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Customer experience problems: what WE see vs. what YOU see
Recently while purchasing an item in a store here in Manhattan, the salesperson asked me for my email address - for my receipt, I thought.
A couple of days later, here came two separate promotional emails from the store: SALE! NEW! WOW! BUY!
I contacted customer service and told them that I had never given permission to be on a spam list. 'So sorry, we'll take you off immediately,' came the response.
A few days later, you can guess what arrived: WOW! SURVEY! BUY AGAIN! I contacted customer service again and said "please stop" again.
Here's what they wrote back:
Thanks Mark - that email is tied to your purchase, so we classify that as transactional rather than marketing. ...
What? Who cares how it was classified inside the company - I asked for it to stop.
This is a brilliant encapsulation of what's wrong with so many companies' customer experiences: what the company sees is different from what the customer sees.
Let's take the example above:
• The company sees its own view from the inside: marketing team over here, sending "marketing" emails - promotions for all recent customers. And product team over there, sending "transactional" emails - surveys and promotions related to specific products. If a customer opts out, they just turn off the "marketing" spigot.
• The customer sees a bunch of email spamming his inbox immediately after a purchase. He asks for it to stop, but more comes.
Here's how to solve customer experience problems like this: get the company to see what the customer sees. If the executives inside the company could just "see through the eyes of a customer," it quickly would become clear how to improve the experience.
Building a successful company these days means creating a good experience from the customer's perspective, not from the company's perspective.
And that's why to invest in customer experience. (This is what my company Creative Good does, by the way. Drop us a line.)
Or, the more sinister interpretation: it's not that the company doesn't see what the customer sees, it's that they don't care. They have your email address and they're going to do what they please with it.
Bart said it best. I can't tell you how many times I've had the business intentionally ignore things like that just because they don't care.
Another example is contact info - "yes, we know some people vastly prefer phone to email, but we don't want them to call us, period, so we will not be putting a phone number on the site."
Bart is right. We have become much more narcissistic as a society in general--just look at the rise in popularity of ridiculous reality television shows. The culture in most companies today puts customer service at the bottom of the list. Most of the customer service reps barely speak English anymore and their main objective seems to getting you off the phone rather than solving the problem. It won't change until the majority of customers vote with their wallets.
Perfect. I had a similar experience this week in a sporting goods store. I asked the salesperson on the floor for cycling gloves. He pointed me to a rack of cycling gloves, then said they're also cross-referenced with the biking jerseys and shorts. I looked at him blankly and said, "I have no idea what 'cross-referenced' means". He sighed and explained very slowly that it means they are also hanging on the same rack. I sighed and explained very slowly that "cross-referenced" might be a retail term but is not a term that most customers understand.
You are so right, Mark. It's not only that the company needs to "see through the eyes of the customer," but really immerse themselves as a customer. It's so obvious when companies do this and so obvious, like in your experience, when they don't! Sigh... :)
I couldn't agree more! This has happened to me on more than one occasion.
Wow - what an arrogant company.
No, wait - what an ignorant company!
Such inside-out thinking is a sign of poor management. Any company that so blatently disregards a customer's request has a major-league culture problem, and bad culture usually stems from bad leadership.
Another sign of ignorance:
When a customer transacts with a company, the company has a legal right, according to "Do not call" legislation, to add that customer to it's call list. Apparently, this company thinks that law extends to email lists, regardless of the cusotmer's request!
Which is worse? Arrogance, or Ignorance?
Jim Watson
http://bit.ly/rmOYIf
Similar annoyance... catalogs. I removed myself from a particular company's catalog and was added back twice after ordering from them online.
IMHO, there should be a catalog and email opt-in with orders that is unchecked by default.
As Jim points out above, this is classic Inside-Out behavior. Persistently operating in this more destroys customer goodwill and creates opportunities for commoditization.
I think it's very unfortunate that in these economic times, such behavior is still tolerated. The signs for success and failure are there for those who wish to see them.
In the end, many organizational leaders end up blaming the people close to the line for the failures, not the organization, culture and leadership that created the conditions for the failures to occur in the first place.
kengon
@Ken - good point about the real cause of the experience. Read Danny Meyer's "Setting the Table" for more on the link between hiring, training, and the hospitality that is delivered to customers.
@Krystyn - you might try catalogchoice.org - great service to unsubscribe from print catalogs.
Similar experience with an insurance company. I have several lines of insurance (car, boat, house, hospital) and only one claim in 34 years (on a boat). Next thing you know, they call me a bad risk, won't insure me for another boat, and in so many words, tell me to go away.
When I query about my all their insurance products I own, the tell me their company is organized along LOBs (lines of business) and each is run relatively independently. I say that I don't care (their problem, not mine) and that their name is above the door through which I buy "insurance." That's how I think of it; I simply buy insurance (that's what they sell) and I spend a bundle every month for it. And once I went with their company, I was happy to return for more insurance during my life when the times came - no research, no nothing. I assumed they were competitive and would provide reasonable service, so I never even looked anywhere else. In other words, the perfect customer - I buy automatically from them.
No dice, though. So I was forced to look online and lo and behold, another insurance company was happy to accept my business, making it easy to sign up, pay, and receive service. And while I was there for my boat, what about my other insurance needs? Hmmm... would anyone be surprised if I moved all my insurance to them?
And... they seem to miss the point the customer experience does not end when someone leaves the store. It could, but by adding a 'next contact' that looses your emotional genie from its bottle, they have extended the period of 'service encounter', added another 'moment of truth' and kneed your customer satisfaction and loyalty in the proverbial groin.
Mark, your observations are right on the money. As you know, I am a physician - a hospitalist - and see examples of this "disconnect" all the time. Hospitalized patients spend most of their time in their rooms. They are whisked off to various tests, often not being forewarned that the particular test has been ordered, or why. But for the majority of the time, they remain in their rooms wondering what's going on, experiencing a spectrum of emotions from boredom to irritation to terror.
But we on the medical side have a much different experience - perception - of what's going on. I spend much of my time reviewing the results of blood tests, x-rays, scans and ordering more. I confer with nurses, my colleagues, consultants or patients' family members. Most or all of this activity is "behind the scenes," so the patient is generally unaware of it.
If the patient and/or family can be kept "in the loop" about what's happening and why, they are - in my experience - always grateful. They may not be happy about the findings (bad news is still bad news), but they are genuinely appreciative of the attention and consideration.
Basically, this takes a shift in the doctor's thinking, from treating the disease to treating the patient.
Mark,good point, well made. How about taking the customer/patient experience one step further and give them control of their personal data and preferences? Making the individual the point of integration opens up a whole lot of new and exciting ways of doing business. There are a number of organisations around the world that are looking to make this happen and UX research on a prototype service has shown that empowering people to do business on personal terms rather than on the organisation's creates a "halo of trust" and improves the relationship.
Yep, it's sad. Some companies just don't want to realize how many people they're annoying by being pushy with their marketing messages. They're putting a Kick Me sign on their own back, and then wondering why so many people either ignore their emails... or kick them.