Feedback is big. As an employer, you need to provide oodles of feedback to employees to ensure they know what they’re doing, what they’re supposed to be doing, what they’re doing well and what they could be doing better. Customer feedback provides a way to prevent little annoyances from becoming reasons to leave.

Hardest part of my job? Collecting and then reporting bad feedback to clients about their customer experience. Here are some of the awesomely horrific things I’ve had to utter to clients:

• Your employees hate their jobs. They feel useless and frustrated. They reported not getting enough direction or feedback to do their jobs – or even to care enough about them.

• Your customers have asked for <improvement A> on the web site or application for years. They don’t understand why it’s not a priority and your competitor is delivering on it now.

• Your sales team has an adversarial relationship with your marketing group. They are, in essence, working against each other and the customers are paying for it when their expectations aren’t met.

• Customers have reported leaving because of a lack of communication from you. They need to hear from you about things that matter to them – not just your marketing newsletter.

• Your internal communications are nothing but demands of your employees. Demanding they attend training for training’s sake doesn’t serve anyone.

• Your sales team goes out of its way to avoid showing your site to prospects. Your web site is embarrassing.

• You’ve hired the wrong people. These people get the job done – but not with a focus on the customer.

• Your social media is stagnant. Customers are begging for feedback and you’re providing them with no reason to interact.

The list goes on and on and on…

I won’t lie. It’s not easy. I had one CEO refuse to hear it. He said I must have spoken to the wrong customers. I had another who got so excited about hearing my feedback she asked me to get their people on board by training them on customer-centric attitudes.

Guess who fared better?

Difficult feedback is hard to take. We’ve all had that sinking feeling that something you know in your heart is true is laid out there for the world to see. It’s easier to ignore, deflect and defend. It’s easier to put that head in the sand and carry on with the status quo.

So I’m asking you to be brave. Take a good look. Put your defenses aside and understand that feedback, in all its ugly glory, allows you to improve proactively instead of waiting passively for the inevitable decline.

What do you think? Are there organizations and leaders out there who are ignoring the feedback that could help them soar?

Photo credits woodleywonderworks

Most companies don’t have anyone truly leading the customer experience. Some have people who care, who see it as part of their jobs, and some (less than 40%) have someone who truly owns it.

So in a way, we all own it. We are all responsible for doing what we can to ensure our clients and customers experience the best from our organizations. So if you’re a customer experience ambassador, whether or not it’s in your title, here are 3 phrases to listen for in your internal meetings. Hear one of these and your customer experience is in jeopardy.

1. “I know it’s not great for the customers, but our systems only do x,y,z.”

Translation: It is too painful to change the billing system, the onboarding process, the horrendous renewal process…It’s too painful for the folks who work there, but, trust me, it’s more painful for the customers who are forced to live with the lack of attention to these systems.

2. “We know she’s a problem, but she’s the only one who is willing to put up with that position.”

Translation: She (or he) is a big problem. Whether it’s your receptionist or your VP, if she’s causing emotional distress for others in your company it’s getting to your customers. People with bad attitudes and annoying personalities are cancers to your business, no matter how much good work they deliver.

3. “It is what it is.”

Translation: Nobody around here cares enough about this issue to change it.

Don’t let your organization get away with being lazy about things that are tough to address. If nobody is looking out for your customers, you can bank on the fact that your competition will.

So let me have it. What are other phrases that make your skin crawl because they are dismissing the customer experience?

1. The world continues to revolve, even when you are lazing away in a hammock snuggling with your sons.

2. Stepping away provides perspective you cannot get any other way. Period.

3. Family and time with the people you love is more energizing than caffeine, deadlines or big fancy events.

I’m back with a clear head and excited about what’s next. Hope you have grabbed a few days with the people you love this summer. You still have time.

So it’s no secret it’s “VOTE FOR ME” time. The time when people you barely know ask you to promote their panel at South By Southwest, the mega conference in Austin, TX concerning all things interactive.

So…here I am. Asking for your vote. Here’s the link.

But why?

I attended South By Southwest last year, and while I enjoyed the experience, I was disappointed. Disappointed in the panels and the lame topics covered by people who thought this was our first trip to the rodeo. I walked out of more than one session. I gained more knowledge hanging out in the bloggers’ lounge than in the conference rooms.

And there was one topic – close to my heart – that I was missing. You guessed it – Customer Experience.

How can you discuss search engine marketing, user experience and new media techniques if you forget about the customer?

So I’m proposing a revolution. I asked some friends – Luis Serpa, a former colleague and brilliant user experience expert; Tabitha Dunn, Director of Client Insights at Citrix Online, a client and expert of Net Promoter Score; and Tim Walker, a friend via Twitter who I met in person at SXSW last year and a brilliant moderator – to get involved. They all generously agreed.

I think a focus on Customer Experience could change the world. And I’m not joking.

Join us. Register, vote and pass it on. Here’s the link for our panel.

Thanks for your vote. See you in Austin!

The JetBlue “quick getaway” of flight attendant Steven Slater is an example of lots of things. Good customer experience is not one of them, quite obviously.

But this is one of the things JetBlue is known for. A new section on their website is titled “Experience JetBlue,” with customer videos praising the snacks, the legroom and the “above and beyond” customer service. (And is it just me or do the intro and music in this section seem overdone?) So now that we’ve gotten to know what happened to the customers at the end of this recent flight with a flight attendant who apparently took that chirpy attitude and shoved it, where is JetBlue?

And who should they defend? The customer – who allegedly bonked the flight attendant on the head with his luggage and disregarded the instructions to stay seated?

Or the flight attendant? Who cursed out the passenger over the speaker (and therefore the whole cabin-full of passengers) before escaping via the emergency chute?

They’re  both behaving badly, no doubt.

So where’s JetBlue?

Shouldn’t they be reassuring the public, their customers and their employees that this is NOT acceptable? That the philosophy of the JetBlue experience is one of respect and courtesy?

Yes, but…

Here’s the challenge – do it in a human, emotional way. Acknowledge the redonkulousness of the situation, and mention that it made the executives and other employees roll their eyes, too. Don’t come out with a standard, stodgy statement about JetBlue’s commitment to safety and customers – even though that should be mentioned. Get some JetBlue customers and employees around a microphone and have a good laugh. Let us know we’re not the only ones thinking both parties here are loco.

Then start a community. Start a movement. Ask passengers to help set better examples in their behaviors. Ask flight attendants to give out travel vouchers to well-behaved passengers.

Do something to share in the experience the rest of us are observing. Otherwise, the whole experience focus they claim to have just isn’t adding up for me.

Maybe I’m off. What do you think?

UPDATE: Here is the official blog post from JetBlue. Well done, IMHO. http://bit.ly/bu8huV

When I’m up on my soapbox proselytizing about customer experience, employee engagement is a topic that’s easy to get preachy about. After all, if your employees aren’t engaged than neither are your customers. It’s really that simple.

More often than not, I find my clients do a lot of great things for their employees. They have good cultures, they offer great benefits and they have those extras that make working someplace fun – picnics, games, and generally nice people. But when it’s time to send out an email about the picnic or the annual benefits enrollment, it’s like they forget where they work and who they work with and send out communications lacking all personality, clarity and – the worst – humanity.

Here are 4 questions to ask before you hit send on any email going to many employees or colleagues:

1. What’s the point? What action do I want the reader to take?

I can’t tell you how often there isn’t one. Really. For example, HR wants to push training. So that’s the gist of the message – training is here! Sign up! It has nothing to do with the reader.

Ask yourself what behavior, understanding or to-do you want the reader to get from this.

2. Is this in the right voice for our culture?

If your culture is laid back and casual, your communications shouldn’t be stuffy and stodgy.

3. Do I give enough information to get the job done? What if someone needs help?

One email I reviewed said this: “We’ve been having lots of errors with the time reporting software. We know this is happening but you still must enter all your hours by Friday at noon.”

So if the software was misbehaving, what’s an employee to do? Apparently, continue to hit his or her head against the keyboard! Provide an escape route for those people who might need it. Is there a specific person to contact? Is there a resource available? Don’t assume things will go as planned. They rarely do.

4. Is this readable?

Think about the amount of emails most of us get in a day. We are all training ourselves on a daily basis to care about some more than others. If I get something that’s not useful, not readable, or not important, I’m going to ignore it. Finally, if there is super critical information you are trying to communicate, don’t bury it in 4 paragraphs. Highlight what you need to and use scannable copy in the form of bullets, lists, and headers to help get your point across.

Employee engagement is a lot more than communications. But if you communicate at all, it’s important to consider how you engage via that channel, too.

Jerry Seinfeld, in his totally great appearance in Curb Your Enthusiasm last season, mentioned how annoyed he was with how everyone is saying “having said that” as a way to negate what they just said. Larry David put it in the context of a stand up comedian, saying “You people are a bunch of morons. Having said that, I’m very happy to be here.”

So why is it I hear this idea come up again and again when people within an organization are defending their customers’ experiences?

“I know our customers are frustrated with the time it takes to reply to their requests. Having said that, I can’t dedicate more resources to that issue right now.”

Now, just for fun, let’s put this in the terms of new sales. The conversation is different, and I bet you can’t see someone saying this.

“I know our prospects want us to close the deal. Having said that, I can’t dedicate more resources to that issue right now.”

It would never happen.

Why, again and again, do organizations sacrifice the experience of their current customers for the sake of new ones? Some of this is mindset. If they’re already a customer, we have them! But the fact is that now, more than ever before, customers do have the power to switch. The bank Ally has done a great job showing the absurd nature of treating new customers better than the ones who are loyal to you. Their commercials show how kids react when they are treated differently for no reason.

So take a quick mental review of how you treat your old, tried and true, loyal customers. Are you doing enough to make them feel special? Are you treating prospects and new customers better? Time to rethink.

I don’t even remember what day it was, officially. I guess it was hardly official. I decided to incorporate on my own last year in July. In the year since, I’ve been reading, learning, sharing, writing, speaking and consulting. I’ve managed strategies, daily tactics, finances, clients, prospects, and press. I’ve discussed customer experience, social media, rude behavior, being a mom, the challenges of being on my own and the wonders of being part of a huge virtual community. More importantly, here’s what I’ve learned:

YOU, yes you, have been supportive, funny, demanding and awesomely honest with me this year, and I thank you for all of it.

• I feel lucky every day.
• I am better/worse at this than I expected. (This depends on the day!)
• My clients rock. I mean, really, truly rock in a way that I can connect with and support.
• I am not where I want to be, but I am further than I thought.
• This journey is worth the fight. The destination is now.
• Hip hop, jazz, neo-folk and classical music are the necessary fuel for my workday. And show tunes punctuate in all the right places (see title).
• Getting outside once a day is absolutely necessary, even with deadlines.
• When people tell me they don’t understand social media, I feel incredibly blessed to have created rich relationships through it.
• It gets better every day, although some days are better than others.
• A work in progress is a fine description – and one I plan on labeling me forever.

Thank you for sharing this journey with me, and thank you for all the tremendous support. Here’s to Year 2!

I’m not that kind of mom. I deprive my kids of adventures to places like Chuck E. Cheese’s. However, we’ve attended birthday parties there and gone with friends, so my older child saw a 6th birthday party in his future. And just to seal the deal, after my nonchalant “We’ll see” responses weren’t enough commitment, he brought home a card on Mother’s Day. This is 2 months before his birthday, mind you, with “Mommy, I want to thank you for my birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese’s” scrawled on it. The kid will be either a master negotiator or politician.

So I was stuck there. There’s no turning back from a message scrawled in kindergarten letters. It got me.

So I signed up. We will be celebrating his birthday on Sunday, a week past the official 6th anniversary of his birth.

Here’s where the love story starts. Signing up online was easy, with plenty of options. (Although the automatic talking helpful chick needs an auto-off option!) They make it clear it’s about the kid (get over it, Mom!); they make it about convenience; they make it easy to personalize.

Yes, there are gimmicks and silly things like the “Star” package v. the “Superstar” package, but overall it’s easy.

So here we are, 2 days out, and I feel…dare I say it?…relaxed. I could adjust the number of kids and change my mind on the goodie bags and cake until 48 hours before the party. Phew. The showroom manager just called to reinforce the idea that they do everything. “We want you to sit back, relax and have fun.”

Lordy, I hope she’s right. Because here’s the thing – as a “working” mom (aren’t all moms working!?) I value this type of convenience above almost all else. The only thing higher on my priority list is that my 6 year old gets the Chuck E. Cheese’s party he’s been dreaming of for months – and they’ve instilled faith they’ll deliver it.

This is a great example of the bookends of experience. I already have had a good experience – the set up was easy and they’ve given me a sense of confidence in the party experience. If all goes well, and I expect it will, I will remember this first phase as a customer as a high point – something I’ll share with friends – or you, dear readers.

So, thank you, to the big strange mouse and his pizza posse for making this mom’s week a little bit easier.

POSTSCRIPT: Party went well, employees were kind and manager made sure it was birthday boy’s special day.

Let me get one thing out of the way: I am not a user experience architect or designer. I can’t make a wireframe to save my life. BUT…I can break ‘em pretty good.

One of my roles as a customer experience consultant is to explore the online experience. And by “explore” I mean evaluate it like a real, live customer. I do this by stepping in during the design process to review wireframes, help set up user tests, and also review live sites from a customer’s perspective.

Often, in these evaluations, the sites themselves work just fine. Clean, usable forms, good functionality, and sometimes even nice bells & whistles. So while USABILITY may be high, USER EXPERIENCE often is not.

What’s the difference?

Usability tests are incredibly important, but don’t forget about User Experience in the process. Usability tests often set out to verify specific sections, updates or tasks. While a user might complete the task just fine, the user might not be able to articulate what’s important about the user experience.

So every so often take a minute to review your entire site with a critical eye – not just specific tasks or user paths. Do some comparisons against competitors, both in and out of your industry. And pay attention to where users spend time on your site through your analytics.

Otherwise you may have a highly functional site, but not an engaging one.

What do you think? Is there a difference?