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Chris Walker and Robert Rose debate: What exactly is a great customer experience?

chris-walkerBefore industry analysts present their latest research to the public, they often chew over potential topics amongst themselves. And if they are located in different countries, that dialogue tends to take place over email. We thought we’d try an experiment and “liberate” one of those dialogues on this blog. A few weeks ago two Digital Clarity Group analysts, Chris Walker (St. Albert, Alberta, Canada) and Robert Rose (L.A.), got into some meaty issues around customer experience and customer service. Chris and Robert wonder whether customer service has improved over time compared to the pre-digital era, whether age matters in how customer service is defined and executed, and whether the customer themselves plays an active role in enabling customer service and experience improvements. (Editor’s note: this has been edited for clarity but is mostly verbatim).

Chris Walker: I watched this piece on “Customer Disservice” yesterday. It’s pretty interesting on a couple of fronts:

  • Underscores that customer service and customer experience are not all digital
  • Ties in to Tim’s CEM imperative paper
  • Life is never going back to how it was, but there’s plenty of room/opportunity to make things better

Robert Rose: Thanks for sending. I find the last point interesting: “it’s never going back to how it was, but there’s plenty of room/opportunity to make things better.”Robert Rose

We have nostalgia for things that never were. Customer service has actually never been better. Imagine if you could travel back in time to the 1970s and you told your mom as you turned away from your breakfast cereal that she didn’t need to actually repack and drive those shoes an hour away to the mall to return them – or package them up and send them (at her expense) and wait up to 6 weeks for satisfaction. Instead, there was a service that not only delivered shoes to you overnight – actually let you try them on and then for NO MONEY send them back for whatever reason in a box that they would provide, with a label already printed and postage already paid – and that her account would be credited within a matter of days.  She’d have thought you were smoking the wacky weed again.

Customer service has always sucked (or not depending on your point of view). I love this PSA from 1960 where the interviewer is “training” people how to return products and I love the “reasonable” and “unreasonable” stance the department store customer service manager takes. No, it’s our expectations that have changed. This Louis CK bit, “Everything is Amazing and No One is Happy,” exemplifies the false nostalgia.

CW: I wrote about this a bit over two years ago in a blog post. I agree that expectations have changed, but I also think that customer service has been better: perhaps in not so much in execution as in delivery and attitude. With so much human contact trending to online/impersonal communications, the face-to-face customer interactions have taken a beating in terms of empathy, courtesy, and service. An example that really stands out to me personally is my local Home Depot. This difference in attitude between more mature staff and younger staff is stark.

One question, related to the time travel: is more convenient REALLY better? Are we willing to pay the price for better service and experiences? Most of the time when a retailer asks me in person for my postal code or phone number, I give them theirs. It usually takes a few seconds for it to register.

Louis C.K. is brilliant.

RR: Yup I hear ya. Great conversation, and nice post.

I would agree that it’s different – but not that it’s worse. I’ve had both better personal interactions and worse that I’d chalk up to the “online/impersonal” trend. Some perhaps that now compensate for the latter (think Nordstrom) and some even despite it (my local book store).

I think the key difference for you at Home Depot is YOUR Experience and YOUR expectations, not that the kids are any different than the older people. You went to the big box store with conflicting expectations: you expected the small store experience and big box prices. “Yay, they offer 100 times the variety and inventory at a discounted price . . . but goddammit where’s the old guy with a pipe who can tell me how to change the gasket on my John Deere?” Home Depot did or didn’t reset your expectations, and you can fault them for that, but you’re simply never going to get both.

I still get my hair cut at a barber that serves espresso, shaves me with a straight razor and keeps girlie magazines (well, Maxim in this case) out in the waiting room. I happily pay about three times what I’d pay for a similar experience at Supercuts.

On the people side: I always keep question marks in my head about the difference between old vs. young. Every single time I hear the complaints about millennials I’m reminded of the David Bowie song “Changes”: These children that you spit on as they try to change their world/ They’re immune to your consultation/They’re quite aware of what they’re going through.

To your last point: yeah, I do think convenience is one attribute of “really better.” I think improved convenience IS the first step of a customer relationship. After convenience, it’s delighting the customer at every interaction.

There was a wonderful study done where they looked at people in a restaurant divided into three groups. The first group had waiters bring mints along with the check. They made no mention of either, and the mints increased tips by around 3%. They then had a second group bring out TWO mints, by hand, separate from the check, and also mentioned them, and tips increased by 14%. The last group had the waiter bring the check with a few mints, and then a short time later bring back ANOTHER set of mints, and had the waiter mention that it was “just in case they wanted more.” Tips went up 21%.

In none of those cases did the waiter have a “deeper relationship” with that customer, but they delighted them with something unexpected. There’s learning in that experiential creation.

It’s annoying to you that the retailer asks for your data, but remember their motivation: they don’t give a crap about YOU. They want to know how to deliver better service to people LIKE YOU. It’s a data collection game designed to ultimately give you a better experience. Well, let’s be honest and more candid: designed to give themselves a more profitable experience. You may not like the method of collection, but you certainly wouldn’t begrudge them (and to the point of your post probably at some level expect) the outcome of a better, more relevant experience.

As you say in your post “one of the things I like is that they make recommendations about what I may like to try next. What I dislike, vehemently, is that they keep recommending titles that I have previously purchased. Repeatedly.”

Perhaps if you didn’t “fool them” they might deliver you a better, more personal experience. I certainly don’t begrudge your distain from giving your personal information away – and if (and it’s a big IF) they could give you a better experience AS they collect the data they need, you probably wouldn’t care (or even notice). If they could make it more convenient for you to provide them what they need in order to deliver a better more relevant experience, you wouldn’t care. But you gotta tell ‘em!

Anyway – sorry for the long rambling tale….  Gotta go BBQ and get my drink on….

CW: You’re right, great discussion.

Just to be clear … the retailers that I “fool” were not the same retailer that recommended books I’d already read. I was honest with the book retailer because my expectation was that more accurate information would lead to better recommendations.

I remember having a “discussion” with a cashier at IKEA. They asked for my phone number and/or postal code. When I refused they got upset. They were told, by store management, to collect the information, but were not told why. They were also lead to believe that the transaction could not be completed without collecting personal information.

As far as the whole generational argument goes, it’s all bullshit, IMO. You can’t blame a later generation for your failings as a parent, mentor, or leader. You/we need to separate blaming the tools from taking on the responsibility of passing on whatever it is we have to pass on to younger generations. I’m a barely-boomer (1964), btw.

My brother in law is a general manager at an HVAC manufacturing company. When he hires young engineers the first thing he does with them is buy them a slide rule and teach them how to work out problems manually. They balk, but his point is that he wants them to be able to work if the power goes out.  My point is that it’s not the young engineers’ fault; it’s the system’s fault

(Dialogue ends)

For more thoughts from Digital Clarity Group analysts on customer experience and related topics, check out these links:

Scott Liewehr discusses what has changed in customer service levels from the brick and mortar era on CMS-Connected (video)

Where CEM and Information Governance Meet (blog post)

Content, Context and Chaos: How Marketing Must Change to Deliver Customer-Centric Systems of Engagement (insight paper)

Addressing the MidMarket’s Requirements for Customer Service Management (insight paper)

The Top Inconvenient Truths and Dangerous Misconceptions About Customer Experience Management (webinar)

 

 


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