Month: February 2016

Customer Experience Recipe

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If you know there’s something that you want to accomplish that will really impact the customer experience, but you’re stuck on how to get it done, here’s a different approach. Plan out a CX objective by designing it like it’s a recipe.

Start with the beautiful picture of your finished product that will entice you to go the distance. Create an image that embodies the experience you want to achieve in vivid detail. Make sure you add the feelings the customer will have after this experience.

Next, list out the ingredients. What resources are you going to need to accomplish your goal? For example, list the departments that need to be involved, the capital resources, development hours, etc.

Lastly, write the specific steps that will need to happen to get it done in order of when they need to happen. This will leave you with a great framework to take action. You’ll have small, incremental steps to guide you as a result of this exercise and the goal won’t appear so insurmountable anymore.

 

Show Off Your Skills

Show Off Your Skills

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The inspiration for this post comes from a trip to the pediatrician’s office with my 6 month old daughter. I swear she is capable of faking an illness, Ferris Bueller style, just so that I will bust her out of daycare to go on a field trip, but that’s neither here nor there. She is quite the social butterfly wherever we go, smiling at everyone that glances in her direction, even when she’s “sick.”

When we get there, I free her from the confines of her car seat and sit her on the exam table while we wait for the doctor to enter. As soon as Dr. Kim comes in, my daughter brings her A game, and I don’t mean that she turns the (fake) illness on. The exact opposite, in fact. She starts demonstrating every trick that she’s learned since the last visit: putting her feet in her mouth, rolling over and pushing her chest up as high as it will go, talking, blowing raspberries, and the list goes on. She’s showing off! Any chance she gets, she wants to show the world all this cool stuff she can do because she’s put in the time to learn those things. It’s hard work being 6 months old, and you better believe she’s sharing her accomplishments with her audience.

We should all be doing the same thing with our customers, showing off our company’s skills. Make it obvious and known what your organization is good at. And remind customers to be impressed. I don’t mean arrogance, but genuine excitement about the value you provide, whether it relates to a product or a process. Demonstrate your skills and call them out. When other customers brag about your skills, share that too! Be proud of the things your company does well so your customers can be proud to do business with you.

Or in the words of Stewart, say “Look what I can do!”

 

A CX Review: Man Crates

A CX Review: Man Crates

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Every CX professional is tickled by a customer experience well done. And so I’m here for #funpostfriday to tell you about a wonderful website I discovered whilst choosing a valentine for my loved one. By the way, I am in no way affiliated with Man Crates, just a very satisfied customer.

Meet mancrates.com,  a place where your typical gift baskets have been put out to pasture. Instead you are met with kits, jerkygrams, and ammo cans, special gifts for the manly man. The website is a hoot! The copy is fun and silly, the packages are unique and creative, and the user experience is ingeniously simple and ensures the user will be compelled to tell others about it. As the gift giver, I got just as much enjoyment out of Man Crates as the recipient, and I was the one spending money! It’s an impressive dynamic that they have created.

The user experience is well thought out, from plentiful shipping options to a clever message generator, all wrapped up in unique branding. The customer service is exceptional: prompt and personal. My package was delivered as promised, and everything was correct.

I don’t want to butcher all the fun surprises lurking on the site, so check it out for yourself! A man crate could be a great gift for a loyal customer to show your appreciation. Who doesn’t want a box of cured meats or grilling treats?

Overall, I had a genuinely wonderful experience, plump with smiles, that I felt compelled to share (using as many meat puns as possible). The end.

Becoming Transparent

Becoming Transparent

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Becoming transparent to our customers is a challenge we face when the systems behind what the customer sees are anything but pretty. You want to give customers step by step guidelines of what to expect in a process, but to what level of detail do you go? How do you execute a complex internal process while still being transparent with the information customers need?

Well, the ideal answer is to make the process less complicated. Think of the process in terms of how the customer would see it. If you were to share every step with them, would they say, “That doesn’t make sense…why do you do that? You should do xyz.” Generally, while we may not want to acknowledge it at times, we know what they would say. Once the process is simplified, its easier to communicate and likely cheaper to execute. However, sometimes those simplifications require a large investment that isn’t always feasible in the near term.

That brings me to the less ideal (more realistic) answer which is to work around the internal complexities to deliver only the information that the customer wants and needs. You present your customer with the simplified version of the complex process.The best way to get started is by mapping out the internal actions and determine which of those actions is a “milestone” worthy of sharing with a customer. Some ways to determine the best times for updates:

  • ask your customers directly
  • look at contact data — how often do they ask you for updates at certain points?
  • go through the process yourself and with test users and document when there is confusion

If the process is executed over a longer period of time, make sure you find out from your customers how often they desire to be updated. If you can customize the update intervals based on certain customer segments, great. If not, try to get a general consensus of a timeline so that you update them before they seek the update from you.

Lay out the end-to-end process (the customer facing version, that is) on the first interaction. When customers can clearly anticipate the steps and intervals from the start, they’re less likely to call and ask you what’s next. Your process and communication may not be perfect, but it is important to start somewhere to begin building a culture of transparency with your customers. Customers trust the organizations that give them all the facts and keep them informed.