Let's talk shoes

How long could you talk on the telephone with a stranger? 5 minutes? Half an hour? One hour? More?

What about if the conversation was about shoes?

How about 10 hours 29 minutes?

This was the 'world record' set for the longest customer service phone call by Zappos, the online shoe retailer with a very unique definition of good customer service. And they are so proud of this record as its spokesperson was delighted to explain,

' Zappos first core value is to deliver wow through service and allowing team members to stay on the phone with a customer for as long as they need is a crucial measure of fulfilling this value'.

I am not sure what was talked about for 10 and half hours though I believe that one pair of Ugg boots was in fact sold. However it does demonstrate Zappos legendary dedication to its customers.

Now this example might be a tad excessive. And the business case for this call might not be  financially sustainable. But it does raise one important question in my mind-how effective are call handling metrics and targets?

Too often call centres target average call handling times. In other words the average length of the call, or conversation with a customer or prospect, must not exceed say 90 seconds. And colleagues whose average exceeds this target will be subject to 're-education'.

So what happens in this environment-colleagues on the phone rush to finish the call as soon as possible to avoid breach. It must be like watching the Countdown Clock. The priority is to finish the call, not resolve the customer problem. Is this good for business? Is this good for the customer? No and most definitely no.

Last week I heard of a utility company, though I'm sure this tale is equally applicable to banks and anyone else with a large and even small call centre operation, whose rate of efficiency as measured by average call handling was amazingly high yet whose C-Sat scores were depressingly low. And there is a correlation.

For to keep down call handling times call centre colleagues were rushing through the calls with a high tendency to action single requests for service even though the customer might want to do more than one service action. And so this led to unhappy customers and the customer needing to call back. And so the number of calls into the call centre increased too. And you call this efficient?

This is a lose lose. It's not a great customer experience. Nor an efficient business model.

Now I am not advocating that 10 hour conversations about shoes should become the norm in our call centres. But I do say that by allowing our call centre colleagues to take the time necessary to help customers without the need to watch the clock, our call centre conversations will be more rewarding, more fruitful, more engaging, more customer focused and yes more productive and efficient.

If Zappos have found this out surely it is time that everyone out there with a call centre which imposes time limits on calls found this out too.

Trust me-talking about shoes can make for happy smiley customers and happy face accountants too.

The dumbest question in the world...ever.

In all my years in business, and there have been quite a few of these, I have heard businesses say many dumb things and ask many stupid questions.

Like 'your call is important to us so please don't hang up'. If it means that much to you why don't you have more people on the phones then!

Or how about 'our Marketing Director doesn't speak to customers'. Of course he or she doesn't, he or she is far too important to speak to the one person who pays his or her wages.

But the one question that takes the title of the 'Stupidest Question in the World Ever' is this-who owns the customer?

This is a question normally asked by a channel or product unit keen to 'own' the customer that they might sell to them. And I have known businesses tie themselves in organisation knots of Gordian complexity in an attempt to provide an answer to the question in neat pigeon-hole fashion. In essence businesses with this approach see customers as targets to be allocated neatly across the business.

It never seems to occur to people to ask whether or not customers want to be owned.

And I always like to work off the premise that no customer wants to be owned. Indeed any brand or business only borrows the customer’s attention for a limited amount of time and if you are really lucky they just might get added to their repertoire.

You might be able to influence their brand choice but in no sense do you own the customer and indeed most customers would run away from you if they ever thought they were owned or were part of some corporate tug of war between competing and internal arms of the same business. Indeed most customers won't even appreciate the subtleties of internal structures and politics. They just see the name over the door.

So that is one reason why it is the dumbest question ever-it is fatuous.

But there is a second reason-it is the wrong question.

The right question to ask is not who owns the customer but who owns the customer experience. And this is where it starts to get fascinating.

For it is my observation that businesses which will expend significant amounts of effort to determine customer ownership will glibly respond to the proper question by saying 'we all do'.

Really?

If everyone owns something then no one does and in this situation the customer loses through a sub optimal customer experience. No business would say we all own the P&L and hope to remain solvent; or say we all own health and safety and hope colleagues avoid a paper cut; or say everyone is responsible for setting our own conditions of employment and hope to remain competitive.

Yet it seems rather foolish to me that in those businesses where everyone is accountable, they assume that this will be a good thing for its customers. It won't be. So get a grip.

And so there you have it, my nomination for the dumbest thing ever said by a business. Unless of course you know better.

Message in a (wee) bottle

Those of you of a certain age, and I count myself in this cohort, will be aware that the first signs that the ageing process has begun are diminishing eyesight and the addition of Specsavers to our retail repertoire.

And this is a problem when staying in hotels.

Last week I had occasion to stay in quite a few hotels while travelling. And in each of these hotels I encountered the same problem.

( Those of you of a younger generation will not know what I am going to talk about now so you can skip the new few paragraphs but please come back before the end to learn the moral of this tale and its application to marketing practice).

And it is quite a simple problem.

In a hotel room where is the last place you are likely to wear your glasses? In the shower, of course.

And yet the writing is so minuscule on the wee bottles that anyone with less than 20:20 vision must surely struggle to work out if they are putting shampoo or conditioner or even perfumed hand lotion on their tresses. It never seems to occur to anyone in the hospitality industry that this might be an issue for the ageing who are becoming visually challenged

I mentioned this insight first to the woman in the corridor with the trolley who makes up the rooms and then to the reception staff and was informed that everyone says the same thing; that they are sick and tired of flagging this up through line management, staff suggestions schemes and the like; but 'they ' just don't listen.

And here is the paradox-those closest to the customer have no influence or ability to make things happen; and those with most influence in any business are the furthest away from the customer. I call this the Customer Experience Paradox. And it is a puzzle that all businesses should be looking to resolve.

Sure businesses will listen to the customer by conducting large scale customer research programmes and no doubt the hotel chain mentioned above will have some sort of C-Sat tracking, though curiously I have not yet come across this. Maybe this is a business that isn't after all interested in hearing what its customers think.

In any event I doubt that such studies will pick up the small but irritating critical non essentials like the size of writing on the shampoo bottles. But it is by paying attention to the small details, the small irritations, the small delights that can set a brand apart.

And to do this it must find ways to solve the Customer Experience Paradox. Perhaps by paying more attention to the collective wisdom of its staff and finds ways to ensure that their wisdom is collected and shared. And I don't mean the usual Staff Suggestion Scheme but a channel where those closest to the customer are brought face to face with those with the ability to bring about change.

Alternatively those at the top of the organisation commit a day per month to spend on the shop floor, working with colleagues who deal with customers and even with customers themselves. Nothing could do more to help 'them' understand the frustrations, needs and emotions of their customers. Walking in the customers’ shoes is a very powerful catalyst for chance.

Hopefully someone in the hotel industry is listening and when I next stay in a hotel I might be able to wash my hair without fearing I am putting the wrong substance on my locks and that my hair might fall out.

Stairway to heaven

A few weeks back I walked into a very tall building in the heart of London. I was only going up 2 flights and to save waiting for a lift, and to get some much needed exercise, I thought I would change my default setting and go by stairs. One problem-I couldn’t find them. And so despite my best and well-meaning intentions, my default setting continued as my default.

We know climbing stairs is good for us-it’s a good workout and can even save time.

And yet few office buildings do anything meaningful to encourage stair climbing beyond maybe the odd notice or two trying to encourage people to stair not lift and which I suspect has only a very limited effect.

What is the first thing we normally see when we enter a building? It’s the lifts not the stairs.

And indeed when we do find the stairs we will usually find some grim, fluorescent-lit, concrete passage hidden away behind fire doors. I have even been known to end up locked out when moving between floors by stairs because I didn’t have the correct key card access.

It can be very difficult to change our default settings as every marketer will attest.

Maybe we should hide the lifts and make the stairs more prominent. Give them a lick of paint, put carpet on the stairs and framed prints on the walls. And while we’re at it consider making lift access dependent on key card.

That should do it.

But this kind of thinking is as relevant to marketers as it is to the designers and architects of buildings. We may not be designing buildings but as marketers we are architects of consumer choices. And the actions we take can help make it easy or difficult for consumers to choose.

We already pay great attention to how our products and services get noticed when the consumer is shopping. Supermarkets place great store on the location of certain products to optimise yield. And online we all battle for Google to promote us high on the rankings.

But there are many other places where we can influence customer choice through making certain choices more or less attractive, and this is not just about price incentives or penalties.

We may for example be required to influence channel choice. And just like the choice between stairs and lifts, it will be our responsibility to change the consumer default through priming customer choice by ensuring one choice looks and feels more attractive.

Perhaps at a more tactical level we are prompting customers to opt in rather than opt out. Or to consider and adopt our brand’s CSR programme.

There are lots of opportunities for us to think how to edit and design the consumer choice menu. Maybe we should stop being marketers and start to become choice architects and designers.