Um, what?

So, to sate the few appetites of those who read this blog regularly and the other passersby who discovered it today, I decided to provide a reading list of sorts of the greatest hits. Ok, not really, but here are a few items from the archives I thought you might enjoy about customer experience.

Happy reading.

What Is Customer Experience and Why Do I Care?

This is one of my personal favorites, because it involves me flashing a badge: Customer Experience Investigator

If you ever talk with me in person, I’m sure I’ll use the phrase “holistic customer experience” at some point. I’m sure it’s annoying, but it sums up a big part of my philosophy. Holistic Customer Experience

User Experience Issues

Reviewing the archives, I realized I complain a lot about user experience. I’ll try to get better at writing about good ones. But, for now, here are some posts about the bad and ugly side of online experience.

Usability v. User Experience

Mistakes

Communications as Customer Strategy

Apparently, I’m Andy Rooney. I complain a lot. What is it about communications? Why are they handled so poorly?

Communications is Customer Experience

Communication is important internally, too. No, really, it is.

General Ways to Improve

Yay! Happy ideas! You can improve and create great experiences.

Ways to improve the experience today!

Have a great week. Thanks for reading, commenting, sharing and basically liking me and what I do here. It’s very appreciated.

Photo credits: travestyalpha and Kenzoka via Creative Commons license

 

But there’s one channel that gets a lot of attention: online. It’s not unusual for me to work on projects that are almost exclusively about user experience. Companies provide goods, services, communities, feedback and more via the Interwebz. And yet, even when this is the main (or exclusive) channel to connect with customers, they ignore what is really happening.

Here is a partial list of the offenses I’ve encountered recently:

• If you’d like users to BUY from your site, then please make it easy to do so. The shopping cart shouldn’t be hidden, buried, or otherwise hard to get to. (This is often true when you are trying to get BACK to the cart. It’s vanished!)
• Users will have questions about your products, your company, or your return policy for shipments to Guam. Some questions cannot be predicted, so make it easy for customers to find a way to contact someone directly.
• Your blog or your white papers should not lead users to a foreign land of new windows with various URL’s.
• If your form is smart enough to ask for my zip code first, then it should be smart enough to figure out my state. Ditto for asking for my time zone listed as “Chicago” and then requesting my country.
• I like cool doodads as much as the next gal, but using them for cool’s sake is just silly. It’s easier to type in the year of birth rather than scroll through a drop down of the last century. It’s nicer to refine a number with a keypad than a slider. Think of the USE first, then the design.
• If it’s a mobile site, then test it on different mobile devices. Figure out what happens when the user is punching a code on a tiny screen while bouncing around on a train.

 

I consider myself the Customer Experience Investigator(sm). I’m thinking of creating a “CXI” badge to flash when I arrive at the scene of the crime.

I’m not sure if I can do this in one post, but here goes. A day in the life of me as a customer experience investigator.

Someone cue the music and I’ll be slowly removing my aviators for the opening credits…

There really is no typical day.

Most of my clients have ongoing relationships with me, so I know exactly what the expectations are on a weekly basis. I challenge myself to have at least one deliverable per week for each client. I’m able to do this with some help from contractors and assistants, but I understand clients hire me for me, so I am still very involved with the main parts of the products.

Here are a few of the things I’ve done recently my clients, depending on what we’re working on or what their concerns are:

Taking a walk in the customer’s shoes is usually a part of my day. This is done in a variety of ways, most of which I can do virtually. I have a proprietary heuristic analysis I use to review web sites from the customer perspective, complete with scoring and colorful charts. This type of evaluation is highly detailed, so I try to reserve appropriate brain power for it. Sometimes taking a walk in their shoes is about mapping out the customer journey. I do this with a variety of research tidbits, employee interviews, documentation exploration, and actually walking through the process.

Competitive analysis is playing a bigger role in what I do. This means I examine the experience from the customer’s perspective, point out where competitors are gaining or lacking, and usually get inspired by something “missing” from everyone. This leads to innovation and better experiences for my clients’ customers. Much of this is focused on the online experience, so I have a features gap analysis I use as well as just qualitative observation.

For lack of a better name, I become a high-level mystery shopper for my clients. This means conducting actual transactions, going through the corporate sales process, reviewing customer communications, ending a customer relationship – all as if I’m a real customer. While I’m a focus group of one, I bring with me about 15 years of doing this. It’s never disappointing what we learn from these types of experiences. My clients have improved many processes by being open enough to receive feedback this way. The process on paper is never quite what’s happening in real life.

Social media is part of the experience. More and more, we’re focusing on ways to review how social media is used and how we can use it better to serve customers. I do a lot of social media audits and work with the internal departments who are focused on this aspect of the experience. This is another fascinating way to learn every day about what’s working and what isn’t!

Training and speaking is something I enjoy doing but don’t do as much of any more. I’m just not up for too much travel since I’ve got 2 munchkins at home who need me here IRL. Occasionally, though, a specific need arises and I help my clients create training programs or speak with their group. The most popular topics are employee engagement, social media and communication.

Strategy Sessions are other IRL events I enjoy but can’t do too much. My favorite ones are the totally free-for-all, get-everyone-thinking-big innovation sessions. That’s where real customer experience magic happens.

Part of what I love about how I’ve framed this business is that I am totally a third-party investigator. Once we identify what needs to be done for the online experience, or sales process, or retention strategy, I am not trying to sell the next step. I help continue to examine things from the customer’s perspective so we can continue to improve proactively.

I’ll be honest – it takes enlightened leadership to be ready to pay for this. It may seem easier to have the web firm do the initial analysis, but they can’t bring the outside-in perspective. It’s easy to fool yourself into thinking your employees give you the information you need, but they can’t. And while we like to think we are always keeping one eye on the competition, it’s typically buried in the day-to-day of running a business. I’m grateful every day for the clients I have who get this and understand that evaluation, investigation and honesty are what build strong experiences.

Then, of course, there’s my business.

I wish I could say I have this all figured out into a science, but I don’t. But I still have to worry about finances, marketing, blogging, guest blogging, learning, managing projects and people, and planning the growth of 360Connext. Somwhere, somehow, I try to find time for these things in my week.

So, there you go. The not-so-typical day of a Customer Experience Investigator.  I’m thinking I need a trench coat and a walkie-talkie to complete the look. What? Too much?

 Photo Credits: AngryJulieMonday, catfordCelt and 1936matt

 

Imagine you sign up for a service which you believe will help you rent your place out for a week. You sign the papers, pay the invoice and find a tenant. Woo hoo! The renter goes through the same service you signed up for, and you feel a trustworthy agreement was made. Then you come home to damage beyond your wildest imagination. To make matters worse, you realize that nobody – not you, not the company through which the agreement was made – knows who this renter was. Fake information was used and you were left with a life turned upside down.

That’s what happened to a customer of AirBNB, and most people who heard this heartbreaking story of unwarranted destruction and devastation asked the same question: If this could happen, what the heck were those membership fees for? There were really no background checks, no security measures, nothing. As the customer pointed out, it was pretty much just like Craigslist with fees, but no warnings.

The micro (one person’s experience) became macro: if this could happen to one, could it happen to many?

And then there was a really thoughtful response from AirBNB. It was good – it shows thinking about the future. (Also, props to them for using a promoted tweet to spread the word – nice thinking!)

The customer, who is also a blogger, has been chronicling the experience in detail. The reply to the statement from AirBNB was honest. Basically – the feeling is: That’s nice. Happy you’re thinking about the future. But what about the micro here? It’s not over for this one customer who is putting a life back in order. I hope that AirBNB goes back to the micro intent here. Make it right for one AND all.

When micro doesn’t go macro

A few months ago, I wrote about my feelings of apathy for ADT. Well, they heard about it and got in touch. I heard from a customer service representative, had a service call, and my problems were solved. After a few years of frustration, a single blog post and a few tweets were all it took. Instead of the typical fee for a service call, they sent someone to fix what was installed incorrectly for no charge. Of course I was happy MY problem was solved. When the follow up call came, I said it was all fixed now (3+ years later!) and they went on their way. But I’ve wondered: what really changed!? Other customers are living what I lived with simply because it was too painful to do anything about it. They may not be bloggers or tweeters.

The micro AND the macro

There are times you need to step back and look at both sides of the coin. If ONE customer has an issue, it’s critical to realize it’s probably an issue MANY customers are having. What can you do to proactively address the issue?

At the same time, sometimes addressing the macro isn’t enough. You need to go back to the one customer, the one issue and ensure that it’s resolved.

How does your organization handle the one-off customer fires? Are they quickly extinguished and forgotten? When do you take the time to examine the macro of the issue? Complaints are a gift. Resolution is a prize. But only if you make it work for one and all.

Photo credit lucy_hill via Creative Commons

 

As humans, we like to fool ourselves. At best, it’s a way to be kind to ourselves (“It’s ok to eat this on vacation!”) and at worst a way to maintain excuses (“I’m too tired to exercise”). As business leaders, however, it can be the worst kind of risky. When you try to look at your own project, business, or even employees without a sharply tuned critical eye, you end up with a viewpoint that inevitably provides some data, but not necessarily the right kind.

I evaluate other organizations’ experiences every day. I work hard to maintain a true third-party perspective, because I know what happens when you’re on the inside looking further in. You make assumptions, based on history. You acknowledge success based on completing a project, whether it is working for your customers, or the business, or not. You hear what you want to hear from existing customers and employees, regardless of what they’re really trying to tell you. But I’m also realistic. We run businesses because we want to do it ourselves. We don’t need to hire an outside consultant for every little glitch. We are often our biggest critics, right? (If you just shouted, “that’s an excuse!” you’re catching on.)

Following are six ways I recommend to truly gain an outside perspective on your company:

1. Google It! It’s no secret to search yourself to see how others might see you. But what about your customers? Your competition? Your employees? Do a few different searches on a few different search engines to see how a prospect, a job seeker, or a blog reader might first gain an impression about you and your organization. Click through the links presented and ask yourself, “Is this putting our best foot forward?”
2. Mystery Shop Your Organization: Call into your business as a prospect. See what happens. Really listen and think of it as Acting with a capital A! Dive into your character, think about your motivation before you call. Then listen carefully and take notes. If you were actually that person, would you buy? Why or why not?
3. Gather Communications from the Last 30 Days: Take a critical eye and review your blog posts, your newsletter, your invoices and anything else you’ve sent to customers. Do they each represent your brand in the same way? Would you bother reading it if you hadn’t sent it?
4. Review Your Employee Interactions and Communications from the Last 14 Days: Within the last two weeks, have you dragged your employees into more than three meetings? Have you sent emails you now see were rude, curt, or unappreciative? How are they paid? Is it cold? Are there conflicting pieces of communication about your future, your vision or your plans? Employees are looking for a clear path. Make sure you’ve delivered that to them.
5. Call a Few Customers, Past and Present: The trick here is asking the right questions. Don’t ask “What could we have done to keep you?” It’s too open-ended and most of the time, we humans really don’t know! Ask “What did the competition offer that made it more attractive for you to leave?” Don’t make these calls about sales – make them about listening. And a cautionary note – it’s hard NOT to hear what you want to hear and it’s difficult (believe it or not) for customers to say what they REALLY think to you, especially if you’ve had a personal relationship. You will get the *partial* truth, at best.
6. Hire A Third Party: I know I said this isn’t always an option, but nothing can give you the gift of perspective faster. Even by taking the steps above, we’re still likely to read the communications with the voice in our head saying, “Oh that email wasn’t written well because that was the day when everything hit the fan and I was in a bad mood!” Or, seeing nothing wrong with the invoices we send because they are accurate and paid on time. That’s not the same as someone reviewing your experience from the customers’ perspective. Humans, it turns out, are tricky. We love to fool ourselves. So do yourself a favor and ask another human to be your eyes and ears when it matters most.

What do you think? When is it vital to bring in the outside perspective?

Photo Credit:  _moonpie

 

It’s a great question, and deceptively complex.

It would be great if we all had extra time in our days, but, typically, we don’t. It would be great if we could make a phone call once a year and determine what’s really going on, but of course companies, employees, customers, products, org charts and, of course, entire economies can change pretty rapidly.

So here is what I suggest.

1. Hire from the outside.

Yes, I realize this sounds self-serving, and I won’t turn away prospects who find me via this post. However, audit yourself or your company and you are undoubtedly viewing things from your lens. Call former customers to find out why they left you and they will hold back. People, in general, tend to be kind, especially to those we know personally. So while you will get SOME information, you might not get the good stuff that really moves your company forward.

2. Randomly walk in your customer’s shoes.

I know I just told you NOT to do this on your own. The thing is, if every CEO or VP occasionally, randomly called in as a prospect or tried to buy something online, the experience would reveal itself more than doing nothing. The fact is most of us just don’t have time to do this, or we make excuses when we know the inside story. For example, how often have you heard someone in your company say, exasperated, “our site stinks,” yet know there’s nothing he/she can do about it? So the site remains as it is.

3. Ask customers why they bought from you.

Customers are full of information, and yet we rarely ask. I’m not talking about a survey or a focus group (not just because I hate focus groups). I’m talking about asking someone right away – why us? Why not the other guys? And then really listen. Listen for what almost stopped them. Listen for the real why – not just the compliment they are bound to pay you.

3 things you can do today. So why not get started?

Photo credit: Rennett Stowe

 

Many a business guru – Tom Peters, Peter Drucker, and others – have promoted metrics as the end-all of business goals. Set a goal, measure key performance indicators, and adjust accordingly.

Which is great. Except they’re always late. No matter how carefully you track your metrics or refresh your Google Analytics screen, the metrics are there to tell you what happened. What has already happened – as in, in the past.

By the time you start examining what those metrics tell you, you’re late. Say you examine your Google Analytics to find that 100% of your web traffic comes from Twitter, but 90% bounces out of your site. You may think of ways to improve your site, or you may look for ways to see how to retain users on your site longer. But how long has this been going on? It’s done. In other words, you don’t know what you think you know.

So I propose you start investigating now. TODAY. I love metrics, but I’m often in direct conflict with them. I ask my clients to have faith in me as I evaluate their customers’ true experiences. It’s not easy. It’s difficult to say “ok, go for it,” when you THINK you know what your customers are seeing and experiencing every day. The metrics tell you things are normal. The metrics alert you when there’s a problem.

Except they’re late in doing so.

While you wait for your measurements, customers get frustrated. Email automation breaks. Prospects get lost in the system.

The worst part? You THINK you know what’s happening.

By evaluating experiences my clients THOUGHT they knew about, here are a few of the gems I discovered in the last 6 months: 

• The email system, while reporting “all systems fine,” was actually sending out duplicate emails to several groups of customers.
• An important “buy now” button on the site, again appearing to work fine on their internal sites, was not working for a majority of users.
• While the online ordering experience was GORGEOUS and easy, plus gaining them plenty of sales, the actual product arrived with terrible packaging and communication which didn’t match the brand experience AT ALL.
• Salespeople, all with decent numbers, were missing cross-sale opportunities.
• Renewal for the best customers was cumbersome, priced incorrectly and leading customers into labyrinthine processes.

Would analyzing the metrics reveal these issues?

The short answer – yes, eventually. But not at this moment. There is no way you can know everything going on at any given moment. But using both real-time evaluations with careful analysis of what’s already happened, you can discover where you need to focus.

Where should you put your energy today to improve the customer experience?

Photo credits: Search Engine People’s Blog & Neil T

 

Launches have a lot of moving parts. There are lawyers worrying, creatives working on design, writers developing content, technologists pushing the limit of technology, marketers determining launch awareness strategies, analysts yapping about key performance metrics, and some poor project manager doing her best to make all those teams work together. Not to mention about 1.1 billion other tiny make-or-break details.

Sometimes I’m brought in to review the almost-launched site/product/idea. While I love helping at this stage, I always feel a little bad when I inevitably silence the room with a simple question.

“What do you your current customers think about it?”

Crickets. Awkward glances. Someone shaking his or her head like, “I knew it.”

The unavoidable truth is they haven’t been asked. They didn’t include their customers in those zillion details. They just assumed. And sometimes we luck out! We create something our customers love. But sometimes we just tick ‘em off.

There are easy ways to get your customers involved. Have you tried? Do you know what your customers think? Before you let go of “your baby” and hope for the best, it doesn’t hurt to ask.

Here are a few ways to do it:

1. Ask them.

While this seems deceptively simple, it is rarely done. It doesn’t take an expensive, time-consuming survey. Just hang out with your customers. The Cancer Treatment Centers of America make it a point to do so on a regular basis. Or, using social media, throw out the question and get some opinions from the crowd.

2. Observe their opinions while online, on the phone, or at your store.

Paco Underhill has done some excellent research on why and how we behave as consumers. His book, Why We Buy, is one I highly recommend to understand how to observe and act on customer behavior for real. (affiliate link)

3. Conduct usability tests.

There is resistance to this for many reasons, but the two reasons I hear most often are:

• We didn’t have that in our timeline.
• It is too pricey and takes too long.

Allow me to overcome those objections. It should be in the timeline, but rarely is. But it really should be. And you’ll pay for it later. You’ll have rework or broken experiences and need to throw money at the problem instead of lining up the customer expectations with the experience first.

As for being too pricey, there are different levels for usability and user experience testing. For instance, get your favorite customers to try to achieve something familiar on the “new” web site. Ask for their feedback. Offer them a small perk – reward points or a gift card – for their time. Or hang out in the store with a laptop. Ask customers in the store to check out the new site. What do they like or not like?

It may not be scientific, but it’ll still give you valuable information.

There are many more ways to include customers in your launch. It may be your baby, but it really does take a village. Let your customers participate and they’ll feel included and rewarded.

What are you doing to include your customers?

Photo credits: jurvetson and Oberazzi

 

1. Proactively, personally, and unconditionally THANK your customers.

A good example from a local store I’ve written about before is here: Simple, yet personal and thoughtful. No sales pitch, no begging, just a nice, thoughtful way to say thank you. Cha-ching. It’s in the bank!

2. Understand you are probably not your customer’s top priority.

Think about ways you can make their lives easier by getting them in/out of your store, your web site, your IVR system faster, easier, and happier. While Amazon is not always a top contender for customer experience, they absolutely established themselves as an easy place to shop online. How many times have you, as a customer, decided to shop there for ease alone? The site remembers you, suggests ideas, and gets you in and out in no time. That’s a lot more appealing than filling in yet another order form and hunting for the products you want.

3. Care about your people before they’re customers.

Ever wander into a little store and feel like you’re interrupting the salespeople? How about when you’re browsing and they treat you like you better buy something or you’re wasting their time? Here’s a test: Wander through a Trader Joe’s market some time. It’s part of the culture there to smile, greet, and basically be happy to see people. Everyday, I watch people on Twitter push and push and push content, products or ego to their followers. That’s NOT caring about people – and it shows. Why would I want to become a customer if you don’t really care about me in the first place? Sharing good content, supporting others, and generally connecting with people will actually make them want to become your customer.

When things go wrong (and nobody’s perfect), wouldn’t you rather have something in the bank?

 

It’s amazing how many times I report back to a client and someone in the group reports back, “Oh, yeah, we knew that’s bad.”

Online experiences are often the last part of the experience to get a good buff and shine, but I’m here to argue for bringing that priority up to the front of the line. Here’s why:

1. People shop online.

Not shop like “ooh, let me pick up one of those and one of those” but more like “let me check this product and price and feature against every other site known to man.” Seriously, your customers are checking out your competition. All the time they’re opening up multiple windows and verifying they’re getting the best possible deal, reading other customer reviews and essentially shutting you down before the first date.

If your experience is flawed, slow, painful…they know there are other fish in the sea.

2. Your experience online is vastly different than the one your employees live each day.

This, truly, cuts both ways. Ever see a hip, I-would-kill-to-work-there agency site and then show up and realize it’s not nearly as hip and cool as the site wants it to be? Or how about meeting totally likable, smart people who all work for the same place and then visit their online location to discover a boring, oft-neglected, watered-down reflection of the same company? This disconnect leads to all sorts of mess – from missing out on would-be applicants to getting the wrong kind of clients. Make sure your culture is reflected authentically and honorably on your site.

3. The most recent case study is from 2007.

Isn’t it awesome to have the ability to publish new stuff all the time? Then why don’t so many companies do it? Your site is not a pre-paid billboard. It’s a living piece of your communications strategy. Live it up!

4. Your agency or web guy talked you into too many gimmicks.

Drop the flash, audio, pop-up obnoxious home pages. You actually WANT people to go to your site more than once. Don’t punish them for doing so.

This is a short list. When was the last time you really thought about how your site interacts with its audience? How about how it fits with your bigger customer experience?

(Oh, you haven’t thought about it for a while? Let me take a peek. Let’s talk.)