I Hate Everything About This Post!!!

A Four-Act Rant, including a Surprise Guest Rant

Down on my knees:

My local mega-cosmetics-store (yes, folks, you know you live in a super-urban area when you have a cosmetics store that’s larger than most people’s grocery stores) went through a massive renovation about six months ago. I found out about it five-and-a-half months late because cosmetics superstores are not my thing.

But I digress. Back to the reno.

This reno made the store look like a beautiful white chamber, very futuristic… in 1962. Okay, so I show up late and I don’t care for it much. But all I want is my usual mascara, which I’ve needed to get for a couple of months, but it’s not my thing…. oh, I already said that.

Lovely, white white white lab-style scene. I find it hard to orient myself. I make the classic customer’s decision that this is because I’m a dolt, not because they’ve taken all visual cues away from the huge space.

Your customers decide that all the time. Then they walk out or click away. That’s ‘cuz they don’t need my mascara, I presume.

In the section I’ve been hunting for, things are no longer grouped by brand. As they are in every other cosmetics section of every other doggone store I’ve ever set foot in. Now they’ve got me disoriented, they’ve violated conventions that make shopping easy for me to understand, and at last…

At last I find the Mascara Bar. Yes, now I must suffer cutsey indignities like calling this area a Mascara Bar. I am on my way to mildly annoyed, but I still need the stuff. My brand located, style spotted, all that remains is to find the shade I want.

This is when I notice that the racks go all the way to the floor. Not backstock, or drawers, or extras, but the actual hanging racks that I am trying to look through to find my mascara. The Kid happened to be with me, and she saw nothing wrong with crawling on the floor to look for me (thanks, Kid!), but I do. When she didn’t spot it, and I wasn’t sure whether she knew what she was looking for—yes, I had to get down, on my wool-clad knees, in my suit, to look at bloody floor-level to be certain that my mascara wasn’t there.

Which it wasn’t.

… …

If I go back, hoping it will be in stock, what I can’t decide is, will I ask for sales help?

What’s more awful: me on my knees just so I can give them money, or asking a salesperson to humiliate herself to keep my knees clean?

The new interiors are an Experience Design FAIL in every way.

UPS redux:

Long time readers may remember my difficulties in getting packages sent via UPS to my home address. I’ve even offered UPS tips to improve their Customer Experience, but it seems they’re a little slow in implementing the changes.

For nearly two years I have avoided UPS for personal and professional shipping, due to this impasse with the company. I’ll even find another supplier if I need to, when the company I wanted to do business with can’t ship via FedEx or USPS.

Except… when I’ve just got to have a certain something, and I can’t get it any other way. Such was the case a few weeks ago for a small package I wanted delivered to my home. On the delivery date, oh what luck, I even happened to be home with a sick kid. We’d have no delivery shenanigans this day…

I checked the tracking number a few times during the day. Out for delivery, out for delivery… no updates, but nothing going wrong either. I kept the blinds on our big picture window open and watched the long front walk for Brown, and continually scanned the parking lot for a truck. All day, while sitting at the computer, while writing, or while taking care of The Kid, checking out the window every few minutes.

At 7 pm I checked the tracking number again… UPS’ site says they can not give delivery estimates but they’ll deliver by 7, yet the tracking number still said out for delivery. The Kid and I were watching a movie so I kept one eye on the picture window, and didn’t bother the computer again until 7:45… when the website said “7:28 pm. THE RECEIVER WAS UNAVAILABLE TO SIGN ON THE 1ST DELIVERY ATTEMPT.”

For a package that did not require a signature. But as my past difficulties have shown me, with UPS that’s a mere technicality.

I’d been sitting there all day for nothing.

I called their 800 number immediately. I explained with a bit of agitation in my voice that I wanted the truck to turn around, he or she is supposedly only 15 minutes away at most, and NO attempt had been made—the truck had not been in the lot, no one had walked up the sidewalk, and of course, no one had been to the door, all of which I’d been watching like a hawk all day precisely so this wouldn’t happen. I explained that this has happened several times before—and variations on this—and that I avoid UPS like the plague because of it, though of course, I know it’s not your fault, Customer Service Guy, you’re just the one who has to hear this stuff. So please turn that driver back from wherever he is, and save him the faux trip that he probably won’t make tomorrow.

He said he was not able to have the driver turn around, because he could not contact the driver. He made me check my front door to see if there was a UPS “attempted delivery” sticker, which I assured him there would not be, and there wasn’t. Even after listening to everything that day and my history with the company, he still said “That’s odd. He was required to leave a note.”

“I am trying to tell you that he has NOT been here.”

The gentleman had been typing furiously the entire time I was on the phone with him. I made sure he understood that it’s not even the undelivered package that was really bothering me, but having the delivery person lie about his whereabouts and mine to save face. I don’t know where he was, but I know where I was. If they’re running too late they ought to write in the system, “ran too late.” Not lie about whether I was there, and think I’m too stupid to find out.

He said that so-and-so from the local office would contact me between 8 and 9 tomorrow morning, after she’d figured out what happened, and give me an estimated delivery time for that day.

At 11 am so-and-so called, and left a message to tell me that she was sorry I had not been there to accept the package, but a different driver would deliver it between 2 and 3 pm. No phone number to call her back.

So I guess the Customer Service Guy was typing an email to his girlfriend, because he sure didn’t tell her that I WAS there, every minute of the day, and the driver is the one who wasn’t. Which means the driver is not going to answer for this incident… which probably has a lot to do with why this is rampant in their organization, judging from all the UPS stories I’ve heard since I first wrote about them. After going through a telephone-labyrinth for the sole purpose of trying to help them fix this problem—after all, I knew they’d attempt delivery again the next day, so I wasn’t getting anything out of the call—there’s no accountability at the proper levels. I wasted my time and my breath.

C.S. Guy apparently also didn’t tell her he’d promised that she’d call hours earlier, when I was ready to take the call and try to straighten this out locally.

The UPS guy arrived at 3:45 pm. Right when you’d expect.

… …

Even a certain something isn’t worth this.

Independence Day:

The 4th of July provided a lot of surprises for me this year. Since we moved to this area, we always head to Philadelphia to take in the historic sites and the evening festivities, but maybe I have blinders on as I go. This time we needed a couple of items before running out of town and thinking a 24-hour drugstore would be my only choice, I discovered that most major stores were open. For my readers who are not in the States, Independence Day was once almost as closed-up as New Year’s Day… though New Year’s, I’ve noticed, isn’t as closed up as New Year’s anymore, either.

Is this a good thing? Not to me, for a variety of reasons, but there I go digressing again.

In Philly the story was the same. Many shops and restaurants were open, which was convenient, but distracting from our usual purpose of taking in massive amounts of history, starving until we head to the scene of the night’s activities, and then wolfing down large amounts of street-vendor junk food. I mean, we could eat good food and go shopping between Betsy Ross’ house and Ben Franklin’s! That’s just not traditional.

When it came time to head to the Parkway to meet up with Sheryl Crow, we stopped in a little shop for dessert before dinner (Mama and The Kid get to make up our own rules!). We’d seen people walking by us with cups of soft-serve and we were dying for a little ice cream without the long wait we’d have for some icky premade bar up on the Parkway.

Once inside, we tried to get the hang of things from watching other folks. The place was serve-yourself and pay-by-weight, which seemed interesting enough. We made up wild flavor and topping combos and paid, and only as we were grabbing our spoons did we hear the cashier explaining to another newbie that we’d just purchased frozen yogurt.

I’m not complaining about the concept of frozen yogurt, mind you, but astonished that I’d misunderstood, I looked carefully around the place—there is NO mention of that anywhere, and no hint from the names of the flavors, to the name of the shop.

Not telling your customers what they’re buying is a huge no-no in my Customer Experience book.

We wandered out, munching and walking a bit, and kids being kids, mine decided after we were blocks away that she wanted to use their restroom, so we headed back. I’d finished my treat, quite surprised at how much I liked it (frozen yogurt is not usually my thing), but The Kid, who does usually like it, hated this version. So when we walked back in one of the staff asked me had she liked it, and I could honestly say, “Not as much as I did! I surprised myself.”

… …

The big problem is that they surprised her. Expectations play a major part in enjoyment.

If we knew what we were in for, I admit I wouldn’t have wanted any because I’ve not enjoyed it elsewhere, but she probably would have enjoyed it much more. No matter how many “wins” they may achieve in a pleasantly surprised person like me, the losses will eventually outweigh them.

Broken English, Broken Promises:

Last, the fireworks for this show are provided by my friend and fellow blog author, the Urban Panther, who also contributed the title for today’s post. She wrote me:

There is a wood company offering a new type of wood (torrified) in Canada. They have established a market in Montreal, and are now trying to break into our region. We are their FIRST customer in the area. We hired them to build a $7,000 fence, plus told them that we will likely order more wood to build a deck, then next year a balcony, and in later years flooring for inside. In other words, there is the potential for a lot of business from us.

Well, they promised the fence would be installed six weeks ago. Personally, I lost patience with them the second week, after the third broken promise. Because they are French, my partner, the Urbane Lion, has been dealing with them. He has been cool as a cucumber, with the patience of Job, until last night.

Yesterday afternoon, I got a phone call from the fencing company. The Lion wasn’t home yet, so it was my turn to deal with them. The girl didn’t speak English, but she did manage to get out the following:

Fence Girl: Because it rain, no fence tomorrow
Me: It’s not going to rain here.
Fence Girl: Yes, rain.
Me: No rain tomorrow. I am looking at the weather report right now. There is no rain here tomorrow. You CANNOT go by your weather. You are 2 hours away!
Fence Girl: Please wait. I get someone.

Fence Girl 2: May I help you?
Me (after a significant pause): You phoned me!
Fence Girl 2: Yes, yes. No fence. It rain at your place. (Her English was marginally better)
Me: There is NO rain here tomorrow. I looked up the weather report.
Fence Girl 2: Yes?
Me: NO RAIN. I want my fence tomorrow.
Fence Girl 2: Installer phone you tonight. Bye.

The Urbane Lion got home, and Panther relayed the conversation.

Lion: Give me the owner.
Fence Girl: I told your girlfriend that the installer would phone tonight.
Lion: Yes, well, for 6 weeks now I have been told people will phone me and they don’t. I have no trust that he will.
Fence Girl: Okay, I will have the installer phone you now.

Installer: Because it’s going to rain at your place, I started another job today I have to finish tomorrow.
Lion: **&&^% there is no *&^% rain here *&^%g tomorrow. &^%$ You will &^%$ install my fence &^%$ tomorrow. (And it went downhill from there for about 5 minutes)
Installer: Okay, I’ll phone you back.

Note: $#@! = extremely colourful French swear words

Owner: Monsieur, I can assure you that you will get your fence tomorrow.
Lion: Thank you.

Installer: Monsieur, I will not be installing your fence tomorrow.
Lion: ^%$# %%$# %$# %$# %$# (you get the idea)

Lion: Give me the owner.
Fence Girl 1: He is unavailable at the moment.
Lion: tell him to come get his %$#@ wood.

Owner: Monsieur, the installer double booked himself. I will tell him that if he doesn’t install your fence tomorrow he will lose his contract with my company.
Lion: Okay because I am %$#@ tired of all the $#@! broken promises. You promise one thing $#@! and your staff $#@! break them.
Owner: I understand. I will keep you posted.

Owner: Monsieur, the installer will be there at 7 a.m. tomorrow morning.
Lion: Okay. But if he’s not, I would really appreciate your wood being gone before the weekend.
Owner: I will not need to come get my wood.

The installers are here. And, as I suspected would be the case, they had no clue what the design of the fence is. The Lion had to print off the picture we agreed on with the sales lady. So, if he wasn’t home, the installers wouldn’t know what to build. And, it means they are currently standing around scratching their heads on how to build the fence. But at least they are here!

… …

This story made me wonder, as I have many times in my adult life, whether people should be as patient as the Lion (and the Panther, and I) are. Whether we should be or not, many people are. And many companies abuse that good nature.

Until you want to expand into an area where English is the primary language, customer service staff who can’t speak fluently may not be an issue. For this company that time has come, but they’ve got far worse to deal with in their utter inability to follow through on their promises. Your word is all you’ve got in business—no matter what language the word is spoken in. There are many businesses in this super-urban area I live in with staff who are just learning the language, but I enjoy giving them my money because it’s clear that in any language they are pleasant, helpful people.

Post script: The Urban Panther and her Urbane Lion finally got the fence they’d been hoping for. Was it worth the horrors? Let’s see what they do about the deck.

Okay, so I don’t hate everything about this post, but I do hate everything that happened in this post. I hope you got a laugh and at least a couple of wows from it.

If these things are going on at your place of business, dear reader, it’s time to get back to work—Maximum Customer Experience is still a ways off.

Have a suggestion for these companies, or a rant of your own? Please share how NOT to woo you in the comments!

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

A Not-Quite Fable of Customer Experience

Once upon a time there was a lady who wanted to buy a new hat.

A baseball cap, to be exact, but one that no ball player has ever worn.

Something extraordinary, something remarkable. A cap with meaning, a cap with zip. A cap with the verve of the giver and the class of the receiver.

Rarely has a ballcap been asked to be so much!

But the lady knew zilch about ballcaps. She did know something about the convenience-laden land of franchises in which she lived, and knew that no such gem would be found near home. She did a little research on the wild, wild web to find out about remarkable haberdashery in Big Cosmopolitan City, where she frequently travelled, and got addresses for purveyors of artisanal head-finery that would make a wonderful gift for a king… if kings wore baseball caps.

1.

At the appointed hour the lady drove in to the city and approached the first address. Their website hadn’t been much, but they came well-recommended.

They were also out of business.

Such are the times, folks, and I feel for you, really, but if you’ve gone out of business, either mention that on your site or take the site down, okay?

2.

The next two addresses were near each other, in the artsy-tony section of town. The lady parked, paid her 73 quarters to feed the hungry meter, and headed off to the closest one. The shop was tiny, immaculate, sun-filled, cleverly arranged, staffed by one, possibly the owner, who greeted her and her Kid pleasantly, and full to the rafters of all manner of hats. This was hat heaven. She was sure they’d go nowhere else. Oh, the prices stung a little, but she wanted to own twenty things for herself, they were so beautiful and unique, she’d spotted gifts for everyone she knew… she was almost distracted from the task at hand, finding The Perfect Gift for her friend.

At last, having gone through shelves, tables, and racks, nothing at all had truly grabbed her as belonging, perfectly, to her noble friend. Her standards were very high for this gift. Sadly, she thanked the smiling man still sitting behind the register, and wandered out as another customer wandered in.

Surprised there hadn’t been a match in such a wonderland, she peered longingly through the windows as they planned to make their way toward the next shop, when—she spotted The Hat! “Oh, yes, I like that one too, Mama,” The Kid agreed. They hurried back in, excited to tell the smiling man that they’d take the one in the window, no matter the price, please. “I’m sure those are on a shelf,” he said, still smiling, and among his vast array, he did find the cap displayed on a table.

“I’m so thrilled!” said the lady, noting the $86 price tag and swallowing hard, but grinning at the thought of the hat on its recipient. “I have a friend who loves….”

Between “I have a friend” and “who loves,” the smiling man had walked away from her, leaving her holding a very expensive ballcap, a rapidly fading grin, and a funny feeling, as he walked up to the only other customer in the store, who was admiring himself in the mirror, and asked if he’d like any help.

The Kid tried the hat on and turned to the mirror. “I don’t think I like it anymore,” she said.

“Me either.”

As they shuffled up the street they made up little things that were wrong with the hat once they’d closely examined it. The exact shade of olive was just a bit off. The shape was… well, it was a little too avant-garde, wasn’t it?

Eighty-six bucks lost today, who knows how many in the future, because… please tell me it wasn’t because I’m a woman? My money’s the same shade of green. Let’s just assume it was because you’re a jerk.

If that was a staffer, the lesson is don’t hire jerks, and if that was the owner, just remember what happened to the first hatter. Near-perfect Experience totally destroyed. I wouldn’t return to buy the twenty hats I loved if I won the lottery.

3.

They stopped at a few little shops for indispensable this-and-thats on their way down the street. At the final hatter’s that she had scoped out on the web, a place that was far more artsy-grungy than artsy-tony, a pleasant greeter took their bags, firmly but a bit apologetically, on the way in. She misunderstood for a moment, not having been mistaken for a thief at any other shops, but with an understanding laugh, she gave up her bags in exchange for a charmless clothespin, scribbled on in Sharpie. (Should’ve branded this, and should’ve used something cleverer, she thought to herself. Opportunity to turn my frown upside-down, missed.)

The shop had only one, large wall of hats, but there were only ballcaps, which meant plenty to look through. With nowhere else on the itinerary, surely they’d see something here.

If only they could see something… the wall of caps was behind an enormous cash-wrap area, at the opposite end of the counter from the sole register. The space behind the cash-wrap, plus the counter itself, put the lady and The Kid at least eight feet from the caps. They couldn’t tell if any of them were what they had in mind from that distance. A friendly-looking salesperson was hanging t-shirts on a rack near the ballcap end of the counter. “I can get something down for you,” she said.

“Well, I can’t see them to know what to have you get down. Can I get closer?”

“Oh, sure. You can get a little closer,” she said, returning to her hanging duties.

Relieved, the lady told The Kid to stay still and went round the end of the counter, quite far from the cash register, and of course, without her dangerous bags. She laughed again in camaraderie. “Thanks, because it’s really hard to choose one without being able to see them. Awful that they made this so inconvenient, huh?”

She stood at least two feet from the hats, not wanting to seem as if she might touch or disturb the grunge (dis)order of the store.

“Not that close,” said the exact same salesperson, with clear menace in her voice. “You can’t be behind the counter.”

The lady backed out. From the edge of the long counter, of course, the view was twice as bad—at a distance, plus now at a very acute angle.

“I cant buy them if I can’t see them.” It was a statement, not an argument. No point in that. She was already walking away.

“Mm. That’s how it is.”

They were back at the front door, waiting to be handed their bags in exchange for the cheesy clothespin, before the greeter had done whatever he usually did with people’s bags (they were still in his hand). The entire shopping experience took less than thirty seconds. Behind them she could hear baffled grumblings from all four of the staff, as she walked out, incensed.

If shoplifting is such a problem that everyone must be assumed to be criminals, you’d better find a way to make that mighty amusing. I don’t often pay money to be treated that way.

Your floorplan is a major player in creating, or destroying, the Experience.

Don’t let your staff grumble at anyone. Some folks are bloggers who seriously considered naming names today.

Once upon a time…

… there was a hot, frustrated lady, who just wanted to buy a cool doggone hat, wandering one of the most fascinating areas of Big Cosmopolitan City, attempting to talk straight to The less-annoyed Kid so her muttering would not be mistaken for insanity: “Can’t even throw my money at people. I’m going to write a post about this. I should take pictures… make a collage… ‘these are all the places I couldn’t buy a hat.’ I can’t believe how stupid this is…” when they wandered right by an unremarkable-looking store, ominously marked something boring to do with Hats.

Without looking at the bag I can’t even tell you the name. Big yawn.

The lady almost didn’t go in, because of the blah name, but she wanted a doggone hat, and doggone hats were here. She gave it a shot.

It wasn’t too well lit, but the store did have yet another incredible selection of hats. (Big Cosmopolitan City should be renamed from Sweatsuit Capital of America—sad but true in spite of all these cosmopolites—to Hat Capital of America. How does one city support four—okay, three—hatters in such a tiny area, and I suspect many more that the lady didn’t discover in other areas of the city?) The walls were lined with bookshelves, artfully displaying wares, and there were too many trees full of hats to count, dancing down the center aisle of the store. It took more than a half hour to peruse all the possibilities, to try on a few for fun, but mainly, to get the bad taste of the other shops out of their mouths and prepare to attempt human interactions. The Kid put one hat in the lady’s hand, insisting that they buy it for her, if ever a gift were located for the noble friend. As The Kid had endured quite a bit it was agreed to, as a reward for her help and patience.

Then The Kid noticed a hearing impaired man, attempting to make his interest known—a hat too high on the wall for him to reach. She pointed out to her mother how kind the cashier was, stepping out from behind the counter, coming closer to listen to broken speech, working with him through patient gestures, never once looking like this was something he didn’t deal with every day. The lady’s eyes teared up, just a tad, watching the elegant interactions between the customer and an unlikely, t-shirt-clad 20-something cashier. She put another hat in her hand that might look darling on someone.

Still, the perfect cap eluded them.

As she was about to give up, she noticed one last tree that she hadn’t examined the first time through the store. Ballcaps! and every one a delight. Soon she had several to choose from. Off to the mirror, to model them herself and let The Kid model them, trying to imagine which was right. The Kid took the caps back to the rack, carefully replacing them where they’d been, and the lady noticed a floorwalker, watching with a smile. She hadn’t “seen” him before but then remembered that for as long as they’d been in the store she had seen him… never pushing, never intruding, never helping (which they clearly didn’t need), nor warning in any way. Simply, and discreetly, there, letting them take their time to fall in love with the store. Almost falling…

The Kid walked back with one last cap from that one last rack, and from six feet away the lady knew it was The Perfect Gift. The Kid was already smiling, and they both began to laugh at how perfect it was. “But I can’t understand the price tag….”

She hadn’t said it very loudly, but the store wasn’t very big. The associate on the floor looked toward them and gave a half-smile. Still not pushing, only inviting.

“How much is this cap?” The lady knew that it did not matter at all what his answer was. When The Perfect Gift has been found, asking the price is only for curiosity. But she took careful note of his welcoming tone and friendly answer. She nearly sighed out loud with relief, and she walked with him to purchase all the hats she held. He’d even remembered which one The Kid fell for straightaway—though by then it had been in the lady’s hands for twenty minutes—and without so much as a wink, quietly offered to cut the tags off that hat if she’d like to wear it out of the store. Which she did. And for the rest of that hot, hot day.

At the risk of repeating myself—your floorplan plays a critical part in creating your Customer Experience. Make it a logical, but never boring, voyage of discovery.

When you’ve designed a floorplan for lingering, integrate it with customer service that encourages the lingering.

Hire human beings. Some folks say there are none to be had “these days,” but I say that some Mamas raise their babies right in every generation. Find those people, because you can’t train for empathy.

Discretion is underrated and in desperately short supply. Demand it of your help. Works for hats as well as it does for Mercedes-Benz. Just because you don’t sell high-ticket items doesn’t mean you shouldn’t treat your customers as if they’ve come to find a gift for a king—it’s your payday if they’re delighted.

And one more… get a website. With a fine enough web presence, I might have gone here first.

So ends the tale of the three mad hatters, and the one who got all my business. A not-quite fable of useful Customer Experience tips for you.

Had any fabled Experiences yourself lately? Meet me in the comments…

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

Wednesday Words

To Go Where Your VisionPoints, a few inspiration points for you and your business.

Money is just a symbol we use to facilitate the gathering of memories and experiences.
—Stuart Wilde

Is it true what I hear?

Some folks are afraid of marketing. You’d rather your sales just came walking in the door on their own. If you’re creating Maximum Customer Experiences, I hope a lot of your sales do wander in off the streets through word-of-mouth alone. But to grow, you’re going to have to shout about your awesome solution to my problem on a regular basis. Growing businesses can’t be passive about their sales.

We talked about the memories your company can create yesterday, but if you don’t talk it up how will I ever know?

So let’s look at this differently. I work my butt off every day to make my clients’ businesses work better. (How cool is that?) When I do that, I get to have money to pay my bills and to spend on other stuff.

Maybe your stuff, if you let me know about it.

Never be afraid to help me gather memories. I’m hanging on to my “symbols” until I know there’s an experience out there that’s worth even more. You don’t have to be a four-star resort or an incredible musician or a fashion designer to do it, either. Recent experiences that have been worth far more than the “symbols” I gave up included utility shelving that went together like a breeze and made a disaster area into a part of my home once again; a pair of scissors that reduces stress on my hand when I’m having one of my twice-yearly attacks of wanting to sew my own clothes; and a hazelnut spread I fell in love with in Spain many years ago that I can (finally) get imported to this country. All boring commodities to some, but utter delights to the right customer at the right trigger moment.

I want to gather memories and experiences with this money. I will gather memories and experiences with this money. Will they be yours?

It depends. Can you get over the feeling that you’re pushing me into something I don’t need—and guide me to something I do want?

Think of the memories and experiences you’ve gathered with your hard-earned money lately, and the companies that guided you to your purchases.

When you’re on the customer side of the equation, you’re glad to learn about a company that has what you want. Why does letting the right customers know about you cause such distress?

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

Tickle Me!

The journey to your next sale begins. You know how to create awareness. You can capture the interest of your Ideal Customer. You make the sale, a smooth win-win, deliver an incredible product or service, and you set about repeating that process with another customer. High fives, all done, right?

It’s easy to forget that a customer experience is still happening long after you’ve cashed the check. Does that mean it isn’t Experience Design by then? No way!

In the comments on this Saturday’s Round Table post, Chas of Project Home 101 wrote:

It seems to me that creating a successful MCExperience requires, not only the process of providing a service or product that will be treasured and remembered by the customer, a “meaningful product” as an end result of the experiential process of a sale. Together, the process and the product will keep your doors open and the cash register singing for as long as you keep in mind that the entire journey the client takes—from product presentation to purchase to product use—is what will be remembered and valued by the customer.

Chas,

You’re absolutely right. You’re selling an Experience, and not simply a product/ service, because afterward it’s the total Experience that keeps the memory of purchasing from you alive.

(For better or for worse!)

What about the journey the customer takes alone? After the purchase?

Dear reader, you know I can get pretty excited about Experience Design. Here’s where my train of thought went next:

So after I bought my DeWalt drill a few years back, it wasn’t the hunk of plastic and metal I remembered. It was the first project I put together with it and how I sailed through it compared to my old piece of junk drill. That’s my memory, and I love DeWalt for giving me that Experience.

After I got my web hosting through GoDaddy it wasn’t their ugly website (okay I still do remember that) or their consistent… um, hosting… I’m no techie, so I don’t even know if what they provide could be done better. What I remembered was their quick, never condescending, incredibly responsive, we-won’t-let-you-go-til-you’re-HAPPY service. Not “satisfied,” not “problem solved,” but happy with my answer. That’s my memory, and I still recommend them whenever asked because of those excellent customer service encounters, adding so much to the dry Experience of choosing a web host.

Help me create beautiful memories

It isn’t just about service, though it’s easy to understand that a server at your local Italian place needs to stay friendly after he’s taken your order, and that GoDaddy needs to provide outstanding service even after I’ve bought my hosting if they want me to stay with them next year. Experience Design goes a lot further than customer service, and yes, I think DeWalt’s Experience is just as designed as GoDaddy’s.

Designing Maximum Customer Experience post-sale involves making sure your product or service exceeds my expectations. It had better work, and work well. It had better be easy to understand. It had better be dependable, durable, long-lasting. It had better help me create beautiful memories of using it. Even if you didn’t promise these things, I’ll remember you badly if your Whatchamacallit breaks. If I’m sweating to read your instructions, if I’m combing the web for outside help, if I’ve got buyer’s remorse at 3 am, you missed this.

Designing MCE post-sale means extras that provide delight. Get the door for the lady with the stroller on her way out. Heck, take her bag for her. Send her a thank-you note in a week, asking how the new Widget is working out. Send her a card on her birthday. (Or chocolate.) Selling a toy? Just about everybody knows it now—include batteries. Want to make my drill even better? Include drill bits. Maybe I won’t buy the add-on right away, but including a couple for the newbie who gets it home without even thinking about bits would go a long way toward increasing goodwill. (Not me! I had bits at home. But I did think about that as I went through the packaging.)

Designing MCE post-sale does definitely mean keeping a close eye on customer service. When I call my bank I get amazing, 24-hour, human-being service. As a business owner and a mom I do personal stuff at odd times so believe me I know—they are just as knowledgeable and as empowered to take action in the middle of the night on a weekend as they are during “business hours.” And a little extra—they always call back about a day later. A real human, not an automated survey-taker. Asks me how it went, knows what my call was about, wants to know not “should we fire Susie,” but “is there anything else we can do for you.” No matter how many times that’s happened, I’m always surprised. And tickled pink.

Tickled pink

Maybe that’s the answer. Can we make Experience Design post-sale as easy as this:

“Will our Ideal Customer be tickled pink, long after we’ve made the sale?”

Experience Design post-sale: The answer has got to be Yes. Yes. YES.

I know you can make that happen.

Got a story to tell? A product or a service or a favorite company that helped you create beautiful memories, long after there was a salesperson in sight? Tell us how to tickle you pink in the comments!

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

Like Growth Serum for Your Small Biz…

1. Ignore fads
2. Be a trend of 1
3. Be as essential as morning coffee
4. Be yourself
5. Toss what can’t be measured
6. Toss what doesn’t give measurable results
7. Know what you offer
8. Shout about it
9. Audit your Customer Experience regularly
10. Listen to management
11. Listen to staff
12. Make real changes
13. Give credit loudly
14. Test on outsiders
15. Assume we don’t read anything but the headline
16. Romance us
17. Ask a customer
18. Get help
19. Give praise
20. Show more respect
21. Show more joy
22. Tell a story
23. Clean it up
24. Light it up
25. Talk it up
26. Look with fresh eyes
27. Take a sniff
28. Walk around
29. Get out in the real world
30. Get into the Internet
31. Write thank-you notes
32. Write a blog
33. Comment on blogs (like this one?)
34. Monitor what’s being said about you
35. Be part of the conversation
36. Beg friends
37. Hire professionals
38. Don’t be cheap
39. Scrimp where it doesn’t show
40. Be bold
41. Be real
42. Dress well
43. Take vacations
44. Take days off
45. Give your staff a raise. Now.
46. Expect excellence
47. Or fire their butts
48. Hold yourself to the same standard
49. Reward excellence. Frequently. Loudly.
50. Don’t compete on price
51. Respond quickly
52. More quickly than that
53. Read a local newspaper every day
54. Read Seth. And Andy. And Liz. Every day.
55. Read one book every week.
56. Start with this one.
57. Ask for the sale (Hire VisionPoints when you’re ready for more targeted solutions)
58. Ask for referrals (Tweet this, please)
59. Say please
60. Stop ruling
61. Start leading
62. Give ‘em what they want
63. Don’t sell. Solve problems.

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

P.S. If you enjoyed this post, I hope you’ll subscribe by email or by RSS (it’s free!), and link to it, Stumble it, or otherwise bookmark using the “Share” button below.

If you were my client I’d say to you:

The old ways are not as dead as you think. Connect with real people.

You’re neglecting your interiors woefully.

Keeping your business cards in a box to save money costs you thousands of dollars in new business each year. Get happy with them.

I don’t know why I’ve got to have what you sell. And I’m trying harder than your customer will.

This place is filthy—anyplace your staff thinks you won’t look.

50% of your staff have you 100% psyched out. Don’t be so trusting.

Functional beats “pretty” every time. But looks still count, a lot more than you think.

You’re making it too hard for me to buy from you.

The old ways are twice as dead as you think. Get on the web.

Nobody stops here because you’ve gone green.

You don’t know your competition as well as they know you.

Your biggest competition is Doing Nothing. Get to know him first.

You will nearly always miss the macroeconomic boat. So forget about The State of the World and shake hands with your neighbors.

Your employees don’t know what you really want from them.

Your customers don’t believe they come first.

Whining never sold anything. Keep it positive.

Your staff needs more freedom or they won’t stick around.

Half of them would leave right now if they could. So would half of your customers. Loyalty is almost dead.

I can’t figure out your website, and even though you’re paying me money I don’t care anymore.

Your staff are rude.

Yes, they are.

Signage—parking lot—entry. You can lose a ton of business before you’ve had a chance to show off your product or service.

Lordy, you’re stubborn. That’s great—it keeps you in business—and bad—it keeps you from seizing growth opportunities.

New customers are dying for you to solve their problem. Do you know what it is?

Someone else is already more convenient, cheaper, and faster than all the rest. So stop trying to be those things, and concentrate on not being all the rest. Be wildly, remarkably different.

You never make me want to jump up and down and throw my money at you. BUT YOU COULD.

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

P.S. If you’d like me to say such nice things about your business, email me: kellye (at) visionpoints (dot) net. If you were my client, I’d tell you VisionPoints is rooting for you all the way. I owe you the truth!

I’ve been holding out on you…

Last Friday, I asked you a question that was purposely misleading.

Do you “know” what it takes to win today?

A little food for thought:

You are not trying to beat your customers.

I’m not even sure you should be trying to beat your competition. Be unique, offer something different, and make folks you used to consider adversaries into allies whenever possible.

Don’t look for the win. It’s see-through selfishness today, and yes, it always has been. But right now, customers are looking a lot harder at you than they ever have, in the lifetime of your business or mine.

What it takes to “win” today, is sincerely wanting the customer to be the winner.

Same as it ever was.

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

Are you guilty as charged?

I look at your business in ways you probably don’t. That’s a good thing—you’re busy running your business. I’m busy soaking up and analyzing your Experience. When I look around, I see things you don’t know are there—good and bad. And sometimes, I might let it get to me, just a little bit.

I suppose if I weren’t feeling so darn ranty about it, I probably could have called this 10 Things You Can Fix to Get More Customers Today.

But I didn’t.

Herewith:

Ten near-fatal blows to Maximum Customer Experience

10. Disillusioned business owners.

Makes me sad to see that. Very, very hard to take action even when “a part of you wants to,” if you’ve given up hope.

9. The color orange.

There. I said it and I feel better. Orange makes people and places look bad. Sack it like a crummy employee. (Hahaha, Kelly, it’s pepping up your graphics right here at MCE. Yes, I know. But I’m not wearing it, and neither is the room I’m sitting in.) Close second: The color green, in restaurants. Appetite suppressant and general turn-off. Did you know that fast food places used to use green as a subliminal indicator to get you to leave fast?

8. A lack of clear web strategy.

What is you site doing for you? What do you, actively, do on the web, and why?

Worse, lack of Internet presence at all. I’d say we are rapidly approaching “too late” to get on the bandwagon except, there is always a newcomer to whom you’ll seem like you’ve been in place forever—if only you’re in place when they look for you. Do it now.

7. Dated design.

Oh, yeah. It shows.

6. Undervaluing design services.

You’ll spend $60,000 on a new company truck, but not spend somewhere around a thousand researching your Customer Experience strategy, or making your website a functional lead and revenue generator, or planning your interiors to maximize sales?

For fifty bucks I’ll tell you your fancy truck will never bring in one single new customer. Paint the old one.

Whoops. I told you for free.

5. Disrepair.

How can you let your customers sit on ripped vinyl benches, with stained acoustical tiles above their heads, and still wonder what you should do to make them feel special?

Take care of the details. That goes a long way toward making folks feel special.

4. Your name.

Ooh, sorry. I know you like it a lot, but yeah. I probably hate your business name. Take a look around—they’re mostly awful. They don’t make me want to buy and they don’t even make me curious. If you’re stuck with that name, you need to get a tagline that rocks. And quick.

3. Wasted staff.

We’ve invented the wheel, discovered the photon, built the railroads, grown Facebook and Craigslist and Twitter through word-of-mouth, and touched the moon. Yet most of us aren’t doing a quarter of what we could in our workaday lives. What could your staff do if you weren’t holding them back?

2. Rude service.

It’s related to #3, but it must be elevated to a position all its own. There’s no surer route to a lost sale.

1. Dirty businesses.

No, not that kind of dirty. Real, honest-to-goodness-how-can-you-not-notice-that, dirt. Filth. Easy to deal with, far too often ignored, and at the root of way more Customer Experience problems than I care to list.

From cheap fixes to big picture—sure, I hate these things now, but I know you can turn them around. Invest in the long-term health of your company by putting improved Customer Experience in place, starting today.

Your turn! Got a Customer Experience pet peeve? Share it in the comments. You know you want to!

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

*Thanks to The Ad Contrarian, Bob Hoffman, who reminded me in a recent post that I hate a bunch of stuff, too. What else are 2.0-friends for?

Polly* Had a Birthday Recently…

And in between some other madness, the ten-year old’s Mama and grandparents slipped in a birthday lunch at a favorite restaurant.

Where said ten-year-old ate broccoli cheese soup, as she does at every opportunity. Only since we were in Vermont (oops—blew my cover), Polly was able to get her favorite crackers.

The Kid, you see, is a raving, lunatic fan of Westminster Oyster Crackers, and the discussion was about the fact that they’re made in the very town we were dining in—Rutland, Vermont. I believe they have no bigger fangirl. Not only does she hoard them in every New England restaurant where she finds the charming little packages, she has also been known to howl (politely) when she dines at a restaurant that is hopelessly out of step with her demanding taste buds. Polly wants a Westminster cracker! She spreads word-of-mouth about this little company wherever, and whenever, her soup-loving soul takes a meal.

The back of the package had an address. My father has a GPS in his car. Did they not know how curious a fangirl can get? Did they not know that grandpas are contractually obligated to indulge the whims of little people?

Even when it involves getting so nervous about walking in to the factory, that she changed her mind four times on the way there.

Grandpa dutifully changed directions, yes folks, four times. He wouldn’t have done that when I was a kid, nosiree. What Polly wants (if she ever figures it out), Polly gets. And Polly wanted to thank some people for making crackers.

But this post is not about making it easy for people to find you.

I let Grandma, who is a bold soul, lead the nervous birthday girl in to the offices. When they were not immediately tossed out, we knew things were going well, and I took pictures of the scene while my father laughed at the whole business.

Westminster Crackers’ modest signage. Yah, it was snowing.

The photo below is our haul from the swag the nice ladies in the office gave to my mother and my daughter. Mom’s got the rest.

But this post is not about swag.

WOW! The freebies some cute, adoring chicks get!

The people in the office were surprised and thrilled; they had great senses of humor, and they were awesome to The Kid, who said very little but smiled lots.** They treated her well, very much enjoyed hearing from a fan, and gave her a bit of literature indicating that they get a lot of fan mail, though (we like to think) this may have been their first legitimate in-person stalking.

But this post is not about treating your customers wonderfully when they come in to rave, nor about remembering to treat little people with genuine respect, and never talk down to them.

This post is about the crackers.

Make something wonderful. These are not an incremental improvement, folks, or else neither The Kid nor I would remember them. These change the game. Make the meal. Beg you to use them wisely on your broccoli-cheese, so you can savor a few on the way home.

(And it doesn’t even involve chocolate!)

Create something remarkable. Don’t make the most, don’t blanket the country, don’t try to be everything to everyone, and commit hari-kari before you allow a mediocre product or service to walk out your door. You don’t have to be expensive to be a hidden gem.

You’re running a small business. Revel in your smallness. Be exquisite. Be sought after. Be hard to find.

Engineer delight.

From the tiny package, enjoyed dozens of times over the years (but never enough), to the grin on a kid’s face after meeting her cracker-heroes, Westminster knows Maximum Customer Experience.

Polly wants to spread the word about you—How can you make something so unique, so game-changing, so wonderful that it’s easy to become a raving fan?

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

*NOT her real name. No disrespect meant to all of my readers who are, in fact, named Polly.

**She’s shy, so she didn’t say much then. Later, as we rounded the last turn toward Grandma and Grandpa’s motel, she exclaimed loudly, “Oh, the Glory of Life!”

Her grin could’ve lit Manhattan for a week. Then the adults in the car laughed so hard that Grandpa almost ran us off the road.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Let’s bring in some fresh blood!

Let’s not.

I’ve been around a few blocks in my working life. If you’re reading the Maximum Customer Experience Blog, I’ll wager you have, too.

My unscientific estimate is that 2/3 of the workforce I’ve seen in my travels is underutilized. If you think that’s a bold charge, walk around your world today—at work, while shopping, while eating, while running errands—with your eyes open for it. 2/3 of the people you see don’t love their company, and they aren’t giving it their all.

Bored, disengaged, clockpunchers.

So many have been doing so much less than their talents for so long, they’re even resentful.

Bored staff=Missed revenue.

It’s a direct equation.

Every darn day. In your company. Bored staff ignore opportunities to improve and innovate, they do their work at the slowest permissible pace, they give minimum Customer Experience to the people who pay your bills, they create an environment of demotivation for each other. And you’re letting it happen, because you don’t care, either.

Don’t bring in new blood. Get the blood you have, pumping.

A new-hire transfusion is a lazy, artificial mask for a problem that will come raging back in a small-business heartbeat—when your new staffers discover that they’re not required to give it their all, either. That giving it their all isn’t encouraged or recognized by you, and sure isn’t appreciated by fellow employees.

Heart and soul from every person on staff, starting today.

Use what you’ve got to the maximum—starting with you.

Or new blood will only make a bigger mess.

Grow and be well-fulfilled,

Kelly Erickson

P.S. I’d love it if you’d take a moment today to Tweet, Stumble, or otherwise spread the word about this post (click on “Share,” below).

If you’re new to MCE, welcome! I hope you’ll join the conversation in the comments, and become a regular part of the Experience here!