Build Positive Emotional Equity with Customer Care

The Situation: Every business has the potential to subject customers to an occasional "oops" moment ... but some businesses are better equipped to recover from those mishaps than others. Recently, a client with offices in a remote section of Canada asked me to help with some strategy planning. They kindly put me up in a charming little inn by a secluded lake. The setting couldn't have been more beautiful. But... there were a number of service-related issues that I found aggravating. Among these problems: no shampoo or soap in the shower, (only discoverable while one was actually in the shower, thanks to the wall-mounted squeeze-bottle dispensers favored by the innkeeper), no air conditioning to dispel the heat and humidity ... and a temperamental Internet connection that left me cut off from the outside world, unless I went to the conference room and set up my lap top on the ping-pong table. Normally, problems like these would have lit my fuse and launched me on a mission to track down the innkeeper and have a little chat about service quality expectations.
THE MARKETING TAKEAWAYS: But I didn't have that chat. So, I started to think about why I had not complained. I realized what a great job the management of that inn had done in “insuring” itself against “oops” moments like the ones I had experienced with the missing soap and the unreliable wireless connections. That customer insurance policy took the form of superb service interactions with all the staff at the inn.
Ernan Roman inducted into the DMA Hall of Fame. To learn more, please click here.
For instance: One evening, after I noticed the sign informing guests that breakfast was not served until 8:30 am, I asked the staff to prepare something I could take with me as left early the next morning, for my client meeting. They not only had breakfast waiting for me, but they also asked if I wanted to take a seat in the dining room, which was still being set up, and relax as I ate. During breakfast, I happened to compliment the chef on his excellent fresh gooseberry muffins. He said thanks and proactively offered to prepare an early breakfast the next day. When I arrived for breakfast the following day, the chef came out with a bowl of fresh gooseberries he had prepared based on my comments the prior day. These were just a few of perhaps a dozen great face-to-face interactions with the staff during my 3 day stay at that little inn. Management had trained every staff member, from the chef to the gardener, to deliver consistently exceptional service. As a result, every interaction built positive emotional equity with me. Those positive “deposits” in the “bank” of emotional experience not only built up my sense of satisfaction with the place, but they also made it much easier for me to overlook the occasional “oops” moments. THE LESSONS: The more complex your business, the more likely you are to inadvertently deliver an “oops” moment to a customer. In fact, “oops” moments are pretty much inevitable. You can’t eliminate all of them. The question is, how good are you at compensating for them by making regular deposits in the emotional bank accounts of your customers? Ask yourself and your management team: How much emotional equity are we building up during every single interaction with customers? How easy are we making it for our customers to look past the occasional mishap ... and look forward to interacting with us again?

What's Your Marketing Innovation Score?

Last December, I wrote two blogs (Top 10 Marketing Challenges Part 1, Part 2) to help corporate leaders with marketing management responsibilities. In those blogs, I warned of 10 "game-changer" challenges that these executives would face in 2011, given the rise of social media and a newly empowered consumer. Now it's time to look at the list again ... and assess your company's progress in meeting each of these ten challenges. The resulting numerical score is your enterprise's MIQ (Marketing Innovation Quotient) score. MARKETING INNOVATION CHALLENGE #1. Accept that the balance of power between buyer and seller has changed… forever. We have identified new ways our company can provide clearly defined, competitively differentiating value both at the point of purchase and throughout the customer's lifecycle. Mid-year assessment score: 0 (no action taken yet in 2011) to 10 (industry role model) ____ MARKETING INNOVATION CHALLENGE #2. Completely re-think how you view your customers. We have made Customer Lifetime Value an essential business metric within our organization. Mid-year assessment score: 0 (no action taken yet in 2011) to 10 (industry role model): ____

MARKETING INNOVATION CHALLENGE #3. Stop chasing the "quickie". Build relationships instead. The allocation of budget and resources has been shifted from a traditional focus on Acquisition, to a balance between Acquisition and Retention. We have changed our compensation plans from an Acquisition/new sales focus to reflect Retention and repeat customer purchases. Mid-year assessment score: 0 (no action taken yet in 2011) to 10 (industry role model): ____

Note: Additional insights are contained in Ernan's manifesto "Don't You Want to Do Real Marketing?" published by 800-CEO-Read.

MARKETING INNOVATION CHALLENGE #4. Communicate with customers and prospects through multiple channels. We emphasize the value of engaging with our company via all media and channels. Then we personalize the communications per individual opt-in preferences, so the value and relevance is obvious. Mid-year assessment score: 0 (0 (no action taken yet in 2011) to 10 (industry role model): ____ MARKETING INNOVATION CHALLENGE #5. Create uniquely powerful Opt-In preference-driven databases. Rethink your marketing so it provides unquestionable value from the consumer's point of view. We have conducted research to identify the value propositions required to engage customers to Opt-In and share their media, message, and offer preferences. We have developed an opt-in database to drive preference-based communications. Mid-year assessment score: 0 (no action taken yet in 2011) to 10 (industry role model): ____ MARKETING INNOVATION CHALLENGE #6. Re-design your web site to meet customer expectations. Given the rise of social media and the newly empowered consumer, re-think your entire website strategy. We have learned how customers and prospects define value and relevance, and we have followed their lead by connecting them with easy access to peers, subject matter experts, and the right people within our own organization. Mid-year assessment score: 0 (no action taken yet in 2011) to 10 (industry role model): ____ MARKETING INNOVATION CHALLENGE #7. Give Customer Service the respect it deserves. We have abandoned the view of Customer Service as an Operations expense line-item, repositioned it as a revenue center, and synchronized it with our marketing efforts. Mid-year assessment score: 0 (no action taken yet in 2011) to 10 (industry role model): ____ MARKETING INNOVATION CHALLENGE #8. Don't let short-term financial objectives destroy your long-term customer-focused strategies. We use quarterly financial forecasts as tools. We don't let the tools run the business. Our organization's strategies are focused on building and sustaining strong customer relationships. Mid-year assessment score: 0 (no action taken yet in 2011) to 10 (industry role model):____ MARKETING INNOVATION CHALLENGE #9: Model the behavior and the priorities. We have created an Employee Council and meet with its members at least once a quarter to hear about what is and what is not working. We model the resulting new behaviors and priorities from the top down. From the Mid-year assessment score: 0 (no action) to 10 (industry role model): ____ MARKETING INNOVATION CHALLENGE #10. Accept that ultimately, the responsibility for moving away from "business as usual" in any and all of these areas lies with senior leadership. If customer feedback dictates that a change is necessary in any area of our organization, our president, founder, or CEO is willing to make the necessary changes. Mid-year assessment score: 0 (no action) to 10 (industry role model): ____

Next Step: Share your organization's midyear MIQ score with the senior management team ... and identify specific areas for improvement in the second half of 2011.

Useless Technology; Ford’s Fall from Grace

In my recent book, Voice of the Customer Marketing, I praised Ford Motor Company for executing one of the great business turnarounds in recent business history. This year, however, there is disturbing evidence that Ford has gone off track. The firm slipped from fifth place in the 2010 J.D. Power survey of consumer satisfaction -- highest among non-luxury automakers -- to twenty-third in this year's survey. Something bad must have happened to the recently-solid relationship between Ford and its customers. I didn't have to look very far to find out what it was. After months of our own ongoing complaints, we watched in disbelief as Ford washed its hands of the problems we were having with my wife’s new Lincoln ... because “no one else had complained about these problems” and the technicians “could not replicate” them. Neither statement was true. Ford had indulged in what I call the Useless Technology Syndrome and was not taking responsibility for the problems that resulted. (See this blog for other examples of consumer-hostile technology “advances”.) Useless Technology is what happens when new technology is developed with more emphasis on the “Wow” factor versus the “function” factor ... and adequate consumer testing is not conducted. It’s beginning to look like Ford bet the goodwill of its customers on an ill-conceived plan to get to market first with a host of new, complex, and poorly conceived technological changes to its cars. These changes involved a wide range of high-tech design and engineering “upgrades” to the Ford fleet, notably in the navigation, music, and phone interfaces (via a new system called MyFord Touch) and the transmission and powertrain (via an option called PowerShift, meant to boost fuel economy). As publications like the New York Times , Consumer Reports and the Detroit Free Press and many other sources have reported, mishaps and consumer complaints related to the much-hyped MyFord Touch system are legion. These include problems with:

starting the car using the keyless, push-button ignition; a “voice recognition” system that quickly became notorious for its refusal to recognize human voices; a navigational system that was slow and unresponsive; a touch screen computer interface that rebooted unexpectedly and was less intuitive and far more cumbersome than the old-fashioned buttons and switches.

Ford seems to have rushed the pre-testing process and, instead, conducted its beta testing for its new Useless Technology systems on several million live customers, including our family. To top it off, Ford customer service was not straightforward about the numerous problems consumers were having with the new technology. Now Ford is paying the price. All of that hard-won Voice of Customer insight, guidance, and good will from 2009 and 2010 is in jeopardy because Ford insisted on being “first to market” with systems that were manifestly not ready for the marketplace ... and that many customers do not want. The kinds of complaints Ford is now receiving are signs of a serious breach of trust in Ford's ongoing relationship with its customer base. The right next step is for the automaker to spend time listening to aggrieved consumers.... so Ford can find out what customers need to see and hear in order to restore their trust in the Ford brand. For starters, I recommend a high-profile apology.