June 25, 2012 28 Comments

A Healthy Obsession

Rock Gods

I believe there’s one obsession all companies should breed in every employee: an obsession with the customer experience. This isn’t window dressing. This isn’t “nice to have.” To me, it should be fundamental. Why? Because everything flows from that experience. How many opportunities are being missed simply by not looking bravely and honestly at how your customer flows through your process?

A Healthy Obsession

I recently stayed at the San Diego Marriott Marquis and Marina in San Diego. Upon entering the lobby, there was a human being standing there like a greeter. He guided me over to the desk, where my check-in process was handled flawlessly, and I was pointed in the direction of the elevators.

The very last part of this is where some hotels do it differently.

Both the Trump International in Las Vegas and the amazing Magnolia Hotel in Victoria British Columbia take the extra step of walking me over to the elevators and pushing the UP button.

This seems like an unnecessary gesture. This seems like a time-waster and a problem with process, especially if there are a lot of people waiting to check in. And yet, the difference is that I felt even more personally cared for at both of those other hotels, based on the starting experience of that simple gesture.

Let me be clear: the Marriott Marquis & Marina is an amazing hotel, and I had a wonderful stay, a great view, and flawless service. I’m pointing this difference out simply to illustrate the point of differentiation in my experiences.

And that’s just one kind of experience opportunity. To me, the bigger issue is friction.

Friction is the Enemy

I was seeking a word to sum up the problem with customer experiences, and the team at 44Doors gave me friction, based on this post. Friction is the enemy.

Where are all the various parts of the customer experience that might cause frustration, an issue, a delay? Sticking with hotels, the one that the Marriott Marquis & Marina solved brilliantly was the business traveler’s lament: plugs. Their desk was loaded with ports and plugs and places to stick my devices.

If you simply set your company’s every last employee on a hunt to reduce friction, you’d find much more customer satisfaction, I’d predict.

Follow the Flow

What is the customer experience for your business? Follow all of it? How do people find out about you? How do they take a next step? What happens when they get started? What about after you’ve “sold” to them? How much of the journey do you still hand-hold? And what happens when a customer leaves your care?

I wrote about this once before in a post about guest experience design. I believe in this. I believe there’s a lot to understanding the potential customer flow.

It’s also really easy to NOT remember to do all this, and really easy to believe that the system is working exactly as planned, after you do it once. But that’s not how life works, is it?

Following the Customer Experience Is Predictive of Future Opportunities

In speaking with credit unions the other day, I challenged them that banks weren’t their competition; access and trust were their competition. Meaning, it’s not banks that are stealing members from their credit union, but it’s problems with access to services and their money that causes them frustration (and trust, but that’s for another post). If every part of a credit union walked through the variations of a member’s experience, it would become clear fairly quickly that members have switched to being more reliant on their mobile phones for information, and that their websites need a mobile-friendly refresh.

The same is true with your company, by the way. Heck, it’s true with mine.

First Steps

How would you get your company on board to grow this healthy obsession? It’s a process. It requires building out some assumptions of what the map looks like now, testing those assumptions, and bringing together teams, probably as a whole and then one at a time, to talk about how your work influences the work of others around you. From this, perhaps there’s a “spot friction” contest, where you earn points for finding parts of the customer experience that are messy. Maybe you award the employee with the most points the role of “World Class Concierge” and you set him or her to the task of building an empowered workforce of friction-hunters.

And keep this a daily process rolled into a quarterly review. This isn’t a speech to be had at annual events. This is a lifestyle choice, or a workstyle choice, I suppose.

Where’s the Friction in YOUR Customer Process?

Even if you’re a solo consultant, what’s the hardest parts of doing business with you? I know I’m working on mine over the next few months, and then daily. What about you?

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  • http://sevenroots.com/ Tiyo Kamtiyono

    Just wanna point out, that the friction link is missed, probably you forget to enter http:// Chris :)

    • http://chrisbrogan.com/ Chris Brogan

      Thanks! Fixed it! :)

  • http://raulcolon.net/ Raul Colon

    The fact that many companies established a complex process to be followed and execute it a few times well and never revisit it is a reality to many! Companies run audits on critical processes that pose risks on the fraud or where they impact the financials! They hardly ever establish periodic audits on processes that have many moving parts.

    I think that by setting reminders and also reviewing your performance daily can help us all improve in areas that impact customer experience.

    • http://chrisbrogan.com/ Chris Brogan

      Sounds like another offering the consulting team at HBW could offer. :)

      • http://raulcolon.net/ Raul Colon

        I think we to a certain extent have already provided it we might just need to offer it as another option! :)

  • http://twitter.com/therichbrooks Rich Brooks

    “Friction is the enemy,” is the perfect way to sum up not just the customer experience once we have them, but also the process of getting them in the first place.

    I sometimes wonder why companies make it so difficult to do business with them, from requiring logins to buy a pair of socks, to not having enough sales people when I have a question in a store, to most of the stores in my downtown area closing at 5pm except when the tourists are around.

    It also makes me wonder how much friction is in my own business, both for attracting customers and during the project itself.

    I’m off to find some sandpaper and WD-40 and get to work!

    • http://chrisbrogan.com/ Chris Brogan

      When I turned my eye on my own stuff, I shivered. Lots of work to be done.

  • Pasi Rahikka

    Logistics?

    • http://chrisbrogan.com/ Chris Brogan

      Huh?

  • http://www.skipprichard.com/ Skip Prichard

    Love the healthy customer obsession. Understanding customer needs and meeting them is the key to any successful business. Today I’m going to look for unnecessary “friction points” and outstanding customer experiences everywhere I visit to see this play out.

  • http://www.carpscorner.net/ Sean Carpenter

    Chris – Great post and healthy reminder that “service” is just one component of the customer “expereince.” I alwasy talk about people will be more likely to talk about great experiences in detail yet will only mention service (good or bad) in passing.

    I am afraid that many companies don’t audit or review their “experience model” out of the sad reality that they assume that everyone should be doing their jobs.
    Disney seems to do a great job of seeing “a day in the park” through their customer’s eyes by requiring all staff members to go through a costumed experience as well as learning the history, culture and protocols of many departments.

    I have a sign in my office that says, “Doing what’s required only prevents customer dissatisfaction. You must do more than is required to truly satisfy a customer”

    Thanks for the reminder

    • http://chrisbrogan.com/ Chris Brogan

      The customer seems like the least important part of most business equations. Isn’t that scary?

      I love that sign.

  • davewakeman

    I often describe the “customer experience” as everything from the time the person first notices your brand until the person dies. Its for this reason that you have to work extremely hard as an organization to control the experience that customers have with you throughout every step of their journey.

    Or, in other words, you have to constantly be on the look out for ways to make your experience better than the competitors and also to make sure that your customer facing employees aren’t just mailing it in.

  • http://my168project.com/ Matches Malone

    Friction is how you make babies. ;)

    Seriously, your first time customer experience at a new hotel should be typical for a hotel of that caliber. I’m an amenities man myself, which is why I won’t be staying at Embassy Suites during the Con that I’m not attending this year.

    However, if someone has crash space available, that may change.

    Anyone?

    Thanks for the ad space, Chris.

  • Katybeth

    My business pet business (which supports my family) is run by three people..me, my 16 year old, and one helper friend and our number one goal is for people and their pets to have a wonderful experience with us. If it’s not right we fix it. Always. My top business goal is keeping my clients happy. It works. In ten years I never had anyone walk away unhappy. That does not mean we are right for every client but if we can’t help them we find someone who can and they still leave happy.

  • http://jeffkorhan.com Jeff Korhan

    Yep, I frequent Marriott’s and too have noticed lots of convenient places to plug in. Little things matter.

  • http://www.facebook.com/shephyken Shep Hyken

    Service is definitely a healthy obsession. I love the use of the word friction to
    describe what keeps companies from having a great customer service experience. Isn’t it nice to have interactions with companies that are frictionless? Think of a time when you took a flight and there was absolutely no friction; short lines at TSA, flight was on time, airline personnel were nice, etc. No friction doesn’t guarantee great service, but it sure can’t hurt.

  • http://JaredLatigo.com/ Jared Latigo

    I think from this perspective, the hardest part for me would be when the customer is asking for more work to be done on a project. Most of the time it seems like it would only be a few minutes to change something, but programming and design wise, it could take a couple hours. It’s hard to balance whether that time is worth it to please them and/or what it could cause for the future of the project. They tend to keep asking for more if they get more.

    Good points here…customer service really has gone down the crapper.

  • The Irreverent Sales Girl

    Brilliant!

    My vision is that EVERY part of my business and customer interaction is SPARKLY. From no typos to easy registration processes to enticing communications. BRING THE SPARKLE!!
    (And it’s HARD to do, and it’s FUN!)

    Love ‘em up!

    The Irreverent Sales Girl

  • http://jasminewanders.com Jasmine Stephenson

    A healthy obsession with customer service… I like it. I recently bought a camera and was so impressed with the service provided by the company that it’s highly unlikely I’ll purchase anything related anywhere else. In the long run, it can inspire a fierce loyalty that will keep customers coming back for the lifetime of the company.

  • http://www.facebook.com/david.mattichak David Mattichak

    After spending nearly thirty years working as a chef I have developed a method for finding the wrinkles in service that is as simple as putting myself in the place of the customer. I always find better ways to do the same old things by looking at them from this appropriate perspective.

  • http://www.michaelnichols.org/about Michael Nichols

    Great thoughts Chris! The extra mile matters!

  • http://propertyagents.co/real-estate-lead-generation-course Muhammad Ayaz

    Great article Chris! you always have something different to talk about and every time come up with the some great tips. Thanks for sharing very informative post.

  • Pingback: Why Customer Experience Is a Healthy Obsession | OpenView Labs

  • http://rickmanelius.com Rick Manelius

    I think the biggest challenge is the identification component, which is why I love the idea of a “spot the friction” contest.

    It can become easy to make assumptions as to what’s working and what’s not because we’re so inside the system that we’re blind to obvious shortcomings that outsiders can see a mile away.

    Time to start the contest with my clients :)

  • http://desperatelyseekingwp.com/ Cathy Tibbles

    There’s a reality tv show (in Canada) that follows the CEO/owner of a company as he disguises himself and goes to work in one of the entry-level positions of his company. The changes that he makes as a result of the experience prove that there’s not enough communication between the ‘top’ and ‘bottom’.

  • Jennifer

    I LOVE the Magnolia Hotel, although nobody has EVER walked me to the elevator and I’ve stayed there a number of times . . . That being said, they still outrank any other hotel I’ve ever stayed at, anywhere, for customer service!

  • ozio media

    Creating a great customer experience starts from the point where they first discover your business, right through to your after-sales support. Because so many businesses now provide the same or similar products and services, basing your business’ image on the quality of your customer service has become even more important. Business is all about relationships and successful businesses have good ones with their customers.