This week’s podcast highlights some of the take-aways from last week’s Digital Customer Experience Strategies Summit in Chicago, at which I had the honor of being on the first panel of the event.

Banks, Telecomms, and B2B Companies Grapple With Omnichannel Customer Experience

Most startling for me was to discover how many big companies in the worlds of financial services, telecommunications, utilities and business-to-business vendors are just now starting to realize that they’ve got to take omnichannel customer experience seriously.

Get your FREE Transcript Now!

And many of them — even those that paid a couple of thousand dollars to send someone to the conference — are still not serious enough to put significant resources behind the effort. Nice that they’ve appointed someone to look at “customer experience” but when a company with over 10,000 employees and billions of dollars of assets appoints one person — seriously?? That person has to be a superhero to make progress!

That said, many companies are committed, and we heard from several of them at the conference.

DCX 2016 Highlights

* Culture Change: Vicki Jones, of AT&T, talked about the challenges of merging three large organizations. Dealing with culture differences is even harder than the technological challenges. Having a supportive CEO (which she has) is incredibly helpful.

* Text & Messaging for Customer Service: There was a lot of talk about the increasing use of text and messaging for customer service. If it is done right, it can really save you money by lowering the number of contact center calls.

* Data: Big data is great, but you have to figure out what’s relevant in all that data. Don’t just go fishing; know what you are trying to learn.

* Streamlining offers and systems: In a large organization it is easy for the number of offerings to have spun out of control. It may be time to re-examine and rationalize them. This will help you and your overwhelmed potential customers.

* Personalization: One of the great things about using data more effectively is that it is becoming increasingly feasible to truly personalize offers. Once you’ve got the technology and expertise to understand that data, you can potentially really optimize your profits by giving more customers exactly what they want at the perfect price.

* Empathy: If you are doing customer journey mapping (which you should be doing!), map customer emotions along the journey, not just actions.

* De-silo: Not surprisingly, many speakers and audience members discussed the challenges of getting cooperation of all departments that are needed to implement omnichannel customer experience. Crossing silos is inevitable if you really want to make things work across all channels.

* Executive buy-in: The best way to get executives interested in customer experience improvement is by exposing them to what their customers are really saying. Whether video clips, story telling using a simplified customer journey map with customer quotes, or dragging them out onto the front lines, they’ve got understand the pain before they’ll commit the resources.

* Happy employees: As Michelle Morris, of Crowe Horwath LLP, put it,

Wednesday, September 7, 2016, is PeopleShock Launch Day!

Yes, the book, PeopleShock: The Path To Profits When Customers Rule, has been available for a while already, but I figured there was no point trying to do the “official” launch during the summer, so here it is! If you are going to be in Edmonton, come to the party! Details and registration at http://bit.ly/ps-launch.

In today’s podcast, I am sharing the start of the book with you, and talking about riding the boom and bust economic cycles, and how strategic customer experience improvement can actually help you survive the tough times (and surge ahead when the boom happens again).

20% Off at DCX Conference

Also, wanted to remind you that you can get a 20% discount at the Digital Customer Experience by using the offer code TFRANK20.

I’ll be on a panel with Naaz Nichols from Travelocity and Danny Setiawan of The Economist about Digital Customer Experience Integration Strategies.

Let me know if you’ll be there! I’d love to meet you in person!

Customer Experience Improvement Program Challenges

Big and small companies have different challenges when it comes to implementing a customer experience improvement program, but there are things each can learn from the other.

That’s why this podcast and blog range from last week’s episode with small business owner, Marie Soprovich, whose company has 20 employees, to today’s interview with Benjamin Easaw, Senior Director, Customer Experience at Thomson Reuters, which has about 50,000 employees in 100 countries.

Get your FREE Transcript Now!

Thomson started as a holding company, which had acquired hundreds of different companies. A few years ago it decided to bring them all into a common brand: no easy task!

Just think of all the different systems, attitudes, and customer expectations! How the heck do you bring all that together?

Should You Even Take the Job?

There’s not much hope of developing a successful customer experience improvement program in that situation if you don’t have some pretty serious commitment from management. So if you are thinking of taking a position like Easaw’s, before you accept it, ask some tough questions to find out how committed the company really is.

Where to Start With the New Customer Experience Program?

You’ve accepted the job. Now what?

To start on the right foot, you need to do a few key things:

* Get to know the players. Who’s who in each department, and what are their goals. (We discussed this a bit in episode 16, with Reginald Chatman on how to win internal support for a customer experience program. You may want to go back and listen to that one.)

* Develop common terminology. Easaw found that “everybody seems to have a different definition of customer experience.” Depending on what your department does, you’ll see it in different ways. So you need to develop a common definition and words to work with.

* Assemble a team. No customer experience improvement program succeeds in a vacuum. You need representation from across the organization, and you’ll need an executive level sponsor or champion. While some people put on such a team will start off skeptical, Easaw found that one on one conversations to understand what makes them negative can often turn them around. And having some skeptics on your team is actually a good thing: it’s a reality check as you make plans.

* Dig for data. Find out what data exists, and start drilling into it for insights. Try connecting different sources of data across the organization to help you get a view of the overall customer experience, not just one department’s part of it. Often there are plenty of people within the organization who know the key problems customers experience, but without the data assembled and organized to tell a convincing story, there is no way for them to prove their hunches.

Next Steps?

Hang in there. In a company that large, customer experience improvement is a marathon, not a sprint.

In Other News – Upcoming Events

Hope I’ll see you at some of these!

Would Your Small Business Survive If You Were Gone?

Entrepreneurs and small business owners are often advised to think about what would happen to their business if they were hit by a truck. It’s a horrible thing to contemplate, but that sort of thing can — and does — happen.

Get your FREE Transcript Now!

If you are a regular reader or Frank Reactions podcast listener, you know that I’ve been away for the last couple of weeks because that very thing happened to one of my closest friends recently. (I’m sad to have to report that he’s still in a coma.)

Marie Soprovich’s husband, Doug, was hit by a sudden cancer diagnosis, not a truck, so they had a little bit more time to plan, but not much. When he died, Marie concluded that it would be easier to replace her as a school vice-principal than to fill the leadership void left by the passing of her husband, the much-loved CEO of Aquarian Renovations.

So she took a deep breath, and took over as CEO.

“It was the biggest challenge of my lifetime. Doug was a very loved leader” – Marie Soprovich

In the five years since, the small business has not only stayed strong, but has grown its revenues and profits with the same size staff by improving processes and by always, always staying focused on the people side of things.

Internal People – Staff

The company was focused on culture from the beginning, so it was a close-knit team. That undoubtedly helped the staff deal with the terrible blow of its founder’s illness.

But at the same time, their loyalty to the leader also meant that invariably it would be hard to adjust to anyone new stepping into his role, whether or not it was his wife.

Marie decided the way to deal with her lack of experience in the company was to play to her strengths — writing and communications — while getting to know the strengths and weaknesses of the staff.

External People – Customers

As an English teacher, she had strong writing skills, so she decided to start writing for industry magazines about home renovations and featuring some of the projects the company had done. This brilliant move not only leveraged her strengths, it

*

Gave the new CEO a wonderful excuse to interview customers

about what their experience had been like with Aquarian during their renovations. She got to know them on a personal level, established herself as the new leader, and learned where the company could improve.

*

Created positive publicity at a time when the company’s future could have been in doubt.

If you are going to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on a high end home renovation, you are likely to be nervous about signing a contract with a company that has just lost its founder, leader and driving force. The articles reinforced the company’s image as a strong, high quality producer that hadn’t disappeared.

*

Generated staff pride.

Seeing your work featured in glossy magazines can do great things for morale.

The 3P Profit Formula At Work

Aquarian Renovations is profiting from all 3 of the Ps in the 3P Profit Formula:

* Promise. The company has a strong set of guiding values and principles, including a commitment to quality and customer satisfaction.

No Podcast This Week. Here’s Why:

Sometimes the world doesn’t unfold as it should.

The wonderful man who is both a good friend and was the first early reader for my book recently moved to College Station in Texas to start a new job. His wife sold their home in Calgary and had just joined him. They’d had a bunch of things go wrong in their lives over the last few years through no fault of their own, but now it was all turning around.

They had just bought a house in College Station — hadn’t moved in yet — and were walking, hand in hand, to dinner. They were in a crosswalk when a pickup truck raced round the corner and knocked my dear friend out of his wife’s hand. He was sent flying, and his skull shattered.

That happened last Wednesday. After emergency surgery, he has been in a medically induced coma to try to keep the swelling in the brain down.

I’m flying down to Texas to be with his wonderful wife. I can’t even imagine what a nightmare she’s living through. And there’s no quick end in sight.

When it comes down to it, people are more important than anything else. So PeopleShock book promotions and the Frank Reactions podcast have to take a back seat for the next couple of weeks. Sorry about that.

Now, go hug someone you love. Don’t wait.

Update: September 6, 2016. People have been asking me how my friend is. I’m sad to report that, after a month in a coma, they have decided to take him off life support. This is so tragic. He will be sorely missed by people from all around the world.

 

Last time I went to my car dealership (because I was too lazy to do the switch from winter to summer tires myself), I got really mad.

Why?

Get your FREE Transcript Now!

I had called to book an appointment, chose to come at a time when they wouldn’t be swamped with the morning rush of people bringing cars in before work, and told them I’d wait, since it should only take about 20 minutes to change the tires. (The tires are on rims.)

Many Car Dealerships Act As Though We Had No Options

So I get there at the appointed time, and the guy in the service bay says, “Things are pretty busy today, so it might be a couple of hours before we can get to it.”

I reminded him that I had booked an appointment. “Oh,” he tells me, “The appointment is just to see the service rep. It has nothing to do with when we’ll actually get to your car.”

Seriously???

So what the hell is the point of booking an appointment? I should have just driven in at 8:00 a.m. when they opened!

I once switched doctors because mine routinely made me wait an hour or more, didn’t apologize, and had a lousy “bedside manner”. I finally found a good doctor, and I’ll wait for him because I know he cares about me, if he’s running late it is because somebody else needed more time than expected, and the odds of finding someone better are pretty low.

But when I pay a premium to get my car serviced (regularly, I might add) at the dealership, there are other options. Those other options are cheaper, and may even treat me better.

Not only does bad customer service make customers look elsewhere for car maintenance, it gets them looking elsewhere to buy their next car. 

We Pay a Premium for Service at a Car Dealership. So Why Aren’t We Treated That Way?

Today’s guest, Joseph Michelli, author of Driven to Delight: Delivering World-Class Customer Experience the Mercedes-Benz Way, talks about the painful realization at Mercedes that they were losing business to a competitor who had what Mercedes engineers insisted was an inferior product.

The customers were leaving because the other product was close enough, and the customer experience was way better at the competitors’ car dealerships. 

So they realized they had to become the best at customer experience quality, not just car engineering quality.

This interview talks about how they made that transformation.

“It is less about how much you spend and more about how kind and thoughtful you are in the delivery” – J. Michelli

Topics covered in the interview include:

* The challenge of getting the car dealerships to buy in to the changes.

* The key roles of the 3Ps of Promise, People and Process.

* How to find the money to make major improvements to customer experience.

* The process Mercedes-Benz used to change how people thought and acted.

* Shifts in reward systems and measurement tools, so that people didn’t just focus on lagging indicators like their J.D. Power ranking but instead worked to improve the leading indicators that make customers happier overall.

Can You Really Do a Restaurant Turnaround When Things are This Bad?

It took a lot of guts to buy the failing Wild Wing restaurant franchise in Sherwood Park, Alberta, but Kevin Sembaliuk was convinced he could manage a restaurant turnaround based on great customer experience.

Things were so bad even the Mayor said he’d never eat there.

Get your FREE Transcript Now!

Things were so bad that when Sembaliuk advertised online to hire staff, the ad instantly had comments on it warning people not to go work there.

Things were so bad the health inspectors were on the verge of closing it down.

Yes, Virginia, You Can Turn it Around

It was all about “turning the guest experience” around — quickly, says Sembaliuk in today’s podcast interview.

“Anybody can put food on a plate and anybody can serve a cold beer. But when you walk in the door, what’s the experience?

He started by cleaning the place up. Literally. It was filthy. Then he got out and networked. He started sponsoring community sports teams. He hired and trained new staff, telling them, 

He focused on each of the 3Ps I talk about in PeopleShock.

*

Promise

He made it very clear to staff and new hires that he and his wife, Tina, had strong core values that centered around treating people well, teamwork, and providing great guest experiences. Staff who didn’t buy in couldn’t stay.

*

People

Not only was it crucial to treat staff well, and to listen to front line staff for their ideas, he also realized that playing an active role in the community would be key to helping convince people that the restaurant really had changed, and was worth trying.

*

Process

He developed and put in writing processes and checklists for everything. That way it was faster to bring new hires up to speed, and everyone knows exactly what is expected of them. (If you haven’t read it, check out Michael Gerber’s book, E-myth, about processes in small businesses.)

Kevin Sembaliuk was right: it is possible to turnaround a restaurant that is on the brink of disaster.

Get your FREE Transcript Now!

Cold Calling Isn’t Dead?!

I wish cold calling were dead. I really do.

I don’t like making cold calls and I don’t like being on the receiving end.

But according to today’s guest, Mari Anne Vanella, the problem isn’t cold calls; the problem is bad cold callers.

Get your FREE Transcript Now!

And if you care about customer experience, you want to start off on the right foot with prospective customers. Asking “How are you today?” or “Is this a good time?” are not promising ways to start. Nor is lying to the assistant who took the call, or pretending on my voice mail that you are something other than what you are.

Crazy though it sounds, sales reps are still doing these things all the time. According to Vanella, they don’t all work for two-bit operators either; some of them represent huge companies.

Note the word “represent” there. Your sales reps represent you to prospective customers. Make sure the way they are behaving is truly representative of your brand.

Why Do We Even Need to Cold Call Anymore?

I wish we could just rely on inbound marketing but the reality is that it’s a big, noisy, competitive world out there.

It is true that customers do a lot of research before deciding what to buy and who to buy from. But without monumental marketing budgets there’s a good chance they won’t even know that you sell it.

So if you want your company to grow, you are going to have to suck it up and do some cold calling.

10 Tips For Sales Teams

Since I’m a reluctant caller, I took advantage of the opportunity to grill Vanella about how to be better at cold calling. Here are some of the tips she had. For more, listen to the podcast.

* Involve the sales team in your customer journey mapping process. These days most prospects will already have researched your type of offering at least a bit before you call them, so don’t assume they are ignorant. Teach your sales staff how to identify where in the journey the prospect is.

* Get you marketing automation right. Don’t send the same thing to everybody. Have different streams depending on where they are in the purchase cycle. And make sure that your sales reps are aware of where somebody is before they call them!

* Think from the point of view of the person receiving the call. Why should they want to talk to you? Can you really offer something that will help them, not just you?

* Do your homework! Develop systems so that in 10 minutes you can research a prospect and their company well enough to be able to offer something of value in that call or phone message. Use LinkedIn. Check company news releases. Be able to show that you’ve taken the time to learn at least a bit about them.

* Treat administrative assistants as allies, not roadblocks. If you treat them with respect and are open about what you are hoping to accomplish, they will often help connect you with the right person. The CEO is not always the right person.

* Be prepared to leave a good voice message. Good means relevant to the prospect’s situation, brief, and non-demanding. Don’t expect the prospect to call you back. It’s not their job to try to connect with you.

* Make a test call. Record the message you plan to leave,

It’s Time For Multi-Brand Companies to Focus on Customers Instead of Brands

Martin Aubut is the Digital Director at L’Oreal Canada, which owns some 35 brands. When he took the job, he realized that to succeed today, it no longer makes sense for brand managers to operate in silos.

Get your FREE Transcript Now!

They had to focus on the customer, regardless of which brand interested her on any given day. 

They had to become truly customer-centric, across the whole stable of products.

Their range is so diverse that the company has products for every stage of the customer lifecycle. The brands you want to buy at 13, 30, and 73 are not the same. But you are still the same person. So why not leverage the diversity of those brands to follow the customer for years, and always be able to meet their needs?

That’s the change in mind-set Aubut has been working on at L’Oreal for the past five years.

Going From Product-Centric to Customer-Centric

Traditionally consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies, like Procter and Gamble, organized themselves by brand. Sometimes they’d even pit one brand against another, to see which could do a better job of grabbing market share.

One big problem with that model is that it loses the synergies all those brands could have if they took a total view of the customer, across brands.

One of the exciting things about technology is that it is now becoming possible to do so.

Where to Start in Changing An Entrenched Corporate Culture

For Aubut, the first thing was to start digging into the people side of things:

* What was the culture of the organization?

* What was really driving customer purchase decisions?

He had to be able to get staff  “to see l’Oreal as an ecosystem of brands.”

He decided to start by setting up an e-commerce playground of sorts. Picking a brand to sell online so the company could get closer to its customers, who had traditionally only bought from third party retailers.

To understand the customer in a big, multi-brand environment, means collecting and understanding data.

Lots of data.

Data that crosses websites, channels, brands, and even countries.

Not an easy task.

“The first thing that you have to do if you want to transform an organization and be consumer centric is to collect the information the right way and be able to analyse it real time,” says Aubut.

That meant doing things like:

* Training all the marketing staff (not just those in the digital unit) to understand and use Google Analytics.

* Putting public relations staff and brand managers on teams together. They have to be able to work on a consistent story.

* Investing in technology that can connect online and offline data, including advertising and its impact, and, whenever possible, link it all to individual customers.

* Finding ways to give customers a reason to engage with the company, and particularly to want to share personal information with it. Think about it: how could letting you know more about them help your customers? With beauty brands, consumers want to know which products will make them look their best, so asking things like skin type not only gives l’Oreal information to use in product development, it helps the consumers.

Interview with Curtis Kopf, Vice President of Customer Experience at Premera Blue Cross, about his experiences there and at companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Alaska Airlines in working to improve customer experience. The biggest challenge: culture.