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.

Walk A Way without spending

Customer experience feedback often never even begins because customers get fed up and can’t be bothered to wait to be served…they go away empty handed.

I have noticed that in our local Waitrose the single basket paying area is so poorly laid out that customers wait in a long line that snakes across the other tills which makes life harder for other shoppers and looks a mess.It probably deters other shoppers..

I also noticed that some shoppers gave up before even joining this line which means that Waitrose missed out on some sales.these could have been fairly small but aggregated up across all stores and every day this will mount up.As a rival says,Every Little Helps…

So how much does the retail sector miss out on as a result of Walk A Ways? I have no idea but it’s millions of pounds without a doubt.What about the combined loss in leisure sectors? More millions..

Maybe better attention to how customers shop could prevent lost sales?More staff, better layouts,better customer feedback systems…

Knowledge management (KM) comprises a range of strategies and practices used in an organization to identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of insights and experiences. Such insights and experiences comprise knowledge, either embodied in individuals or embedded in organizational processes or practice

The above is taken form Wikipedia and says very clearly what KM is all about.

I have been wondering recently what has replaced KM as the burning management issue.Clearly KM was such a powerful tool that it can’t have stopped being effective.Can It?It was the buzz word only a few years ago and changed the way companies were structured and the way that they operated.

Was there a sudden fall from grace that led to all KM departments being disbanded? Have the principles remained but the name changed?

It is a concern that Management fads come and go and absorb so much time that the drive of an organisation is turned inwards.Outward facing progress always is in terms of internal reorganisation. Should that be the case or should companies keep the pedal to the metal and keep going?

Losing sight of where the company is going is a real danger if valuable time is spenttinkering with the engine rather than driving. Is there a metric out there that maps the lost energy devoted to system management V market performance?

So what is the new KM?

Anybody care to venture an opinion?

Marketing is finally making sense…

Having read Stefan Stern’s brilliant article in the FT “Why the marketing team must aim higher” (March 2nd 2010) I realise just how important it is to constantly engage with customers.

Marketing has had a turbulent ride in the last few years.The economy has not been friendly, budgets have been slashed and the notion of payment by results has crept into fee bargaining.

Customer loyalty is the key to growth and not new product launches that consume resources and money on promotion. Loyal customers boost a brands reputation and profitability by word of mouth.

As mentioned in a previous posting, it is the Generators who help transmit that message and not the Acceptors or Resistors.To quote the authors of Firms of Endearment ” Earn a share of the customer’s heart and she will gladly offer you a bigger share of her wallet”.

At last some common sense….

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5787759c-2563-11df-9cdb-00144feab49a.html

It is nearly 25 years since Coca Cola decided to give the world New Coke and a text book example of how not to do marketing by ignoring loyal customers.

Background

In 1985 Coca Cola unveiled New Coke on the world. This was a new sweeter recipe that was to replace the “secret formula” that had been around for a mere 99 years.The words “the best just got better” were uttered during the unveiling. It was the start of something special for Coca Cola, unfortunately it was not a positive experience to begin with….

The reaction of consumers was a lesson in how companies meddle with their brands at their peril. Despite all the market research that had been undertaken the company had failed to engage with their customers directly. Research indicated that the sweeter formula was preferred to the existing flavour.

The company failed to grasp that brands should always be viewed through the eyes of customers. Companies may own their brands but they need permission to change or tinker with them.

Customer Reaction

Within 78 days after a barrage of letters and phone calls the original formula returned branded as Coke Classic.

Customers had reacted with such intensity of feeling that it had shocked Coca Cola. The brand was and is such an integral part of American culture that its removal caused almost panic amongst consumers.What took nearly a hundred years to build was almost lost in the blink of an eye.The closet example of such brand destruction in UK terms has to be the famous Ratner speech.Overnight a respected chain of jewelers had its reputation and stock value reduced to next to nothing. Continue Reading »