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Dear Customer Service VP: It's Broken. Fix It!

Today’s markets are dominated and driven by commoditization. Every consumer knows that an insurance policy is an insurance policy; a mortgage is a mortgage; a bank service is a bank service; and every product and service is pretty much the same as every other like product and service.

Although differentiation remains the primary force behind marketing and sales, you no longer can differentiate yourself with your products and services. Instead, differentiation between brands comes primarily out of the customer experience. How you treat customers and how they experience your products and services determine market share and profitability. Everything you say and do determine a customer’s experience, your brand image, and both your top and bottom lines. So why do we continue to have crappy customer experiences?

Yesterday, I spent 45 minutes trapped in T Mobile customer hell. Most of that time was spent repeating the phone tree trap over and over again. When I did manage to get a human being, I had to repeat my cell phone number, wait for them to look up my customer account and then I was forced answer the same questions asked by the previous customer care representative. Only to be told that my problem could not be handled over the telephone. I don't understand. What is so difficult about replacing a three-month old phone that no longer functions properly? Why do I have to take it to a T Mobile store 30 minutes away to have them verify that it isn't working? The solution is simple: Send me a new phone, require that I return the non-functioning one, and everybody is happy.

Why Customer Service Sucks
I believe customer service sucks because of leadership from the top and a department head who is either afraid to challenge that leadership or is so under-budgeted that he or she cannot fix the problem. Those are excuses for poor customer service and need not be tolerated. It is the responsibility of every department head to fight ignorance above at every turn and to educate to eliminate that ignorance. Doing so in an appropriate and research-backed way will deliver both authority and money. If it doesn't, then the business is lost and will never maximize its potential.Fixing customer service is a must. Like all business solutions, we begin by asking the right questions.

The first question a Call Center or Customer Service Vice President should ask him or herself is: What is my department's primary objective? The only correct answer is "to create happy and loyal customers who will continue to purchase their wants and needs from us." The second Question is: How do we create great customer experiences? The answers will vary from business to business, as creating great customer experiences depends on who your customers are and what they most want from you. However, every business needs to focus on the basics to ensure happy customers.
 
Basic Guidelines for Creating Great Customer Experiences

1. Know your customers. Why have they chosen to shop with you over your competitors? What do they most want to experience when they interact with you?
2. Simplify your phone trees. No customer should experience a phone tree more than once per call and the only options should be which human the customer wants to talk to--sales, customer service, technical assistance. That's it.
3. No one sits on hold for longer than 60 seconds, no matter your crisis. Hire enough staff to cover any emergency. Forward incoming calls to a home phone or a cell phone of a staff member by creating emergency staffing. You will deliver return on your investment because a great customer experience is the only way to differentiate yourself and to create loyal and profitable customers.
4. Train your customer service staff monthly. Frequently remind them that their only goal is to make customers happy. Give them the authority to say "yes." It is better to fix a "yes" mistake than to lose a good customer because of a "no" mistake.
5. Build an Inbound Marketing system that gathers data from every customer touchpoint, analyzes the data, and then predicts customers' wants and needs. When a customer calls, the customer service representative should see that data in real time based on the phone number collected during the phone tree phase above. Then, not only should they be able to provide a solution for the caller but using the real-time data the customer service representative should be able to up-sell or cross-sell based on the analysis and predictive function of the Inbound Marketing software. Not only do you create a great customer experience; you also create a Customer Service Revenue Center.
6. Constantly look for areas of improvement and implement the strategies and tactics to get better at providing service customers' wants and needs and by exceeding their expecations.

The Bottom Line
Spending money to create great customer experiences delivers more ROI than any other thing a business can do. It's a simple equation--happy customers = greater profits over a longer-period of time.

Social Media Doesn't Need a New Home

Lately it seems that models for adapting social media have become a popular discussion point. From Jeremiah Owyang at Forrester Research to David Armano, a senior partner at Dachis Corp, recommendations and questions arise around creating an organizational chart for where Social Media should live. They discuss the Hub and Spoke model (Owyang) and an expanded Hub and Spoke model (Armano). To quote, David's current view: ",,, I wanted to visualize what it might look like if you took a single "hub and spoke" model and turned it into something that resembled more of a network." Last December, I posted the following article, which I believe remains relevant to the discussion: Inbound Marketing is Where Social Media Should Live.As I said then and continue to see no reason to change my thinking now:

"Inbound Marketing is driven by customers when they reach out to a company by, for example, calling the customer call center, shopping in one of our stores or online, visiting a web site or a blog, or by responding to a marketing piece. Software such as CRM and now new data and analytical systems have become the primary tools to gather data, analyze it and create customer predictability.

"At the end of the day, the objective of inbound marketing is not conversation for its own sake, as some social media evangelists suggest, but to use those conversations to learn as much as we can about what customers most want and need from us and then create great customer experiences by meeting those wants and needs at the right time and the right place, which are when customers contact us and wherever they do so. We must first and foremost remember that companies are in business to create revenues, and any tool that doesn't ultimately lead us to that objective is not valuable to business. Tools might not directly lead to sales but, no matter their route, they destination must be sales.

"To date, Inbound Marketing has not led to revenues because departments have not found ways to work cross-functionally. Now we are beginning to acquire software applications and other tools such as social media that are breaking down walls, although most businesses still don't know how to make it happen. The following lays out a foundation for using Inbound Marketing as a revenue generator and suggests how social media can be monetized without treading on customer conversations and instead adding to customers' experiences."

In my opinion, adding more bureaucracy to an organization is not an option nor is injecting a changed business model from what currently exists.

I prefer to see social media as a set of tools, not as something revolutionary but as something that can be evolutionary, increasing a company's ability to better serve both customers and employees. Frankly, no business needs more conversation; it needs better conversation. The most efficient and effective way to merge social media is to use a company's current model. If we are to achieve flexibility and productivity, attempting to change a culture is fruitless and improbable. However, finding ways to meld strategies and tactics within the current culture can lead to evolutionary and organic culture changes.

Culture change is almost always unanimously rejected by those affected and fearful of change that affects people's daily lives. However, change at the management level is possible. It requires a sensible objective, doable and measurable goals, and gradual buy-in. When introducing social media, getting management buy-in and using social media to make their departments profit centers by helping them better serve customers and their staffs, is a winning argument.

Business models take decades if driven from outside an organization, and will take longer if the cause comes from new tools or technology. Instead, adapting social media to a company's current structure makes better sense. And doing so encourages organic changes, which are more likely to happen seamlessly and with less pain.

Author's Note:

Most companies today use some form of a Hub and Spoke, where decision making happens at corporate headquarters (the Hub or Tower) and then is distributed to the departments, plants, stores and so on--the spokes. Jeremiah Owyang applies his terms differently than I have here. In his article, he also specifically addresses social media within a organization, not the organization's overall business model. I have run multi-functional teams, which is what he calls Hub and Spoke and what he recommends. In my experience, they are like all models--they remain bureaucratic, are usually inefficient and continue to fall under the company's overall model.

Whether or not we call it Tower, Tire or Hub and Spoke, most models are bureaucratic and work poorly at best. Consultants ranging from Tom Peters to Seth Godin to Jim Collins have tried to help businesses become more efficient and effective by reducing the bureaucracy created by such a model, mostly to no avail. In my corporate years, it seemed that every year or two, culture change was on the table for discussion based on somebody's new book or great idea. Models created in a smart person's mind almost always seem better. However, creating the change necessary for them to work in the real world seldom succeeds. Whereas, although organic change is slow, painful and grinds on everyone, it does bring about the tiniest of positive differences in terms of flexibility and buy-in within an organization.

In David Armano's post, he looked to the military as a place where change works. David admits he has no personal military experience. In my 8 years of military service, my observations regarding change tell me the only place it happens relatively quickly is on the battlefield, in life and death situations. In non-threatening environments, much is done today as it was centuries ago. In fact, the model they use is a combination of Hub and Spoke and Tower, as most are.

What do You Tell a Business Owner Who is Losing Money?

The truth. As consultants, clients depend upon us to be the people who will always give their honest opinion, whether good news or bad. It's sometimes painful. But so necessary.

Many of my current clients are struggling. That is precisely why they called us in, and we have stopped the negative slide and are beginning to deliver ROI and increase revenues. Nevertheless, the economy has slapped them in the face and knocked them down. Instead of earning profits, they are digging into their own   pockets to pay the bills. How can any of us ignore their pain? While our job is to deliver results, we must also offer hope, sometimes be a cheerleader and always approach our efforts to grow a business with joy and positivity. However, it is nothing short of unethical and irresponsible to do anything other than share our honest analysis of how long the pain might last, including reminding them that business development takes time, and should be an ongoing strategy that is budgeted properly.

I've had two such conversations this week. Both businesses are young, doing all the right things in the area of customer service and experience, and taking our counsel, which we are confident will drive success. Unfortunately, they had hired consultants who did not deliver results; therefore, when they brought us in we had to first dig these businesses out of a hole. In both instances, the owners are taking money out of their own pockets to stay alive. And they are frightened. Here is what I have recommended:

1. Continue to work the business/marketing plan. The ideas and the execution are creating upward spikes.
2. Measure everything we do. Throw out what isn't working and replace it with another idea with good probability of success.
3. Meet quarterly with us to analyze what we did, how it worked, where we are, and how we are doing in terms of the one-year goal we established.
4. Offer hope when we can. Dish out reality always.
5. Never over-promise or be either optimistic or pessimistic. Instead, be realistic.
6. Feel their pain, be sensitive to their fear, give them the entire story, not just the parts they want to hear.
7. Remember, it isn't about our retainer. It is about their future. Recommend pulling the plug as soon as we recognize the probability is dipping quickly toward zero.

This is a double-edged sword because our clients futures represent our futures. If they can't make it with our help, we both lose. But, again, our job is to understand their wants and needs and to always work to exceed them. When we no longer can help them achieve their goals, we are obligated to say so.

10 Tips on How to Make a Good Impression Every Time

Whether in sales, marketing, customer service, consulting, entrepreneurship, or any other job, or career, we should always be striving to make a good impression on others, be they boss, customer or client. Why? Because in life, especially in the business world, people hire, promote or buy from those they like, trust, respect, have confidence in and believe that the relationship results not only in revenues for their business but a good personal experience.

In business, creating a good impression comes from the heart not the brain. It is about being who we are. In other words, it is about being authentic. As one former Starbucks executive once said to me: "If that means you are an asshole, be an asshole. Because sooner or later, everyone around you will figure out that's who you really are. Faking it doesn't work for very long."

Assuming you aren't an asshole, here are my recommendations for making a good impression:

1. Be authentic. Always be who you are.
2. Understand others motivations, inspirations, agendas, wants and needs. Treat everyone as an individual based on who they are, not on who you wish they would become. (This is especially important in personal relationships.)
3. Try to put yourself in their position instead of focusing on your own ideas, thoughts, wants and needs. Make it about the other person, not you.
4. Listen. If you listen carefully, your chances of building a good relationship grow exponentially to how much you listen vs. how much you talk.
5. Leave your pitches in your back pocket. Nobody cares. Instead, understand what others want and need and help them get those things, if you can.
6. Be honest but sensitive. If you disagree, do so in a professional, kind and respectful manner. Always be clear that you only care about getting the best results for the business, customer, client or colleague.
7. Find common ground, if you can. Meet others where they are. If you recognize that is not doable, you might also recognize that relationship building in this particular instance has gone as far as it ever will. In that case, co-exist with politeness and respect but don't expect too much in the way of a successful relationship.
8. Always seek out the good in others, recognize it, respect it, honor it, and build on it.
9. Don't waste time on assholes. They are a lost cause and not good for business or your mental health.
10. Know thy own self. If you don't understand who you are, how can you hope that others will relate to you?

Your thoughts? Experiences? Suggestions? Reactions?

Under-Capitalized, Without a Plan and Dead

Whether you are an entrepreneur, a President and CEO of a mid- to large-sized business or a one-person shop, do the plan. The Business Plan that is. Without it, the chance of your business ending up dead increases to a probability not worth the risk. If you never create another plan, the Business Plan is as important as anything you will ever do in your business.

Building a business requires more than a dream and hard work. Both are necessary ingredients for achieving success. But without strategic, planned and disciplined growth, businesses usually fail to achieve their goals—assuming, of course, that they slow down along the way to create those goals. No matter the size of your business, keep in mind that it takes capital to grow. If you plan to use your savings, your business plan had better be on target to make all that money back plus a substantial return on your investment, assuming, of course, that you enjoy having a roof over your head and eating regular meals.

If, on the other hand, you plan to raise capital from outside sources, understand that a reputable bank or investor won’t invest in your business unless you have a well-thought out business plan that proves you worthy of investment. Investors tell us most business plans fail that test. A surgeon doesn’t operate on himself, and you shouldn’t either. Business plans are complex. Hire someone skilled in the specific areas and content needed by your organization to build the plan. Hire a CPA, an attorney and a business planner or a business consultancy that understands investors and can manage each and every ingredient of a business plan, driving and executing it so that you reap the benefits of the consultancy’s experience and talents.

Here's a story of two clients--the first a year old and struggling to survive; the latter with a 20-year-old current business who just hired us to develop its business plan for expansion into another state.

In the first case, the owners mortgaged their home and took out a small loan. Together, the monies equaled about $400,000, barely enough to launch the business, not nearly enough to survive three years without profits and cash flow. That three-year average is critical, as without enough capital to make it for three years, your business likely will struggle ti survive. Is that always true? No. But on average it takes a new business a minimum of one year and a maximum of five years to become profitable. If it doesn't happen by the 5th year, it is time to execute on your exit strategy. In this example, the monies ran out after about six months--normal for a B2C business with this kind of expenses. Now the owners are struggling to stay in business.

They brought us in three months ago, in an effort to make things happen quickly. We explained in detail that we would do our best but that we believed the task was nearly impossible to meet their cash flow and capital needs. With direct marketing, we created an instant spike in business, which has now plateaued, as is normal. Tomorrow, we advise that without a business development budget, there isn't much more we can do. We will carefully lay out their options, which are essentially the same ones we described three months earlier. The outlook, in our opinion, isn't good.

In the second example, the business owner has grown its first location and maximized its revenues, profits and growth potential. Last week, he brought us in to build a business plan for his second business. The objective is to raise $3 to $4 million dollars before he launches. Very smart and more than enough to get him through several years of growing pains, which because of the plan will mostly be averted. Here's what many don't understand. A Business Plan is much more than financials with projections. It is in every way a Business Development Plan. Here is the outline we will be working from for this client.

• Front Matter (loan request statement—amount requested, client assets, use of loan; confidentiality agreement;table of contents)
• Executive Summary
• The current state of the health care industry in the geographical area where this business will reside
• Market Research & Analysis (competition, strength of market, opportunities, etc.)
• Economics of Health Care (costs vs. revenues)
• Marketing Plan
• Health Care Center Opening Schedule
• Management Team
• Risks & Assumptions
• Exit Strategy
• The Financial Plan
• Layout, Design, Printing and Delivery of Plan

Bottom line: Without a business plan you won't know

• How much capital you need
• How and when to use it
• Where you are going
• How hard or easy it will be to get there
• How you will get there
• And how you will know you got there

Lesson to Remember: Don't get caught being Under-Capitalized, Without a Plan and soon to be Dead.

Can Marketers Be Human, Too, and Do Their Jobs?

That depends on who they are. For example. yesterday I posted the newest Calvin Klein billboard, which has provoked more than a few to label it irresponsible and pornographic. Were those marketers who created the ad campaign tapping into their human sides or focused on getting attention in whatever ways might result in sales? And if the latter, is being money-focused and offensive inhuman?

I bring this up because of a post by Spike Jones at the Brains on Fire blog entitled Quit Thinking Like a Marketer. In that post, Spike writes, "People don't like being marketed to.... So I think it’s really, REALLY important to remember to take off our marketing hats and just be a person thinking about how to relate to other people in a honest, open, transparent way."

And then in a reply to a comment left by Mack Collier, Spike writes, "Maybe it’s just semantics, what you’re calling good marketing, I’m calling good-relations. Marketing means too many things to too many people - and most of those are BAD impressions."

An hour after reading and thinking about Spike's post, I came across the Calvin Klein billboard and privately, now publicly, think that the ad is a cheap trick to get noticed. It isn't creative nor innovative or is it difficult to execute on. Most marketers can come up with provocative ways to get their products attention, and I among them have sometimes resorted to provocation to get the message noticed. Provocation isn't just about sex and it can be useful when exchanging ideas.

But there is a line that when crossed violates our value systems and those of most Americans. Crossing that line might create word of mouth and buzz, but does it enhance intended results, which in business is most often related to sales. It certainly isn't the way most of us want to relate to our customers.

The Calvin Klein billboard and other similar marketing pieces leave a "BAD impression" on me. Furthermore, relating 'to other people in a honest, open, transparent way" has for most of my 35 years in communications, marketing and business development been the mantra for us whose job it is to introduce services, products, brands and ideas to people in ways that they will want to purchase or share in the experience in some way. How does offending people achieve that result? Is that being human? And for bottom line thinkers, even if short-term sales increase, how much long-term harm do we cause? Frankly, I know of no way to measure how many sales we lose because we offend people.

Most of the marketers and other business people I've met along the way are good people. They care about how they and their businesses are viewed. They have strong value systems and feel connected to their community. They want to do the right thing, and more often than not they do. They are Little League managers and soccer coaches and dedicated family people and spiritual and generally solid citizens. And when a business's marketing messages leave a "BAD impression," every one of them and their businesses takes a negative hit to the perception that business cannot be trusted to make good decisions. At least that's what I think. What about you?

Do You Want Calvin Klein in Your Neighborhood?

Located in Manhattan at Lafayette and Houston Streets, this billboard has been called borderline pornographic by neighborhood residents. An Ad Critic for Adweek says the billboard is "a desperate act for Calvin Klein;" Calvin Klein replies that the "intention was to create a very sexy campaign that speaks to our targeted demographic."

What do you think? What if this billboard was in your neighborhood, would you feel differently? Is the ad just smart marketing by being provocative or is it a desperate measure to get attention? And what is the target market--how many people engage in this lifestyle and pass by this billboard regularly? Placement still matters, doesn't it?

Content Is Still King (It's Just Not What You Think It Is)

by Matthew T. Grant, PhD

The other week, Mack Collier wrote a post calling the tired notion that in blogging content is king total bullshit. To be sure, he wasn't saying that content didn't matter.  Instead, he was saying that social media is, in the end, less about content than about being social. As he puts it, "The best way to grow your blog is to leave it." In practical terms, this translates into the following advice: to get comments on your blog, leave comments on others.

While I agree with Mack that blog content, or any content for that matter, won't grow business by itself, I nevertheless still maintain that content is king. I say this not because I believe that being social, whether by Tweeting or commenting on blogs or taking customer service calls, doesn't matter. I say it because today being social is itself an important form of content.

Business communication used to be semi-private; now it's all potentially public
Most social acts such as sending email, chatting online or even having a telephone conversation, can be recorded, archived, transmitted and broadcast. Thus, while in the past calls to a customer service center or correspondence with a sales rep, for example, were semi-private," today we must think of them as potentially public. Similarly, opinions about your products or services, which used to be passed from acquaintance to acquaintance in the course of casual conversation, can now become a permanent part of the public record.

Content is not a product, it's a process
We are accustomed to thinking of content as something fixed, in other words, as a product. Today, when almost anything can become content and the old fixed content can take on numerous forms (blog posts, podcasts, webinars, etc.), all of which invite commentary and encourage sharing, we must think of content as a process. Moreover, it's a process involving a variety of folks across your organization and not just the writers at your ad agency or the crew in your PR department.

You don't need more content, you need a content plan
Viewed as a product, there is an overabundance of content. We're swimming in it. For this reason, although I say that content is king, I don't believe that most organizations need to produce more content. Instead, viewing it as a process, I believe that most organizations need to develop and implement a content plan. Such a plan would, of course, include strategies for syndicating, recycling and generally making the most of your existing content products to educate your customer base, enable your sales force and improve SEO. But the plan's more critical component has nothing to do with these products and everything to do with people.

Your people ARE your content
Everyone in your organization is a content producer. They are on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and on and on. But they are also, in a way, your organization's most valuable content. Their attitudes, actions and abilities continually inform customer perception and exercise a major influence on customer behavior. Thus, the most intensive focus of your content plan will fall on educating all those people who have direct interactions with your customers as well as those whose public actions may reflect back on the company and its products. These people must not only understand that they play an active and significant role in the company's marketing efforts, they need to know how best to play that role.

Marketing can no longer be separated from operations
In our highly mediated world, the difference between internal employees and outward facing is vanishing. How people do their jobs is no longer just a question of efficiency and productivity. It's also a question of differentiation. Because marketing content is less about what your organization says and more about what your people do, marketers need to re-situate themselves organizationally. Specifically, they must become more inclusive, cultivating alliances and partnerships throughout the organization, and, they must become more intensively focused on operations and involve themselves to a greater degree in training, performance management and even recruitment.

Crazy talk? That may sound like a tall order, and even a little crazy, but that's where we're headed. My question is: How many marketers feel prepared to make the journey into the operational trenches? And if you're not prepared, how do you expect to make an impact?