Don’t kid yourself – Creating great customer experience takes effort

I read two blog posts this past week that sort of ticked me off. Not because the posts were emotionally charged or offensive in any way. After all, the election is over. The blog posts ticked me off because they mislead the reader. The posts suggest that creating a fantastic, memorable, exciting, loyalty-building customer experience that delights customers is really simple and doesn’t cost a lot of money. Just do these easy steps – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and you’re done.

Photo courtesy of Stuart Miles & FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The thing is, if this were actually true, we’d all be having amazing customer experiences every day and everywhere we go. But that’s not the case, is it? Both blogs are written by VERY smart gals and I plan to continue reading them because, well, like I said, they’re really smart. But hopefully neither will mind if I poke a little fun at their stories.

Fido and the Pet Store

In the first post, the writer compared her pet food shopping experience, first at a big-box pet store chain and then at a local, independent mom-and-pop pet store. Guess where she had the better, more personal, warm and fuzzy, loyalty-building experience? Of course – at the small independent pet store.  The clerk at the big box pet store was polite and helpful but didn’t offer to take the extra steps to get the special dog food the customer needed. It was a policy-driven experience. The clerk at the neighborhood pet store bent over backwards to help the customer.

I’m willing to bet the local pet shop owner’s heartbeat is only steps away from the customer. In fact, the blog post writer may have actually been dealing with the store owner. When the owner of a business is that close to the customer, the likelihood that you’ll have a more attentive, personal experience is much greater. On the other hand, the shareholders of the big-box pet store chain are wa-a-a-ay far away from the customer. So are the CEO, the executive team and all the “steering committees.” Is it possible to create a personal, attentive, warm and fuzzy customer experience in a big box chain store? Yes, it is possible. But it may not be the intent of the company. The intent of the company might be to become number one in market share by serving the most customers at the lowest prices. Second, if a large company wants to create a super-awesome customer experience, it’s gonna cost ‘em! I probably can’t tell too much to a local store owner that she doesn’t already know about taking good care of customers. But a medium to large business where the customer is “further away” from company leaders – now, that’s where I can help big time.

Starbucks and Big Bucks

The second blog post talked about how delighting customers doesn’t have to cost big bucks and in fact, can be hugely profitable. The post sites as an example, a Starbucks barista who carried on a flirtatious exchange with a customer by writing notes on her coffee cups over a period of months. It’s a cute story about how the customer’s co-worker would take the empty cup back to Starbucks with the customer’s responses. This back and forth cup dialogue went on for several months until the customer herself went into the Starbucks and met her cup-pal for the first time. No, they didn’t get married and live happily ever after but the experience made for lots of great postings on the customer’s own marketing blog. I wouldn’t be surprised if Starbucks encourages their baristas to put little smiley faces on the cups and otherwise make the beverage buying experience feel personal. And it obviously works. But the Barista Romeo example was a bit over the top. It’s a great one-off example of personalizing an experience. But not a good example to hold up to businesses and say, “hey, you should do this.”

Photo courtesy of Stuart Miles & FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Reality Check

It’s true; companies who focus on delighting the customer can be and are enormously profitable. However, it’s neither as easy as 1-2-3 nor is it cheap. Deciding to delight your customers is easy. Institutionalizing it is another story.

It will cost any company in recruiting and hiring the right people who naturally want to deliver a great customer experience. It will cost the company in new hire and ongoing training, performance assessment, recognition and incentives. It will cost the company by creating a culture where employees feel valued, stick around, and understand how and why they should create a great customer experience. You’ll need great leadership, a commitment to the long-term and a belief in what you’re doing. The per-interaction cost of delivering great customer service is very low. Getting to that point where hundreds or thousands of employees are delivering a great customer experience every day – that is a significant investment in time, money and effort.

Can you do it? You bet! The time, money and effort spent is a good investment in your business. But don’t let anyone fool you into believing you can decide to delight your customers on Monday and git er done by Friday.

Is it worth the effort? Absolutely!

Does Your Service Leave Customers ‘Holding the Bag?’

The subject handbag on Michele’s arm

My friend, Michele, received a bag as a gift. But not just any bag and not just any gift. It was a Michael Kors handbag received from her husband at Christmas. And it was RED! Michele loved the handbag, she’s crazy about her husband and apparently, the red color is a big deal too. So Michele called me the other day asking for advice because she had a really bad customer experience with Michael Kors. To quote her, she was expecting a good “Landmark Experience” and instead, well it was a landmark alright but not good. Not good at all.

First, my disclaimer. If you whipped out your antonym dictionary and looked for the opposite of “Fashionista,” my picture would be there. Much to my partner’s dismay, I am not a devoted follower of fashion. What I do know is customer experience. I’m an expert on that. So I did have to ask Michele, “Who the hell is Michael Kors?” “Oh, luxury brand fashion designer.” Once I figured that out, we were ready to move on.

Now, back to the red handbag. Here’s the deal in a nutshell. After only several months of owning the red handbag, the inner lining began to fray and then tear. By summer, the lining was torn in 4 places. Michele has purchased a ton of Michael Kors products – shoes, clothes, wallets and other handbags, even her bridesmaids’ gifts. I nearly choked when she told me how much she has spent on Michael Kors. Then again, she had the good sense to marry an attorney so, good for her. The red handbag cost more than several hundred dollars. Michele also owns another Michael Kors handbag and the lining on the first bag is fine after four years of use. For the money her husband spent and for the perceived quality of the brand, the red handbag was not living up to expectations. So off she goes to the Michael Kors Cherry Creek store in Denver.

And here’s where the experience really goes bad. The Michael Kors store associate told Michele that the tears in the lining were “normal wear and tear” (ironic, isn’t it. I never took the “tear” literally before). She proceeded to say that since it was “normal wear and tear,” Michele could take the handbag somewhere to get it repaired at her own expense (even though that is contrary to Michael Kors published policy and voids the 1-year warranty) or she would have to pay for the repair if the bag was sent back to Michael Kors.

Michele was not pleased.

The store associate offered another option. She could exchange the bag for the same style bag in the store, although they had only black and brown because the red was a special, limited edition. But the cost of the bag has since gone up by fifty dollars, so Michele would have to pay the difference to exchange the bag for a color she doesn’t want.

To make matters worse, the store associate was able to find Michele in their “system” but couldn’t see all the purchases that she has made over the past several years. So while Michele’s lifetime customer value was pretty high, they couldn’t see it. All they saw was a very unhappy customer and all they offered her was their “policy.” Well actually, not even that. They weren’t living up to their policy. Here’s what the Michael Kors website says:

HANDBAGS & SMALL LEATHER GOODS

Handbags are protected from the original date of purchase by a one-year limited warranty (proof of purchase required). If the handbag or small leather good proves to be defective in material or workmanship under normal use anytime within the first year, we will repair or replace the item free of charge with same or comparable product. Defective handbags will not be returned to customer.

The variations in color and texture are the prized characteristics of beautiful tanned leather. Over time, the leather will acquire a patina and may also darken due to the oils from your skin and direct sunlight, further enhancing the natural look of your handbag. Please refer to our Product Care Guidelines for further information on caring for your handbag or small leather item.

Conditions and Exclusions:

The warranty does not cover damages arising from dye transference, accidents or misuse, or from any alteration, service or repair performed by any other party other than Michael Kors.

I’m pretty sure Michele didn’t carry around her Ginsu knife collection in her Michael Kors bag, so I’m confident we can say the bag got “normal use.” Yet there was no offer to “repair or replace the item free of charge with same or comparable product” as their policy states. Additionally, the store associate never asked Michele, “What would you like us to do for you?” She never got the store manager involved to see what could be done outside “the policy” to satisfy this (clearly) very loyal customer.

Wow. Does this sound like any way to treat any customer, let alone a luxury brand customer? The disconnect here is that the experience of OWNING a Michael Kors bag is nothing like the experience when quality falls short and service needs to recover. Inconsistency.

Hey out there, listen up. The cost of losing the lifetime value of a customer is way more than the cost of a silly handbag (sorry, Michele, I mean a stunning handbag). It doesn’t matter if you’re peddling your aunt’s secret pizza sauce or making expensive handbags. If your service falls short, then customers just feel duped. They feel like you don’t really care about them – you care only about your money and your policies. And when customers feel like you don’t really care about them, then they start questioning why they were loyal to your brand in the first place. For all your hard work, that takes you back to square one with customers.

Is it time to take a look at your brand experience? Is there consistency between quality of product, service, support, after market, re-orders, brick-and-mortar, online, phone, chat, email? Or do each of these places where your customers show up live in their own little world, disconnected from the promise of your brand and your vision? If you need help figuring that out, let me know.

Bill Leinweber

Landmark Experience

The Shopping Cart – The Design is Largely Unchanged but the Experience Keeps Getting Reinvented

Goldman's Basic Design

Just about every retail experience involves a shopping cart.  I don’t mean the “Click here to add to cart.” I mean the brick and mortar basket on wheels. The shopping cart is over 70 years old and hasn’t changed all that much.  However, retail chains still struggle to innovate an efficient method used to get the cart into the consumers hands.  First a little background.

Folding Chair to Shopping Cart

The shopping cart as we know it today is largely attributed to Sylvan Goldman and Orla Watson.  Goldman was a grocery pioneer (Humpty Dumpty chain in Oklahoma) and Watson was a machinist and inventor.  In 1936, Goldman wondered how he could get shoppers to buy more groceries.  A folding wooden chair gave him an idea.  He placed a couple of baskets and wheels on the chair and – voila’, the shopping cart is invented!  The drawback of Goldman’s original patented design was that the carts had to be disassembled to be folded and stored.  Watson came up with the telescoping shopping cart design in 1946, which allowed the carts to nest into one another and required no disassembly for storage.  Goldman and Watson squabbled a bit over their respective patents until Goldman stopped

Orla Watson Cart

contesting Watson’s patent in exchange for licensing rights.

“Carts Are Provided For Our Shoppers Convenience”

Convenience?  Let’s be honest.  Shopping carts are provided with the hopes that you will fill them to the brim before making your way to the checkout!  As an aficionado of ingenious process efficiency, I’m intrigued by the ongoing innovations retailers devise for putting the shopping cart at your fingertips as you begin your shopping experience.  The superstore is about 50 years old and the shopping cart 73, and yet shopping cart logistics continue to evolve.  Think for a moment.  The last time you used a shopping cart, was it an awkward wrestling match to get one or a smooth and easy exercise?  Truth is, if the process was efficient, you probably didn’t pay much attention to it.

Who’s Doing it Well?

Shopping cart logistics can be tricky and expensive.  As a consumer, you want the cart right there where you need one.  You wheel the cart through the store and checkout and usually out to your car.  The store then has to pay employees to fetch the carts and bring them back into the store.  One exception is Aldi where you have to pay 25c to get a cart.  When you’re finished shopping at Aldi and return your cart to the queue, you get your quarter back.  The ideal scenario has the carts in a queue, with the consumer pulling carts off one end of the queue while the retrieved carts are fed into the other end of the queue.  Newer Lowe’s and Walmart stores have mastered this design with the cart queues turned parallel with the front of the store.  As you walk into the front doors, you pull a cart off the leading edge of the queue.  Employees return carts to the queue through special ‘mini’ doors on the sides of the entrance and away from shopper traffic.

Our newest Target uses a slightly different design.  The cart queue doors are in the center of the bank of front doors so you’re walking alongside the carts as you enter the store.  Carts are fed into the doors at the entrance and the shopper pulls their cart off the other end of the queue after they enter.  This is clearly the most convenient for the shopper except that both shoppers and carts are co-mingling outside the main entrance.

Not surprising IKEA has shopping carts down to a science.  After all, they’re experts at getting that bookcase or chair to fit into a box the size of an overnight bag.  The traditional carts are at the ready as you descend the stairs into the IKEA Marketplace.  These are traditional European style carts with all four swivel wheels and can be a challenge for Americans who aren’t used to them.  IKEA also has flatbed carts in the warehouse for furniture and larger items.  These carts are fed into a mechanical queuing system from the loading area at the front of the store.  As shoppers enter the warehouse inside the store, they pull carts off the end of the queue and the mechanism advances the queue so the next cart is ready.

Classic Process Inefficiency

The retailer that surprises me the most is Meijer.  Meijer is largely credited with pioneering the super store concept in the early 1960’s so you would think shopping cart logistics would be part of the mastery of their business.  Not so.  The Meijer nearest me is an older store but I can’t believe all the money and effort they spend on an extremely inefficient model.  The majority of carts are lined up outside the front of the store.  A small sign instructs shoppers, “Meijer guests, Please select a cart before entering the store. Thank you”  Really?  Not the best customer experience in inclement weather.  The carts that are inside are all pushed into a “corral.”  Shoppers have to enter the corral, grab a cart, then walk backwards pulling the cart out of the corral and backing-up into the next shopper trying to get their cart.  It’s even worse for the employees who fetch carts from the parking lot.  They bring the carts in via the same entrance doors the shoppers use, then have to make a sharp left and then a sharp right to get the carts into the corral.  I can’t believe Meijer hasn’t spent a couple thousand dollars at this store to redesign their cart logistics rather than subject their customers to and pay employees for such an inefficient experience.  Most Kroger stores I’ve been too are only slightly better.

So What’s Taking So Long?

So after 50 years of super stores and 70+ years of shopping carts, why are retailers still reinventing their shopping cart process?  You would think by now most retailers would have the whole shopping cart logistics thing figured out.  And why do so many stores have a such a shopping cart mess?  I’m guessing many retailers have only recently recognized that a shopping cart is part of the TOTAL customer experience and they are finally evaluating the experience (and efficiency) from beginning to end – cart to car and back.  In addition, a lot of upper management just isn’t accustomed to seeing things through the customers’ eyes.

So here’s a lesson for your business – Want to save money?  Take a look at repetitive processes that occur over and over and over each day.  One small improvement in efficiency, when multiplied by the number of times the process is executed, can save you big bucks over time.