Customer Experience Management

Chris Daffy
(author of the book  "Once A Customer, Always A Customer")
tells us how to use exceptional service to create an Addictive Customer Experience

There's a lot of hype around at present regarding Customer Relationship Management (CRM). And if you were to believe much of it you could easily think that CRM is something new. But it obviously isn't. People have been attempting to do their version of CRM for as long as there have been suppliers and customers. Yet although it's not new, there still are very few organisations that have succeeded in using customer service or CRM to create differentiation and sustainable competitive advantage. I've therefore spent the last 10 years or so studying and working with many of the successful ones, trying to understand what they do and how they do it. What I've learned is that they are rarely doing anything revolutionary. They're simply using the basic principles of human interaction and customer service, that have worked well for thousands of businesses over hundreds of years, but adapting them to suit their market.

I'm therefore convinced that the age-old basics of customer relationships are as effective and powerful today as they ever were - even in the new, fast moving e-business environment.

So why didn't I use the words Customer Relationship Management in the title for this article? That's because I've never been comfortable with it as an all-encompassing term for the topic. I actually don't think that relationships are "manageable" things. Some people have difficulty "managing" the simple relationship they have with their dog or cat, so what chance have we of managing a complex relationship with a customer? I therefore don't believe it's the correct term for the techniques of success. I do know however that we can manage the "experience" a customer has when doing business with us. I've also learned that by focusing attention on every detail of a customer's experience, employees see the business, and their contribution to its success, from a new perspective. They appreciate what really matters about customer service and realise how they can make a significant contribution to achieving worthwhile service goals. So I think the title Customer Experience Management is more apt.

So what is Customer Experience Management? Well, the subtitle really says it all because it's about using a few proven, simple, yet powerful techniques to create an experience for customers that they will wish to repeat-again and again! Or as I like to call it, to create an Addictive Customer Experience.

But is it realistic to believe that customers can become addicted to an experience created by a supplier? My research, observations and experience all indicate that they definitely can. Here's how :

Identifying your Customer Loyalty Zones
All customers have loyalty zones. Different customers have different ones. Some have more than others. Some are more prepared to let you know about them than others. But be in no doubt - every customer has them! And if you know how to find and use them you are well on your way to creating lifelong customer loyalty.

Customer loyalty zones vary from market to market and person to person. There are however some common elements. These are :

·  A relationship based on trust

·  A whole brain business approach

·  +1s and WOWs

·  Dazzling recovery

Building a relationship with a positive trust account

"Price does not rule the Web; trust does."

This quotation is from an article in Harvard Business Review (July -August 2000) by Frederick F. Reicheld and Phil Shafter of Bain and Company. In it they referred to research they had done which clearly showed that the key to long-term e-business success is customer loyalty, and the key to customer loyalty is trust. So just as trust is the essential element of any personal relationship, it is also the key to any successful business relationship.

Trust is earned by demonstrating trustworthiness and we demonstrate trustworthiness through two core elements -

TRUSTWORTHINESS = COMPETENCE + CHARACTER

The first is "competence". A customer needs to be confident that we can be trusted to deliver the goods or services they wish us to provide, or in other words, to be competent in our job. So a poor reputation, failing to honour promises or providing unreliable goods or services will obviously prevent the creation of trust.

The second core element is "character". Most customers want to do business with people they feel comfortable with; decent, honest, honourable people - people with good character.

So to create a relationship based on trust, these two elements must be demonstrated. This takes time, and it works a lot like a bank account. People have what you might call a trust account. Over time, it's possible to make deposits to build up a credit balance. Then, if we occasionally slip, we have 'something on account' so will be forgiven and this should not have a damaging affect on the relationship. If however no deposits have been made and the account is at zero, any slip is unlikely to be forgiven. And if we've only made withdrawals, so the account is in debit, then there is little no chance at all of creating a trusting relationship. Also even if we do something positive, this is seen in the context of an overdrawn trust account, so it has little or no effect.

Using a "Whole Brain" approach
Most businesses suffer from what I call "Half Brain Bias". It generally afflicts their leaders and so limits their ability to create customer loyalty. It's a result of most business leaders being male. Most men have brains with a bias to the left (not political) and a difficulty with or reluctance towards a "Whole Brain" approach. The diagram below will help explain this.

Figure 1.

As the diagram shows, the left half of the brain tends to be dominated by what could be called the Logical and Factual things, whilst the right half is mainly involved with the Emotional and Creative things. It's interesting to note that the two core elements of trustworthiness, competence and character, seem also to each be focused in one or other half of the brain.

Men tend to be left brain biased. When they talk, they take turns, (most men are unable to talk and listen at once), and male communication has the primary objective of exchanging information. Women have more of a whole brain approach. They can have a number of communications going on at once (most women can talk and hear at the same time), and female communication has the primary objective of building relationships. Men therefore tend to be good at things that require detailed, single minded, sequential thinking and women at things that require general, broad minded, simultaneous thinking.

Men currently run most businesses. (Or at least they think they do) It's therefore no surprise that most businesses have a "left brain" approach to delivering customer service. That's one based on manuals, checklists, procedures, etc. These are all good and necessary approaches but they're only "half brain" so they rarely create loyalty. This is because they demonstrate lots of "competence" but not much "character", which is also needed to get into a customer's loyalty zone. Character is demonstrated by adding some "right brain" thinking and actions. These could be done through things like :

·  Relationship focus - This means ensuring that people throughout the organisation understand the value of long-term customer relationships, they know how important their individual contributions are to their creation, and they are equally as focused on building these relationships as they are on making as much profit as possible from each customer and/or each sale.

·  Service culture - It's impossible for people inside an organisation to deliver exceptional service to customers if they aren't experiencing exceptional service from their colleagues. A service culture therefore requires you to ensure that people inside the organisation are treated at least as well, and ideally better, than you hope they will treat their customers.

·  Recognition and rewards for service - If service matters to an organisation there must be ongoing schemes to recognise and reward the behaviours and people that demonstrate excellent service delivery. The customer's perception of service must be continually measured and rewards throughout the organisation must be linked to it.

The 2001 SOCAP (Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals) conference was entitled "The Future is Female". I'm sure they chose this title for two main reasons. One is that too many businesses appear to overlook the fact that most of their customers are women. The second is that the whole-brain, female approach to business is the one that's most likely to succeed in the future.

Once a whole-brain approach is working you can then focus attention on creating WOW experiences for customers.

Using +1's to create customer WOW experiences
WOW = OK + 1

This simple equation explains how a customer's experience can be moved from satisfaction to delight and beyond OK to WOW. A key element of service success is therefore hidden in the concept of +1.

A +1 is something that is valued by the customer, which is over and above what was expected. Done properly it will create a WOW experience for the customer. There are three important criteria for +1s. They are necessary to ensure that each +1 creates added value for both the customer and the business. They are :

·  They must have little or no cost
You don't need to throw money at customers to create a WOW experience. You can't but long term loyalty. +1's must therefore be mainly about what you do for customers - not how much you spend on them.

·  They must be quick and easy to do
People who serve customers are usually busy people. We therefore don't want to create things that make them even busier when they're serving customers, which are the times that they're usually at their busiest. +1's therefore must be things that fit naturally with normal working practises without creating any or much extra work.

·  They must be noticed and valued by colleagues and customers
+1's should be things people enjoy doing, that they are proud to do and are considered to be important by colleagues. They must also be noticed and valued by the customers experiencing them. Using these criteria for reference, a +1 could be any or all of the following :
+ 1 %
+ 1 more smile
+ 1 additional item
+ 1 more personal contact
+ 1 bit more thoughtfulness
+ 1 extra minute of your time
+ 1 check to make sure all's now OK
+ 1 telephone call to ensure the product's working
+ 1 anything else you can think of to delight your customers

The best way I know of making +1's a natural part of what people do is to arrange regular meetings at which they discuss existing ones, create ideas for new ones and receive encouragement and recognition from their colleagues for the ones they do.

Obviously the occasional, small +1 will not be enough to create long-term customer loyalty. What is needed is a whole barrage of them. At every possible opportunity, every point of contact between your business and your customers, ways should be found to deliver +1s and create WOW experiences.

Harnessing the power of recovery
There is yet another way to create customer WOW experiences. It is also really easy, but it happens so rarely that for most people it is a "once in a lifetime" experience. It's called recovery and it too has an equation, which is :

Recovery = Fix it + 1

The opportunity for recovery occurs when something goes wrong and the customer becomes disappointed or dissatisfied. Recovery then happens if this is dealt with in a manner that is above and beyond the customer's expectation. Recovery therefore takes place when a problem or complaint is used as an opportunity to WOW the customer.

The diagram below shows this recovery process graphically.

Figure 2.

As the diagram shows, recovery does not happen when you simply put right what went wrong. You have to do more than that. You must find a way to neutralise or outweigh the OUCH that comes from the mistake (and is always remembered), with a WOW, (that will erase the memory of the OUCH), that comes from doing something extra. It's the something extra, the WOW (which is also remembered) that creates recovery.

Research has shown that a well-recovered customer is often more loyal than one who has never experienced a problem or had cause for complaint. Recovery is therefore one of the best opportunities we ever have to create customer loyalty. What a shame it is therefore that most businesses waste these "golden" opportunities by not practising good recovery.

Creating an Addictive Customer Experience
So +1s and recovery can be used to deliver customer WOW experiences, and collectively these have the power to create an Addictive Customer Experience.

To understand this we need to understand how to combine competence with character in ways that will trigger the brains chemicals that create addiction. The following diagram will help explain this.

Figure 3.

For this example the diagram represents the customer contact cycle in a retail purchasing experience. From a customer's perspective, it tracks though as follows :
Consider - I'm thinking about buying something
Approach - I approach the store
Enter - I enter the store
Enquire - I enquire about what I want
Recommend - The assistant makes a recommendation
Purchase - I make the purchase
After sale - I have an after sales experience
Reconsider - I am thinking about buying something more

Different businesses will obviously have different cycles. The key is to understand them, in detail, from the customer's perspective. At each of the above key stages there will be many different experiences. For example, at the approach stage there could be the location of the store, the ease of parking, the external appearance of the store, the appearance of surrounding stores, the look of the window display, etc. All of these customer experiences must be seen and understood from the customer's perspective so they can be managed. You are likely to find hundreds of these customer contact point; the connections between you and your customer that provide an experience. (Jan Carlzen of SAS Airline called them "Moments of Truth"). Many organisations have found thousands. Having charted them you can then begin to manage them.

To do this you must first know, for each contact point, what is the customer's minimum or reasonable expectation? This may be as a result of your promises, what competitors provide or what the customer thinks it is reasonable to expect. Until you know this you cannot create an Addictive Customer Experience. Having established these expectations you then need to design and implement systems and procedures to guarantee 100% delivery. There will of course be occasions when you fail to provide this 100% service delivery you are aiming for. In readiness for these instances you must also have systems in place that will ensure excellent recovery. This 100% service delivery system is essential to have in place before adding +1s. Otherwise, attempts at +1's run the risk of getting an "I'll tell you where you can stick you flowers" reaction from disgruntled customers. When you've got this right you are in the outer circle of the target and are demonstrating "competence" through a consistent and reliable product or service that matches the needs and expectations of customers.

The next step is to look for ways to create +1s. Ideally you will find +1 opportunities at every customer contact point. You do this by getting everyone involved in creating and testing +1 ideas to see which ones work best. When you've found them, "bed them in" and make then habitual. Then keep repeating the process as often as necessary to keep creating more. The more you create the more you move into the central ring, which moves the customer from satisfaction to delight.

But even then you're not demonstrating enough character to create addiction. To do this you need to ensure that each of these +1's is delivered in a way that shows real empathy for the customer. This happens when you demonstrate care, concern, warmth and humour as you do the +1. Each time this happens the WOW that is created for the customer moves them into the inner circle on the target. Delivering +1's with empathy therefore makes these inner circle hits. Doing so triggers emotional reactions from customers, which, if there are enough of them, take a customer from satisfaction through delight and eventually on to addiction.

To understand why this happens we need finally to consider some of the chemicals triggered by the brain. These include :

Adrenaline - This is the chemical that is triggered when we feel nervous or anxious. It is the fight or flee chemical. It tightens the skin, increases the heart rate and increases the blood flow to muscles, making us ready for action.

Endorphins - These are the chemicals that kick in along with adrenaline to help us undertake fight or flee actions. They reduce pain and accelerate healing. They therefore make us more able to endure what any action may bring and help our body to heal faster if damage is caused.

Dopamine - This is the chemical that provides the feeling of relief or elation when a fight or flee action is successful. It creates the tingles and warm feelings that make us want to applaud, jump for joy and/or shout out with delight. If you've ever experienced these feelings you'll understand why it is so addictive.

Dopamine can be triggered when something goes wrong, we expect a poor outcome, but it ends up much better than expected (Recovery). It can also be triggered when we are shown great empathy, care or consideration by someone we didn't expect it from (+1s). Customer WOW experiences can therefore trigger this addictive chemical.

Always remember that what creates a WOW today may be viewed as just OK tomorrow. You'll therefore need to be constantly creating new ways to continually WOW your customers with an ever-growing barrage of +1's. But in the right service environment that will be easy and just part of the routine and fun of delivering exceptional service.

I'm therefore convinced that it is possible to create an Addictive Customer Experience. I hope you are now convinced too, and that this article has shown how you can go about it.