Disney, where I am this week, has a concept called a Moment of Truth. A moment of truth is “any time a guest comes into contact with any aspect of a business, however remote, is an opportunity to form an impression.” Note that it’s “an impression.” It can be good; it can be bad.

Why “guest?” Because guest is much more hospitable than “customer.” What “experience?” Because experience covers so much more than “service.” Service is important, but there are many other parts of the experience than just that.

Can you see how that opens up the game? Can you see how this position, this mindset gives you so much more to work with? Let’s just walk through it a bit, using a few examples: a hotel and then a small publishing company.

Guest Experience for a Hotel

Let’s break out the different phases of a hotel experience:

• Prospecting – guest wants a place to stay.
• Research – guest compares information for selection.
• Purchase – guest pays for a room.
• Arrival – guest reaches the facility.
• Checkin – guest secures room.
• Entry – guest steps into the room.
• Inhabitation – guest’s stay at the facility.
• Error handling – anything that goes wrong.
• Checkout – guest leaves the facility.
• Aftermath – any contact with guest thereafter.

That’s pretty much all of it, right? Now, how many ways could you brainstorm to make this better, if I put you in charge of guest experience design?

You’d start at prospecting, of course, because this is where you’d find new ways to share with your guest why you’re the right choice. You’d use listening tools to find potential guests talking about traveling to the locale where you have a hotel. You’d think of ways to make that prospecting experience better.

Walking through it, you can just see it. How would you improve the guest’s experience at check-in? What could you do to improve the “inhabitation” stage? What else?

It feels obvious. But is that just me?

Guest Experience for a Publisher

Again, let’s break down the components of the experience.

• Prospecting – guest wants information/content.
• Research – guest investigates possible sources.
• Purchase – guest pays for products (services?)
• Consumption – guest absorbs the information.
• Aftermath – any contact with guest thereafter.

Now, with publishing, depending on what kind it is, might have more than one kind of “guest.” If it’s a magazine, advertising sales might be another kind of guest experience. Finding authors/creators is another type of guest experience. We’d have to add other components. But you can do that without me having to type it all.

What could you do to design a better “purchase” experience, for instance? We sell magazines as annual subscriptions, and we sell books as a single unit purchase. Why couldn’t someone subscribe to a book? What would that experience be like?

The method is supposedly simple: if you receive a free voucher to fly as the guest of Southwest Airlines, they send you a paper ticket. You present this piece of paper to the ticket counter person when you check in, and then you receive a boarding pass.

I believe I have the ticket somewhere. It might even be in my suitcase. But it got a bit confusing to me, because I flew a different airline into Dallas, and so I thought everything was just kind of adjusted. (Assumption. See how I’m still showing you this is my fault?)

BUT (never forget that when someone says “but,” they’re kind of discounting everything that they just said. I try not to write sentences with “but” in them for this reason.

But, if the system knows I’m a guest of Southwest, if Southwest’s own social media star and I shared handshakes last night at an event in the heart of Southwest’s territory, then why was it so tricky to resolve this at the counter?

The detail in this, that somehow not having a piece of paper issued by a computer system was catastrophic to the actual service of moving me from one location to the next doesn’t add up to me. (And let me be clear: it was my fault. It was my fault. I didn’t have the piece of paper. I didn’t follow the rules they’ve set up, because I didn’t have the piece of paper.)

But if the system knows, if the fancy people know, why isn’t it just, “Welp, here’s a new ticket, sir. Get home safely to your son on his birthday! See you next trip!”

Instead, what’s in my head is this: “wow, I’m not smart enough to fly Southwest. If I lose a piece of paper, I’m out of the game. Hell, it took me two years to realize that if I checked in the night before, I’d get a better seat. Guess I’m just not the right guy for this airline, complementary flight or not.”

It’s okay. I’m not always thinking about the day-to-day things. Hell, I didn’t even know Southwest flew out of Love Field and not DFW, so I paid my cab driver $68.70 plus tip to correct that error.

But man. Just because of a paper ticket? Seems like a silly system if it gets in the way of service.

Oh, we complaining bloggers. We mess up the simple things. Hello from seat 10F.

In an article about Google’s Approach to Social, Liz Gannes at GigaOm quoted David Glazer, director of engineering, as saying: “Everything is better when it knows who I am,” said Glazer, who is responsible for working on developer platforms that include social aspects[.]

Google’s new approach to social media:

“Who I am, who do I know, what do I do,” said Glazer.

You can read the article for more context, but I want to take it somewhere different.

Does your company know who you are? Do they know who you know? Do they know what you do? Maybe. Probably. Somewhat.

Does your company know who your customers are? (yes) Do they know who your customers know? (sometimes) Do they know what your customers do? (not as sure)

People expect a certain level of customer service as table stakes to the game. In the new, much more wired world, I believe we’re asking for more. I want my airlines to know just how often I fly, which seat I tend to choose, how often I upgrade, and whether I normally check my bag. Think about how helpful they could be if they did something with that information.

As we move into another year of social, where location and mobile is playing much more a role, I think people will want the companies who serve them to know we’re there (checking in with Foursquare would tell them this), who in the company interacts with them and in what ways. Imagine Best Buy knowing that Corvida is roaming the floor, seeing her most recent tweets that she’s looking for accessories for her Motorola Droid, and knowing that she’s blogged seven times (5 favorably, 2 neutral) about the company.

Remember, I’m talking about this being opt in. Privacy freak-outs, save your juice for Mark Zuckerberg’s crazy privacy situation.

What more could we all do with a socially integrated customer experience?

I’m working on this right now for a potential new client partner (remember, at New Marketing Labs, we prefer to turn our clients into partners). As we explore how much more value can be derived from the blend of customer-centric business communication and social software, I think we’ll find that better understanding the traits David Glazer mentioned above (who are you, who do you know, what do you do), as well as a few more (where have you checked in, what have you said before, what do we think of you), and we’ll possibly see some better customer experiences.

What do you think?

**UPDATE: Scroll down for the “making of” video**

Here’s the video review:

Can’t see the video? Click here.

If you want to learn more:

New: Making-Of Video

As almost every comment presumed I was soon to kill every other person on the road, I thought I’d show you how I shot it. Still, was it safe? I’ve probably done safer things than shoot a video while driving, but hopefully, you’ll get a better sense of what I saw and what controls I had while shooting it. If you’re still not pleased, it’s okay. I do lots of things you don’t like. I just don’t usually film them.

When it was my turn to order, she greeted me with, “Bread?” I smiled a big wide smile and said, “honey oat, please.” She said, “meat?” I smiled even bigger and said, “turkey, please.” And nothing. Terse. One. Word. Queries. I couldn’t get her to smile to save myself. And I felt like a machine could’ve taken the order.

Some of you are going to comment that I should stop picking on the retail service, and that she doesn’t make enough money, or whatever. Bull. You can be human at any dollar amount. I was the best damned grocery store cashier in town at $4.10 an hour. I loved people, and I made that show. Sometimes, I’d have a huge line at my register when others were free, because they knew there was a show to what I was doing. I was an entertainer ringing up food.

What I wrote this post for, and what I hope you think about is this: are you delivering assembly line service in any area of what you’re doing? Are you just moving information through as if you’re tired and jaded? Are you responding to your audience or your community in that way?

Rise up. We can do better. All of us. (Me especially.)

A few quick ideas:

• Shake it off. Just stepping back from the task at hand for a few seconds, taking a breath, squaring your shoulders, and smiling will actually help. Smiling releases some really interesting chemicals, even if you don’t really mean it at first.
• Mix it up. You can try some different phrases, some language that people don’t expect, some ways to change the experience.
• Turn it around. If your most loved relative or friend were on the other side of you, how would you treat them?

Just some thoughts.

I travel a lot. Currently, I allow Priceline to find me a deal. I love good hotels, but I compete on price, because the typical amenities aren’t all that differentiated, so why should I care? I’m thinking a lot about this from the mindset of hoteliers, and also from my interests as a business traveler. I want to run a scenario by you, and see if this makes sense. I’ll make up a hotel name.

Ideas for Hotels and Hospitality

Chris Brogan logs into the M hotel’s profile system. He’s already received his special 16-digit loyalty card. Now, it’s time to express his interests when traveling. Chris prefers:

• No floor preference.
• No view preference.
• No bed preference.
• No allergy preference.
• Thick down pillows.
• Heavy comforter/duvet
• Room at 70 degrees F.
• Lemongrass bath products from Lather.com
• SpaciousPLUS Desk with 6 power outlets and 2 LED lamps.
• No wifi preference.
• Herman Miller Aeron chair.
• Breakfast delivered: oatmeal, fruit, brie, orange juice, pot of black coffee.
• Wall Street Journal.
• Swimming pool and/or exercise ball and dumbbells.
• Late check-out.
• Opt-in for social features: business, arts, dining
• Price range: $129 – $199/night plus expenses.

What if I could show up and all that was just known about me? What if I could just swipe my credit card in a reader at the front desk and it would spit out one key (I only lose one at a time), and flash a room number?

This is so easy, and yet, we’re doing hotels as if it’s 100 years ago. I would skip Priceline if everywhere I traveled, I was guaranteed a room at a consistent rate range that I agreed upon. This means I’d give the money directly to the hotel.

Setting up rooms to meet my needs within their chain would be reasonably easy. In fact, if you look at my requests, I have very few specifics, except for the desk arrangements and the pillow. Hell, I even upsold myself room service.

The next-to-last feature is something I’ve always wanted: when I’m traveling, I want the OPTION to opt into a locality-based social network that allows me to pass an intermediary email address (and maybe distorted room number) out to other guests with shared interests. If it went through the hotel, and if it was noted that all emails and phone calls are stored for security purposes, but not reviewed without a warrant, then it would address most of the privacy issues. Yes?

And Then What?

After this worked out well, I’d want to expand concierge services. I want to have a database to start from and narrow down my potential interests in a city, and then have that last mile be served by a human (because one never knows). Here, I could see the concierge using services like Twitter Search and upcoming.org and Yelp and Google Blog Search to add to whatever’s been officially reported. I can see local venues knowing enough to tweet their upcoming events, and/or to share potential additional offers with visitors.

I want hotels to offer B-cycle for me to just grab a bike and go.

I want a virtual assistant at a rate of $20 USD an hour billed out to me should I have other business needs while staying at the hotel. This person can manage anything from basic laundry and store pickups, to simple business functions like copying, or making reservations, or any of those other services one comes into needing while traveling.

I want a selection of business books dropped off with the option to buy. Why can’t Borders or Barnes & Noble partner with the hotel and tap into the profile database, and let me select great books like Trust Agents for me to read while I’m there ($5/day or billed to your card if not in the room at checkout).

I’ll Stop Here

Any opportunity to be helpful is an opportunity to earn money. I’ll give you some of mine if you make my stay a custom fit. It might not look like a lot when you compare the room rates at a luxury hotel, but if you got this consistently from a whole class of travelers that stopped using discount services, wouldn’t you want to increase that revenue stream?

I’m not going to analyze the exchange further myself. Instead, I’ve got a few pointers for people who find themselves as the stewards of their company’s brand, regardless of their level (intern or CMO).

You Are ALWAYS On

As representative of the brand, you are always on. The lights, camera, action started when you lit up the social channel. People judge the whole experience, not the best moments. That said, here are some thoughts for when moments come up where you feel a little sub-par, or when someone catches you off-guard.

Here’s one way to consider approaching the problem resolution that leads to these kinds of issues.

1. Step away from the mic. Services like Twitter aren’t magical. We type into them. If you’re feeling a bit heated, take a step back. Speed of response is important, but so is level-headedness. Take a break for a moment. Step away.
2. Disarm. It’s one of the best things Stephen Covey ever taught about human relations. When someone’s on the attack, accept that they see things differently. Embrace that. It also relates to the fabulous method, the three A’s: acknowledge, apologize, act.
3. Apologize. Don’t necessarily assume blame, but apologize for the other party’s frustration. Restate what he or she has shared with you. “I’m sorry for your frustration. It sounds like you feel unheard.”
4. Offer an offline connection. In social-media-based customer service, one of the most important shifts is to move into a more one-on-one medium like phone or email. There are two reasons: 1 is that it’s more personal ; 2 is that logging an entire customer service resolution in real time on the web isn’t always useful to either party.
5. Engage the right people for the job. You might not be the right person to bring resolution. Don’t hold onto a problem for a long time before you realize this. Move all issues through internal channels, so that the people who can resolve the issue get involved quickly.
6. Check back a few days after resolution. A nice move is to connect with the person who raised the issue a few days after it has been resolved (whether or not this was to the satisfaction of the customer, it shows that you care). If the problem is taking a while to resolve, a mid-solution check-in isn’t bad, either.

This Could Be You

There are plenty of days when I know better than to jump into Twitter or start lashing out on blogs. I’m human. So are you. We all let the world get to us from time to time. Don’t be so quick to judge or to take the high-and-mighty response. There’ll be a day when your chips are down.

As more and more of us are finding our way into the role of trust agent for our organization, in some regard or another, I predict we’ll have more and more experiences like the one Doug chronicled. Hopefully, we’ll have tools in place to help us be human and friends to keep us sane in the mean time.

Say cheese.

Photo credit Saquan Stimpson/monstershaq2000

A Social Customer Request Sheet

1. Why do I have to learn your phone tree? Once I get into your system, let me punch in some ID (give me 3 ways to do this), and let me customize. The truth is, you KNOW why I’m calling. Don’t make me go through your messy tree. Let it be keyed to me.
2. Make your website all about me. Hell, Amazon.com goes about halfway there now. Why can’t you? If I’m a customer, then you have a sense of where I am and where I want to be. Can you help me get further along?
3. If you’re going to make communities, please align them to me and my usage. Meaning, if I’m looking to talk to other parents about how I use my dSLR and my video camera to capture my kids’ lives, make the community site about that and not your new amazing dSLR. I’ll be a parent much longer than that SKU will be relevant to your company.
4. Please give ME stats and don’t keep them all to yourselves. Why shouldn’t I know that I’ve called in 14 times and that I’ve had more than 24 agents working on my problems? I think stats would help alleviate certain customer service tensions, and they would give me more information to share, should the problem persist.

In short, if you’re going to think about social customer relationship management, then make it the other way around from the beginning. Make the customers the prime focus and not your company.

Could anyone do it? Not sure. What’s your take?

When I got on that plane, we started to taxi, and then at the exact moment I looked out the window and noticed that there were approximately 579,320 jets sitting around on the runway, the captain came on and said, “Uh, we’re like…45th in line to take off.”

Seriously. He said 45th. That’s like saying, “We’ll take off next week, if that’s just the same to you.”

I flipped on my phone to tweet a bit of steam-venting (as all whiny bloggers do), and the flight attendant came over and reminded me we had to have our phones off. I pointed out the window a bit exasperated and said, “Um, we’re not going to be flying forever. Is this really going to disrupt the universe?” After a bit of back and forth, I acquiesced like a sheep and cracked open my book.

I never blame flight attendants for stupid rules. She gave me a very apologetic look. It was all she had.

Not much later, the same lady came back through the rows handing out cookies. You know, a stupid sweet treat isn’t going to change my mood around. I thanked her politely, though. It’s what she could offer, and I knew that.

She then stopped and talked to me about how her mother and grandmother had bought her son a second XBOX 360 because his first had started suffering technical problems. She was frustrated because she’d heard that XBOX had a recall on some faulty boxes, and she knew her son didn’t need another XBOX, but who listened to her?

The story had nothing to do with today.

But you get it, right?

She became instantly human. We talked. She knew that I wasn’t happy, and she knew nothing she said about the situation mattered, so she just acted human. She knew that she had me, too. I changed body language. I responded. I reacted well. Before leaving, she said, “I’ll just ring the captain and see if we can get the okay to use cell phones.”

Moments later, the captain comes on.

“Uh, so I couldn’t get a word in edgewise with ground control, but I texted my supervisor. We just figured out that the tower’s not letting anyone depart on a westbound route…” (and listen, if you’re a pilot and I’m getting my routes wrong, this isn’t the point of the story) “…but we just plotted a course from a southbound runway, and we’re cleared to go. Flight attendants, please take your seat immediately.”

Huh?

Basically, our captain did the equivalent of jumping the curb and scooting down the breakdown lane to get us out of the traffic snarl.

We were airborne in less than two minutes after the XBOX story.

So, what went down?

USAir wasn’t responsible for bad weather. The flight attendant wasn’t responsible for the rules. The pilot wasn’t responsible for a 45-plane lineup.

But our flight attendant gave us a cookie. She disarmed a few frustrated passengers (me included). She didn’t go on and on about the situation, but instead did what she could with what she had. The pilot did the same, and further more, he got creative and went around a few roadblocks.

In all, it felt to me like a really great customer service turnaround, and judging by the looks of other folks on the plane who’d endured an equally bad travel day, we all felt similarly satisfied by what went down.

Do the best with what you’ve got. Be human. Connect.

It’s good stuff. Thanks, USAir.

My laptop is falling asleep lately and not waking up. I called the Apple Store number and was told I have to book on the web. Great, except that my laptop is offline. So, I go through the phone tree a few times, finally reach a human, and then beg for a sense of how busy they are. Answer: very.

Okay, so staffing is staffing. I understand you’re busy today.

But the “must book appointments online” bullshit? Why? I’m pissy about this. I’ve been a customer since 1984 (first Mac). I’ve got the stupid iPhone. I buy all your toys. I tell other people to buy your toys.

You’re forcing me to a website because it’s more convenient for you?

GFY, Apple.