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.

B2B Contact Management

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Knowing your messaging target in the B2B world is critical to the success of that message and critical to the customer experience. ANY type of messaging requires a carefully aimed target: marketing, order/product notifications, status updates, surveys, and so on. At the root of that process is your B2B contact management.

To start off with great contact management, you have to make sure the system in which you manage your contacts is set up to allow you to choose your groupings and add various criteria. In other words, using a billing software as a CRM might not get the job done.

Next, a great way to choose your groupings is based on personas. If you’ve never gone through a customer persona exercise, I highly recommend it. You can do so by assigning “personalities” to your different customer segments. It really helps you to get into the mindset of what that customer thinks and needs. Along with each persona, you can understand their level of influence and power with-in the business and how they are involved in purchasing and consuming your products/services.

Once individuals with-in each business have been assigned a persona, you can build your various campaigns around that knowledge of each target. Who will receive what type of messaging? Mapping out all types of current and desired messaging in one location can help you understand who should receive what and when they should receive it.

And lastly, make sure you can utilize this valuable targeting information from any other platforms that are distributing information to customers. For example, if you are sending satisfaction surveys, are you able to base the recipient on your detailed customer data from your CRM tool or are you pulling that contact information from a separate platform? Having a centralized location to pull intelligent contact information can be what makes the difference between an average campaign and an excellent one.

You Are Already Getting Feedback

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If your organization does not yet have a survey program in place, you are still receiving feedback from your customers on a daily basis. If your company isn’t interested in making the investment in a survey platform today, don’t let that hold you back. As long as you set up other systematic ways to take in and process customer feedback, you can tap into great insights. Here are some ideas on listening to the feedback you’re already getting.

 

THROUGH CALLS / ONLINE CHATS / EMAILS

Whether customers reach you through phone calls, online chats, or emails/web forms,  it is important that you classify each one of those contacts to understand the top drivers. The classifications are themselves are important here. If a customer calls or emails you and their reason is classified as a “billing question”, that doesn’t give you much to go on. Did their invoice not show up? Did it reflect the wrong amount? Try to be specific enough with your classifications that you can actually act on them, but not too specific that you dilute the results and end up with way too many one-offs.

If you don’t have historical data to look at as to why customers are contacting you or the classifications used in the past don’t give you enough insight, try going back and doing the research yourself. Document all the reasons that people call/chat/email for a week (or whatever the right amount of time is based on your volume). Set up a system to tag what you’re hearing or seeing. if you already have a system in place that does this, reevaluate it and make sure it is actionable information.

 

THROUGH YOUR FRONT LINE PEOPLE

Your front line people know the reasons that customers contact you. They might not be able to say the highest reason with absolute certainty, but they are going to have a pretty good idea of the main problems. Focus groups are a great way to probe the experience of front line employees; however, for this purpose, you might try sending a free survey through something like Survey Monkey to your employees. You can assure them that their responses are anonymous and that will give them the confidence to provide candid responses. If there’s something the company does that an employee thinks is really stupid, an anonymous survey is a great way to tap into that info.  It doesn’t even have to be that formal. Simply walk up to your staff and ask some of them, “What’s the biggest problem we have when it comes to our customer experience?” Whatever method you use to get the front line perspective, track that information.

 

THROUGH CUSTOMER ACTIONS

There are many customer actions that you can measure to give you clues about whether or not you’re meeting the mark on CX. Think about the systems with which your customers interact and what sort of data trail they are leaving. A few suggestions of areas to investigate: web bounce rate (to see if your pages are providing value); utilization rate of tools available (to see if tools are useful and/or functioning properly); repurchase/renewal rate; or attrition after certain occurrences.  The actions that customers perform while engaged with your company are where you want to look. When you’re not asking for direct feedback from customers, things like this can give you a piece of the puzzle.

 

COMPARE RESULTS ACROSS SOURCES

The last step is to compare results from the all the sources listed above. Most likely you will see a pattern emerging that warrants your attention. You can begin your customer experience improvements in that area. Start taking action and be sure to continue listening through the methods you have set up.

Too often I see organizations spending so much time trying to figure out the “right” thing to fix, the “one thing” that will transform their entire customer experience, and they end up frozen, not taking any action out of fear that it’s not the best possible use of their time and money. Stop waiting for the silver bullet, and get started. Customer experience is work! There’s not a switch to flip that will make it outstanding in an instant. Find some things to improve and chipping away at customer frustrations.