02.10.09
Customer Experience Wall of Fame or Wall of Shame
Customer Experience Wall of Fame or Wall of Shame…
Let’s name names. If we are honest, when we have a good customer experience we want to tell our friends. When we have a bad experience we want to tell everyone; strangers on the street, neighbors that you never speak too and even that homeless person out in front of your Starbucks. You even give the homeless guy a dollar just to listen to your story when you are mad. There are many studies that talk about how few people we tend to tell about our good experiences but also that we tell so many more about the bad experience. Research from Arizona State University, Center for Service Leadership, (http://wpcarey.asu.edu/csl/index.cfm ) has shown how important the word of mouth is to your company. They also have shown the results from the explosion of the social media sites etc. that have changed the issue of ‘word of mouth’ to ‘word of the WEB’. Instead of telling a handful of friends we can now tell millions worldwide.
Customer experience continues to be one of the focal areas in the sciences of service. The reputation, the brand image and culture of the organization are all intentionally designed to be what they are. Few companies set out to be bad at creating customer experience. So many companies do not recognize when the actual experiences that they intended or designed somehow transforms into something completely different. Even worse, once the experience does go awry they have no plan on how to recover the customer. Not only do you want to be sure that your former customer does not become your enemy, you actually have a chance to create a valuable asset. Studies of service recovery have shown how by executing appropriate recovery methods, a disgruntled customer could actually be more loyal and have more lifetime value, in terms of repeat business, than one who has not experienced a service failure at all.
Deploying customer surveys is not enough. You have to actively listen to your customers. By active, I mean, you have to not only reach out to them and give them the opportunity to comment but you also need to search for blogs, websites, and customer forums where your customers might be discussing your brand of which you were not aware. I recently heard a great story from the CEO of Charles Schwab at the Net Promoter Conference in San Francisco. When he first got the job one of the first things he did was to personally contact 100 unhappy or former customers and 100 of the employees who had quit the company. You can imagine the wealth of information that he got by listening to them. More importantly, this treasure trove of real live experiences translated into real action. It is important to remember, NEVER ask customers their opinions if you never intend to ACT upon them.
Let me share two experiences that I have had as a customer. First is with HOME DEPOT. When this company first opened near me, I loved them. They hired ex contractors or trades people who could give you great advice and recommendations. Help was not hard to find and the choices of merchandise at reasonable prices were good. For some reason they then fell off the customer cliff. Not so coincidently this happened around the time that a certain ex- GE executive became CEO. Merchandise went to hell. What products you found on one trip could not be found the next time because they were now stocking something cheaper or more profitable. If you could find a store person to speak with you, they were unqualified to help you with anything. Their attitudes and demeanor turned off people. I came to HATE this company with a passion and openly spoke about them as a bad example of a company that was failing from the top down. I moved all my business to LOWES. Good experience, helpful people etc. Then something unexpectedly changed.
Home Depot brought in a new CEO, who apparently can listen to customers. I was forced to go back to a Home Depot store and I started to witness a whole new expereince. Almost to the point of annoyance, Home Depot employees greet you throughout the store and actively seek to help you. Their former dour attitudes are replaced by people who seem to be genuinely smiling. I have moved from being a huge detractor to being a promoter. All those former unhelpful dour employees must have moved to LOWES. It is almost like LOWES wanted to copy Home Depot’s success but studied them when they were failing. Home Depot gets my money today.
The Second company I want to highlight is a car dealer called EAST BAY MINI in Pleasanton California. They are a part of a large dealership group owned by the Hendricks group. This is an interesting study as MINI USA has one of the most amazing brand strategies I have ever seen. They are innovative, imaginative and know how to create an experience. The Hendricks Motor Group, of which MINI is just one of many brands that they sell, tends to have a well defined formula for their customer experience. Between BMW/MINI and the Hendricks group, this should be a delightful place, but it is NOT! If you want to learn what NOT to do, this is a great place to observe.
EAST BAY MINI started out as MINI of Pleasanton. When this popular car was first introduced, this dealership knew that they had something that people wanted and they took advantage of their customers. They were not helpful and their sales practices made any experience with them less than satisfying. They were well known as a dealer that sold the MINIs to the highest bidders. I am a good capitalist myself, but treating your customers badly to make short term profits always comes back to bite you. From a sales perspective they seemed to be predators but on the service side, they did try. I was a customer of their service department more by convenience than choice but I had to admit, even though I would never buy a car from them, their service department was ok.
It is interesting as a customer experience professional to observe this place. They seem to do everything right. They obviously train people to say the right things, they stage the experience as if they were the Ritz Carlton and they survey their customers. However, as you observe, things are not always right. Every time that you interact with them, they mention their survey and how important it is to get a perfect score. They want you to tell them before any survey if you will rate them less than perfect. In a good place, they would use this opportunity to correct any problems immediately. However, EAST BAY MINI is NOT a good place in my professional opinion. It seems that in spite of knowing the right things to do, the execution falls way short. They go through the motions but good customer experience is clearly not in their DNA. They are trying to report to the stakeholders that all is well because the survey says so. Nothing is worse than insincere customer service. They have read all the books and they try to imitate best of breed but it fails them terribly. Unlike the HOME Depot example, the CEO does not seem to care. They do not listen to their customers and in this day and economy, I do not see them lasting. We can only hope that Darwin was right and that they are put out of our misery.
Net of all this? Good companies listen to their customers and when they make bad mistakes, they change. Bad companies like EAST BAY MINI pretends to listen and pretends to care but do not change because they believe only what they want to believe. Honestly, because of their good after sales service, I thought that perhaps they changed and my gut was wrong about my observations. I have tried 4 times in last 6 months to get someone’s attention in the showroom to buy a new car. I have been ignored by people who were more interested in their personal business than in their car business. In spite of their attempts to create a “ MINI “ branded experience and in spite of BMW /MINI USA’s wishes, EAST BAY MINI has shown how that bad management, poor execution and sloppy operations can sabotage your best efforts. And yes, I AM trying to tell everyone I meet…I had a bad experience and I am not a happy customer.
Now, I think that I will go find that guy outside Starbucks with the coins in his cup and see if he will listen…
Send me YOUR stories, good or bad, I AM listening.
