Strada del sole, a Swiss manufacturer of sunglasses, is offering service on their website that allows you to try different models with the help of their webcam and a small program that projects the sunglasses on your face. Here is what it looks like, if you have a webcam you can check it out at their website.

While the software is not perfect (the glasses could be more realistic and resize automatically to the size of your head) this is nevertheless an interesting approach to solve the problem of allowing customers to virtually experience a real-world product.

Shoppers want to experience a product before they buy it. If we don’t have a chance to test a product before we buy it we have to trust others through recommendations and base our buying decision on these recommendations. Online retailers face the challenge that even though it is easy to order products on the Internet, the process of finding the right product is difficult for customers if they don’t have any prior experience with the product they intend to buy.

Innovative solutions are needed that allow customers to experience products in a digital environment and to form a purchase decision. Strada del sole made a first step into this direction.

Do you know any other examples of companies successfully bridging this gap? Let us know in the comments.

Posted in innovation, retail | Permalink | No Comments »

The emergence of Web 2.0 technologies (blogs, forums, social networks, has created a public forum for customers to voice their opinions about companies, products and services.

One challenge for organizations is that it is difficult to control what is happening outside their sphere of influence on blogs, forums or social networks.

Dell Hell is just one of these examples when the angry voice of customers has run out of control. The term coined by Jeff Jarvis to describe the horrible service he experienced from Dell Computers, has received a lot of attention, especially since at the time when he posted the number of customers frustrated with Dell’s customer service reach record-breaking heights.

What can a company do about these public complaints that might start an avalanche of negative publicity?

It is necessary to create a platform that gives customers a possibility to complain on the Internet. This should not just be possible in a private way (such as a complaint submission form), but instead in a public way with representatives from this organization working and documenting their efforts to fix the problem.

After the "Dell Hell" fiasco, Dell has established a few quite innovative concepts to deal with customer complaints on the Internet. Dell Community Pulse allows you to state your problem and post your tone (compliment, comment, complaint) together with a message. Take all complaints submitted to Dell globally and the result is a real time thermometer of their customer’s mood.

Complaints dominate the current mood; one reason is that such a website is always biased because of a self-selection of customers who prefer to complain rather than to compliment.

Nevertheless, such a platform creates transparency where an organization has problems, but it is also a way to show that an organization is taking unsatisfied customers serious and is not afraid to show the current state of customer satisfaction.

Even more important is that such a platform attracts people who would otherwise complain on platforms out of Dell’s control. Most customers do not want to harm an organization; they just want to be heard. That is why they write on blogs.

Providing an open, (semi-) transparent channel for your customers can help you to attract customer complaints and at least partially keep negative word-of-mouth in control.

Posted in customer service | Permalink | 4 Comments »

The question whether our economy is in a recession is a difficult one that not even our smartest economists are able to answer. It is not important whether the worst is already over or is yet to come, businesses are facing challenges to win and retain customers today.

Companies that have systematically built relationships with their customers in the previous years should now tap into the potential that lies within the most potential customers. As AdAge reports, marketers are shifting to programs to keep their core audience, their most loyal and profitable customers.

It is a well known fact, that most of a business’ revenues come only from a small portion of its customers. When times get tougher it is more economically reasonable, to invest to keep these customers loyal. Adam Burke, senior VP Customer Loyalty of Hilton Hotels notes:

Our Honors members tend to be the group that buoys us through a downturn. They are the core audience and tend to stay loyal and sustain the business especially through those downturns.

But the challenge remains that betting on your customer’s loyalty cards is not enough. Differentiated and customized services that match your customers needs are the key to keep them loyal. Focusing on their individual experience will help your business make it through these stormy times.

"It’s important […] to understand that loyalty is not a plastic card. It’s about creating experiences and recognition with programs versus just making it a plastic card inside a wallet. That’s what is next for loyalty."

Read the full article here.

Posted in customer experience, loyalty | Permalink | 1 Comment »

Checkout Smartshop and other similar mobile price comparison software might soon be on the list of most-hated technologies of brick-and-mortar retailers. Price comparison for shoppers has become a lot easier through different online services yet most traditional brick-and-mortar retailers avoid these platforms since they cannot match the competitive prices on the Internet due to different, higher costs in their their retail stores.

Luckily for these retailers their customers so far had no chance to check prices for the products offered immediately in the store. Customers interested in price comparisons had to do it manually after their visit to the retailer at their PC at home.

Along came the iPhone (as well as other mobile phones) and an application call Checkout Smartshop that allows instant price comparison and online order or products that you just see standing in front of you in whatever retail store you are.

Checkout Smart Shop is an easy way to find prices (local and online), reviews, and local information for a product. Here is how it works:

1. Enter a barcode (UPC) number (faster than typing in a product description on the web!)
2. Now you’re searching!  Checkout automatically starts by bringing you to product reviews so you can see what other people liked about the product you’re looking at.  Checkout also automatically filters out the less useful reviews so you see things other people thought were good to know (don’t worry, the rest of the reviews are just a click away if you want to see them).  By default you see review summaries so you can tell at a glance what people thought, but full reviews are also just a touch away.  Note that even after you come to the reviews screen Checkout will continue to look for and load reviews.



3. If you want to look beyond reviews, you can look at either local or online prices.  For either category you can see the price listed, and choose to visit the web site if you like.

The challenge is that this is another building block to bring online experiences into traditional offline environments through the use of mobile computing. Retailers will be confronted with a lot of questions.

What are the consequences for shoppers? How will it change impulse shopping behavior? Does the knowledge of other prices redirect impulse shopping behavior from the location where it was triggered (the brick-and-mortar store) to the online store?

Do we see a new generation of shoppers that see brick-and-mortar shops only as an outlet to experience the product but the purchase is made online right in the store where the cheapest offer can be found?

What does this mean for retailers? Should retailers fight these mobile applications and try to focus on keeping the existing business model?

Or should the focus shift towards creating a truly extraordinary shopping experience, redesigning the supply chain and through this ensuring maybe not the cheapest, but probably competitive prices.

Posted in mobile, retail | Permalink | 2 Comments »

It is easy to focus on creating always better and more differentiated products and services when designing for remarkable customer experiences. Maybe it is simply human, that we tend to not look at situations when a product or service fails (think positive!) your customer’s loyalty will be negatively impacted.

I see a huge opportunity for improvement and a chance to create remarkable experiences that create word-of-mouth marketing in situations when products and services fails - if sophisticated service recovery programs are in place.

Can you imagine one of your customers telling a friend:

"You know, the product (or service) of company XYZ broke down the other day. But when I contacted the company, they did everything possible to solve the problem in a fast and friendly manner and now it is fixed. I understand problems can happen, but I feel that this company is taking care of me."

Every service (human or technology driven) as well as product will eventually fail one day and put your customer in a uncomfortable situation. Smart organizations will understand this and develop a service recovery program which ensures that their customers are satisfied even after things have gone wrong.

When organizations plan to implement recovery programs it is helpful to differentiate between (1) the strategic initiatives that should be in place before the actual problem occurs and (2) the tactical activities that should happen after a problem has occurred and the customer contacted the company.

Let’s start with the strategic initiatives that will ensure that the right environment for remarkable service recovery is in place.

Anticipate the needs for recovery

Whenever you roll out a product or service, the people related with it are probably well aware of potential problems or obstacles that might occur. It is probably not so much arrogance than probably more wishful thinking that limits the ability of companies to foresee potential problems with a product. Accepting that even the best designed product or service will fail one day in specific situations is the first step. Anticipating potential problems will help organizations to be prepared when the first customer contacts the company with a problem.

Build an organization that is fast in decision making, and fast to response.

One of the key success factors to win back customers and restore their satisfaction is to act fast. While your front-line employees might be working hard (and fast) already, the whole organization that deals with service recovery has to be “designed for agility”. This includes clear escalation and decision-making processes. One key principle should be that the fastest decision-making happens when the front-line employee can make the decision. So the real goal is not to define better escalation processes, but to define processes that empower employees so that escalation processes are not necessary anymore.

Empower front-line employees

In most companies, the employees that are actually interacting with customers are the ones that receive the lowest salary in an organization. While increasing the salaries (compared to other competitors) is one way to attract and retain talent that is able to deliver exceptional service, empowering employees and giving them the freedom to do whatever is necessary to ensure that customers are satisfied is probably even more economically meaningful.

Train employees

Ensure that your training program includes not just lessons on delivering service when everything works out as planned but also to include lessons that teach employees to improvise or to set recovery programs into action if something goes wrong.

While these strategic initiatives are important to define the long-term direction of your service recovery programs, the "moment of truth" happens when a customer contacts a company and interacts with an employee to discuss the problem and possible solutions.

In these moments the following seven rules should be applied by employees that are actually interacting with your customers:

1. Acknowledgement

Acknowledge that there is a problem. It doesn’t matter whether the customer didn’t understand certain aspects that are obvious from an organization’s perspective. He is the one that has a problem and if you want to keep this customer he needs to be taken serious. If one tries to convince customers that there is no problem, you are actually telling them they are stupid. This applies also to situations when the customer is following the wrong steps to perform a task – never blame the customer.

2. Empathy

Understand the problem from a customer’s point of view and also understand that he might be upset after a problem has occurred. While it is not necessary to listen to a customer when he starts cursing at employees, front-line employees should try to create an atmosphere that supports and enables a positive solution of a problem. Confronting the customer with his anger and frustration will not lead to an escalation of the problem, communicating that one can understand his situation will.

3. Apology

Saying sorry in the name of the company occurred is essential. Whether the employee should apologize in his name or in the name of his company depends on the context of the service recovery. If the employee (or a direct colleague) was involved when the problem occurred, he should apologize for himself. If the employee is in a call-center and a problem happened at a completely different location in the organization, he should apologize in the name of the organization - everything else is not authentic.

4. Own the problem

Taking ownership of the problem by the employee that is confronted with the problem (no matter in what position he is in) ensures that customers feel that they are taken care of. And even if your job is not to resolve the problem ultimately, telling customers to go somewhere else (and not "bringing" them there) sends the message that they don’t care.

5. Fix The Problem

Obviously fixing or at leasing trying to fix the problem for the customer should be the top priority. This might be easy in some situations (maybe just replacing the defect product) it becomes a challenge when the problem is not a real problem. Let’s say the customer was simply using the product in a wrong way, fixing the problem in such a situation means re-educating the customer so that he uses the product or service in the supposed way.

6. Provide assurance

When Customers get in touch with you to report a problem and to demand a fix their most important need is to be taken serious. Giving them a feeling of assurance that the problem will be sorted out and should (hopefully) not occur again will leave a professional impression and help rebuild the customer’s confidence a company’s products and services.

7. Provide compensation

If you want to make angry customers happy, give them money. Providing a refund, token or other compensation depending on the severity of the problem remains to be a powerful method for service recovery. Increasing the amount of money that a company pays to company to fix problems requires a rigorous control but it can indeed ensure that your customers are satisfied. It is important to note that just "handing out money" is not enough - if money is handed out unfriendly or even worse, in a tedious discussion with the customers, satisfaction will not be restored.

References:

Hart, C.W.L.; Heskett, J.L.; Sasser, W.E.: The profitable act of service recovery. Harvard Business Review 68 (4), 1990, pp, 148–156

Johnston, R.; Michel, S.: Three outcomes of service recovery: Customer recovery, process recovery and employee recovery, International Journal of Operations & Production Management 28 (4), 2008, pp. 79 - 99

Posted in checklist, service design | Permalink | 1 Comment »