How can you engage staff who will never have direct interaction with customers or those executives who still think improving the customer experience is a trade-off to improving bottom line performance?

In top-performing organizations, there is tight alignment between the “performance chain”—all the things, people, and processes that have to move from the moment you trigger demand to the moment you have cash in the bank—and the things customers value most to solve their needs. In other words, leaders who match daily decisions across the entire organization to a clearly defined target customer experience perform better than those who don’t.

The following seven ideas can help you align your customer experience with your performance chain and give those people in customer service some well-deserved company.

1. Appoint executive-level accountability for customer experience.

Picture a typical leadership meeting: There’s someone at the table reporting on finances, someone giving a marketing report, someone going over production updates. Who’s reporting on customer experience? Who takes accountability for the value your experience brings to customers and to your organization? Don’t let the cliché “If everyone owns it, then no one owns it” happen to your organization. Perhaps it’s something that naturally falls into someone’s purview, or perhaps it calls for an entirely new position. We’ve discussed many approaches to this role. Whatever way you address this, your customer experience and its link to performance must be accounted for at the highest level of your organization.

2. Define a target, or ideal experience, for your product, brand and whole organization.

Too many companies just have one-off improvement goals with no shared end in mind. In many cases, the local results are great. But in too many cases, there is wasted effort. There are improvements to certain aspects of the performance chain, but they aren’t far-reaching enough, or important enough to customers in a global sense to change the overall experience—or your performance—for the better. What’s needed is an enterprise-level vision that every department and location understands and can act upon with massive focus.

3. Get crystal clear about your target customer experience.

You may not be able to get everyone in your whole organization to understand all the ins and outs that must happen and how customers should feel at every step of the customer experience. But you can get employees to remember three simple things. At my company, Aveus, collaboration, sustainable action, and change that pays are three ideas that guide everything we do, from people we hire to tools we develop to client work plans and technology platforms. What three things define your target customer experience?

4. Require customer experience goals in annual operating plans.

Everyone says customer experience is important. But how many leaders actually put pen to paper and make it a part of the businesses’ daily operations? That defined vision for an ideal customer experience will quickly become just another forgotten idea if it’s not translated to the work each department and each person declares in their annual operating plans.

5. Add overall measures of customer experience to enterprise metrics.

Everything else in a business is measured and held to specific goals—why not apply the same logic to customer experience? Measure two things: the value to customers and the value to the organization. Some companies use an algorithm of customer effort and loyalty and profitable growth. Some ask a version of the simple question “Did we solve the need that triggered you to act?” to measure the value to customers, and then analyze revenue plus profit to measure the value to the organization. Set it up in whatever way works best for your company—just make sure these two measures are somewhere in your performance metrics.

6. Define target or ideal experience for non-customer constituencies, too.

The people purchasing your products or services are typically who we talk about when we discuss customer experience. But there are many other people who interact with your company along the performance chain: employees, distributors, suppliers, and investors, just to name a few. Each of these groups has a unique need that your company exists to fulfill. Take time to define these different groups of people and identify what their ideal experience with your business would be. Start with employees. Knowing where the needs for these groups are in alignment—or not in alignment—can focus company efforts and create shared value for all.

7. Practice “positive conspiracy.”

Once the ideal customer experience is defined, it will take every employee across the company to achieve that vision. But “We tell everybody to change and POOF it happens!” is not a common tale. Establish a plan for how employees will learn about the target customer experience. Create a “positive conspiracy”—engage the handful who live the alignment between customer experience and daily action. Then watch and help as they engage others who translate your ideal customer experience to their own daily actions. Leaders at HealthPartners did a powerful thing as they went through annual planning last year; they called it “3 for Rita.” Senior leaders worked with department leaders to work with their teams, asking everyone to name three things they could do to positively affect “Rita,” a profiled persona of HealthPartners plan members.

It’s a tall order, I know. But if the conversation isn’t started, customer experience will always be stuck in the customer service department. As a marketer, you have a product, brand and organization-wide line of sight on this topic. How have you approached customer experience with your company? What other examples have you noticed of other organizations bringing customer experience to all levels of the organization?

Note: Photo courtesy of lamont_cranston via FlickR Creative Commons.

That being said, plenty of marketers possess a few very scary traits that impact their brands and their effectiveness. Here are three deadly traits to avoid.

Narcissism—Let’s face it. Most of us aren’t “experts.” Most of us haven’t been published, aren’t keynote-caliber speakers, and haven’t made serious advances in our marketing niche. That doesn’t mean we aren’t good marketers; we certainly are. But lately it seems that most marketers are asserting themselves as experts—and this is a very slippery slope.

When the narcissism trait sneaks into your marketing team, you quickly lose the ability to work well with others, adapt to changes, and value outside feedback. Avoid this trait, stay humble, keep learning, and listen to the feedback of others!

Apathy—We’ve all seen it, and we all know how toxic it can be. A marketer cannot become apathetic. The drive we have as marketers to be constantly searching for innovative ideas and creative solutions is what keeps our brands performing. If you are becoming apathetic in your current role, it’s time to find another job!

Marketers need to actively seek inspiration and new ideas. That’s why you are reading the MarketingProfs blog after all, isn’t it? Also, marketers need to be sure they are constantly reflecting on the data and acting on facts, not assumptions.

Procrastination—Time management is an essential skill for marketers. With our to-do lists growing, putting tasks off is simply not an option. Setting SMART goals and developing a plan to achieve those goals can help keep your efforts on track, but beyond that, marketers need to be dedicated to the cause and eager to achieve in order to resist the urge to procrastinate.

After all, you know what they say about procrastination: It’s not good. (OK, that’s not really what they say, but I’ll keep it clean.)

So, fellow marketers, what other deadly traits should we be avoiding?

The Story

The Roche Brothers grocery store in Massachusetts offers delivery as well as order and pick-up. So, en route from a cut-short vacation, we ordered some groceries for pick-up the next day. I headed out Sunday in the torrential downpour and winds. I pulled up to the dedicated parking space and chatted through the intercom. I was half-expecting to go inside to get my stuff, but Roche Brothers pride themselves on customer service (no tipping permitted when they load groceries into your car, etc.). So, I know I paid a small fee for the pick-up option. But I was prepared to go into the store and get my order in this case. After all, it was raining sideways!

Instead, the complete opposite happened. I was greeted by Neil in a raincoat, rain and wind whipping in his face. He was smiling. He greeted me professionally. He said to stay put in my car. He opened the hatch to load groceries. He asked if there was any particular order to load the groceries. I said whatever is fastest to get him out of the rain! He smiled and said to not worry and to be safe. He loaded the groceries in an orderly fashion.

The clincher of this story is when the grocery cart attendant swung by—not just pick up the cart, but to help Neal load the groceries into my car. And as the rain is coming down in buckets sideways, he says to me, “Thank you for your business, sir. Have a safe day, OK?”

“Thank you for your business,” he says to me. As he is getting soaked. Most people in his position would grumble. Most might not even say anything and just sling the bags, breaking eggs and everything, into the car. Or call in sick. Instead, this guy goes out of his way to say thanks to me on what might be one of the worst outdoor working conditions of the year.

The Lesson

Word of mouth isn’t dead. I told this story to a handful of people that day, and again the next. The story I told wasn’t: “My grocery guy is great.” Instead it was: “The Roche Brothers supermarket in Westborough is awesome because of their customer service. Listen to what happened to me a few days ago … ”

You might say, “Whatever, Alan. Word of mouth is dead. This is an isolated incident.” To that, I respond, “Well, tell that to the people I’ve already told.  And, you’re reading this right now, aren’t you?  so it worked right?” By virtue of your reading this, it’s appearing on the MarketingProfs Daily Fix.

Good customer stories travel far. What are you doing to empower your employees to be part of those?

Recently, we drove with friends to Ashland to see a couple of plays in the 2011 season of the venerable Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Beyond a dazzling dunk into contemporary and Elizabethan drama, I was reminded of a few things relevant to all of us who market for a living.

The first night we saw “August: Osage County,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning play about a dysfunctional Oklahoma family. However, the play we thought we were seeing and the play we actually saw were two different things. We arrived to learn that the Bowmer Theatre had to close for structural repairs, and the play would be relocated to a smaller theater at Oregon State University. Only 300 seats vs. the 600 tickets sold were available, so it would be a first-come, first-served experience.

The festival staff compensated by offering all patrons the opportunity to get either a refund or a voucher for another play. And for the 300 who made it into the new theater, the performance would be free. We arrived early to wait in line and get our seats. The festival staff was on hand to direct us to the location of the unfamiliar theater and to delight us with free chocolates while we waited. We felt well-attended to.

Lesson #1: If you must tell a customer bad news, leaven it with care, consideration, options for satisfaction … and freebies.

Once inside, we faced a stage that was completely bare, save for about a dozen school chairs situated across the stage in twos, threes, and fours.

The director came on stage, apologizing for the lack of a set—which in its original staging was comprised of a three-story home, replete with sitting rooms, kitchen, and an attic bedroom. He walked us through the chair set-ups, naming each set as a particular locale in the home. He also advised us that there would be one violent scene that could not safely be performed on this stage. Instead, the stage manager would come out and tell us what was occurring, so that we could safely segue to the next scene.

Not knowing what to expect, we watched the play unfold. The acting was brilliant, the characters deftly drawn, the dialogue powerful and resonant. We forgot that there was no set. We were all deeply immersed in the drama. We could imagine the attic bedroom, the staircase, the kitchen—and all the pain, humor, and insight the author intended. We all stood for a thundering ovation, moved to tears by this powerful work.

Lesson #2: At the end of the day, marketing is about content. Great content moves people. You can wrap crap writing in a gorgeous red bow, fancy website, or colorful ad, but if you don’t provide information or writing that moves people, it’s still crap.

The next night we saw Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labour’s Lost” in the outdoor theater in the round. The director staged this comedy of love in the fifties with the entourage of the king dressed and cavorting as a college varsity team. The young queen and her coterie were dressed and behaved like spoiled sorority sisters, with their sweater sets, puffed skirts, and ponytails. It was clever costuming and clever staging, and we were initially smitten with the hijinks and collegiate repartee overlaid on Shakespeare’s poetry.

Lesson #3: Shakespeare has been around for centuries, but his works remain fresh because every director brings a new sensibility, nuance, or style to it. His “brand” doesn’t get old and stale because we renew it every time it’s staged.

We made it to intermission. However, two of the couples decided they’d had enough. They didn’t enjoy all the silly wordplay. We, however, stayed to the end as we rarely get to see Shakespeare’s plays. Our friends, however, didn’t miss much; the second act was more disappointing because instead of the typical joyful pairing of young lovers, they end up postponing their amour for a year.

Lesson #4: Even Shakespeare can write a stinker. We all try to be original, to produce great and lasting creative content. It’s good, however, to remember that even William wrote a clunker or two … and it hasn’t diminished his reputation. He just kept at it. And so should we all.

We marketers may not be producing great works of lasting literature … but Shakespeare, in his lifetime, wasn’t doing so either. Like us, he was making a living by his wits. And therein lies the tale.

Mimi Sells is the chief marketing officer of Oshman Family JCC.

Most of us are guilty of not being focused. We want to sell our product or service to as many people as possible. So, we go out there and market with a message that’s some flavor of “buy my product or service.” The spirit of this is not a bad thing—after all, most of us are in business to sell our product or service. But marketing is about changing behavior. And if you’re going to change customer behavior effectively, your marketing message needs to be focused.

To do this, you need to understand your customers’ purchase process and then focus your marketing objectives on a specific stage or two within this process.

Here are the six general stages of your customers’ purchase process.

1. Origination: What’s the need that triggers your customer to buy? If you’re a web design service, one origination trigger for your customer is the purchase of a domain or hosting service. Your marketing objective could be to “get people who just bought a web domain to use our web design service.” If you’re a flooring contractor, one origination trigger for your customer is the purchase of a foreclosed home. Your marketing objective could be “get people who just purchased a foreclosed home to repair their flooring with us.”

2. Information Gathering: Where and how does your customer gather information to address the originating need? If your customer turns to mommy blogs to find a solution to her need, your marketing objective could be “get moms who are searching on mommy blogs to find our product.” If your customer solicits the advice of her accountant for a product recommendation, your marketing objective could be “get accountants to recommend my product instead of competitor X’s.”

3. Category Choice: What category choices do your customers have when seeking a solution to their need? For example, a customer looking to create a website can choose between self-service web design services or full-service web agencies. If you’re a web agency, your objective could be to “get customers who are looking to build a website to choose our full-service agency instead of choosing a self-service option.” If you sell children’s toys, your marketing objective could be “when a parent is looking to buy a birthday gift for their child, get them to buy a toy instead of a game, puzzle, or movie.”

4. Brand Choice: Once your customer has made a category choice, which brands will she choose from? For example, if you sell PR services, you should identify your key competitors and focus your marketing objective on “get startups who are looking for a boutique PR agency to choose us instead of competitor X or Y.”

5. Usage: How does your customer use your product? For example, if your customers use your software weekly but you want them to use it more regularly, your marketing objective will be “get my existing customers to use daily instead of weekly.” Of if you offer a “freemium” product with a free trial, your objective could be “get more existing customers to signup instead of churn after the trial period.”

6. Repurchase: Would your customer purchase from you again? Would she refer you? For example, if your repurchase rate is low, your marketing objective could be “get more customers to repurchase my service instead of lapse.”

Sketching out your customers’ purchase process is a critical step in helping you decide where you to focus your marketing efforts. And depending on where you decide to focus, your marketing message and efforts will be hugely different.

Gary Gebenlian is vice president of marketing at Future Simple—small business software.

I have had enough, and I can’t stand no more.

I’m talking about ads, commercials, spots, whatever cool vernacular you want to use to describe the visual medium that plays over airwaves and into our house via what is commonly referred to as a TV.

The target of my ire is aimed directly and squarely at the airline industry. Truth be told, I do not blame these companies and their respective ad agencies one bit for capitalizing and promoting a benefit they offer and others don’t. I get it … It’s their USP, Universal Selling Point. Or at least it’s one of them.

Here’s two spots from two different airlines:

The first one is Southwest’s campaign—which I like by the way in terms of creativity and execution—that promotes and advertises the fact that on their airline “Bags Fly Free!”

The second spot is for Jet Blue and promotes and advertises the fact that passengers on their planes get … a whole can of soda!

Now before I go on, let me state for the record that I do not fly very often, point being I don’t even know if these “amenities” are still being offered by each respective airline. But just the fact that they were at one point in time was enough to make me want to put pen to paper, as it were.

I just love the line in the Jet Blue spot … “free unlimited brand-name snacks.”

Man: “What airline should be fly, honey?’
Woman: “Jet Blue, for sure … ! We can get all the Oreos we want, and none of that store-brand crap the other airlines offer.”

But think about this, boys and girls. Should we as consumers now be happy that we are getting something for free that should have been always been free to start with?

Are you kidding me?!?!?!!

I was out a few days … I apparently missed the part where the American consumer gleefully celebrates getting ripped off, duped, and downright conned by the greed of corporations and companies.

Don’t you see what is happening here, people?

1. Companies are taking things that used to be free and now assigning a cost to them.
2. Everyone gets outraged.
3. The outrage dies down and ultimately passes, and the aforementioned charging for what used to be free becomes an accepted practice.
4. Said company then creates an ad campaign/blitz that promotes and advertises something which is NOW free, which should have stayed free the whole time!
5. We all dance gaily in the streets and happily patronize said company for “being different” than the other guy.

And this is just one industry I’ve touched on …

Did you know some supermarkets now charge you to use a shopping cart? How many restaurants now charge for what used to be free refills on beverages? We even have to pay for air for our tires now!

So, if you’re enjoying something for free right now, chances are it won’t be free for very long, and the cycle will begin and then one day, it will be free again.

What can we as the American consumer to stop this incessant cycle from happening or are we powerless to stop it?

Help me out, please … someone. Anyone. Bueller?

But in the frenzy of donning and doffing garments, clothes may unintentionally disappear. This happened with my favorite shirt. I thought it gone for good, so when I got home, I immediately searched online, looked at several options (none in my signature green, however), and finally ordered the same shirt that disappeared.

And then, I received an e-mail telling me that my beloved shirt had gotten mixed into someone’s pile and would be returned. Now, I had two.

Case closed? Not quite.  Immediately, ads began showing up touting the shirts I had not bought. The same two shirts in the same two colors (red and black) followed me everywhere I went. The web had decided I’m in the market for a shirt and was determined to sell me one—even though I had already made a purchase (and now had two).

With this experience fresh on my mind, I saw this article on re-targeting:

Lesson: Technology is wonderful and re-targeting might work sometimes, but enough is enough! I lost my shirt, yes, but I found it already.  Twice.

Ah, another day, another marketing misstep in the unfortunate context of a crisis communications. Actually, “misstep” for many companies in the age of social communications is far too lighthearted a term to use. Consider the news headlines devoted to the Sony data breach of 100 million user records.

This seemingly never-ending saga is yet another reminder that in today’s networked world, there is an increased demand for open, honest, rapid, and ongoing communication. Failure to do so will result in lost brand equity and customers.

A crisis can serve as a stage to either show the world that your company is either unorganized and uncaring, or responsible and human, as noted from the still considered best practice playbook of effective crisis communication, Johnson & Johnson’s handling of the Tylenol poisoning of 1982. Clearly, Sony should have taken a page from their playbook.

In this day and age, the chances are pretty good that your company will need some form of crisis communication, particularly in the areas of information security and data loss. Information is now the new currency of the 21st century. Your data in its entirety—from intellectual property, to customer databases, patient records, and even facility blue prints—are extremely valuable. In many cases (think banking, health care, aerospace, etc.) data protection is tied inextricably to your brand equity. Securing that data is obviously critical on many fronts. Today, a severe data loss could be a going-out-of-business event for many companies.

In this regard, your marketing and communications teams play two important roles.

First, know that the Marketing department often serves as the Achilles heel of information security. With the increasing advent of cloud-based marketing automation, your customer data is now sent to third-party companies who may not be as security conscious as you. Note the recent breaches suffered by major brands due to their marketing vendors’ security missteps. Also, be aware that your Marketing department often handles some of the most sensitive documents in your company—from RFPs to blueprints and, of course, your customer and prospect database. Conversely, the Marketing team is often the least likely to be trained in any form of IT security preparedness or processes.

Second, it’s important to note that in the event of a major data loss (especially if you are a larger organization), there will be powerful interests at play that could harm your company more than the breach itself. In a data breach, legal and corporate communications teams will often be at odds with each other. Legal seeks to stop all communications and reduce liability while communications teams end to get overly aggressive and  spin all communications in the most positive light they can. These different points of view often cause delay, confusion, and often contrite, invaluable messaging at the worst possible time. Case in point: Sony waited a full six days before alerting PlayStation users of the data breach, which infuriated not only customers, but legislators as well.

When managing a data breach crisis, here are some general guidelines that may help:
1.    Expect to have a crisis event.
2.    Have a predefined crisis communication plan in place.
3.    Acknowledge the problem immediately.
4.    Become the news breaker.
5.    Leverage social media.
6.    Be accountable.
7.    Make it right.

Given the fact that Sony is a multibillion dollar corporation, I’d venture a bold guess that it actually had a crisis communication plan stored away, collecting virtual dust on a server somewhere.  And I’m certain that remaining silent was not part of it.

Don’t just have a plan, but make sure your team knows the plan and is able to implement it when necessary. After all, you don’t want to become another “lesson learned” in the marketing annals. Security breaches will happen, they always do, and when you fall victim, you want to become a shining example of “how it’s done.”

C. Edward Brice has more than 18 years of global marketing experience from SAP AG and Sony Corporation. He is the senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing for Lumension.

Most organizations focus on marketing to their current and prospective customers. If they’re smart, they realize how valuable these relationships are and steward them accordingly—with kid-glove customer service.

Yet, how many organizations think about their suppliers when it comes to brand reputation? Word of mouth works on both sides of the fence. Treat suppliers poorly, and they will talk negatively. Treat them with respect, like the partners they are, and they will talk positively.

5 Ways to Honor Your Suppliers (& Turn Them Into Brand Ambassadors)

1. Pay your invoices on time. Pay your invoices before the due date, and watch your suppliers jump through hoops for you.
2. Treat your best suppliers as part of your team. Invite them to your holiday parties, and have lunch together periodically.
3. Communicate with your suppliers. If cash flow is tight, give them a heads up. If something isn’t to your complete satisfaction, let them know so they can make it right. Cut them some slack if errors are very infrequent.
4. Send them referrals, and they will reciprocate. The old “scratch my back” philosophy works wonders with good supplier relationships.
5. Send a thank you note when they’ve gone out of their way for you. Appreciation goes a long way in solidifying these relationships.

Your suppliers can be your organization’s best brand ambassadors. How does your organization rate in its supplier relationships? Got any good tips to add to my list?

Your customers may be wondering what Roger Waters famously asked on the Pink Floyd classic album The Wall: “Is There Anybody Out There?”

The voice of the consumer has never been more powerful, or influential, and has potential to spread virally in an instant. Reacting quickly can often quell negative comments and amplify positive ones. And yet, more than 58% of tweeters who have tweeted about a bad experience have never received a response from the offending company.

In today’s competitive landscape, customer service is more important than ever, and a company’s reputation for satisfying clients has never been so vulnerable. Social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn enables businesses of all sizes to interact directly with customers.

Companies now have the option to not only take a phone call—but also take a Tweet or a Facebook post and drill down into it, see who wrote it, and respond accordingly. Of course, don’t expect social media to replace you customer service department, but instead look for it to increase your overall customer satisfaction.

Your customer service issues are likely to fall into one of three categories:

1. Customers experiencing difficulty with a product or service
2. Suggestions for product or service improvements customers would like to see
3. Better ways to market, sell, support, or communicate with customers

Be prepared to respond quickly and cordially. In some cases you may need to “kill them with kindness” in an effort to offer an experience that exceeds their expectations.

If a customer has a serious issue with no quick resolution, offer an email address in order to take the conversation offline. I would suggest a dedicated “unlisted” special email address (think “Batphone”) to specifically deal with these types of issues. Let the customer know that their message is important and that you are doing your best to rectify.  Your No. 1 goal is to turn a bad experience into a good one, save the customer relationship, and get positive word of mouth. After the issue is solved, following up with a quick personal message can encourage the customer to praise your responsiveness.

You can measure the success of your efforts by defining metrics which reflect your overall strategy (for example, saving money, service improvement, etc.). I would suggest starting with the following metrics:

• Responsiveness: How fast is your average response time?
• Complaints: Is the number decreasing?
• Praise: Is this number increasing?
• Quick resolutions: Are you able to eliminate calls to customer service?

Make it a priority to review the progress of your customer service strategy and make adjustments accordingly. Send out an online survey through your social channels asking how your company is doing in regards to customer service.

Solving these issues in real time through a company’s social channels shows your dedication, and transparency, to your customers. So the next time your customer tweets “Is there anybody out there?”, you can proudly respond with, “Yes! How can we help you?”

Do you use your social media channels to enhance your customer service efforts? Which tools do you find most useful? Do you have any success stories to share?

Jason Miller is a social media marketing manager at Zoomerang.

But what about bad business advice? What’s the worst advice you’ve even received? Did you take it? (And spend considerable time trying to counter it?) Or did you ignore it?

Here’s how some of the Facebook friends of MarketingProfs answered the question, “What’s the worst marketing advice you ever received?”

“If you build it, they will come.” (Meg, Black Dog Education)

“You don’t have to ask [people] what they want.” (Shareena Ali)

“[You] have no competitors for your ‘unique’ product/service.” (Kate Donlon)

“If we make a brochure, we’ll increase sales.” (Amanda Brandon)

“Had a client who hired us to do a logo, and then wanted us to put five icons into the logo.” (Adam Kleinberg)

“If you just [advertise], you’ll get customers.” (Abnormal Marketing)

“I can get you to page one on Google … that’s all you need.” (Doug Sherwood)

“I’m too busy with project work, so there is no need to market.” (Cathy McKay)

“Just have the intern do it.”  (Ann Swanson)

“‘Join Share A Sale’ —an affiliate program that costs a lot of money and delivers a lot of spam ‘coupon’ sites.” (Steve McNamara)

“A/B testing can wait.” (Marketing Sutra)

“Let us go through and delete all bad reviews on social sites for you … ” (Signs By Tomorrow)

“We’re going to do the same things as our competitors, but we’ll do it better.” (Patrick Ifonge)

“Worst advice I ever got was from R&D on a new product launch: Even though we don’t have product in the warehouse, go ahead and launch anyway. Production will catch up with inventory before your first orders come in.” (Greg Sabala)

“Develop the business and if they are interested THEN we’ll send them the proposal.” (Nameer Khan)

Your turn: What’s the worst marketing advice you ever received?

After all the work a business puts into securing a customer—the marketing campaigns, the sales pitches, and the personal support—it makes little sense for companies to put up barriers at the final stage of contract signing and execution. Businesses that have not yet moved this final sales process to the cloud risk slowing down or derailing sound sales deals.

More and more businesses are moving their contract management to the cloud and gaining faster, more secure sales cycles, and making it easier for customers to do business with them. With the confirmed legality and security of e-signatures, businesses are quickly adopting technology that blends efficient Web services with contract execution—meaning a deal can occur completely within the cloud, from first sales pitch through negotiation and closing. Sales and marketing teams that don’t offer such options must consider the potential negative impact on customer and partner relationships.

3 Myths That Stand Between Businesses and Better Contract Processes

Presumably, no business knowingly decides to turn its back on a capability that attracts and retains customers and partners.  Cloud-based contracts and digital signatures can reduce sales cycles by 200% to 400%, which frees up sales staff to focus on bringing in new revenue, shrinking the personnel hours required for administrative tasks, and creating a positive, secure signing experience for prospects and customers.

There are three main questions, all easily answered, which typically keep businesses from moving contracts to the cloud and claiming the associated benefits.

1.) Are e-signatures legal?
In 2000, the federal Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (ESIGN) delivered the convenience of electronic signatures with the consumer protections of appropriate notifications, disclosures, and assurances of technological neutrality and universal access. The legislation also provided for authentication processes, privacy protection, legal certainty, fraud shields, easy document access, and record retention. Today, contracts signed with e-signatures are enforceable agreements that also deliver greater business efficiencies, improved customer service, and quicker sales cycles.

2.) Are cloud-based contracts secure?
Perhaps there is no other business process in which security is more paramount than in contract execution. When businesses adequately educate partners and customers about e-signing, they clear confusion and concern that could otherwise threaten the move toward cloud-based contract management.  Today, the conversation around e-signatures no longer has to do with making them as secure as physical ones because paper-based signatures offer no way to show identity other than the signature itself.  The recent robo-signing scandal in the mortgage industry showed the number of analog holes in physical signatures. In the cloud, there are several ways to authenticate the signer (e.g., email, IP address, passwords, and social network credentials from LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.), all of which surpass anything possible via physical copies or fax transmissions. In addition, an online audit trail tracks every chronological step in the signing transaction.

3.) What rules constitute e-signing etiquette?
All parties involved in an e-signature process should keep in mind the paramount etiquette rule that has served society well in every era, online and offline: Communicate clearly and be thoughtful of your audience. Document owners should let recipients know beforehand that expected documents will arrive electronically and can be signed electronically as well. For new or reluctant e-signers, the most important point to reiterate is that electronic signatures are enforceable.  The second concern often involves fraud, and here, too, the document initiator can educate other parties about common safety checks.

Electronic signatures enable a company to quickly measure the cost benefits and savings of this technology—typically companies see that electronic signature applications pay for themselves in the first 30 days of usage.  Plus, businesses should let partners and customers know that e-solutions increase the overall efficiency of executing almost any document. Sometimes, they decrease turnaround times by 10X over a paper-based process, as it is much easier and more efficient to receive, complete, and send an item via computer rather than working through the multiple steps of printing, signing, packaging, and delivering.

Cloud-Based Contracts
In a wide range of industries, cloud-based contracts speed the final hurdle to a sale or partnership from days or weeks to hours or minutes. Electronic signatures solve numerous problems that plague businesses, such as: waiting for customers to locate fax machines or put paper contracts in the mail, duplicating work, managing time zone pressures on faxed communications, and losing prospects who walk away in the midst of overly long contract processes.

Cloud-based contracting offers businesses the means to transform their processes and change their business for the better.

Does your company use electronic signatures? Why or why not?

Jason Lemkin is the CEO of EchoSign.

Educating customers about issues that can affect their perceptions of your customer service can greatly affect customer acquisition and retention. This is especially true with products or services that require some “insider” information to understand the full picture.

I just experienced this myself when purchasing a 2010 car for my daughter. Going to car dealerships right from the get-go is an apprehension many of us harbor. Maybe it’s unfair, but decades of slick, pushy sales techniques have contributed to this reputation.

Without recounting the entire tale, let’s just say that the deal would have fallen through had I not intervened between sales manager and hubby. And the outcome would have been a very negative brand experience on our family’s part. And why? Because the manager didn’t enlighten us regarding what is typical in our state or what to expect.

Unlike other places, a “new” car here is considered new until it has been titled, so it can frequently have mileage on it. In our case, about 210 miles. That’s what concerned hubby. His first instinct was that the dealer was trying to pull a fast one and sell us a used car. If he wasn’t forthcoming on this information, how could we trust the rest of what he told us? If the vehicle was used as a loaner to other customers or taken for test drives, which it was, then it seemed logical that it wasn’t a new car.

In addition, it is typical for some car dealers here to delay updating the manufacturer’s database with their sold inventory until the end of the month, even though salespeople are supposed to do this daily. It has something to do with competition between the dealers. Now, is this customer-oriented? No, of course not, especially if the salesperson is searching the computer system to locate the car you want from a competing dealership. Our perspective: How come the computer shows all this inventory and yet it’s taking two days to find a car with her specs? Sounds suspicious, doesn’t it?

Both these pieces of information were news for us. A lot of angst and suspicion could have been avoided had the salesperson advised us of these norms in advance—not after customer frustration. He could have said, “Just so you know, it’s very typical here for new cars to have a few miles on them. This is a widespread practice in our state.”

So, think of any pertinent information you can share with your customers and prospects that may affect their perceptions of your customer service and build trust with your brand. This doesn’t mean you should burden them with your organization’s internal issues and challenges. But if there are common practices or standards that you know, don’t assume your customers will know them, too.

Can you give a good example of this type of situation BEFORE and AFTER you enlightened your customers about something? Did it work?

1.  Look Beyond the Top of the Funnel

Too many marketers view lead generation as an exercise in filling the top of the sales funnel. But just filling the top of the funnel is not lead generation. It’s response generation. And most “responses” don’t buy.

Marketers need to look past the response, further down the funnel. They need to begin thinking in terms of lead management, which encompasses the entire funnel from response to close of sale. By taking this holistic view of your lead-generation efforts, you’ll do more than just generate leads. You’ll manage leads, engaging with prospective buyers and nurturing them through the buying process.

To effectively manage leads, you must move from a top-of-the-funnel approach to a process-based approach. This can be achieved by adopting a process framework that consists of:

• data
• lead planning
• lead qualification
• lead routing
• lead nurturing
• a content-development process
• metrics

Using a process-based approach will improve the number of qualified leads that get sent to sales. In turn, sales will increase conversions. Together, marketing and sales will have a direct impact on corporate revenue.

2.  Lead Generation Is More Than a Marketing Tactic

Lead generation is not a tactical exercise. It’s a holistic strategy. In his Propelling Brands blog, Adam Needles discussed this point by saying, “So I put a stake in the sand with this post—asserting my belief that demand generation is a strategic activity; that it is, in fact, the charter of B2B marketing; and that it spans and should be defined in terms of our holistic interaction with buyers throughout their buying life cycles.”

I couldn’t agree more with his assessment. If lead generation does indeed span the buying life cycle, then marketing isn’t the only entity that should be involved. Sales must be part of developing the strategy.

As I mentioned earlier, lead generation is about managing the entire funnel, which includes passing leads to sales and helping them to close more deals. By gathering sales’ input and collaborating with them on lead-generation strategy, you will ensure that you are working towards a common goal with sales (this is the “lead-planning” component mentioned above) and that sales will be receptive of marketing generated leads. This approach will lead to shorter sales cycles and greater effectiveness for both marketing and sales.

By shifting the thought from tactical to strategic, lead generation will take on a whole new meaning in your organization, one that will start of yielding much better results.

3.  Technology Won’t Solve Your Problem

Marketers are increasingly turning to marketing automation in hopes of improving their lead-generation efficiency and effectiveness. However, marketers need to understand that technology alone will not solve their lead-generation challenges. Why? Because automation only automates what’s already there. It doesn’t create anything. Using an automation technology will not create a lead-generation plan or develop a strategy.

To make automation work effectively, first develop a strategy that consists of:

• the right people
• process (as mentioned above)
• relevant content

These three components can then be enabled by automation technology leading to exponential improvement in lead-generation results.

4. It Doesn’t Stop Once You Have a Customer

Building a successful marriage doesn’t stop once you say, “I do.”  In the same way, managing the dialogue with buyers doesn’t stop once they buy. Ongoing communication and engagement with customers is crucial. It should be a significant part of your demand-generation strategy. If you want to quickly improve the revenue results from your lead-generation plans, you should be sure to look at your current customer base as a key target segment.

5.  Take an Integrated Approach

As marketing automation has increased in adoption, so has B2B marketers’ love affair with email.  While email is certainly an effective medium for lead generation, it’s not the only one.  The best results will come from using an integrated multi-channel approach.  Research has indicated that buyers (both prospects and customers) will respond to and want to receive information in a variety of ways.  Therefore an integrated approach will yield the best results.  There are naysayers that claim direct mail and teleservices are dead. But these and other channels (social, web and live events, etc.) should not be used exclusively either.  They should be incorporated as one of many media in your lead generation campaigns.  Make sure to constantly test to determine the best mix of media, as well as the best response by medium.  This process is not a one-time exercise. It’s part of an ongoing, dynamic strategy.

The landscape of B2B marketing has changed and continues to change. The focus is now generating quality leads and engaging buyers in meaningful dialogue.  By looking beyond the top of the funnel, adopting a strategic mindset, and using resources effectively, organizations can transform lead generation results to greatly improve their impact on revenue.

Want to get to know more about how to recharge and manage your lead-generation process? Check out our free virtual conference, Digital Marketing World, this Friday.

Yet, it would almost seem that many people, when naming their companies or coming up with a tagline, actually adopt that as a goal! Therefore, here are the Top Five Rules for those who would prefer not to stand out—who’d like to be undistinguished, unremarkable, and easily ignored!

1. Come up with a business name that means nothing. Ah, yes, Global Strategic Business Solutions—that tells me a whole lot about what you do. Or perhaps A & B Associates—catchy, unique, truly memorable! Or, to memorialize the two partners who so brilliantly launched the enterprise, let’s go with Douganberry and Smith, that’s descriptive! Remember: The goal is to keep the audience guessing. We wouldn’t want those pesky potential clients to immediately understand what the business stands for, would we?

2. Describe your business in the most generic way possible, so everyone will think they need you. “We supply business improvement products and services to businesses all over.” “We’re striving to improve health care around the world.” “Our business is going about the business of helping your business gain more business.” So now, out of 50 million companies, you’re one of them.

3. Weave a less-than-meaningful tagline into your identity. Pass by any UPS delivery truck and see: Worldwide Services. I guess that clears that up! Here’s a brilliant law firm tagline: Commitment to Excellence. Why, I’d rather have attorneys committed to mediocrity myself! Hilton rolled  a campaign under the ineffectual banner, Travel Should Take You Places (duh!). And how many companies have you seen adopting this ridiculously obvious and overused phrase: We Mean Business! Now there’s an original and unique thought.

4. Look at what all your competitors are offering and saying, and mimic them. Be sure that when potential clients are looking for something, you pro-actively blend in with the crowd, and thereby be considered on equal terms. If Company A is talking about offering “complete end-to-end enterprise solutions to enhance supply chain productivity,” be certain that you adopt that message also, so that you can stand out along with the rest of the lemmings. Never lead—it’s too dangerous. Follow!

5. Try to please everyone. Hey, it’s a complicated world, and lots of people get in on decision-making. So craft your message so that there isn’t a chance that a single person could possibly be offended, or (heaven forbid!) conclude that you have a different focus than what they’re looking for. Remember, all business is good business, so you don’t want to miss a single opportunity by narrowing your message to your unique core competencies. We do it all! is the safe bet.

On rare occasions, I forthrightly recommend that people not take my advice. This is one of those occasions!

Now, not only was I disappointed that I couldn’t see what I clicked on, but now I was also a little insulted and put-off.

That’s the error page above. The idiot wearing the short-sleeved, orange, Hawaiian shirt at the Black Tie event is supposed to be me. The site visitor.

“Ever feel like you’re in the wrong place?” states the caption.

Wow! An interesting way to treat a guest to your site. I wasn’t digging around their bathroom’s medicine cabinet and got busted for snooping. I clicked on one of the main links on their site! Why are they making me feel like I did something wrong?

I know this sounds like a bit of a rant … But, the lesson is, the way your company handles your websites error page can say a lot about your company.

Some take time to make the error page fun, trying to make the best of the situation. After all, it’s a bummer for the visitor when something goes wrong, and it means something is broken with the site.

When trying to make a site as sticky as possible and something is broken or confusing, anything less than “Oh my gosh, so sorry … How can we help you find what you were looking for?” is not enough.

How are you supporting your web visitors when they encounter an error?

Call To Action

• Check out your site’s error page. No, you really should. In fact, why not open another browser window right now and check it out?
• If you aren’t sure what your error page looks like, enter the URL for your site and then put some junk characters after it. For example: www.YourSiteNameHere.com/icuraqtinvu
  I’ll bet you don’t have a page with that title, and your error page will be revealed to you.
• What does your Error Page say? Is if generic? Is it fun?
• Is is branded? Is it brand appropriate?
• Did you simply leave it up to the person who designed your site to create the page?
• Does it have search tools or ways to help your visitor get back on track?
• Check out what others have done on their error pages. See clever and helpful error page collections here and here, and here.
• By all means, while you may have fun with visitors to lighten up the fact your site is broken, don’t berate them.

As someone who’s sat in that chief marketing officer chair (I was a line executive for a number of years with organizations like Digital River, Wilson’s Leather and Deluxe Corporation), I know the challenges of trying to stay ahead by looking forward, but also trying to keep one foot on the ground by continuing to achieve financial results.

So, what would I share about the year ahead from a customer experience standpoint if I had 10 minutes with a roomful of Fortune 500 executives? I thought you’d never ask.

First, top performing organizations are learning that customer experience is a path to profitability—not a trade-off. A while ago an executive said to me, “Linda, I’m not sure how much customer experience we can afford.” He saw investments in experience as a trade-off to profitability. Heading into 2011, fewer executives profess this view—and that’s good news for them, their organizations, and their customers.

More and more leaders are defining a specific ideal customer experience, then using it as the guide for daily decision making across the organization, in good times and in bad. They’re winning the same payoff we saw in the top performers in our 2008 research. In that study we found that organizations with a well-understood definition of customer experience are TWICE as likely to beat their profit targets than those who do not. Heading into 2011,  I see more and more companies follow the customer experience path to better financial performance.

For additional insights, I polled seven other thought leaders and line executives who have proven success in driving performance for organizations via customer experience. I asked them what they’d share with a Fortune 500 executive if they had 10 minutes to talk about key trends in 2011. Here’s what they had to say:

Barry Dalton

“Customer experience and marketing will converge. A turf war is possible for ownership between chief experience offers and chief marketing officers. Also, self-service and social media for customer service will continue to grow.”

…

Chris Reaburn

“I have to say, a key trend is that people are starting to link the service profit chain in a meaningful way, recognizing the connection between employee satisfaction and loyalty, customer satisfaction and loyalty, and profit. The best are measuring internal satisfaction as a leading indicator of external satisfaction.”

…

Ted Coine

“Savvy companies are already using social media to engage their customers more, to include them in the actual design of products and service experience. We’ll see a LOT more of that in 2011 and onward. The gulf between 20th- and 21st-century business models will grow vast as a result.”

…

Wim Rampen

“I think customer involvement is the overarching trend that will affect customer experience in 2011 and beyond. We’ll see a huge increase of customer involvement in customer service through support communities and we’ll see an increase of mass customization propositions, product co-creation efforts and ideation forums. I hope to see companies seeking to involve customers more to create value for themselves or other customers than seeking customer involvement for broadcasting marketing messages to potential targets.”

…

Alan See

“First, you will not get a do-over, mulligan ,or practice shot. Translation: Do your P&L homework upfront and structure your best offer immediately. Don’t hold back. Consumers with cash and a willingness to spend it are in short supply right now.

“Second, focus on the consumer. Translation: Make sure you address competitive weaknesses within the four stages of the consumer purchasing process lifecycle, including: Awareness, Information Search, Evaluation, and Purchase/After-Sale Service. In addition, you may need to think smaller by breaking large marketing initiatives into several highly targeted micro campaigns based on continuous selection of the best (most profitable) of the best (ready-to-buy).

“Third, don’t wait until there is a problem to contact or follow up with customers. Translation: Monitor trigger events (contract dates, service calls, etc.) closely and nurture two-way relationship-building conversations. For example, my cell phone contract expired back in February, and I still have not been contacted. When you do follow up, make sure you have something valuable or significant to relate. By the way, a call merely to say you ‘just wanted to touch base’ is not value-add.

“Finally, keep asking, listening, analyzing and improving. Translation: Keep asking for and listening to your customer’s feedback. And make sure you are leveraging and engaging your entire organization as it relates to that feedback. Social media platforms are an excellent channel to help you both listen and engage in conversation.”

…

Jeannie Walters

“I would tell them to be aware of giant killers in customer experience. There are several larger companies that have ignored what smaller, more nimble competitors are doing to create memorable experiences for their customers. This differentiator can create more loyalty, word of mouth awareness, and recommendations. I’ve watched as large companies stick their heads in the sand as start-ups, even with fewer features or higher prices, chip away at their customer base by appealing to the emotional experience people are craving. ‘The way we’ve always done it’ is not good enough! Watch what your competition is doing to appeal to customers, and take note.”

…

Kent Huffman

“In 2011, your entire organization should be laser focused on customers—not on simply satisfying needs or even fostering loyalty, but creating a unique customer experience that motivates them to willingly spread the word about your products or services with evangelical enthusiasm. One very effective way to accomplish that is by truly listening to and interacting with your customers via social media. Companies like Dell, with its newly launched Social Media Listening Command Center, are already leading the way.”

…

That’s what the experts think. What about you? What customer experience trend would you point to if you had 10 minutes with a Fortune 500 excutive for 2011?

…

In 2009, consumers spent $23.6 billion on gift cards during the holidays, with an average spend of $40 per card. That’s 590 million gift cards. 590 million customers. That’s a lot of people. Beginning December 26, many of these card-wielding people, will be your first-time customers, new to your business.

Are you ready?

What are you doing to ensure you make a remarkable first impression on their first visit to your store or website?

We have the chance to roll out the red carpet for these new customers, to make the first time at our business as welcome and as easy as possible. But this can be a challenge because we forget. We and our employees spend so many hours in the business, we forget what it was like to be new and not understand the process. We suffer from the curse of knowledge.

Here are ways customers may feel lost or intimidated:

• Technical Knowledge
  Is the technology of your product confusing? I’m not sure which TV features I need. What is the difference between the Wii, XBox, and PlayStation game systems? What tools do you provide your staff or directly for the customer to clear confusion?
• Jargon
  Do your products call for jargon to understand and order? How about a Starbucks double-tall, extra-foamy, non-fat caramel macchiato anyone? At Waffle House restaurants, you can order your potatoes: scattered, smothered, covered, chunked, diced, peppered, capped, topped or “all the way.”
• Barriers to Ordering
  Do you make customers create a full account on your site before you let them place an order? Is it necessary? Isn’t an email and order number enough for the customer? Are your days and hours of operation such that it makes it a challenge for those with full-time jobs to access your business?
• Demonstration Is Required
  Some products need a demonstration or trial before they really get what you’re about. Some products need to be tried before buyed. (Yes, it’s terrible grammar, but it’s also an important rule.) An example would be perfume. You smell a few brands before you buy. Often, someone came in planning to spend a minimum amount, but after trying and understanding your wonderful products, departs spending more than either you or the customer expected.
• Demonstration Is Required
  Some products call for an in-store demo before the customer takes it home to try. Espresso machines are a good example. As great as directions may be, it always helps to see it done and try it yourself when there is someone there who can help with questions.
• Batteries Not Included
  It is incredibly disappointing when you rush home with your new gift to find out you don’t have all the pieces to make it work. Batteries are a great example. You need to alert customers when they’ll need something else to make your product work.Did you know an espresso machine (and sometimes a coffee maker) need to be primed before using them? Yep, you’re supposed to run white vinegar through it to get out any factory residue and pre-clean it. If you don’t, it will make your drink taste like oil or metal. Despite knowing this, I never understood why Starbucks (back when they used to sell espresso machines) didn’t put a small bottle of white vinegar in with the machines at the factory. How disappointing the next morning when excited for your home-crafted Starbucks latte to find out you can’t make it. Even worse, to ignore the instruction and start the day drinking a nasty tasting latte?!

And, I’m sure there are many many more examples …

It is important to note, make sure, when warming up to your new customers, you don’t leave your current, loyal customers out in the cold. Royal treatment should be given to every customer.

Long story short

Make sure your employees are ready. Make sure they understand it may take these “newbie” customers a little longer to understand. Give your employees the tools to make it easy to share and teach the customer. Let the use of a gift card be the start of a conversation between your employees and the customer.

Treat them poorly, and spending that gift certificate is the last you’ll ever see that customer. Treat these people properly, right from the start, and you can have a customer for life.

Why Everyone Matters

Dave Carroll may not have had an AdAge Power150 marketing blog, a stratospheric Technorati rating, or a huge Twitter following. Like the other David, Carroll slew his Goliath with humble means:

• A good story, artfully told
• A clear plight that resonated with others
• Proficiency with You Tube and other social channels
• Creativity and personality
• Incredible tenacity
• Helpful pals
• A little dumb luck

We bat around terms like “influence” but when push comes to shove, it’s all terribly subjective and unstable. I’m not saying we can’t call people “influencers.” However, it occurs to me that, oftentimes, the people who assail us most effectively largely emerge from left field. Play along with me for a second.

Imagine that you are call center supervisor. Who is more important?

• Plain Jane with a seemingly straightforward service issue
• Influential Tom who is ticked off
• Corporate Fred who is on call number five and is getting the runaround

But here’s what you don’t know:

• Plain Jane’s issue impacts thousands of other customers and is costing you thousands per second.
• Influential Tom exposes companies for a living, and he’s armed to tattle on you to 1 million consumers.
• Ordinary Fred just happens to know your boss.

Everyone Has the Potential for Influence

This doesn’t mean that everyone will prove to be influential—it just means they have the potential to matter greatly to your business. Now, if we truly believe this, everyone must matter to us. If we truly believe this to be the case, we have no choice but to respond by making sure we treat people accordingly. We must listen and applying critical thinking instead of running people through hoops and  homogeneous “chutes” for processing, like cattle. This goes far beyond lip service, because it is our actions that speak the loudest. Do we listen? Do we demonstrate empathy and care? Do we take action on their behalf? How do we handle people, their issues and carefully respond?

Bad Things Happen When We Assume People Don’t Matter

When was the last time a brand or company communicated (explicitly or implicitly) that you don’t matter? How did it impact your feelings toward the brand? When act on bad assumptions, rotten things can happen—to our prospects, customers, partners—and to our businesses themselves. Borrowing from our example above, lets say we blew it in our handling of Jane, Tom or Fred.

• Plain Jane gives up because no one she encounters “gets it” when she tries to explain what transpired. Her issue isn’t escalated and costs your company $850,000 before it is properly discovered.
• Influential Tom tweets his experience in real time in a highly entertaining manner, making you and your company look ridiculous in the process.  His resulting blog post creates a mountain out of a mole hill, which results in bad press and a PR fire drill.
• Corporate Fred calls your boss to complain, pinning the responsibility on you. In reality, his issue is really a larger company policy matter that is beyond your power to resolve, but nothing is done about it, and the issue is bound to repeat itself.

Now, I’m being intentionally one-sided here. It’s true that cases like these might be a minority—but it’s food for thought and illustrates a good point: If it is what we don’t know that can hurt us most, why aren’t we actively listening and responding like people matter?  In the end, even a Plain Jane matters simply as a good customer. However, she will matter even more if she’s unhappy and decides to combine her voice with 20,000 others.

Treat people as if they do not matter, and they may decide to prove you wrong. Consumers have more resources at their disposal today, and they’re intent on using them to be heard. In this light, companies have more to lose than they might think.

So, Do You Roll Out The Carpet For Everyone?

In a manner of speaking, yes. But don’t get me wrong. It’s entirely worthwhile effort to create  tiered service levels for customers who fall into various relational tiers or “premium” experiences for high-value customers. However, these elevated levels of service should be offered over and above the already great service you offer. The problem is, many companies emphasize key segments (frequent buyer, frequent flier, target demographic or insert segment here) to the detriment of everyone else. As a result, they fail to create a baseline customer experiences and service levels that unilaterally treat people like they matter—and this becomes a critical flaw. It’s also a flaw when these segments become the primary focus of things like Voice of the Customer programs.

When we decide to ignore the “lesser masses” (limiting the avenues customers have for self expression, suggestion, or obtaining service, response and resolution, or plugging our ears to their plights), we create disservice and frustration. This damages customer experience and produces corporate dysplasia, deafness and blindness that destroy relationships. This is more common than one might think!

Customer Experience Is the Litmus Test for Corporate Values

It’s essential to make sure we deliver solid, consistently pleasing baseline experiences. This is where the real, dirty, operationally intense work is.  Everything else we offer is icing on that cake. In this era of “social commerce,” this means companies must be oriented to:

• Actively and expansively listen
• Apply critical thinking and common sense
• Respond with care
• Assess. learn and improve

We must do this  not by just using our “owned infrastructure”  but within the cloud and social web as well. While this is more challenging now than ever, it’s also more exciting and promising because of the dynamic applications, tools, and solutions at our disposal.

When push comes to shove, when we fail to deliver the customer experience fundamentals well, there’s a likelihood that many, many people will know. As I said to a senior airline executive in my last post, Pandora’s Box is already open! If we play games with people and refuse to listen and respond, they will make themselves heard somewhere else. Treat people like they don’t matter and, like Dave Carroll or Jeff Jarvis or Motrin Moms, they may just prove you wrong.

In the 2010 Customer Service Champs, BusinessWeek took an in-depth look at the company USAA. They are a private company that offers auto and home insurance to a customer base of military members and their families. With $68.3 billion in assets, USAA has unrivaled staying power atop Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s annual Customer Service Champs ranking. Since the first list in 2007, no other company has come close to achieving USAA’s feat: a No. 1 or No. 2 spot for four years running.

Beloved and prosperous companies deliver service with care and empathy.

Customer empathy means understanding a customer’s needs and having the ability to interact with that customer in a personalized way. It’s the ability to imagine what it might be like to experience the life of a customer. It’s the ability to put one’s self in another’s shoes and walk a mile. And it’s an essential skill that should be at the heart of everyone’s service plan in the company, especially the frontline.

The companies that have made “the list” and companies that are thriving in this economy are there for good reason. Even in a sluggish economy, these companies continue to care for the customer, continue to empathize, and, for that reason, grow their business. As I discuss in my BusinessWeek article, Customer Service: Marketer vs. Merchant, “They have made deliberate decisions about how they would run their business, and they live out those decisions every day. The most important of those decisions is the one that determines that taking great care of their customers is the highest priority.”

At USAA, new hires eat like soldiers.

While new hires are not required to be from the military, they must understand the military.  So, new USAA employees wear the military helmet and feel the weight of the backpack and flak vest strapped to their backs. USAA serves new employees MREs (meals ready to eat) during orientation, so they can better identify with military life. They get to know the people behind the uniform by reading letters from soldiers and their families.

USAA was the first bank to allow iPhone deposits and among the first to let customers initiate an insurance claim using their phones from the scene of an accident. In 2008, they rolled out a service allowing customers to get text messages about their account balances. Later this year, they are planning mobile peer-to-peer payments, allowing customers to e-mail or text-message money to friends or family for immediate deposit. Also coming this year is a mobile car-buying service that lets customers snap an iPhone picture of a vehicle’s VIN number and instantly get back insurance quotes, loan terms and pre-negotiated loan rates. “They do all this really creative stuff that applies to guys and gals who are in Afghanistan,” says Karen Pauli, a research director at consulting firm TowerGroup. “There is nobody on this earth who understands their customer better than USAA.”

While nimble technology may be part of the formula for meeting its customer’s needs, USAA knows that an empathetic and caring workforce that understands the unique lives of their customer base is fundamental to their ongoing success. That means walking in their customers shoes.

In almost everything it does, USAA puts itself in the spit-shined shoes or combat boots of its highly mobile customers. Elizabeth D. Conklyn, EVP of People Services, says, “We want to cover the light moments, the heart-wrenching moments, what it’s like to be bored in the field.” (Excerpt taken from Jeanne Bliss’s “I Love You More than My Dog: Five Decisions for Extreme Customer Loyalty in Good Times and Bad.”)

By walking in the shoes of its customers, USAA breaks down the barrier that often exists between companies and customers.  As a result, USAA customers love and reward them with growth and validation. “No fewer than 87% of respondents to J.D. Power’s syndicated surveys say they will definitely buy from the company again, far higher than the average, which is just 36%. Its client retention rate? A near-perfect 97.8%.”

Decide to be real.

Companies that customers love work hard to make personal connections. They strive to ensure their “real” personality shines through in each interaction with the customer.

In the beloved and prosperous companies:

• Leaders blend who they are as people with how they lead.
• Business decisions combine purpose and passion.
• Leaders give employees behaviors to model and permission to be “real.”
• Relationships are between people who share the same values.

These attitudes and actions embody what is behind beloved and prosperous companies. The action of empathy, walking a mile in the shoes of your customers, allows you to connect, establish rapport and create a trusting relationship. Once the customer realizes that you are on their side, they are more willing to work with you to fix the problem, or will allow you the time to resolve the issue.  And they will stay with you and tell their friends about you.  They will grow your business.

Go Try This

Have you trained your staff to understand the unique perspective of the customers they will be working with? Do they understand the value you place on getting to know the customer’s lives and special circumstances?

On a big sheet of paper, trace the bottom of your shoe and label it, “My Customers’ Shoe: Five Things We Should Know about Our Customers.”

In teams of 2 to 4, write down the things you understand about your customers. What keeps them up at night?  What is a day in a life for them?  What do you know about their needs that help you serve them?

This activity will help your team identify the unique characteristics of the people they serve. It may also be an eye-opener if the teams are not able to identify 5 things about the customers. Taking the time to review the lists and develop training to allow employees to gain a deeper understanding of the customer perspective will ultimately grow the value of your business and grow the bottom line.

Companies spend a lot of time and resources collecting customer feedback, but many approaches make it difficult to act upon the responses.  Linear-based surveys require a lot of statistical data to be relevant, and customers often see these tools—particularly those that pop-up unexpectedly and frequently—as nuisances rather than resources.  So how can a business easily and quickly elicit customer feedback that is actionable?

Here are five approaches:

Let customers drive the discussion.

Provide customers with an authentic, real-time, two-way communications channel in which they direct the conversation.  Rather than answering pre-set questions that fail to address true pain points, customer-driven communication enables your website visitors to raise relevant, pressing issues with you.

Integrate customer feedback with complimentary business applications.

Web analytics and customer relationship management (CRM) tools give you “who, what, when and where” data.  When you integrate this information with the more complex “why” provided directly by customers, you gain a far more complete view of website visitors that can inform myriad areas of your business.   Disseminate integrated feedback-CRM-analytics reports to marketing, sales, customer service and shipping staff for quick, targeted action.

Make it easy for customers to talk to you.

Customers and prospects are far more likely to tell you what they think about a particular product, service or website function in the moment when they are considering those items.  Give them an easy-access feedback button on every website page you wish to monitor.   This will provide you with process-level and Website-level actionable data. When visitors or customers come across an issue, they can simply click on a feedback icon. Customers might then rate their overall impressions of your site from a selection of emoticons, select their issue category from a graphical menu, or type in a brief synopsis, giving you insight into their behavior in that instance.

Use the power of pop-up for good, not evil.

Incessant survey pop-ups offer little value to the customer and are therefore of limited use to businesses trying to solicit authentic and actionable feedback.  However, carefully targeted pop-up mechanisms—say, in your shopping cart process—can gently remind customers they have the option to open a conversation with you regarding questions or concerns they have in the most critical areas of your site.  Carefully choose the location and frequency of your pop-ups to make this a non-intrusive experience for users.

Stop.  Listen.  Respond.

Customer feedback is most successful for companies that illustrate to customers that they read and act on comments.  Beyond integrating feedback into your business processes, disseminating reports to stakeholders and analyzing trends to make business decisions, customer feedback gives you the means to connect to your users in a personal way.  When it’s warranted, respond to customers directly.  Elicit more details from them.  Solve their problems.  Offer them incentives to return to your website.  You’ll put a human face on your business and secure customer loyalty in a way not possible with surveys or lesser tools.

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Eran Savir is vice president of products at Kampyle

And now Friendly’s, a Massachusetts-based 500 unit restaurant chain known for its ice cream and treats, with stores in New England, New York, New Jersey, the mid Atlantic and Florida, wants to jump into the fray.

There’s only one problem with this.  Despite offering a menu with mainstays and a few unique offerings as well as awesome ice cream treats, Friendly’s has another, less desirable brand attribute that’s been well-documented: exceptionally S-L-O-W service. Given this, does it make sense for Friendly’s to push for “express” locations?

It’s a fair question. Undaunted, new CEO Harsha Agadi says, “Yes” and shares his plans in a short interview with the Boston Herald.

In a nutshell: Agadi believes he can open 100 Express locations by 2015 with updated menus offering healthier choices and more affordability. He believes doing this, as well as doubling the sales of Friendly’s packaged ice cream sold in supermarkets, will push “this brand across the $1 billion mark” in annual sales. Currently, the chain generates $725 million in sales.

Agadi doesn’t specify how he plans on doubling retail sales on packaged products, however. Maybe he intends to push for distribution in more grocery and gourmet chains? Smaller, drive-through locations along interstate highway systems? Or perhaps he’s interested in launching new products? We can only speculate.

Here’s what he does say: “I want to invest in the brand and bring much more consistency to customer service (read: more speed) and food quality.” Here’s what he doesn’t say: whether he plans on improving both in current restaurant units.

But here are the core questions for the Daily Fix faithful:
• Can a restaurant chain synonymous with slow service, successfully extend its brand to become an “Express” destination?
• Should management be eyeing expansion with new units before fixing the slower-than-molasses service issue in its current restaurants?

What do you think?

“Time to make the donuts” is the phrase Fred the Baker would repeat in a somber tone as he was getting ready before dawn, day after day, to make sure fresh donuts were ready at Dunkin’ Donuts.

Great job on the ads, Dunkin’. It has been thirteen years since those ads ran, but the catchphrase is still with us.

Many of us can relate to Fred —doing the same thing day after day.

In these commercials, Dunkin’ was trying to convey the advantage they have over their competition—grocery stores—fresh baked donuts each and every day. As Fred states in the commercial, “I”ll bet the grocery store guys are still in bed.”

While we’ve turned the phrase to mean something we must do routinely that we may find grueling, many of us have forgotten the last scene of that commercial. When the store opens, Fred turns and faces his customers with a welcome smile.

The marketing lesson here … The life lesson in fact, is that much success can be found in simply following through. Being there consistently. And, consistently delivering on the promises you’ve made to your customers.

But it isn’t easy.

The last role I had at Starbucks Coffee was helping to develop customer service strategy. One of the biggest challenges in delivering customer service is being consistent.

As customers, we prefer to receive “slightly better” service all the time than to have awesome service one day, and a crummy experience the next. But that service roller coaster was happening at Starbucks. Up and down. Service at the same location could change from day to day, and it wasn’t consistent from store to store. It is a challenge many retailer’s face.

Consistency is so important, we’re willing to sacrifice quality for something we can count on. McDonald’s success is built on this. No one is claiming McD’s has got the best burgers in the world, but what a comfort to know they taste exactly the same in Rhode Island as they do in Russia.

In another version of the commercial (below), we see Fred in rain, storm, and snow going to make the donuts. He’s got sticktoitivity.

The recipe for consistency is:

• 1 part, Commitment—showing up day after day.
• 1 part, Anticipation—being prepared for the inevitable glitches.
• Stir constantly.
• Provide consistency, and for your customers, “it’s worth the trip.”

Quick Notes:

• I’m proud I’ve been “makin’ the donuts” here at the Daily Fix each Friday for over three years. And like Fred the Baker, I do it with a smile.
• Fred the Baker was played by actor Michael Vale who passed away at the age of 83 in 2005. When Dunkin’ retired the character, it held a “retirement” parade in Boston and offered free donuts to customers on that day.
• Amil Gargano of Ally & Gargano, the agency who created these commercials, has a new book “Ally & Gargano” coming out next week that tells the story behind some of the agency’s famous campaigns.

This week, I received a promotional email from a local day spa.

You know, massages, manicures and pedicures. In addition, it also offers a retail line of lotions and aroma therapy oils. The spa is positioned as a higher-end brand. Its pricing and build-out is higher than a quick-service spa place you’d find, for example, find at a mall location.

The email contained two offers:

1. An incentive.
2. A special seminar.

The incentive:
For each $100 in gift certificates you buy, you receive a $10 gift card. This is a sales driver.

The special seminar:
A “Yoga Basics” class. The spa’s expert guest will teach about yoga, the benefits, and a few of the basic moves. It listed the date, time, and the cost of the class—$5 cash. Though this may have been created as a way to do something special for customers, this should really be considered a traffic-driving tactic.

The Offers Reviewed

What I’ve explained is pretty standard stuff. We see (and create) these type offers all the time. A special offer to drive gift certificate sales and a relevant class/program designed to help customers. But, each of these has poor consequences. Let me explain where I think the ideas have gone wrong.

$10 Offer (Sales Driver)

Get a free $10 gift card for every $100 gift card purchased.

I give them credit right off for not offering “10% Off!” Percent-off is in-your-face discounting. A “free $10 card for you when you buy a $100 for a friend” is not as blatant, however, it is still discounting.

The problem with discounting is that it reduces the perceived value of the good or service. Why would I ever pay $200 again for a massage that has been offered at $180? It is obviously worth only $180 or less. I’m now going to wait to purchase when the price is low.

Instead of offering a discount, offer a value. I mentioned they have a line of beauty products. Why not give a $10 pack of beauty products free with each gift certificate purchase?

It provides a $10 value, but what you’re actually doing is driving trial. Someone (the giver or receiver) is going to try the products. What if you were able to convert them into a product buyer in addition to a service buyer? Now we have just increased the value of this customer to your company by increasing the average purchase.

Special Seminar (Traffic Driver)

Come to our class, bring five bucks. Seriously?

I mentioned this was a swanky brand. What’s with “bring five bucks? I know, it the cash fee to pay the person who is giving the class. This prevents the spa from taking the money out of their petty cash. But, they’re missing the point. This isn’t a five-dollar-per-person cost … It is an investment. The purpose of bringing people in, is NOT the class. It is a chance to DRIVE TRAFFIC to the site to DRIVE TRIAL of products.

The chance to offer participants a short massage, a chance to use the beauty products. This is a chance to roll out the red carpet and make them feel welcome. Show them why you’re worth paying more for. Perhaps the value of coming in every four weeks instead of every six weeks.

Asking participants to pony-up five bucks make the spa sound like a cheapskate. The spa should either charge $50 a person (make it seem of high value), or make it a free seminar and use the traffic as a way to drive trial, and future purchase.

In Conclusion

As I said at the beginning, on the surface these ideas are pretty standard. And, you have to give points to the spa owner for doing something.

Something isn’t always better than nothing when it can cause damage. The smart strategy not only works to achieve the short-term goals, but also supports or builds the brand in the long run.

I’ve had some really great interactions with brands lately on social networks like Twitter and Facebook. I’ll be honest, I feel a sense of greater loyalty to those who talk with me and acknowledge me. I’ve also been ignored a lot. I hate being ignored. And on social networks, it seems to irritate me even more—because after all, why are brands on social networks if they aren’t, well, social? I can read about your news on your website. I want you to talk with me, not at me.

So I took to Twitter to ask my community if they feel that brands should be responsive when you talk about them on social networks. How do they feel if brands don’t follow them back? Does it matter?

Turns out most people, like me, also hate being ignored. While the majority of respondents said they didn’t care if brands follow them on Twitter, they did say that they feel negatively toward a brand that doesn’t respond to them when specifically called out to do so. Smart brands at least do that and also monitor and interact with the community talking about them, even if not specifically asked to answer a question or talk to them.

Here’s an example. I recently asked my Twitter followers who their favorite fashion sample sale sites are, and I mentioned Rue La La, Gilt Groupe and Ideeli. Only one, Ideeli, answered the question themselves in the form of a response to me. In fact, every time I mention Ideeli, they reply.

I also recently asked this question:

Only Entrepreneur Magazine responded, even though I’m an avid promoter of content in all three magazines. In fact, I probably share more articles from Inc. and Fast Company than Entrepreneur.

Now, of course, I was asking my followers their opinion in both of these cases and not asking the brands a specific question—but the point is, it was an opportunity for each company to interact with a prospect/customer talking about their brand, and to show that they’re listening – and that they care what the community says or thinks about them. I understand it might not be possible, if you’re a really popular brand, to reply to everything. But … why not? Companies like Jet Blue, Virgin America, Dunkin Donuts and LL Bean have done it right in my view. And here are a few other examples that some of my colleagues experienced:

• Cision actually helped me once.  I was generally complaining about Cision’s login expiring too quickly and other PR people were griping with me. Cision saw it within the hour, answered me and fixed my account so the log in time out would be longer.  It was a great example of monitoring your brand and making a dissenter into an advocate as I then tweeted the PR people back to tell them that Cision helped me and what they could do to fix the same issue.
• BumbleRide: I got on Twitter and complained about issues I was having with their Indie Twin stroller (which wasn’t cheap and I had just purchased a few months prior). The customer service rep responded to me via Twitter to learn more and, within two weeks, they shipped me a brand-new (and might I add, upgraded) stroller frame along with a little “snack-pack” add on “for my troubles.”
• I commented on Twitter about my satisfaction with the quick installation of Verizon Fios and they responded pretty quickly— thanking me and offering future assistance.
• I had very satisfactory, quick response/outcomes from both Comcast and American Airlines (about leaving my umbrella on a flight!).

I’m especially jealous of that last one because I once left a coat—a very nice coat—on an airline, and I tweeted about it immediately and they told me to call the 1-800 number. I did and never got a human on the phone and was never helped. And yes, it was extremely frustrating. The point here is that maybe it’s not even enough to just answer or interact, but to have a customer service action plan that includes social networks.

I dare to venture that most companies do not have a routing plan in place for how to handle customer service issues via social networks. Answering and acknowledging frustrated customers or interested prospects is just not enough anymore. It’s expected that, like a website, brands are going to be on Twitter. It’s further expected that brands are going to answer a customer talking about them or at least asking a specific question.

But now, as social media continues to evolve and integrate into multiple business divisions (marketing, PR, customer service, business development, etc.), companies need a smarter, integrated plan and organized process. They need to ask themselves:

• Who is going to handle complaints?
• What are the steps?
• Once addressed on Twitter or Facebook, do you take a customer offline?
• Who handles it?
• Who monitors niche communities (like, say mommy communities) to create relationships and address dissenters, or celebrate champions?
• Who replies on blogs mentioning your brands, further cementing positive relationships, or helping to fix damaged ones?
• Who makes sure any complaints in any social network are addressed to the satisfaction of a company or that a potential prospect was closed (or, if not closed, why not)?

Companies need to realize that just being present isn’t enough. Customers expect you to be there now. Building up large numbers of followers while following no one sends the wrong message. Businesses need better plans for integrating their social media efforts, processes and presence throughout the entire company.

You’ve heard of a social media policy for addressing employee behaviors online, but you rarely hear about a social media policy for addressing a brand’s behavior online. Do you have one? Why or why not? What positive or negative experiences have you had with brands on social networks?

Why are you making it so hard for someone to give you their money? Asking someone to “call for a quote” is like saying, “We need to find out how much money you have first, then we’ll give you a price.” At least that’s what the customer is thinking. Every business, regardless of what you offer, should have some type of packages or set pricing in place for people who want it. If not, you’re leaving a large percentage of cash on the table that they were ready to hand over to you.

Graphic designers are usually the worst offenders at this. They say, “We can quote you as soon as you tell us what you want exactly.” Fine, I get it, but not everyone wants to play that game anymore. Why not instead offer a few packages that a customer can evaluate, and buy, without having to interact with you first? It’s easier than it looks. Here’s an example:

Package A: New Business Logo/Branding Package  $499

This package is perfect for the new business or brand who wants to get a professional logo that will make them stand out! You get 5 different logo concepts to choose from, as well as up to 3 revisions. Final logo is delivered in digital format as a vector image, which  allows you to use it on business cards, websites, brochures and anywhere you need it. If you order by September 2010, you get 20% off! Click the order now button below to get started.

Package B: Rebranding Logo/Branding Package   $1499

This package is perfect for the business or brand who needs to re-brand themselves. You get 25 different logo concepts to choose from, as well as up to 10 revisions. Final logo is delivered in digital format as a vector image, which allows you to use it on business cards, websites, brochures and anywhere you need it. If you order by September 2010, you get 20% off! Click the order now button below to get started.

Tell me, if posed with those choices or “call me for a quote,” which one are you more likely to choose? The point is that there are going to be a large percentage of your customers who won’t need, or want, to “contact you for more information.” They will simply see the package they want and click to buy it.

For this to work, you have to make sure you have a secure, safe way for the customer to pay you right then and there.You should consider getting a merchant account, so you can accept credit cards. Sure, it’s a pain in the butt to set up, and those pesky fees from the card companies stink, but it’s the cost of doing business on the Web. If you don’t want to spring for a merchant account and offer credit card transactions, then at the very least get a PayPal buy button in place. However, many customers aren’t going to want to use PayPal. Small-businesses owners or employees at corporations don’t have access to PayPal accounts. However, many of them do have corporate credit cards. Again, make it easy for them.

You may be saying to yourself now that your business is different. That you can’t offer packages. Bull! The truth is you don’t want to, either because it’s not how you’ve done business forever, or you just don’t like the taste of it. Fine. Know this though: The days are gone when a potential customer had only a few choices. Sure, it used to be you and your competitor only, but now your customer has more options. They’re often going to choose the company that makes it easier for them. You know this is true. You do the same thing when you go shopping for anything. Deny this at your own peril.

* * * * *

For over 15-years, Jim Kukral has helped small businesses and large companies like Fedex, Sherwin Williams, Ernst & Young and Progressive Auto Insurance understand how find success on the Web. Jim is the author of the book, “Attention! This Book Will Make You Money”, as well as a professional speaker, blogger and Web business consultant. Find out more by visiting www.JimKukral.com. You can also follow Jim on Twitter @JimKukral.

I don’t try to hide.   Just the opposite.  I want people to be able to contact me.  It’s simply good business.  That’s why my blog “my 2 cents” is clearly marked with my contact information.  It’s all right there on the page.  You don’t have to click anything to find out how to reach me.  If it means I may get an unsolicited call from someone looking to sell me life insurance or stockbroker services, that’s the chance I’ll take.  It could also be a call from a prospective client.

I’ve always wondered why some bloggers and plenty of company websites don’t offer a clue as to how to call them or write to them by snail mail.  It makes me wonder if they’re operating from home, and they’re trying to hide that fact.  Or maybe they’re located in a small town or small city rather than a hub of business—and they’re trying to project a “big” image.

I don’t know why, but I’ve often wondered.

And then this week, some of my colleagues and I ran into a stone wall called Google.  We’ve been trying to contact someone there on behalf of a client to see about running a promotion on its photo-sharing site.  We understand there might be a fee to do so,  and we’ve been trying to find out how much it is and make arrangements to pay it.

I responded to the spot on the site where it invites you to ask about “commercial partnerships.” That was more than a week ago, and I haven’t heard a peep in response. The next logical step would be to call the company.

Have you ever tried to get information on who to contact at Google?   For a company that is all about sharing information,  Google is one of the most secretive or closed companies I’ve ever seen.  Its website has no phone numbers and no hints of whom to contact for various purposes or how to reach them.   I tried the PR department.  Left messages and no response.  Maybe I should have lied and said I was calling from PC Magazine or The Wall Street Journal.  Or maybe even that sneaky tactic wouldn’t have prompted a response.

We had similar experiences when we tried to contact Yahoo.

Someone suggested that, since these are companies who give away much of their service free, they tend to give priority attention to the smaller group of people who pay for premium services or those who are advertisers.  But here’s a situation where I want to become a paying premium service user, and I can’t speak to or hear back from anyone so I can begin to pay them.

So my plea to businesses and bloggers alike is:  Please don’t hide.  Unless you’re doing something illegal, why put up a wall so it’s difficult for people to find you? It’s kind of ironic and a bit antisocial in this “age of conversation” or “age of connectivity” for companies to deny input, feedback or legitimate business queries.

As I followed, I was able to keep up for a while, but then I began to fall behind. Whoosh, these hills were tough. As we went downhill, he was able to speed even further ahead.

If he looked back, he would have seen me falling behind. But, he just kept pedaling forward. A second set of hills, and before I knew it, he was so far ahead he was completely out of view.

This guy was being a terrible leader. What good is leading if you don’t have a follower? At this point, he wasn’t a leader at all … but a lone ranger.

I rode another quarter mile, but there was no sign of him. Frustrated, I turned around to head home. It was hot, and I decided to get ice cream.

In the middle of all this, I saw a business lesson. What took place on the bike trail, takes place in the office.

You’ve got someone with vision, direction, and the desire to lead. They recruit followers, but forget to communicate important details, such as the big picture, how long the road is ahead … and where the end point is. As a follower, lack of information is frustrating and demotivating.

Great leadership not only requires vision and direction to move forward, but also the ability to look back. Drive forward confidently, but also “lead.” And provide your followers the ability to follow.

In one case, it was a local restaurant that made an anniversary extremely memorable. In the other, it was a hotel/resort that redefined “above and beyond” in my book.

Both of these examples involved personalized notes.

I’ve been to countless restaurants and an abundance of hotels, and very few have been remarkable enough to be … well, remarked on in writing. I expect good service and am disappointed when it fails to occur. I am quite pleased with excellent service. But it’s time to think about providing remarkable service that is—to be perfectly tangible—blog-worthy.

For a customer to go home, and freely and happily take the time to publicly praise a person or a company’s service, is an exceptional affirmation. It is also about the best marketing you’ll ever get. It won’t cost you advertising dollars. It’ll cost you rigorous hiring practices, great training, and cultivation of an exceptional work climate.

What it will earn you is all kinds of repeat business and glowing recommendations. Worthy ROI, in my book.

Perhaps every service organization should sit down with employees and say, “We need to treat EVERY SINGLE GUEST as if they have an influential blog, and assume they’re going to write up their experience tomorrow.” Because the fact is, some of them do—and will.

Don’t just pursue good customer service. Shoot for blog-worthy service. That’s social media marketing at its strongest.

Perhaps you’ve seen signs of it: David Carroll serenading us with United Breaks Guitars.  Jeff Jarvis creating Hell for Dell.  A Comcast customer posting Comcast Technician Sleeping on my Couch.  John Winsor’s blogpost asking Is Your Customer Service Ready for the New World of Openness? about Boeing’s legalese form letter to a child passionate enough about airplanes to mail in a drawing …

All this happened because traditional customer service channels aren’t equipped to deal with social feedback, prepared to respond and interact with people as individuals worthy of consideration and respect, or able to consider that complainers might be voicing legitimate concerns.

The traditional approach tolerates customer service as a necessary evil, a cost center to be minimized, perhaps even marginalized.  Forget social: It’s too emotional.  Emotion opens an organization up to financial exposure and distracts from prudent focus on statistically significant trends.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  When you’re running a business, particularly on thin margins, the last thing you can afford to do is to write blank checks to everyone.  That’s not what I’m proposing with a social approach to customer service.

However, the tough traditional stance invites customers with valid complaints to seek out alternative solutions for being heard—increasingly in ways that can be heard not just within an intimate circle, but around the world.  Statistically insignificant is no longer relevant when customers can be as vocal as a head of state, thanks to the democratization of storytelling options.

Meaning that it behooves every organization to learn about humility and respect for customers and to inject that spirit into every silo.  All organizations exist, not in a avoid, but in a marketplace.  Business transactions take place between individuals––not brands or companies—as a result of conversation based on careful listening, respect and trust. It’s our humanity that leads to loyalty, brand fervor and word-of-mouth endorsements.

That’s making customer service more social.

The companies I refer to above have for the most part adopted a more social approach to customer service. A viral and public outcry forced them to reevaluate processes and interactions with customers, critics, advocates and supporters, and hire full-time customer advocates trained and empowered to listen, respond, and resolve issues (e.g, Frank Eliason @ComcastCares).   They have worked to welcome social feedback into their processes and are better for it, having discovered that customer feedback paves the way to invaluable business insights, worth far more than the original customer service costs.

Making customer service more social requires a radical rethinking of cost centers and hiring practices. Many traditional customer service departments are the domain of least-appreciated employees whose perspectives are rarely integrated into the overall business; they are expected to adhere to rigid scripts.

The crazy thing about rigidity, particularly corporate rigidity, is that it generates a David and Goliath reaction. As customers, we feel wronged.  We want to escalate the complaint, find a backdoor and express our frustration. We want to be acknowledged and listened to. We want to deal with people and not the system.

Be social in your customer service dealings. Defuse the frustration. Find resolution.

Look at how Zappos has differentiated themselves via their commitment to customer service, or rather customer care.  It is available 24/7, live via the phone as well as through social channels, such as Twitter. You may even interact directly with CEO Tony Hsieh.  That’s making customer service social. Zappos has succeeded by being very social with talented, trained, passionate employees.

Boeing has graciously issued a social mea culpa, acknowledging mistakes. I’m hopeful they will embrace openness and newfound humanity in their interactions with customers.

Staples considers interaction with customers an opportunity for insights as well as delight, training customer-care representatives to interact on social channels while preserving the ‘voice’ and maintaining consistency.

Humility, respect for customers, a willingness to appreciate individuals within corporate walls as well as outside, a desire to improve and truly delight, proper training, openness to a variety of perspectives, a willingness to empower and be human and a strong desire to listen.  All characteristics of a social customer-service company.

What would you add?