

Surely it would have been a courtesy to give us the options on wine before assuming we would not say anything? Surely there was the realisation that we would feel slightly cheated by not being told? Surely if we were going out grumpy there was little chance that we would ever come back in smiling?Will we go back? Not sure to be honest.

Customer service is on the whole very good at La Tasca, it’s a shame that one little instance has left a slightly sour and expensive taste in the mouth.

Understanding customers and how they spend is the nut to crack. If it could be achieved on a consistent basis then retailers and brand owners would be in heaven.

Huge sums are invested to harvest customer information to learn what that customer represents in terms of value to the retailer, value here being a monetary value.It’s about customer profitability.

Single View is the new marketing buzz word and it looks like it’s going to play an increasing role in the marketing mix.Analysts predict that those retailers not embracing the new vibe will be the ones that get left behind.

Customer experience feedback is a vital part of how the single view is arrived at and highlights the need to ensure that the whole process of the customer journey is evaluated not just a few well worn KPI’s.

How many other sectors could embrace this single view concept? There is certainly scope for most companies to get to grips with this approach.

All companies know who their customers are, most companies know the frequency their customers engage with them and the average transaction.Customer research can drive sales opportunities if undertaken on a regular basis.

Research doesn’t need to be massively complicated to deliver results.Attracting back lapsed or lost customers could make a significant impact on incremental revenue and self fund the research.

Why does it pay sometimes to be economical with the truth? Because dealing with some companies forces you to if you want a desired outcome.

Take today. I am having huge problems with my ISP and seem to be the only person who can’t stay connected to the web long enough to do anything.

Having checked all the obvious things with my PC it became obvious that the problem was me but my provider.

I call and get a whole bunch of options that nearly address my problem,I’m not moving or don’t wish to add options to my package so that narrowed things down.

I press the appropriate button on my phone and wait for some time before a friendly voice asks for security details,account numbers etc and then proceeds to ask what the problem is. Just as I get to the good part the line goes dead…

Second call the same that third time it just rings out..by now I have been on the phone for nearly an hour.Not a huge amount of time but an annoying amount considering the list of things to be done before I can clock off for the day.

My solution was to press the I’m leaving you button…before I could react the phone was answered and an even friendlier voice asked what they could do to help. I explained that I had pressed the wrong option and they grew chilly telling me that they were there to help and basically stop customer churn. They did transfer me to a very supportive person who managed to solve my connection issues.

The point of this is that I had to lie to get to what I wanted. All the options should have been answered as swiftly giving the customer some confidence that the supplier is on their side.

Each call should be treated with equal gravity, it shouldn’t matter if you are un happy with the service or are moving house, that call should always be a priority.

The majority of customer experiences are judged on the single criteria of the quality of the customer service.This is valid but not always appropriate.

Customer service should be the end result of  a series of exchanges and not the sole deteriminant of how good a company has performed.

The old adage that “coffee stains on the passenger trays tells me that the engines are not being looked after” is very apt.

If a company can’t get the last part of the equation right then it shows that there has to be an inbalance somewhere else for the answer to be wrong.Too often the key elemnets of the experience and customer touch points are ignored or badly handled.

Take a holiday example.

Olympic Holidays were great at getting me and the family to the hotel which was fantastic.If asked at this point I would have given them 12 out of 10.Great price,great service and attention to our needs.

It all fell apart very quickly.

The Rep was never around to ask if things were OK,excursions were poor and under delivered on expectations and were massively over priced.

On some excursions guests were simply dumped in small towns for hours at a time with nothing better to do than spend money in tourist shops and in local cafes.There was no explanation of what these tours actually would entail merely a promise of something to be savoured.

OK,I know that holiday companies are there to make money and that package holidays are just that,packages of experiences,mostly poor.Choice and free will prevailed and guests did not have to pay too much for too little….but…

A key brand,Olympic Holidays,clearly failed in their handling of the individual customer experiences and ultimately led many guests to change their positive perception of them to a very negative one.

Every facet of the customer journey needs to be seen as important if the overall perception that a customer has of a brand is to be positive and reinforced.Failure to ignore any one part just ruins all the good work that had previously been done to establish the brands position.

Why do companies continue to do this?Taking a customers money in the hope that they will come back again is short termism if not supported by an active intent to please at evey stage of the interaction.

Stop asking me….

So you’re in Smith’s and you are just about to pay when the assistant asks,”would you like some chocolate,it’s on special offer,two for the price of one?”

Or you are paying for your petrol and as you pay a never to be missed offer is up sold to you, Red Bull, three cans for the price of two…

It happens all the time and it’s about time customers complained and put a stop to this as it damages customer relations and staff morale which will lead to them not being as attentive as they could be.

Customer relations get damaged because you just want to pay and go.If you wanted to drown in Red Bull you would have asked for three cans.If you wanted to test the pricing structure of your dentists practice you would have demanded two bars of the biggest slabs of enamel corrosive known to man. What about that giant bar of Toblerone? Yes please,seven…

Customers do not want to have to feel as if they are on University Challenge when all they are trying to do is pay some money which will help with profits and supposedly help pay for improvements in the customer experience.

Staff morale suffers because they are made to ask the same inane question to every customer,they have no choice.It must destroy their morale,it takes the spontinaeety out of engaging with customers.There can be no special customer touch point here because all experiences are reduced to a common denominator, sales over kill.

Staff are doubtless driven by area managers who are themselves goaded by head office to improve sales of target items.There is probably some tedious sales competion that staff are supposed to be so excited about that they relish asking their question a thousand times a day.

No one wins in this up selling over selling excercise apart from some short term improvement in sales margins.Customers and staff might just not want to play anymore and shop and work at places where a Thank you may just be enough at the till.