A Consistent Customer Experience August 31, 2007
Posted by mhattoninovis in News.2 comments
Who can honestly say that they enjoy going to the airport? The long lines, the crowds, the flight delays – to sum it all up, no one likes dealing with the unexpected. As consumers, I think the one thing we all expect is a little consistency.
Recently I had the privilege of spending several hours in airport security lines and even enjoyed three bag searches while in these lines. During each search, the security officer would line up the liquid containers from my bag, make some determination around what was acceptable, and confiscate any that were deemed unacceptable. The problem was that each security officer had a different interpretation as to what was acceptable. So the same containers that were placed back in my bag at one airport were confiscated at another. SO FRUSTRATING!!!
The point here is that, above all, customers expect consistency…and they deserve it to boot. If your organization is not delivering consistent service to your customers, then they will ultimately get frustrated and take their business elsewhere. Having spent several years managing customer service organizations, I can tell you that some of the most effective mechanisms to ensuring a consistent customer experience include:
1) Clearly Define Expectations – Outline clear, realistic, and measurable targets that your customer service team can deliver against
2) Continuously Raise the Bar – Continuously monitor, measure, educate, and reward your customer service team
3) Over-Communicate – Ensure open and effective communication lines exist with your customer service team as well as your customers
Kim Proctor’s blog offers insights into various methods by which powerful customer experiences can be created and maintained. In fact, I would love to apply many of her suggestions to the airport security line. I’m sure you are thinking, why doesn’t he just pack the small size liquid containers in his carry-on bag? Hey, at least I’m consistent!
OMG! Giant Football breaks building! August 31, 2007
Posted by mukundmohan in News.add a comment
How to make tactics actionable? August 31, 2007
Posted by mukundmohan in Analytics and Business Intelligence, Business Community Management, Events, Inovis Solutions, Supply Chain Visibility.add a comment
Kristin Zhivago writes a blog called Revenue Journal and today she talks about “How data can turn you into the big dog“. Interesting enough, but although she says “This isn’t rocket science - it’s a process. It’s not a theory - it works.”, the post seems overall very theoretical and “preacher variety” to me. Why?
1. Its not actionable. Its has some guidelines, but none of the - Here’s how it works, and is not explained in actionable steps. Actionable steps are: 1. I did this, it worked, this on the other hand did not work. The third thing I tried had an immediate effect.
2. Its not personal. It feels like she’s writing to an amorphous being at the other end. More like students who are being lectured on the right way to think about a certain topic.
3. Its not easy to implement. The reason why lists are popular is because there is also a sense of “I can try these things now and see what works”.
What would I do better?
1. Share stories. Kristin seems to have consulted with several companies that have done this. Telling stories of how things went at those companies makes the post more real. You dont have to share names or specifics.
2. Think Monday morning actions. Most people I know being Monday mornings with a list of things for this week / day etc. Think about how you can help them put 1 or 2 new things on that list to try.
3. Give tips on what worked and what did. Suggest alternatives. This one’s obvious. If someone has tried something and can save me time I would go back and thank them for it.
Of course these actionable items dont apply only to marketing. They apply even to event management within the Supply Chain. Dashboards by themselves are useless. Unless you make the information actionable, its going to be a waste of time.
Send Michael an email if you have any input on how to make our visibility application more actionable to your supply chain.
picture credit: http://www.piperreport.com
B2B Future or How to make things less complex August 30, 2007
Posted by mukundmohan in News.add a comment
Notice I did not say make things “simple”, just less complex. Currently all I hear from our customers is B2B Ecommerce is complex. There are too many standards (notice the comment on Jon’s post), too many technologies, multiple means of communication VAN, AS/2, AS/3, Secure FTP and way too many points of failure.
Too many points of failure = too many failures.
If we step back a bit to understand why companies actually integrate their systems together, its to ensure that you can have automated transactions. No humans touching it, means no errors. No errors means reduced cost of doing business.
So the complexity comes in when there are multiple segments of customers and suppliers (by size for example) and you have to support them all. A large billion $ customer might want direct ERP to ERP integration, but a smaller vendor might just want email or fax (yes, they are still around).
So what’s your idea to make B2B less complex?
Let us know and we’ll feature you as a comment winner of the week at our blog.
The reason I got this post out is because Robert has a video on the “The Blog of the Future“.
P.S. the blog of the future exists Robert, its called Google Reader. People will STOP going to blogs except for the first time, and after that depending on if they like it (they will subscribe) and if not (ignore it). I see that happening with our blog already. Our pageviews may be down, but our readership is up.
