One way to obtain the voice of the customer is, by simply, asking them.

On Twitter today, I was presented with an invitation to complete a brief survey. I was surprised to see an invitation and was also curious. So, I went ahead and took the survey. Below is the Twitter Survey invitation:

Twitter has selected a small group of users for a brief survey. Answer a few questions and have your opinion count!

Twitter Survey: Hamburger Questionnaire in a Tweet, With No Calories is a post from: Lean Six Sigma Consulting

The more I try to be aware of all the methods by which to obtain the Voice of the Customer, I’m amazed at the tremendous effort companies are taking and the great lengths they’ll go to learn more about what their customers are thinking and feeling.

Wow, that was a really long-winded sentence. Anyways.

The other, I went to Kmart to buy some soda. When I approached the cashier to pay for my item, this is what I saw:

Yup, a Net Promoter Score survey at the cash register or checkout. This represents a good effort but misses a few points:

1. Kmart is measuring the Net Promoter Score, but it’s clearly not applying the Net Promoter System. There is a difference.
2. By itself, the NPS really doesn’t tell you, well, anything. At least, anything useful.

So, while it’s admirable that Kmart is trying to learn about their customers, in reality they are not learning anything at all. They are just trying to obtain a score, with no intention of improving their service as a result.

Payment Terminals Customer Satisfaction Survey is a post from: Lean Six Sigma Consulting

It’s no secret that Amazon is the most customer-centric company on the planet – that’s clearly their aim and the mantra that Jeff Bezos lives by daily. We know that his approach to innovation and in improving the customer experience is based on Lean principles, such as frequent use of Root Cause Analysis and, while he and the Amazon team have received much credit, it’s nice to see Bezos proudly announcing such things on the homepage of the Amazon.com site.

Below is his recent announcement, touting the fact that Amazon’s goal to be the most customer-centric company is being widely recognized by others in industry.

Nice job, Jeff.

Dear Customers,

Our mission is to be Earth’s most customer–centric company. I’m happy to report that Amazon has been rated #1 in the National Retail Federation Customers’ Choice Awards, has been awarded the top spot in the MSN Money Customer Service Hall of Fame three years in a row, and is a JD Power and Associates 2012 Customer Service Champion.

In addition, Amazon recently scored 86 – top score – on the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), and 89 on the ForeSee customer satisfaction survey – the highest ever attained by a retailer. And, our dedicated Kindle customer service team has received a 97.1% satisfaction rate from Kindle customers. We are grateful for and energized by this response.

You can count on us to continue working hard on setting ever–higher standards for customer service.

Thank you for being a customer.

Some Commentary

1. ACSI, as a measurement of satisfaction, is lacking in many, many respects. It’s a score, not a system or a program. In other words, ACSI produces a score ONCE per year, and provides no insight into how to improve customer satisfaction. It’s just a benchmarking milemarker.
2. While Amazon is quite proud of its advocacy for the customer, the general worldview inside Amazon (at least when I was there) is that if Amazon is doing everything right, no customer should be calling, engaging chat, or emailing customer service. One and done – or A to Z is the worldview. In other words – go to Amazon to search, place in cart, pay, receive – then go on with your life. Convenience is a key value proposition.

Nevertheless, great job Amazon.

Customer Satisfaction Letter from Jeff Bezos is a post from: Lean Six Sigma Consulting

Today’s post, contributed by Sarah Wenger is a writer and researcher for www.onlinenursingprograms.com, an online resource designed to help prospective and current nursing students plenty of information about selecting a program and entering the field. In light of a growing fear of a future nurses shortage, it is necessary to encourage more professionals to enter the field all the while understanding how nurses spend their time, discussed by this site in September 2010, and what can make them more efficient in a society increasingly dependent on these trained professionals.

For decades, professionals in the field of health informatics, which is an advantage of electronic medical records, have sought to improve efficacy of healthcare systems using technology and the growing ability to manipulate data. Today, the prevalence of online platforms and communication has led to a push for electronic databases that will allow practitioners instant access to patient records, clinical guidelines and medical terminology. Informatics proponents believe that widespread use of these web-based resources would greatly enhance the relationship between patients and caregivers while reducing errors and wait times.

The overriding goals of medical informatics are expedient access to vital patient data when a conclusive medical decision is required and effective management of this data to ensure it remains confidential. The sub-field of nursing informatics specializes in data related to patient care, such as medication dosage, lab test results, allergies, and other specific information about the patient. Nursing informatics can also be used to design individual care plans based on biometric patient data and apply immediate changes to these plans when required. In theory, effective nursing informatics benefits patients by providing a streamlined healthcare process and made more effective through practice management software, and allows nurses to perform their duties to the fullest extent at a faster pace.

Nursing informatics has many advantages. A centralized data system ostensibly removes the need for constant (and often redundant) communication between physicians, pharmacists and healthcare providers. An electronic platform also ensures that information is accurate and up-to-date. On the other hand, critics have noted disadvantages of informatics systems. One downside is hidden costs; employees that require specialized (possibly academic) training will be required to create an efficient electronic database. Confidentiality is another concern; many have reservations about databases full of sensitive patient information that thousands of people have access to and could potentially be hacked. The mitigation of these problems is necessary to implementing widespread use of nursing informatics systems.

However, these shortcomings have not hindered employment growth in the informatics field; the US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates the medical and health services management sector will grow by 22 percent between 2010 and 2020. In recent years, nursing informatics has become a popular academic route as well. Today, many undergraduate-level informatics programs are available to students. For instance, the University of Minnesota’s NI program incorporates computer science, statistical analysis, health policy, medical ethics and leadership; the program also allows students to participate in numerous field exercises. The University of Cincinnati’s Nursing and RN Technology program incorporates humanities and science courses in equal measure, supplementing classroom studies with weekly clinical activities at local facilities. As nursing informatics practices have become more prevalent in recent years, many hospitals and clinics have financed undergraduate informatics degree programs for nursing employees.

Graduate programs are also offered at several prominent institutions. New York University’s MS in Nursing Informatics program included practicum opportunities at Mt. Sinai Medical Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering and other area facilities. And for students who wish to earn a nursing informatics graduate degree online, the University of Maryland School of Nursing (UMSON) offers one such program; students coordinate practicum opportunities with local medical centers and facilities that are approved by UMSON administrators. Duke University also offers a distance-based informatics graduate program, which emphasizes clinical informatics applied in the real world and concludes with a generalist exam administered by the American Nurses’ Credentialing Center.

Today the informatics field is more popular than ever, thanks to the rising number of academic programs and projected growth in related employment sectors. As more hospitals shift to online recordkeeping and nurses are properly trained to manage various electronic data, the efficiency of contemporary healthcare stands to receive a generous boost in the coming years.

The Important Relationship Between Health Informatics and Nursing Programs is a post from: Lean Six Sigma Consulting

Today’s guest post discusses the benefits of a Barcode system for warehouse management and inventory control. Specifically, Ginger Ebinger shares with us the importance of keeping the fidelity of data through the effective use of barcode solutions.

To many, this might seem common sense, but we all know that common sense is not common practice.

Enjoy the post and learn more about Ginger after the article.

Let’s face it. We live in a technology driven world that demands speed in every realm of life.

As consumers, we expect companies to deliver orders and provide customer service as quickly as possible. In our businesses, we require instant retrieval of current information to run a successful company.

Think about it—if you offer the same products at the same price as your competitors—yet it takes you longer to deliver the goods—chances are that customers may opt to shop next door. Then you lose both the sale and the customer, which isn’t the desired result.

Barcode Solutions: Big Benefits For All

By design, barcode solutions—which are a type of automatic identification and data collection system—help companies compete in today’s competitive landscape. With affordable hardware and specialized software for expediting everyday tasks, such as managing inventory and tracking assets, you can not only deliver orders faster and improve customer service, you will:

• Optimize inventory levels

One of the biggest drains on cash flow is excess, slow-moving, and/or obsolete inventory. Barcode inventory tracking allows you to manage and optimize your inventory so your business is back in control.

• Respond quickly with real-time data

Businesses looking for a competitive advantage must have instant access to information. With barcode systems, companies can analyze data in real time so they can quickly respond to industry changes and customers’ behaviors.

• Reduce errors

Data entry errors and slow or inaccurate updates create problems that can negatively impact a company’s entire operations. Automated systems dramatically reduce the potential for error.

• Control expenses

In today’s economy, controlling operating expenses is vital to business’ bottom line. Barcode solutions promote efficiency, which helps organizations reduce or reallocate personnel expenses while increasing productivity.

• Increase customer satisfaction

We all want to attract and retain customers. Yet doing so can be difficult. For businesses to succeed, they must meet—or exceed—customers’ expectations. Did you know barcode solutions can improve retention? For example, they can ensure deliveries are fast and accurate, which leads to lasting loyalty.

The Price of Success is a No Brainer

For companies of any size and industry, the relatively low price of barcode scanners, printers, mobile computers, and labels makes the decision to invest in a barcode solution a no-brainer. Having organized, accurate data directly impacts an organization’s overall health.

Luckily for business owners, the cost of this success is priceless!

About Ginger Ebinger

Ginger Ebinger is the Marketing Manager for SystemID Warehouse, the nation’s leading value-added reseller of AIDC products and solutions for small-to-medium-sized businesses. An evangelist for all things barcodes, Ms. Ebinger routinely shares helpful information that keeps companies competitive.

Barcode Solutions: How to Gain a Competitive Advantage and Better Inventory Control is a post from: Lean Six Sigma Consulting

While at Whole Foods some time ago, I noticed this Customer Comments Wall as I was waiting at the cash register. I was quite impressed by it for a few reasons:

1. The Customer Comments wall included both good and bad comments. This represents a very transparent approach – an approach that is open and honest, has a way of creating a culture that is driven to improve on behalf of the customer.
2. This type of openness creates an environment that is also good for employees – when employees feel like they are heard, then they in turn will also listen to customers. In general, happy employees means happy customers.

Customer Comments: Transparency at Whole Foods is a post from: Lean Six Sigma Consulting

Godaddy.com, the controversial domain hosting service – known for its racy and random and inappropriate television commercials – suffered a massive DNS attack today from an anonymous hacker group. In fact the downtime is approaching 7 hours now. Word on the street is that it as a very large Denial of Service attack, taking down A LOT of websites, including the Godaddy.com homepage. While the interwebs are focused on the downtime itself and on how to transfer a domain from Godaddy, my focus is on how Godaddy.com handled the terrible experience.

Since the Godaddy.com site itself was down, Godaddy’s main venue to communicate with its customers was through twitter.

How did the DoS Attack Start?

It began from a tweet from an anonymous hacker, with the #tangodown hastag:

Anonymous Own3r ‏@AnonymousOwn3r
#tangodown http://www.godaddy.com/ by @AnonymousOwn3r

Godaddy Hosting Customer Service Response

What is surprising and actually refreshing is that Godaddy communicated frequently through Twitter with updates and reassuring messages. Below are a few examples:

Most customer hosted sites back online. We’re working out the last few kinks for our site & control centers. No customer data compromised.

But, the truth of the matter is that if you were impacted by the Godaddy downtime today, you are most likely contemplating switching to a different hosting provider. I don’t blame you. Despite Godaddy’s efforts to win-back customers or help their customers this is one of those massive outages that will be very, very hard for Godaddy to recover from.

How to Transfer Your Domain from Godaddy?

Step 1: Go to “Domain Management”

Login to your GoDaddy account and head to the “Domain Management” section. This will open up a page that allows you to manage your various domain names.

Godaddy Transfer Domain: A Lesson in Customer Service During a Massive Crisis is a post from: Lean Six Sigma Consulting

Nothing drives me crazier than a website that doesn’t work. Okay, that was dramatic – it’s one of the things that drives me crazy – among many. Seriously, in this day and age, we have a basic expectation of how a website should function,the pageload of the website, and the basics of human-computer interaction. As we begin using a website, our past experience comes into play. This is called a cognitive apparatus – it’s what colors our expectation and our experience. And, when that expectation is not met, we become dissatisfied customers and clear Detractors in the NPS Verbatim.

Which is why I found this survey from US Bank interesting and refreshing. The survey’s aim was to learn about my experience while banking online on the US Bank’s website. While banking, I was randomly invited to partake in a customer satisfaction or website experience survey.

Below is the survey, followed by the exact questions I was asked in the survey.

Website Satisfaction Survey

Below are the actual questions; I think these are great questions that might be helpful as you incorporate surveys into your customer experience program.

1. Please rate how well usbank.com is organized.
2. Please rate the options available for navigating usbank.com.
3. Please rate how quickly pages load on usbank.com.
4. Please rate the consistency of speed from page to page on usbank.com.
5. Please rate your perception of the accuracy of information on usbank.com.
6. Please rate the quality of information on usbank.com.
7. What is your overall satisfaction with usbank.com?
8. How well does usbank.com meet your expectations?
9. How does usbank.com compare to your idea of an ideal Web site?
10. How likely are you to return to usbank.com?
11. How likely are you to recommend usbank.com to someone else?
12. How likely are you to use this site as your primary resource for gathering information about US Bank products or your US Bank accounts (as opposed to calling a call center or visiting a branch)?
13. How likely are you to open an account or additional accounts at US Bank after having visited this site today?
14. How likely are you to utilize additional products and services offered by US Bank in the future?
15. Are you a current customer of US Bank?
16. Which of the following best describes your primary role in visiting our Web site today?
17. Which of the following best describes your PRIMARY reason for visiting US Bank today?

• Apply for a Loan
• Apply for a Credit Card
• Find a Branch or ATM Location
• Research Rates
• Learn More about Products and Services
• Enroll in Online Banking
• Open an account online (i.e. checking, savings, CD etc)
• Mobile Banking
• Log in to my US Bank account (check balances/statements, pay bills, account maintenance, etc.)
• Enroll in Bill Pay
• Other, please specify

18. When you are choosing financial products and services, which factor is most important to you?

• Interest rates
• Bill Pay
• Online banking
• Telephone banking
• Company reputation (for example: strength and stability of the organization)
• ATM locations
• Branch locations
• Security
• Rewards
• Breadth of services available
• Cost of services
• Customer service
• Mobile Banking
• Other (Please specify)

19. How helpful was the US Bank homepage in helping you to find what you are looking for?
20. Were you able to accomplish your goal during your visit to the site?
21. How frequently do you visit US Bank.com?
22. Did you use the Search tool during your visit to the site today?
23. How did you navigate usbank.com? Please select the method that you used most often during your visit.
24. As you navigated the Web site today to find your information, what type of difficulty, if any, did you encounter? (check all that apply)

• I did not encounter any navigation issues
• Too many pages to click through to find information
• Too many links to choose from
• Links did not take me where I expected
• Link labels were difficult to understand
• Search tool was not helpful
• Technical difficulties (e.g. broken links, error messages)
• Other (Please specify)

25. Which of the following sources drove you to visit the site today? Please rank the top 3 (Rank 1 is most important).
26. If you heard about this Web site from a social network, please specify the site (i.e. Facebook, Twitter)
27. What is your gender?
28. Please indicate your age category.
29. What is your yearly household income?
30. Was there any aspect of your visit that stands out most in your mind?
31. If you could suggest one improvement for our Web site, what would that improvement be?

Customer Satisfaction and Website Experience Usability Survey at US Bank is a post from: Lean Six Sigma Consulting

This post is part of a series on Employee Suggestion Programs within the context of continuous improvement or lean manufacturing. In previous posts, I covered the following:

1. What is an Employee Suggestion Program and its Goals?
2. Suggestion Form Template Design

And today, I’ll address how to Manage Idea Generation by proposing 4 major questions to ask that will provide a good overall guide for assessing the health of your suggestion program.

As you design or are thinking about your current Employee Suggestion Program, ask these questions:

Our suggestion program. . .

1. Can handle ___ incoming suggestions per month

Think about the volume of incoming suggestions that will come from your employees. If there are not proper self-selection criteria built into the suggestion form itself, you will find the volume of incoming suggestions to be very overwhelming. When this happens, morale will wane and support will decrease or altogether go away for the program. So, be thoughtful about how you will manage the incoming number of suggestions.

2. With a response time of ___ days

This question is related to the first. We all know from Queueing Theory and Little’s Law that the length of the line is a function of both cycle time and inter-arrival rate of the incoming suggestion cards. In other words,

• Cycle Time: The time it takes for management to respond to the suggestion.
• Inter-arrival Rate: The rate at which incoming suggestion cards enter the system.

3. And an implementation of ___% within ___ days

This is related to question 2. Except, the difference here is not about responding to the employee that provided the suggestion, but it is in the implementation of the suggestion itself.

4. With a total annual savings of ___ or ___ per person per year

While this is not a criteria of selection, this question is more focused on the results. In some instances, the employee suggestion will center on cost savings. But this will differ in context and in the goals of the enterprise.

5. or ___ number of new products were developed generating ___ in revenue

For other firms, some suggestion cards will lead to the possible development of new products.

Employee Suggestion Program: The 4 Questions You Need To Ask is a post from: Lean Six Sigma Consulting

I recently decided to try my hand at marketing. No, I’m not a marketer – I don’t even claim to profess to know anything at all about the topic. But, I thought I’d give it a shot. I published a little, fun Kindle Book recently and decided to try marketing it on Facebook as a Promoted Post. A promoted posts is where one creates a post, it shows up in your timeline, and when you pay $7.00 (the cost of a promoted post), your post containing the marketing message supposedly stays in the timeline longer and is seen by more people.

Results?

The reality is I have no idea what the results of the campaign were. Yeah, I lost $7.00, but here’s what I learned:

1. If you’re going to try something, you need a way to keep score – this answers whether or not the thing you’re trying is working out or not.
2. If you’re gonig to try something new, do so in a quick and cheap way. This approach supports the concept of Minimal Viable Product (MVP) and is also well in alignment to the principles of Lean Manufacturing.

Net Promoter Score

Well, several days after the campaign and well after my $7.00 went into a black hole, I received an email from Facebook asking me to complete a survey. Awesome – I like surveys, so I decided to take it.

And, sure enough, the survey is centered around the Net Promoter Program.

View the survey below.

Below are the specific questions Facebook asked in the survey:

1. How likely are you to recommend Facebook to someone you know? (0 = Not at all Likely / 10 = Extremely Likely)
2. What percentage of your friends do you assume see each of your posts in their newsfeed?
   • Their choice of wording is strange. “Assume” is weird. “Believe” might be a better option.
3. Are you aware of a new option to ‘promote’ a post on Facebook?
   • Again, weird survey question. Of course I’m aware – I already did it.
4. Please share any feedback you have about the option to promote a post you make on Facebook.
5. How satisfied are you with what happened when you promoted a post?
   • completely dissatisfied
   • very dissatisfied
   • somewhat dissatisfied
   • neither satisfied nor dissatisfied
   • somewhat satisfied
   • very satisfied
   • completely satisfied
6. Why were you either satisfied, neutral, or not satisfied with your promoted post?
   • Again, odd question.
7. How likely are you to recommend the promote option to someone you know?
   • Interesting. A Net Promoter question for their promote a post product. Answer: Not likely.
8. How satisfied were you with the following:
   • The report of how your promoted posts performed
   • How many of your friends saw your promoted posts
   • How many of your friends either commented or liked your promoted posts
   • The way the promoted posts looked in the newsfeed
     • My answer to the above questions? Completely Unsatisfied. Why? Well, I never received a report, so I have no idea how the actual promoted post performed.
9. How much better or worse do you feel the option to promote a post makes your experience on Facebook?
   • Much worse
   • Worse
   • Neither better nor worse
   • Better
   • Much better
     • Again, odd question. Actually, it’s terrible questionnaire design.
     • A better question would have been: “Thinking of the feature of promoted posts, from a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is Definitely, rate the option of having the option to promote a post”
10. What percentage of your friends do you assume see each of your PROMOTED posts?
    • This question is slightly varied from question #2; question #2 focused on posts in a Facebook timeline in general, whereas this question focuses on the Promoted Posts feature and how many of my friends I think saw it. My answer – I have zero idea. There were no reports to tell me otherwise.

So, thinking of the Facebook Quarterly earnings on October 23, 2012, my guess is that many on Wall Street will be curious about how Facebook’s attempts at creating other revenue streams are going. If other customer’s experience is like mine, the answer would be “not very good”. But, knowing what I know about Mark Zuckerberg, I’m sure they’ll figure this out and quickly find a product that is good for customers as well as for Facebook monetization efforts.

Facebook Promoted Posts and The Net Promoter Score Survey (NPS) is a post from: Lean Six Sigma Consulting

Most people that are in the Process Improvement or Continuous Improvement world tend to ignore the qualitative aspects of the customer’s experience. Yes, I put myself in this category also. But, little do we realize how critically important it is in meeting and exceeding the needs of our customers.

Let me illustrate.

The Event

Let’s take a fictitious process. Suppose you had been waiting for your flight, but then it was cancelled. Unfortunately, this situation is fairly common and I’d venture to say that while it creates a good measure of negative feelings, most of us have had flights cancelled on us. In fact, we’ve somewhat come to expect it.

I’d argue that if a flight was cancelled on us, we would react with “Man, this sucks, but I’ve come to expect this from the airlines”. Furthermore, if we were invited to take a customer satisfaction survey immediately after the flight cancellation, some of us might even give the airlines decent ratings, understanding that cancelling flights are sometimes a necessary evil in the airline business.

In sum, we might articulate our feelings the following way:

• I was disappointed that my flight was cancelled.

This makes sense and is reasonable.

How The Event Was Handled

Now, let’s take the same situation. Our flight was cancelled. But, let’s suppose the cancellation happened and the way it was communicated was haphazard and that the customers (that’s us) were treated in an inconsiderate way. Let’s further suppose that we, the customers, were made out to feel as if we were a burden on the airline. Maybe, the flight attendant at the gate called on the loud speaker “Attention, your flight is cancelled. Oh, quit all the whining. Cancellations happen, get over it”.

Given this situation and if we were given a customer satisfaction survey to complete, our feelings might be summed up in the following way:

• I was disappointed with the way the Airline handled the cancellation

Do you see the difference?

The Difference

Okay, let me bring this home now. I don’t mean to be your psychology tutor, but this is important.

Emotions have many dimensions. It’s not as cut and dry as “my flight was cancelled”, but emotions are also triggered by qualitative aspects of experience. In our case, how the flight cancellation was handled.

With this worldview, can you reflect on your work and areas of responsibilities and see an application of the principles I discuss?

Let me know in the comments.

Customer Experience Management: The Event versus How it Was Handled is a post from: Lean Six Sigma Consulting

A simple white board that follows the tried and true principle of Standard Work help me a lot. Let me share with you the white board I use at work that helps me remain productive and keeps me focused on the right things.

Standard Work

We know that when there is no standard, there is no Kaizen. So, this post is about the standards we create around our daily work life to help us focus on the right things and engage in behavior is productive and on track.

My white board is divided up into 4 quadrants and 1 Main Area (I’ve removed the contents to maintain confidentiality):

1. North Star: This area that occupies the top center of my white board reminds me the ultimate goal and the number 1 priority of my role and job – that is to improve the customer experience. The rest of the quadrants should support my North Star.
2. Metrics: This area displays the key metrics that I follow or am accountable for. I update this daily.
3. Hot: This area are things that I need to have a pulse on – these are either current projects or other items that require my daily attention.
4. Standard Work: This area shows 3-5 items that I need to do daily – things I are either natural rituals or behaviors that I need to ritualize in order to make them into habits.
5. Goals: This quadrant displays my goals and also tracks how I’m doing against them.

A Note on Rituals

There a set of behaviors that need to be made into a daily ritual – these behaviors then become habits. A perfect candidate for behaviors that should be ritualized are acts that don’t come naturally or behaviors that are important, but new. For example, suppose a behavior that should become part of your standard work is to first walk the floor, say hello to your team members, before you log into your computer to check email. If your natural predisposition is to log in and check email, then ritualizing the behavior of saying hello to your team is a good one to make into a daily ritual.

What do You Do?

What do you do to help you remain productive and ensure that you focus on the right things daily?

Standardized Work: How My White Board Keeps me On Track is a post from: Lean Six Sigma Consulting

There’s a lot that can be said for delivering a wonderful customer experience.

Of the many things that can be said, here’s something that many do not understand or even consider as they think of the customer experience:

Customer Experience Management is about What Customers Desire to Feel versus What Customers Actually Feel

Most of us know this intuitively, but don’t speak of it enough: process improvement can only take us so far. Yes, we must identify the wastes in our processes and reduce or eliminate them. But, just as important is identifying the key areas where the customer’s unspoken need for feeling a certain way is not met. Let me make all this soft and fuzzy talk a bit more grounded.

On Customer Emotions

While we often think of product and service as separate, they are in fact – at least in the customer’s mind – one and the same. Even more, when customers interact with our product or service, they have an expectation of the following:

1. What the interactions are.
2. What the outcomes of the interactions should be.
3. How they wish to feel at those moments of interaction.

The items above produce emotions. And, emotions often produce judgments. And, Judgments of our service or product can create endearment or loyalty or pure animosity and lack of advocates for our service or product.

Let’s talk about each of the items above.

1. What The Interactions Are

This is both a strategic question and a very tactical one. From the tactical perspective, answering this question falls in the realm of process improvement Specifically, we’re interested in only having the customer engage in steps that he or she as value added. Anything else, we would deem as waste and attempt to reduce or eliminate.

2. What the Outcomes of the Interactions Should Be

This would also fall in the real of process improvement. Specifically, this would often be addressed in the language of “Critical to Quality” – do the outcomes of the process match the outcomes the customer has in her or his mind? If there is a mismatch, then that presents an opportunity for improvement.

3. How The Customer Wishes to Feel versus How They Actually Feel

This is where we get soft and fuzzy. But, don’t let soft and fuzzy fool you – this is the stuff that is often at the heart of customer experience: the emotions. We can satisfy [1] and [2]. From the perspective of Process Improvement, that would be a success.

But, [3] is often missed, because it is the portion that is less loud and doesn’t clamor as much. It’s also the less tangible part; not as measurable. Yet, it is likely the part that creates loyalty, positive word of mouth, and future earnings and revenue.

Consider Customer Experience

As you reflect on your products or services, consider the question on what your customers desire to feel at each interaction and how they actually feel. Not just the outcomes or even the interactions themselves. Ask about the emotions. Reflect on that. I promise you’ll find areas that are both actionable and also areas where, if you choose to improve, will yield substantial fruit.

Customer Experience Management: What Customers Desire to Feel versus What Customers Actually Feel is a post from: Lean Six Sigma Consulting

Jeff Bezos demonstrates – yet again – what it means to be customer centric. In his Amazon 2012 Letter to Shareholders, he explains one of the main core values at Amazon: Customer Obsession.

He does so masterfully, even sharing very specific examples of what they’ve done and how that approach is the right approach for the customer and the shareholder. In his letter, he specifically uses a term common in Lean Manufacturing – Andon Cord.

Let me describe what Jeff Bezos says and the examples he uses for how Amazon has implemented the principle of the Andon, and then I’ll explain the concept of Andon Cord more fully.

Customer Service Andon Cord

In his letter to shareholders, Jeff Bezos says the following:

We build automated systems that look for occasions when we’ve provided a customer experience that isn’t up to our standards, and those systems then proactively refund customers. One industry observer recently received an automated email from us that said,

“We noticed that you experienced poor video playback while watching the following rental on Amazon Video On Demand: Casablanca. We’re sorry for the inconvenience and have issued you a refund for the following amount: $2.99. We hope to see you again soon.”

Surprised by the proactive refund, he ended up writing about the experience: “Amazon ‘noticed that I experienced poor video playback…’ And they decided to give me a refund because of that? Wow…Talk about putting customers first.”

Then, Jeff Bezos continues with more examples of what Amazon does to delight the customer. He concludes with the following statement:

I can keep going – Kindle Fire’s FreeTime, our customer service Andon Cord, Amazon MP3’s AutoRip…

Here, Jeff Bezos calls his earlier description as Customer Service Andon Cord. Let’s explore that a bit.

What is an Andon Cord?

First highlighting some history will help give a fuller description of the principle of the Andon.

Sakichi Toyoda and the Automatic Loom

In the early days of Toyota Corporation, before it manufactured cars and automobiles, it manufactured sewing machines. Sakichi Toyoda, saw a need to solve the following problem:

• When the needle broke, the workers wouldn’t know it was broken until much later. This situation caused a problem in productivity.

Seeing a need to solve a very real problem, he developed what we now know as the Automatic Loom, which did the following:

• When the needle broke, the machine stopped.

The creation of the automatic loom that stopped when the needle broke solved the problem of loss of productivity and the problem of not knowing when to replace the needle.

The Principle of the Andon

In more modern usage of the word “Andon”, people often think of an Andon Cord, which is literally a cord that hangs above a car manufacturing line. It serves as a stop for when workers on the line observe problems. They, then, can “pull the andon” and the line stops. When it stops, Kaizen can begin. When countermeasures are put in place, the line begins again.

When you visit a Toyota plant, or other organizations where they have implemented Lean properly, you will see the Andon Cord, or other variants. But the point is this: Cord or no Cord, the principle of the Andon is an alert system that enables the following:

• The Principle of the Andon tells the human there’s a problem.
• The Principle of the Andon allows the human to stop a process and prevent the defect from continuing downstream.

Now, notice that the Automatic Loom was more “automatic” – in the sense that a human didn’t have to pull anything. Whereas the andon cord requires the human to pull the cord to stop the line. There are advantages and disadvantages to each, but each falls in a continuum of maturity in the application of Lean Principles.

Jeff Bezos: Walk the Talk – Lean Manufacturing

Lean principles have taken such a hold on Amazon and on Jeff Bezos that job titles now contain terms often used in Lean Manufacturing. For example, Jeff Bezos’ comment on “Customer Service Andon” – well, it’s also a current job opening at Amazon:

To Improve the Customer Experience

When you have job openings containing terms used in Lean Manufacturing, you know that it’s more than just lip service: Amazon is serious about improving the customer experience and in putting the customer at the center of all it does.

For those interested, below is the job opening for the Product Manager, Andon Cord position:

US, WA, Seattle • Job ID 214369 • Amazon Corporate LLC

Job Description

Amazon’s Customer Advocacy Team is looking for an experienced Product Manager that can work independently in a fast paced, ambiguous environment. As Product Manager, you will create and implement systems and processes to detect customer-facing defects and enable internal Amazon teams to fix them quickly the first time.

You will collaborate with business and development teams across the company to define functional requirements, design high level process and system solutions, and manage all aspects of the project execution – including writing business requirements, maintaining the project schedule, resolving or mitigating issues and risks, and communicating results throughout the organization. The successful candidate will be a person who works well with cross-functional teams of business managers, operations, and software development, has an extremely high level of customer focus and a passion for process improvement.

In addition, they enjoy and excel at diving into data to identify root causes, derive patterns, and determine long-term solutions that ensure superior customer experience.
Basic Qualifications

• 3 to 5 years of program and/or product management experience.
• Experience developing business cases and successfully presenting to leadership.
• Bachelor’s degree in a technical, business, or analytical field (mathematics, CS, engineering or related field).

Preferred Qualifications

• Innovative product manager with superior analytical abilities and a curiosity to dig several layers deep into metrics to identify trends and root causes.
• Comfortable interacting with cross-disciplinary technical and non-technical teams in order to design new technical solutions and processes, meet schedules and resolve or mitigate issues.
• Strong organizational and multitasking skills with ability to balance competing priorities.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills including an ability to communicate with all levels in the organization (technical, business, executive).
• Familiarity with general Customer Service principles and practices preferred.
• Knowledge of SQL preferred.

Customer Service Andon Cord: Jeff Bezos and Customer Experience is a post from: Lean Six Sigma Consulting

We know that when there is no standard, there is no Kaizen. But, the benefits of Standard Work does more than that – having standard work can also help us make better decisions, especially when the decision that needs to be made is especially important.

Moreover, Standard Work can help us improve the Customer Experience by not bombarding the customer with too many options and asking them to make decisions that are ultimately non-value add and trivial.

Ultimately, decision making stems from the same mental resource and, when that resource is depleted, our subsequent decisions are of lower quality.

In what follows, I want to draw on a study from Dr. Kathleen Vohs at The University of Minnesota. She and her colleagues are at the forefront of an interesting field in the area of decision making. I want to apply their findings to how decision making can impact the customer experience.

Decision Fatigue

Dr. Vohs and team have coined the phrase “Decision Fatigue”, which is where the brain has reached a state of fatigue and where subsequent decisions have less thought and diligence and, ultimately have less concern from the decision maker. One way to think of this is with the following example (my example, not Dr. Vohs’):

Imagine that you are to make 100 decisions about a number of items, one after another. Likely, at decision number 50 or so, you care less and less about the decision itself or even its consequences. This is decision fatigue.

In the words of the researchers ¹:

The present findings suggest that self-regulation, active initiative, and effortful choosing draw on the same psychological resource. Making decisions depletes that resource, thereby weakening the subsequent capacity for self-control and active initiative.

The impairment of self-control was shown on a variety of tasks, including physical stamina and pain tolerance, persistence in the face of failure, and quality and quantity of numerical calculations.

It also led to greater passivity. Decision making and self-control are both prominent aspects of the self’s executive function. It is therefore useful to  recognize that they draw on a common psychological resource and that one may affect the other. In particular, making many decisions leaves the person in a depleted state and hence less likely to exert self-control effectively. The common resource needed for self-control, active initiative, and effortful decision taking may deserve recognition as an important aspect of self and personality

To put it in more common language, the answer is simple and really common-sense: when we don’t need to exercise our decision making faculties on things that matter less, our ability is greater for when we have to make decisions on things that matter much more.

Decision Fatigue Harms the Customer

Decision Fatigue matters to the customer. Whether in our service design or in our product design, wherever there is a customer touchpoint that requires a decision to be made from the customer, we have to be mindful that the customer may not be in a state of mind where they are open, qualified, or even care to make a decision.

Have you ever been in a situation where, as a customer, you have been overwhelmed by the number of options placed before you? Yeah, me too. That’s decision fatigue and it is terrible for the Customer Experience.

Barack Obama Makes Few Decisions

Barack Obama teaches us this principle in his description of his daily routine  ²:

This time he covered a lot more ground and was willing to talk about the mundane details of presidential existence.

“You have to exercise,” he said, for instance. “Or at some point you’ll just break down.” You also need to remove from your life the day-to-day problems that absorb most people for meaningful parts of their day. “You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits,” he said. “I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.”

He mentioned research that shows the simple act of making decisions degrades one’s ability to make further decisions. It’s why shopping is so exhausting.

“You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can’t be going through the day distracted by trivia.”

Conclusion

In conclusion,

1. Decision making – no matter the type of importance of the decision that needs to be made – stems from the same brain faculties.
2. When decisions are made, it depletes energy from that same resource.
3. Over time and frequency, consequent decisions are likely of a lower quality than previous decisions.
4. Decision Fatigue, as it relates to the decisions we ask our customers to make, impairs their ability and can negatively impact the customer experience.

Making too many decisions about mundane details is a waste of a limited resource: your mental energy.

Standard Work Improves Customer Experience and Helps Decision Making is a post from: Lean Six Sigma Consulting

We’re pleased to have Michel Falcon share with us his thoughts on how to create brands people admire. Michel Falcon is a customer experience management consultant. In other words, he helps organizations build world class customer experience program and strategies. The ROI that he provides organizations is organic growth through repeat and referral business. He helps organizations become admired.

www.fcgrp.com | michel@fcgrp.com | @michelfalcon

1. Hi Michel, can you share a little bit about yourself and how you came to focus your career on the customer experience?

In 2003, I was accepted into a great university in Vancouver, Canada. After my second year, I was at a crossroads because I didn’t know what I wanted to excel in. I knew I wanted to learn how to grow businesses, I just didn’t know in what field. Should I go into sales, marketing, pr? I didn’t know.

After a conversation with my grandfather, who was a successful entrepreneur in Lima, Peru, he said, ‘go out and be the master of customer service.’ He gave me evidence of how his business grew simply by devoting all of his efforts to earning true customer loyalty. That was the tipping point in my career.

I ‘postponed’ my business administration degree to go find a company that grew from nothing to something admired. Shortly after my hunt to find an organization I could contribute to I found 1-800-GOT-JUNK? I started off in the call centre as a frontline employee and worked my way up the Operations side of the business. It was there that I learned about Net Promoter Score and many other great customer focused initiatives. Together, we built an admired customer experience strategy.

Today, I operate Falcon Consulting Group, a customer experience management agency based in Vancouver, BC. We help organizations build the right strategies to ensure they are delivering amazing service, earning customer loyalty and growing their revenue and profits. I’m also a partner in Instarferral, a software that systematizes the way small businesses gather testimonials and collect referrals. Lastly, I travel often to attend businesses conferences where I speak about customer/employee experience and customer loyalty.

2. As you know, there are many firms adopting NPS. What, in your view, are the right ingredients for an effective NPS Program? And, what does success look like? Is there anything beyond the score?

The #1 ingredient is ‘organizational adoption.’ Everyone from the CEO down to the newest front-line employee must know what NPS is and how it is calculated. Not only this, they must also understand the purpose of the program. It’s very easy to tell someone ‘what’ to do but the value is understanding ‘why’ we must adopt NPS. Part of the beauty of NPS is its simplicity. You don’t need to be a black belt in six sigma or have a MBA to understand it. Organizations are guilty of putting together a NPS program and harboring the data with their senior level executives. Share the data and learn! NPS is a great way to remove silos in a business.

Another key ingredient is to audit your program internally regularly. I’m currently working with an organization who had a NPS program operating for five years however they never completed an audit. What we found was that all of their data was skewed. Their score was not accurate, their comments were being categorized incorrectly. It was a disaster and they were making businesses decisions off of their skewed data.

The success does not lie within the score. I have a saying, “the score is for the score board, the comments are for the playbook.” What I mean by this is, yes, your score is important because it’s your thermometer but the value lies within the comments. By focusing on what your customers say you will be able to make educated businesses decisions.

To give you a concrete example, a client of ours found that 19% of their ‘detractors’ were caused because of the packaging of their product. They reviewed all the data, held a Customer Advisory Board (CAB) meeting and redesigned the packaging WITH their customers rather than in isolation. It is a world class case study of working WITH your customers not AGAINST them. We look forward to tracking these exact same detractors and see when they return and at what rates. This is the ROI of NPS.

3. In terms of organizational structure within a large company, where (in your experience) would it make the most sense for a customer experience group to belong?

I answer this question once a day, at least. Unfortunately, there is no one size fits all answer. However, for the most part I believe it should sit within the Operations department. I say this because if the organization is structured well the OPS team should be in collaboration with all other functions/departments within the business.

Please keep in mind that EVERYONE in the organization have their role in the customers experience with the brand, it’s not a way of doing business . . . it’s the only way.

4. During your time at 1-800-GOT-JUNK, the firm quickly became an example of a customer focused company. How was 1-800-GOT-JUNK able to do that and how did the NPS program aid in its transformation?

The proof is in the numbers. When an organization is growing organically through repeat business and referrals you must have a laser focus on the customer experience. Think about it, what drives referrals and repeat business? The only way we grow organically is by delivering world class service. I’ve never heard someone say, “Michel, you should use ‘company ABC’ they have an amazing logo!” I hear, “Michel, you should use ‘company ABC’ they have amazing customer service, they took care of me and I trust them!”

NPS gave 1-800-GOT-JUNK? an incredible amount of customer intelligence (CI) to make operationally sound business decisions. Rather than making anecdotal assumptions, we were able to step back, remove ourselves as invested team members and make decisions based on what was best for the customer. We are all guilty of being in a management meeting and saying, “I think we should do it . . .” or “No, we should we doing this . . .” Who are we? Often, we aren’t the customer. NPS gives customer intelligence that is invaluable.

5. In terms of metrics, what other customer experience measurements are available that the audience might consider in their own customer experience programs? Are there any that you would consider to be a complement to NPS?

Everyone needs to know their customer retention metrics. I’d bet that most organizations have no idea how often their customers complain and for what reasons. Sure, we may have an idea but we need raw data.

At 1-800-GOT-JUNK? we built a Complaint Resolution System that allowed us to escalate, categorize and resolve customer complaints in one business day. It was an outstanding success! We were able to reduce system wide customer complaints by 33% in one quarter. That is a number I’m still very proud we were able to accomplish.

Customer retention is the carrot cake of business . . . we all know it exists but no one wants anything to do it with.

The post Improving the Customer Experience: An Interview with Michel Falcon appeared first on shmula.

Titanic Director, James Cameron, was recently interviewed on NPR ¹ on his descent into the deepest known spot on the earth: The Mariana Trench.

The Mariana Trench is 7 miles beneath the surface of the ocean. Aside from Directing films such as Titanic and Avatar, James Cameron is also an explorer and serious enthusiasts of ocean exploration.

He also helped design the underwater submersible which is described here:

Cameron designed a 24-foot submersible vehicle, the Deepsea Challenger — “this kind of long, green torpedo that moves vertically through the water,” as he tells All Things Considered’s Melissa Block. Cameron was able to watch his descent, he says, through a window that was about 9-1/2 inches thick.

Once on the floor surface of the Mariana Trench, James Cameron describes his experience as “lunar”, devoid of life. He then describes what it took to go that deep:

To reach the ocean floor, the submersible relied on two 536-pound weights to pull the craft down. To rise later, the weights were disconnected from the craft — something Cameron did after about three hours of exploration.

After 3 hours of exploration, he shares his thoughts on ascending from the Mariana Trench and shares something very instructive in its application to the Customer Experience:

“What was going through your mind, right before you flipped that switch?” Melissa asks.

“There’s always a little bit of a sigh of relief when it works the way it’s supposed to work,” Cameron says.

Did you catch that? Let me reiterate: “There’s always a little bit of a sigh of relief when it works the way it’s supposed to work“.

Application to Customer Experience

In the field of Customer Experience Management, we often talk in terms of Detractor Avoidance and Customer Delight. The former is an approach to eliminate the sources of customer pain and hassle in order to reduce detractors. The latter focuses on getting the basics perfect AND going the extra bit in order to delight the customer; exceed the customer’s expectations, put another way.

Get the Basics Perfect

Why is the customer not surprised when something is supposed to work the way it’s supposed to? Put another way,

• Is the customer delighted when they are treated well by a customer service agent?
• Is the customer delighted when an online shopping cart goes through checkout the way it’s supposed to?
• Is the customer delighted when they receive their customer order within the expected timeframe?
• Is the customer delighted when they receive an apology from bad service?
• Is the customer delighted when a website works the way it’s supposed to?

The general answer to these questions and more is, No. Why? Well, the customer has an expectation of how these services and products are supposed to work and when they do, there’s no surprise.

The Opposite is True

In fact, the opposite is true. When something doesn’t work the way we know it’s supposed to, we are surprised. In fact, most customers would grow frustrated and some very angry.

This is what I call Getting the Basics Perfect.

Let’s Remember Kano

Kano Analysis teaches us that there’s a zone of indifference, which is essentially what I’ve described above. Most organizations aim to remain in this zone, thinking that it will bring customer delight. We know that’s not true, and so do our customers.

The post Descending into the Mariana Trench and Lessons in Customer Experience appeared first on shmula.

We’re pleased to have Annette Franz Gleneicki  share with us her perspective on several questions that keep customer experience professionals up at night.

Annette is a widely-known thought leader in the field of customer experience management. Today, she shares with us her thoughts and opinions on the field and her answers to some its most germane questions. You can learn more about Annette at the bottom of this article and we thank her for taking the time to speak with us today.

1. Annette, can you briefly share with the audience what led you, among all the possible areas of business, to focus on the customer experience?

First, Pete, thank you for asking me to do this interview. I’ve been an avid follower of your blog for some time now.

The story about how I ended up as a customer experience professional isn’t all that exciting. My degree is in Management, but I love numbers, writing, and telling a story, so when I interviewed at J.D. Power and Associates in the early 1990s, I knew I needed to land that position. Five years later, I left with quite the education on what customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and voice of the customer were, along with the importance of all of the above. And the rest, as they say, is history – I’m still working with clients today to deliver the message, “focus on the customer experience and the business will come.”

I’m currently a Director of Customer Experience Management Strategy for Confirmit. In this capacity, I’m not only defining the strategy and methodology that our consultants use to work with our clients but I am also in charge of designing our own customer experience management approach.

2. Can you share with us the best experience you’ve had as a customer? What made it so good?

I don’t know if it’s the best I’ve ever had, but it’s the best I had recently. I was in a minor accident back in February, and my insurance agency (Automobile Club of Southern California) quite literally took care of everything: they rented a car, processed the claim quickly, paid promptly for repairs, contacted me proactively, openly communicated, provided contact information to easily get ahold of them, provided manager contact information to escalate an issue (if needed), and genuinely cared for my well-being. It’s exactly what you want from a “negative services industry” (those industries you don’t think of until you need them) experience. I’ve been a AAA member for 27 years, and they’ve been my insurance provider for as long; that experience solidified my loyalty to the organization.

I was also reminded today of an experience with Apple. My kids had gotten iPod Touches for Christmas in 2011, and my younger son, upon getting out of the car one day, dropped his on the driveway. I hadn’t bought a case for it yet, and of course, the screen shattered. I researched online what could be done, and in the end, I went to the Apple store to see if they could repair it. I was pleasantly surprised when they replaced the iPod – free of charge. The Apple associate looked at my son, listened to the story, and really came across with empathy and understanding. Without a second thought, he said he’d just replace it. I’m a fan.

3. Is the customer always right?

The customer isn’t always right, but you must always do right by the customer. You’ll gain way more by doing right than by arguing and blaming.

4. In terms of customer experience metrics, many companies use the Net Promoter Score. What other metrics, from your experience, effectively measure the customer experience?

Choosing or recommending a metric is a very “personal” thing – personal to the company that is going to use it. NPS is not the best answer for everyone. The appropriate metric to use is the one that best links to your desired business outcomes – not the one that everyone else is using.

Having said that, there are two I like:

• likelihood to purchase again (or likelihood to continue doing business): if the focus is on customer retention because customer acquisition is more costly, this is a great metric to reinforce that – but it must be linked with actual behavior and financial data to confirm it’s the right metric for you.
• customer effort score: being easy to do business with, however that is defined by your customers, is an important delighter in the customer experience; understanding the customer’s effort to achieve what they are trying to achieve is important to gauge that.

The most important thing I’d like to convey is to remember not to focus on the metric – it can rally the troops and get everyone to focus on the customer experience, but that moving that number shouldn’t be the main goal.

5. Tell us about the role of process improvement in the field of customer experience? Are they compatible, how?

Process improvement is an integral component in the field of customer experience. It is one way in which businesses improve the customer experience. Bad processes lead to bad experiences.

There are a lot of different tools that can be used or approaches that can be taken; to get started, I like to see companies using customer journey maps (external view) and process maps (internal view).

Customer journey maps are created from the customer viewpoint; they help companies walk in their customers’ shoes, listen to their customers’ voices, and identify pain points customers have when interacting with the organization. On the other hand, process maps are the internal view of the customer journey and show all the back-office processes and activities that support the customer experience along the lifecycle; with process maps, companies get a view of what happens behind the scenes, i.e., what tools employees use and what processes they have to go through to deliver their piece of the customer experience.

Once they understand the painpoints, they can then use root cause analysis to drill deep to understand which processes are broken.

I realize I’ve simplified process improvement for the sake of a brief answer, but it’s important for businesses to remove broken, outdated, unnecessary, or cumbersome processes that inhibit or hinder the customer experience.

6. Any final words of advice, or anything else you’d like to share?

My final words of advice: focus on the employee experience first. Making sure your employees are taken care of ensures that your customers will be taken care of, too.

Annette Franz Gleneicki is a customer experience executive focused on improving both customer and employee experiences. Through her blog, CX Journey, Annette shares her passion for helping companies understand the importance of the employee experience and its role in delivering an exceptional customer experience, as well as how to transform their cultures to ensure the customer is at the center of every conversation.

The post Customer Experience Perspectives: An Interview with Annette Franz Gleneicki appeared first on shmula.

The post Shep Hyken on Customer Service, Customer Experience, and Leadership appeared first on shmula.

I am very excited to present to you an interview that I conducted with Shep Hyken. He is a recognized thought leader and expert on customer service, known worldwide for his insights on customer loyalty, customer experience, and in leadership. He is a sought-after speaker and has consulted some of the most respected and beloved companies and brands. And, he has authored several New York Times Bestsellers, which you can learn more about in his author bio after the interview.

I hope you enjoy this interview and find what Shep has to share with us helpful and practical in your efforts to improve the customer experience.

Interview with Shep Hyken on Customer Service

1. Shep, can you briefly share with the audience what led you, among all the possible areas of business, to focus on the customer experience?

Customer service is what I’ve always known.  My parents taught me to do the right thing.  When I started my first business at age 12 (a birthday party magic show business), I created an amazing service experience, without even knowing it.  I called ahead to confirm with the customer (parents), I showed up early, did my best while I was there, stayed late, followed up with a thank you note and then followed up with a phone call to make sure I did a great job.  It was a total experience for the customer.

2. Can you share with us the best experience you’ve had as a customer? What made it so good?

So many great experiences.  I love to share the story of a cab driver who treated his customers far better than even a limo driver.  He picked me up, provided soft drinks, a newspaper and even showed me a favorite local landmark on the way to the airport.  Four days later I received a thank you note – and he sent holiday cards.  What made it so good?  More than anything, he had an amazing attitude about taking care of his customers.  You can watch me tell the story on my YouTube channel.

3. Let’s talk about customer service. Historically, customer service has been a cost center in most companies. Can customer service be strategic? If so, how and please share examples of where you’ve seen customer service play a strategic role in a company.

Customer service isn’t a department.  It’s a philosophy.  The best companies recognize that everyone impacts the customer experience, even if they never interact directly with the customer.  A department may be a cost center, but a philosophy permeates the entire organization and is part of what makes that company successful.  Look at Zappos.com, the Ritz-Carlton, Ace Hardware, and Southwest Airlines – just to name a few.  They all use customer service to their advantage and are successful (and profitable) as a result.

4. Is the customer always right?

No, the customer is not always right.  But, they are always the customer, so let them be wrong with dignity and respect.

5. What about employee engagement in the customer experience? What’s the role of the employees in creating loyalty and endearment?

Every interaction the customer has with anyone at the company is an opportunity to create a positive Moment of Truth, which I refer to as a Moment of Magic®.  Every employee must be aware of how they impact that customer experience.  It’s everyone’s job.  And, if they aren’t dealing directly with a customer, they are supporting someone who is, so they must manage that interaction as well.

6. In terms of customer experience metrics, many companies use the Net Promoter Score. What other metrics, from your experience, that effectively measure the customer experience?

It’s hard to argue with the power of NPS.  There are other surveys and programs, but NPS is simple to understand and implement.  I like to suggest to my clients to add one open ended question to the simple NPS question, which is: Is there one thing you can think of that would make the experience better?

7. What’s your view on Detractor Avoidance versus Customer Delight, or both?

There will always be detractors.  Don’t avoid them, embrace them.  They can help you improve.  And, you can turn these “detractors” around and they become your advocates.

8. Let’s suppose you are working with a company that lacks understanding of how the emotional aspects of the customer experience can impact both loyalty and the bottom line – psychobabble would be how the company characterizes discussions around customer sentiment and emotion.

What approach would you take to help others see the value on the emotional and less quantified aspects of the customer experience?

I have the luxury of working with clients who understand the power of a consistently great customer experience.  And, if they aren’t achieving it, they are doing what they can to fix it.  Companies aren’t going to hire me if they don’t have that attitude.  The market – their customers – will convince this company over time, as they defect to the competition.

9. Tell us about the role of process improvement in the field of customer experience? Are they compatible, how?

Anything you can do to make the company better – in any way – has positive impact.  Even if it primarily impacts the employees, they will be happier, which translates to being more fulfilled and willing to work hard to create a positive customer (and employee) experience.

10. While many industries are recognizing the importance of focusing on the customer experience, some haven’t. Where are some areas of opportunity where a focus on the customer experience can make a big impact on loyalty, retention, and growth?

It always surprises me when there are companies or industries that haven’t recognized the importance of customer service, especially with all of the social proof that is out there to prove the benefits of delivering good customer service.  The biggest opportunities for improvement are in air transportation and telephone/communications.  Companies in those industries are making strides, but they have to deal with their recent negative reputations.

11. Any final words of advice, or anything else you’d like to share?

Recognize that with all of the technology out there today, typically people still do business with people. Companies must hire the right employees, train them well and create a customer focused culture.  If you don’t, your competition will.  Finally, as mentioned in an earlier question, customer service is not a department.  It is a philosophy to be embraced by everyone in an organization, from the highest level executive, to the most recently hired.

Shep Hyken is a customer experience expert and the Chief Amazement Officer of Shepard Presentations.

He is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author and has been inducted into the National Speakers Association Hall of Fame for lifetime achievement in the speaking profession.

Shep is the author of the following bestselling books: The Cult of the Customer, Moments of Magic, The Loyal Customer, and The Amazement Revolution.

Shep works with companies and organizations who want to build loyal relationships with their customers and employees. For more articles on customer service and business go to Hyken.com, where you will be able to contact him on business and customer related matters.

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The post Ignore the “Net” in NPS: Manage Promoters and Detractors Independently appeared first on shmula.

Mobilizing an entire organization to a single number, such is the benefit of the Net Promoter Score. But, doing so can be misleading and can lead to behaviors overly-focused on the score and, moreover and ironically, completely miss the spirit of NPS: Improving the Customer Experience. Yes, improving the Customer Experience and improving the NPS score are not always synonymous. And, when we think they’re one and the same, we can say Goodbye Customer.

To the detriment of most companies and organization, too many are focused on the NPS score. As a consequence, they often miss the mark. The “Net” in NPS is too far from the bone, as it were, and so it makes sense that the mark is often missed by organizations.

What is needed is an understanding of the component and atomic parts of NPS. That takes us closer to the bone and the heart of the Customer Experience.

Net Promoter Score

For review, NPS is calculated by taking the % of Promoters Less the % of Detractors.

As you can see, the value of NPS is that it is statistically very difficult to obtain promoters – there’s only a 2/11 chance of obtaining a promoter. With 7/11 of the weight slanted toward detractors, it forces the enterprise to listen and focus it’s efforts on reducing the root causes of detractors.

“Net” in Net Promoter Score (NPS)

I claim that focusing on the “Net” in NPS encourages us to miss the mark. Let me explain. Suppose the following:

Given the table above, would you agree that Day 1 and Day 2, because the NPS was the same, that the customer experience was “flat” – that is, there was no change in the actual customer experience? How about Day 3 and Day 4? Would you say that there was a degradation in the customer experience?

Now, let’s see what happened on Day 1 and Day 2.

As you can see, 60% of Day 1 were promoters and 50% of Day 2 were promoters. Additionally, Day 1 had 20% detractors and Day 2 had 10% detractors. Yet, both Day 1 and Day 2 had an NPS of 40%. Would you still say that both day 1 and day 2 were the same in terms of customer experience?

Now, let’s see what happened in Day 3 and Day 4.

Looking at Day 3 and Day 4, would you say that the customer experience was better on Day 3 than on Day 4? After all, Day 3 had an NPS of 60 and Day 4 had an NPS of 50. Surely, an NPS of 60 is better than an NPS of 50, right?

As you can see, Day 3 had 70% promoters and day 4 had 75% promoters, yet Day 4 had a lower NPS. Most organizations would be in a firefight, trying to understand why Day 4 “dropped 10 points”.

Manage Promoters and Detractors Independently

My example underscores the importance of managing Promoters and Detractors Independently of each other. This subtle, but most important nuance in the Net Promoter Score program is often missed, sending organizations in a tizzy chasing the overall NPS, when the individual component parts are telling an entirely different story.

Miss the Mark, Customer as Collateral Damage

Until organizations understand the subtle difference between the component parts of the Net Promoter Score and continue to manage the “Net” of NPS and not its atomic parts – Detractors and Promoters – the customer will continue to be the casualty. Evaluate how you are managing your NPS program. Test what I’ve shared here. You and I owe it to our customers.

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