For my friends that are not aware of the incident with United Airlines breaking guitars, I am posting the video link below.

It goes without saying that we need to be careful how we treat our customers.  Three million views in less than a week is a lot of negative press!

I’m sure during the development of this issue, the United representative(s) felt the customer should have received consideration outside the policy, but did not feel appropriately empowered.

Although generalized policies are necessary in any large company, these should always be backed up by employee empowerment.

Individual customers never like to be shown they are being treated impersonally by “broad brush” policies that leave them without identity or options.  ”I’m sorry Mr. Jones, there is nothing I can do, this is our policy”, is a good way out for the representative, but could be the worst thing to say to customer.

(Before you upset a customer, ask them if they own a video camera)

here is the link: United Breaks Guitars

Rudy Vidal
Creating Profitable Loyalty

I often encounter the confusion between frequent purchase programs and Loyalty strategies. I don’t believe these are equivalent and would like to address it.

For a long time, the marketplace has endorsed the lowering of prices as a justifiable form of value-add. And, although a lower price does, in fact, constitute value (more for less), it is hardly productive.

By now, most of us have figured out that the incremental sales achieved by a lowering of price will only last as long as the price advantage. We would all agree this increment should not be attributed to Customer Loyalty.

Points, free merchandise or discounts through frequent purchase programs, no matter how well camouflaged, still result in a perceived reduction of price. And, although customers may act more loyal due to the accumulated points in their frequent purchase accounts, they are in fact, attached to the points, NOT the brand. We should be careful not to equate captivity with LOYALTY.

I have a Delta SkyMiles account. Although I am somewhat captive, I took a United flight to LA (which I don’t like) because it was $200 cheaper. I am somewhat captive, but certainly not LOYAL. Captive audiences will stay as long as it is advantageous, but let’s not say that we are creating LOYALTY.

LOYALTY is the ultimate goal in a commoditized market. To have customers that have accepted our brand as part of their life’s value structure is a privilege and takes hard work. We can’t buy this kind of LOYALTY. If we want it, we’ll need to think about adding value to our customers’ lives, and making them emotional in the process.

Most companies have not been able to quantify the ROI on Customer Loyalty and therefore, find it difficult to commit the resources to creating it.

Instead, we continue to feed the price-erosion monster through masqueraded lower pricing, and add insult to injury, by calling it LOYALTY.

If we want Loyal customers we’ll have to do more than offer double points on any purchase before the end of the month.

Rudy Vidal
Committed to XCS

Today I was brushing up on Mahatma Gandhi, his philosophy and methods. If you are not familiar with his works and philosophy beyond what media or folklore provide, I highly recommend a closer look.

While reading, it occurred to me that part of the reason customer service has a large impact on our lives is not because it is special in and of itself, but because it is an extension of the golden rule and therefore, of good social order -

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.

The curious thing is that in order to follow the golden rule, we must be willing to temporarily disengage from our own condition. That is to say, we must focus on the customer’s point of view, putting ourselves in their position.

We cannot offer good service only when we feel the world has been fair to us, when things are going well, when all is just as we want it. Good customer service requires that we consider the needs of another, even as we struggle with our own. OK, this is sounding a little dogmatic, but isn’t it the essence of good customer service.

I often notice three types of customer service people.

1. Those of us whose willingness to provide XCS is dependent on whether or not we are receiving it.
2. Those of us who are simply trying our best to do a difficult job
   and
3. Those of us who have realized, strangely enough, that our own quality of life is usually positively affected by our honest effort to consider the needs of others.

Those of us in the first group, need to move to either of the others, or should consider a diferent line of work. Most of us, however, find ourselves in the second group as we move forward day to day to do our best at a job that is, at times, difficult. This is not a bad place to be.

But, the blessing of customer service work can more readily be felt in the third group, where our lives tend to improve because of our work. Where we become more tolerant and our problems seem to become less debilitating as we disengage from the idea that we are the center of the universe, while we concentrate on helping someone else.

Service does not need to be monumental or earth shattering. It just needs to consider the customer’s point of view separately from our own.

“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” – Mahatma Gandhi

Rudy Vidal
Committed to XCS !

Your contact center is suffering from unexpected staff shortage. Two queues are are in trouble. Michelle, one of your super agents is skilled in both queues. Where do you place her?

Actually, it doesn’t matter. The point is you will decide to put the agent in one of the queues, which ultimately means, for whatever reason, you will consider one queue, a set of customers, to be more important than another.

Because service and the idea of serving people has an ethical taste, it is easy to adopt a general altruistic philosophy towards customer satisfaction. As a humanist you may believe all customers should be addressed with the same attention regardless of their economic weight on the organization, however, for a business person managing limited resources, some customers are worth more than others.

Depending on your company’s priorities customer may be more important because they purchased a strategic product or because your company needs quick market share growth in a particular segment to win a positioning battle. For whatever reason, when in a resource constrained situation, some customers are in fact more equal than others.

Great customer centric organization work hard to avoid this dilemma altogether. When Customer Centricity becomes part of our corporate DNA, we begin to proactively manage the incessant pressure of limited resources, always including the customer in our business plans, our contingencies and our innovation.

Customers are resources just like cash. The difference is that customers can appreciate the value we add and the difference we make in their lives, and therefore, can offer long term loyalty.

The benefits in the transformation of corporate DNA towards customer centricity is not only external in the way customers see us, but more internal in the way we begin to see ourselves; holding ourselves to a different standard for the benefit of our customers, and therefore our own, as a member of a social group.

“Recognizing our responsibilities as industrialists, we will devote ourselves to the progress and development of society and the well-being of people through our business activities, thereby enhancing the quality of life throughout the world.” – Konosuke Matsushita, 1932

At some point we will all have to make the decision to place super agent Michelle in one queue over another, but our intention to work towards avoiding the dilemma altogether, speaks volumes about our future.

Committed to XCS !
Rudy Vidal

I’ve been thinking about intention for a couple of days now. So, I may as well post.

I think great work of any lasting value comes through intention. In fact, I believe clear intention may be a prerequisite to greatness. I read somewhere, “if you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up somewhere else”. The place we end up may be a good place, but we will probably not be able to reproduce our results consistently.

Through intention we can transfer the “human-ness” of our effort to another person and increase the likelihood and strength of the potential emotion. Simply because two people purposefully and intentionally interchanging in a common interest is emotional. Intentional service.

Some touch-points are managed by technology, collateral materials and other innimate methods, but even then, our intention can be made to show through.

Without intention we run the risk of having our companies feel machine-like and impersonal, even when we do a good job. Without intention we loose the opportunity to create and be part of a culture that is sustainable, reproducible and proud.

My intention is to serve my customer as I would like to be serviced myself.
Because it feels right and brings positive emotion to all involved.

Committed to XCS !
Rudy Vidal

A couple of days ago I traveled for the second time on Southwest Airlines.
It took the second time to fully understand and appreciate the experience. I think it wasn’t clear to me the first time because I was accustomed to a certain way of flying. I had accepted the flying paradigm handed to me over the years.

On the second trip, I read the airline magazine and came across a farewell article from the airline’s president Colleen Barrett. In the article she explained Southwest’s customer philosophy and how their success was based on a simple premise, an expectation and requirement of a display of “:Golden Rule Behavior” among and from Southwest Employees -

“Do onto others as you would have others do onto you”.

Once I read the article something seemed to click and I began to see things I had not noticed until then. Flight attendants were fun, helpful, nice, friendly. More importantly, passengers were the same. When the captain announced a weather delay, no one made the usual sarcastic comments or eye-rolling sighs. In stead there were the inevitable jokes about Chicago and its weather. The next thing I noticed was that the energy on the flights was less hurried, intense and more . . .I’ll say it, “loving”.

Southwest is not a high priced airline that can afford great customer service, in fact, they are the opposite, a low cost airline (one of the few making money). So, how does that work?

Ms. Barrett, understands it, and I suspect the entire culture does as well. Customer satisfaction comes from a state of mind. It comes from a caring spirit that needs no funding, no budget nor gadgets. Loyalty comes from the emotions we are able to create in our customers when they see that they are cared for, as people.

Most executives with whom I speak regarding Customer Satisfaction mention they would like to work on customer centricity but believe they can’t afford it. We must convince them all to put away their money and put their hearts out where the customer can see them.

Higher quality of life and higher business benefits are just around the corner, ask Ms. Barrett, or fly Southwest at least twice.

RudyVidal
Committed to XCS !

it sounds easy, but the reality is that you can’t impose a new mindset, or a new culture.
What I find works best in creating a fast transition is to create:

1. Understanding of the logic – Why do we need to change or improve?
2. Provide the vehicles or processes that will carry new action and intention.
3. Create an expectation for results, coupled with effective Key Performance Indicators or metrics.

These three components do create change.

I believe the vast majority of people, given the opportunity, want to do the right thing, want to satisfy customers, treating them as customers should be treated.

However, if they don’t have the process, the information, the empowerment and the expectation from management, don’t expect miracles.

Extreme Customer Satisfaction happens when Management gets a new mindset !

(Some related posting to doing it) 1 2

Mr. Robert’s recent comment inspires me.

I share his passion and feeling that students, especially in Business Schools (in my mind), need to hear this message. Very few Business Schools have curricula on theory, techniques and benefits of Customer Centricity; not for lack of material, knowledge or proven value. As a result, most business executives place much of their focus on the acquisition of new customers with little regard for the inherent value of our current customer base.

I often comment on what I believe are three key powers of influence and control in the world. Government/Education, Corporations/Business and Personal Values.

One of these three has a place in the other two, and is ultimately, the true driver of progress.
Of course it is Personal Value.

There is a place for personal values in Government. It is through our vote that government officials are chosen and driven to act in manners congruent with our values. However, the voice of personal values (customer values) is not so well represented in business, where all too often we see the choice between customers, ecology, and other popular standards take a back seat to the bottom line and shareholder expectations.
Asked to choose between the best short term interest of the customer and the bottom line, the customer is almost always asked to wait. By design, the system usually accounts for the customer only in the most drastic or catastrophic cases or after considerable evolution of mass expectation.

I don’t pretend that we can change the fundamental business drivers of an open economy, which we all know has more benefits than flaws. However, I believe that if we can show corporations that customer satisfaction and loyalty are of greater value than currently perceived, we can begin to make a fundamental shift. Even if XCS enters the board room through the back door, I think it can help to enhance the corporate bottom line as well as improve people’s quality of life far and wide.

Committed to XCS !

Last week I had the pleasure of speaking at Panasonic Computer Systems Company’s National Team Meeting in Tampa. As with most sales meeting, the purpose was to educate, promote and motivate the sales force towards increased efficiency and effectiveness.

Unlike most sales meetings, nearly all of the speakers (The Chairman of Panasonic North America – Yoshi Yamada, High level dignitaries from Japan’s Parent Company Matsushita Electric, and local senior management) spent considerable stage time speaking about Customer Satisfaction, or as the corporate culture addresses it, Customer Comes First.

Matsushita’s founder, Konosuke Matsushita (KM) was a visionary who saw the customer as the necessary focal point for a successful business before the concept was an accepted piece of common business sense.

I worked at Panasonic Corp. of America for a long time. In fact, I would say I grew up there and cut my corporate teeth under the influence of KM’s philosophies. It is clear to me that who I am and what I believe about customer satisfaction is, in large part, the result of this experience.

I often tell the story of reading an article in a business magazine as I was starting my working career. The story was about KM and his philosophies on business and social responsibility. Immediately I knew I would do all I could to work in his organization.

We all would like to think we are original in our thinking, but in reality we are greatly influenced by our environment and by key personages in our lives.

I have a passion for customer service and for the concept of turning the power of corporations towards social good. My idea? I think not.

I’m just thankful to have had the opportunity for such exposure.

We would all be better served to address a bit of KM at all of our Sales Meetings.

Committed to XCS !