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BusinessWeek just released its forth annual Customer Service Champs ranking.
Lots of great stories and anecdotes from great companies. And yes,
many of them use Medallia company-wide to communicate with customers
and monitor, understand, and improve performance ;)
Full ranking here: http://bit.ly/dcKenQ
Right away Steitz overhauled the coaching staff and started to hunt for promising athletes who had good team spirit, who wanted their teammates to do well.
Just attending an Olympics couldn't be anyone's goal, they had to want a [medal], and every athlete had to be improving whether they were already easily going to make the team or not.
Steitz relocated the whole team and all their coaches, nutritionists and medical staff from all over the country to Steamboat Springs, Colorado.
Robert Fulghum created a stir in the mid-’80s with his bestselling book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. The disarmingly titled book counseled a generation of Americans to make the world a better place by getting back to basics and doing as they were taught in kindergarten: be kind, share, clean up after yourself, and live a life that balances work, play, and learning.
I am new to customer feedback—or, rather, I am new to doing anything besides offering it. Considering the issue from the other side, I am struck by how much complexity surrounds a topic that, at first glance, appears fairly straightforward. In my opinion, the “basics” that Fulghum espoused apply to customer experience management as well. Perhaps the best guide to providing great customer experiences is common sense. After all, all of us know what it feels like to be a customer.
As a customer, I want to do business with individuals and organizations that respect my humanity—a preference, I assume, others share. In four years living in Spain, I often frequented bakeries and cafes where the owner took my order, asked me questions, listened to my responses, and generally interacted with me in a pleasant, and completely genuine, manner. In these small, charming establishments, I never felt like a number, a potential profit, a potential promoter, or a potential detractor: I was simply Laura, the foreign girl with the funny accent. As a result, I always wanted to get coffee, pastries, and tapas at these same places—because I like doing business with someone who genuinely respects me as an individual, and whom I genuinely respect.
Having said that, I understand that I can’t buy an iPod from the man who designed it, built it, and offers it for sale in his little corner store. But I’ve come to realize that new technologies, like customer experience management software, enable large corporations to interact with customers in much the same way family-owned cafes do. If you can’t be on the frontline and in the corporate office simultaneously, these technologies make sure you pass on your vision of valuing customers, and making every customer’s experiences great, to everyone in the company.
Getting back to Fulghum and the lessons of kindergarten, the common-sense point is: Treat people with respect. A nice benefit is that treating people this way ensures that they want to come back, recommend you, and so forth. One franchisee of a large company came up with a unique vision for his franchise: to create “lifelong fans,” not necessarily lifelong customers. He understands that because of circumstances beyond his control—new homes, new jobs, and countless other life changes—customers may not always be able to continue spending money with him. He places greater value on the level of respect they have for his business, which is directly proportional to the level of respect his business has for them. To me, this is common sense. But, as Voltaire said, common sense is not very common.
About us: Medallia software enables the whole company to listen to customer feedback and systematically act to improve the customer experience: http://medallia.com
We previously described how Medallia customers have outperformed the S&P500 by 10x since 2003.
Now Jon Picoult of Watermark Consulting has published further evidence of the link between customer experience and shareholder value creation. In a post on customerthink.com, Mr. Picoult describes an analysis of companies in Forrester's Customer Experience Index and compelling evidence of share price outperformance:
Customer experience leaders outperformed the rest:
...the customer experience Leader portfolio outperformed the broader stock market, generating cumulative total returns that were 41% better than the S&P 500 Index and 145% better than the customer experience Laggard portfolio.
Customer centric less affected by recession:
This performance profile supports the notion that customer experience leaders are somewhat cushioned from the most severe impacts of economic downturns, because they represent one of the last places consumers cut back and one of the first places to which they return.
Read the full story here: http://bit.ly/asmzJc
About us: Medallia software enables the whole company to listen to customer feedback and systematically act to improve the customer experience: http://medallia.com
via blogs.hbr.org
Peter Merholz from Adaptive Path writes about developing Target's ClearRx pharmacy system. The article covers four key lessons for anyone wanting to deliver a great experience:
1. Prototype Early
About us: Medallia software enables the whole company to listen to customer feedback and systematically act to improve the customer experience: http://medallia.com
Pella Windows stands behind its products and builds relationships in the process. Many companies would try to red-tape their way out of a 9 year after warranty claim. Pella didn't (disclaimer: Pella is a Medallia customer)
A bad start...
Around nine years ago, I remodeled my house in San Jose. In the process, I bought a garden window from the Home Depot store in Campbell. This window was made by Viking.
Last year when we got a heavy rain, I woke up in the morning and found the window filled with water and water was still dripping inside. I started thinking how to fix it.
Getting worse...
In the window department, I ran into a senior citizen helper who informed me that Home Depot stopped carrying Viking windows and that Viking was bought by a company called Pella that Lowe's carries.
Pella steps up...
We set up a time, he came by, fixed the problem and left without me signing or paying for anything.I asked him what the cost would normally be. He replied $350 and that Viking/Pella are taking care of it...
It is hard to get such free after-services like this and I felt I should give a word of praise and appreciation and thank you to the lady who took my call, Viking and Pella for great customer service!
And now has a promoter for life.
Full article here: http://bit.ly/d1NPJF
Buy your windows here: http://pella.com
About us: Medallia software enables the whole company to listen to customer feedback and systematically act to improve the customer experience: http://medallia.com
via nytimes.com
A few weeks ago, the New York Times reported a rebound-inducing trend at Starbucks: giving the frontlines more autonomy. (see: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/business/21sbux.html) Howard Schultz, Starbuck’s CEO, told a group of employees to “do things for yourself,” and the rebound began.
On two levels, the importance of front-line empowerment is no surprise: As a customer, I remember the moment I realized Starbucks had “gone corporate,” disempowered the frontlines, and relegated its baristas to producing coffee—but not much more. Around the same time, the company—which was founded on the idea of replacing America’s mediocre cup ’o joe with “the authenticity of the coffee experience”—replaced its locally baked pastries with confections mass-produced somewhere else.
I didn't bother to tell the cashier about my dissatisfaction. Would any communication to them translate into fresh-baked, locally produced pastries? Doubtful. Some MBA (full disclosure: I’m one, too) at headquarters had figured out that Starbucks made X% more per pastry when it sold mass-produced treats. No matter how vociferously I might have complained to the frontline staff, it would have amounted to nothing more than shouting into the abyss. So I kept my mouth shut. And went to Peet’s.
The importance of frontline empowerment is no surprise at a second level. The literature about great companies (Built to Last, In Search of Excellence) identifies a number of excellent company traits that portend Starbucks’ empowerment of the frontlines.
The literature suggests that great companies treat their employees as adults, with respect and trust, and give them a high degree of autonomy. “They encourage employees to ‘do’ first (and a lot), ‘analyze’ later and keep what works, in a cycle of ‘try, try again.’ They keep their finger on the pulse of the marketplace by keeping customers close.
How do these traits translate for Starbucks? Give your baristas, who work closest to the customer, greater autonomy. They are your best finger on the pulse of the marketplace. Encourage them to experiment, and then determine which of their experiments work. The innovations may take off at other locations, too.
That seems to be just what Starbucks is doing. According to The New York Times, the company is treating its stores as learning laboratories. Innovations that flourish in one store will be introduced elsewhere. The company is turning to its baristas, instead of just its executives, and discovering some interesting things. For example, coffee tastes are not the same across the country. Northeasterners favor drip coffee and Northwesterners prefer espresso drinks.
Schultz is right in telling his employees to “do things for yourself.” That’s the best first step. But if he wants to optimize the roll-up-your-sleeves, get-things-done, spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship he’s re-unleashing at Starbucks, then he should consider Customer Experience Management (CEM), a technology that enables frontline empowerment and harnesses it to drive company excellence. And while Starbucks is at it, could it reintroduce locally produced pastries? That would save me 5 minutes of commuting time (to Peet’s) every morning!
About us: Medallia software enables the whole company to listen to customer feedback and systematically act to improve the customer experience: http://medallia.com
About us: Medallia software enables the whole company to listen to customer feedback and systematically act to improve the customer experience: http://medallia.com
Growth is critical for a company's success, yet wrong growth can be
really damaging for a business. Here in the Valley we seem genetically
attracted to the promise of new products and markets, yet deciding not
to pursue something can be just as valuable.
Link to video here: http://bit.ly/bCOlMQ
Book website here: http://bit.ly/dh97QK
About us: Medallia software enables the whole company to listen to customer feedback and systematically act to improve the customer experience: http://medallia.com
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