Oh, Hi! I’ve Been Expecting You!

Are You Ready Yet?

You’re never ready. Well, we’re here, and I can’t wait to offer you Maximum Customer Experience in a new home. Please make yourself comfy. If you clicked right over and didn’t get to read this post, settle in for a moment. Otherwise, play the music and race forward. There’s a bit of MCE stats at the end for you to giggle over.

maximumcustomerexperience.com

Big sighs, folks. Leaving my old love TypePad. Looking out the window of the moving van, as I move in with a new beau today. I’d like to say I move fast, but this has taken eighty (that’s 8-0) hours so far, spread over several weeks (I work, you know), and there is a LOT of housecleaning yet to do.

Good morning, WordPress, how do you take your coffee?

Me? Au lait, with just a pinch of sugar. Thanks for asking. We’ll get used to each other’s habits soon enough.

And a warning to those of you who will now go looking for trouble—it’s out there. Beta, beta. Updating of images and links within posts (oh, why am I always cross-linking?) will take at least another week to be completed. The first 80 hours were the fun stuff, getting things to look like we’re all used to but perhaps a bit finer, tweak tweak.

I didn’t want to wait another minute to take the Maximum Customer Experience Blog to the next level. Hope you don’t mind, I’m a bit eager.

If you’ve bookmarked posts (you have, haven’t you?) you’ll need to update your links the hard way, by finding the post at my new digs and bookmarking again, because wouldn’t you know it, TypePad won’t allow redirects.

Meaning, for those of you who have smelled fresh air in the last few weeks and haven’t been buried in code?

Meaning that I’ll keep the TypePad blog up and running (comments are now disabled, though) for a month or so to let folks get changed over, then you will get the dread “404 not found” when I stop payin’ the bill. I’m a bit afraid of the Google gods coming down on me for duplicate content during that time, but I want to make this smooth, so I’ll cross my fingers. Yes, feel free to leave comments about how many other horrible things will befall me, but don’t think I don’t already know!

“Feed”ing already?

I *hope* that if you are getting the blog now by RSS, I will be able to transition your subscription to the new blog without your lifting a finger. I’m telling you now if you don’t see Inspiration Points tomorrow (Wednesday Words…), it hasn’t worked, so please subscribe again at the new address (did you miss it?):

http://maximumcustomerexperience.com Might be worth doing for the Easter egg anyway. I think it’s a nice touch.

Mine is the only blog I get by RSS, so by tomorrow I should know if it works, too… if I remember to check… please leave a comment if anything goes pfft for you.

I have an email subscription to my own blog, so again I should know if that works by tomorrow late in the day; if you are in doubt, do re-subscribe and just delete your old one.

SO sorry to make work for my dear readers. I’ve tried to make this as painless as possible.

Hey, Kelly—Our new address?

You bet. Yours, mine, and WP’s. Without you all, well, I wouldn’t have outgrown the old digs, so call it your place to discuss the Maximums and the minimums of Customer Experience. Grow your business, or kvetch about everybody else’s. Put in a good word for the little guys who get it, or fawn over the Big Boys and think about how we can put their lessons to use.

Same MCE, new address. Did you miss that address? http://maximumcustomerexperience.com

Let’s see if we can burn down the new blog with all your fabulous comments and stumbles and diggs. I know you can hardly wait to subscribe to comments, so say Oh Hi yourself before you have to leave! If we get through today and tomorrow okay, I’ll feel much better. I’m a bit terrified right now!

Please, if you notice bugs beyond the horrors of links that come back to TypePad (I’ll get rid of as many as I can of those before you even read this), leave comments. Don’t be shy. If your subscription doesn’t work or if the blog looks really ugly (should look about like the old MCE does, so let’s not count that as really ugly, okay?) like somehow the code is broken… any bugs I do want to know about. Sort of.

Inspiration Points tomorrow. I think I’ll look in my collection for a good one on terror!

Later this week, I’ll tell you about a guest post I wrote for a friend that’s sure to have you commenting at a blog you may never have read before.

Statistics, please?

TypePad was my home for 143 posts, beginning exactly seven months ago today. I’ve been thinking about migrating from TypePad to WordPress since early February. (What can I say, I’m a Capricorn! I had to be sure it was what I wanted, then I jumped!) Note to new bloggers: There’s a lot more to it than ease of setup, which seemed so important to me in November.

If you think taking four months to decide to move is funny, you’ll love this stat: Early in 2007, I wasn’t sure that committing to a blog was for me. I’d been writing posts for half a year before I started the blog, and had a backlog of over 50 at that time. Some never make it (because some are crap!), some do, but my backlog now is even greater. I’d need three of me to edit them all to get them up here.

Over those posts, I’ve had a respectable 686 comments, which is a nice per-post average especially if you consider that not a soul commented on the earliest ones, as most bloggers find. What are you waiting for? That’s where the real gems are hidden!

Good night, TypePad. Parting is such sweet sorrow.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to have coffee with my new beau. Can I get you a mug?

Thanks, all, for riding along with me.

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

… And Finds Herself Inspired to Whip Off a Huge Email Response

 (Anybody surprised?)

Kelly,

I just recently found your blog via Big Bright Bulb. Your success and exceptional blog content are an inspiration for me.

[Dear Kristen. I am stealing the foregoing sentence for unabashed flattery in every email I ever write from this moment forward. Regards, Kelly.]

I’ve been looking for someone who’ll let me pick their brain along the bumpy road, as I launch my freelance/entrepreneurial journey and try to make my blog more visible…. [I’m] looking for a mentor of sorts…. who might be suitable and willing to put up with me.

Thank you.

Sincerely Yours,

Kristen

http://www.unobstructedcreativity.com

Dear Kristen,

I’m so glad you’re feeling inspired. Thanks for writing!

Brain picking is probably easiest done by reading backwards and forward, as I generally throw whatever’s in the brain out onto the blog, with respect to Experience Design. A blog IS about Customer Experience, with your customers being your readers, so you’ll find lots to pore over at MCE.

Not knowing exactly what you are seeking, my best mentorish ideas for a starting blogger:

I don’t get into the writing/ blogging process, usually, at Maximum Customer Experience, but if you take a look back at my 100th birthday post last Friday, you’ll find a lovely P.S. filled with several who do (and where I am constantly commenting with anything that does belong on their blogs and doesn’t belong on mine), especially Copyblogger (Brian), Problogger (Darren), Men With Pens (Harry and James), IttyBiz (Naomi), and Big Bright Bulb (Crystal).

Big tip: Many fine bloggers are in the comments section adding to the discussion. Always read the comments!

Brian and Darren handle the how-to-be-visible stuff, as well as Caroline Middlebrook at her blog, and Chris Brogan at his. All great resources. Again, they’ve probably answered all your questions, and the great thing about a blog is you can search through and find whatever you want to know that day, then come back again later without making an appointment, so to speak, to find the next answer!

Leaving comments on a relevant post (mine or others) will almost always get the blogger’s comment back to you pretty quickly (not usually Darren or Brian, though), so you can have half a dozen “mentors” at your disposal, customized to your needs. In addition, if the question catches other commenters’ eyes, you may get a lot more advice than just the blogger’s.

Subscribe, so you stay with the flow of a blog, if you like it. If you aren’t subscribed at Maximum Customer Experience, of course I recommend it highly!

Occasionally do a little social bookmarking (Stumble, Technorati favorites, etc.), because bloggers often notice when someone helps them drive relevant traffic to their site. When you give to other bloggers, they feel good about giving back.

Read a lot, soak it all up, comment when you can add to the conversation, and ask questions. Best practices.

Write about what your readers need to hear. Think about what words they might search for, if they needed what you know, then make sure you use those terms now and then. Write like you are talking to just one person, and take the time to fully imagine who that person is in your head. Pretend it’s a cocktail party. Be fascinating when possible, witty if useful; never be a boor, and never say all that can be said. Your blog is a conversation.

Oh, yeah. The one thing you may not hear anywhere but right here: This takes a lot of time to work. You will not have 50,000 readers next week. Or next month. Or in all probability, next year.

I am not saying all this to put you off an email here or there, but because you will absolutely get more out of a more public approach to learning about blogging. Guaranteed. (In addition, if your comments are well-written and interesting, this is one of the very best ways to increase traffic to your blog! People want to know who the woman who has that neat opinion is, they click on your name, and voilà! traffic to your blog!)

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Kelly Erickson

All right, fellow bloggers, your turn to mentor: What’s your advice to Kristen?

If you liked this post, please take a moment to talk it up! I’d love to get lots of mentorish comments from blog authors far more deserving of Kristen’s high praise than I.

Thanks, Kristen. You made my day.

Sometimes, It Seems Like You Can’t Get Your Mojo Risin’

• One-hit wonders
• Bands that peter out
• Authors of one book
• Bloggers who stop posting
• Businesses that “fail”

What if that’s all you have to say?

What if you’re just done?

Move on.

It’s all right.

Sorry, folks, but sometimes there are just too many rah-rah posts in the ether. You may feel pressured by the unending noise, to keep with a business or a strategy that’s not working.

I love sharing tips for success, oh boy do I. Today, a tip for letting go. We will return to rah-rah next time.

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

And How to Find the Right Level, to Improve Customer Experience Daily

Why do the most common musical chords include three notes?

Because one or two is boring and repetitive, and more than three may be asking for trouble unless you’re a seasoned pro. Too much “noise” for your brain to process!

Yesterday, we talked about letting go of micro-management for an afternoon. Whether you work solo from home or manage a staff of fifty, sometimes the best way to see your business’ needs clearly is to step away, considering your direction in silence, without the distraction of daily tasks.

When you’re fresh from this mini-sabbatical, it’s time to turn up the noise level, but only in the right places.

What three notes should you practice in Experience Design?

1. Always Be Checking. This won’t be a full-blown Experience Audit daily—just keep your eyes wide open for the little details that make a big difference to customers. First impressions last.

2. Prioritize from customer point of view. Listen to your customer, and be responsive to their interests and their concerns.

3. Measure results over time. This is the only way you will know if you’ve Pinpointed the right goals and whether you’re on track to achieve them.

Take a little time with this. Many of your daily tasks already fit in one of these three “notes,” but you may not have been viewing them in this way. When you look at your to-do list in terms of Experience Design, you can approach these tasks more deliberately—and more important in an overcrowded day, you can let go of the tasks that are just pointless noise.

With the noise level adjusted, look at the big picture. For instance:

How does viewing your website affect expectations for your store? [Checking, prioritizing.]

How does a constant parade of discount ads in the local paper affect the sort of customers who call you? [Checking, measuring.]

Do surly staff take care of those little details in your interiors as if they want your business to grow? [Checking, prioritizing.]

Don’t see these as separate interior design, graphic design, customer service, and marketing issues. This Experience Design chord can help you to look at your business as a whole. In a customer’s Perception, the elements of Experience will cross boundaries.

Checking, prioritizing, measuring. 1, 2, 3, strum.

That’s the background noise for your day. After a short while, you’ll be good at playing that chord, but watch out! As any musician will tell you, when you’re overconfident, you can hit a few sour notes. So stay focused.

At some point you may be working on a complete Experience re-Design, in which case there are certainly more than three notes in the chord. Jazz! With professional help, there’s a team to keep things swingin’. On an everyday basis: you’ve got just three notes to look after. Checking the details, prioritizing for the customer’s needs, measuring results. When it gets too noisy, it’s time for another silent afternoon.

Which note do you need to hit harder?

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

How to Turn Down Time Into New Business Opportunities

What could your Restaurant do with down time?

Could you:

Invite a mothers’ group

veterans’ group

book club

seniors group

to meet?

Could you blindfold yourself to smell your space, and listen to your space, for fifteen minutes?

Could you send staff out to local businesses where staff will really need a stretch in a couple of hours:

lawyers

realtors

insurance agents

financial services

with bite-sized samples?

What could your Office do with down time?

Could you:

Get a list together, and start sending birthday cards to past and present clients

or their spouses

or their dogs?

Could you watch your Mom navigate your website, looking for spots that trip her up, and ask her what’s missing from the Experience?

(No? Could you gather together the team and the information you need, to finally create that website you’ve been meaning to do?)

Could you email four trusted advisors:

your lawyer

your real estate agent

your insurance agent

your accountant

with a story or a bit of news to benefit them, just because you have this down time and you’re thinking of them?

What could your Store do with down time?

Could you:

use a wheelchair for an hour

come with a toddler

do a walkthrough not as the Ideal Customer, but the tired spouse of the Ideal Customer

to really understand how the Customer Experience could be improved?

Could you ask every guest who comes in today, “How Did You Find Us?”

Could you arrange to be a guest speaker at a monthly meeting for

lawyers

realtors

small business owners

women business owners

with information that will make them more successful, and also touches on your specialty?

What if your business is mainly Online (or in a zillion categories I didn’t mention)? See where this is going?

Could you:

get out on foot and get in touch

get inspired by a new Perspective

be of service to other professionals?

Do something fresh with an hour of down time this week. Maybe you’ll shake your head (“wish I’d known that before”); maybe your hands will shake, if the new activity is scary enough. Maybe you’ll make a new habit, maybe you’ll make new friends. Maybe you’ll turn your marketing on its ear and discover whole new ways to grow your business. Try it this week. Then maybe next week, it’ll be harder to find an hour of down time!

What happens when you step outside your comfort zone during down time? Is it better to rock the boat, or twiddle your thumbs? Tell us what you think!

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

Being in Business Is for…

Converting prospects to paying customers

Nothing more. One rule to work by. You may argue about all the other lovely reasons you are in business, but if nobody’s paying you to do or to make something, you don’t have a business. You have a hobby.

In light of this rule, everything you do in business must have one of two things as its main purpose:

Finding prospects or Convincing them to buy

Designing Maximum Customer Experience is for convincing current customers to buy and spread the word, so that you find more prospects to convince to buy and spread the word…

This can make more money and should give you peace of mind and may give you more free time (or maybe less). But at its core, Experience Design is like any other business activity, from writing a blog to ordering fancier menus or imprinted pens to putting in a new CRM system to hiring that rockstar whose résumé is on your desk.

If you don’t believe it will convert (more) prospects to paying customers, don’t do it.

You are in business to make sales, or you are not in business. Thinking about a new gimmick, a new initiative, a new direction, a new hire? Ask: Will it help us convert prospects to paying customers? The answer isn’t always direct and obvious, but it is critical that you consider it and can answer Yes, short-term or long-term. If not, don’t throw your money out the window.

Do you throw money out the window with pretty but purposeless design, “marketing” that never brings in a soul, or service providers that don’t aid the bottom line?

Try this exercise: What if you could only deduct those business expenses that can actually expand your business? Which purchases would you have to eliminate? Track the tangible results of a suspected low-performer this month. If it’s not converting prospects to paying customers, ditch it!

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

Data Gathering: 10 Things to Bring With You to the First Real Meeting

Something’s wrong at your place of business. You aren’t growing; maybe there’s even a small, disturbing trend downward in the numbers, and you’re pretty sure something isn’t right. (Just the opposite? Maybe something great has just happened, and you know it’s finally time to put your best foot forward.) Time to make a change in your Customer Experience. You heard about this Experience Designer who can help you find the problems and fix them. You’ve read their website. Let’s face it, you read about five designers’ websites before you found the one whose philosophy jived with yours.

You talked on the phone, or had an initial consultation in person. This is the right firm for you, so you’ve signed on. They want to have a data gathering meeting, what VisionPoints calls our Discovery meeting. How do you get ready?

If it’s worth hiring an Experience Design firm, it’s worth using their time and yours efficiently. Here are the ten things you’ll want on hand:

1.  A good tour guide. Even if we walked through the first time, now we’re beginning to develop a framework for the project. We want to see what we’re dealing with, and we want to walk through with an experienced and very frank member of your team. Someone who’s not afraid to tell it like it is (ouch!).

2.  Your best understanding of the current situation. Designers ask a lot of questions, and you can start them off right if you know what’s good, what’s bad, and what’s got to be fixed urgently.

3.  All the decision-makers. If your spouse has a say, make sure he/she is not left out. If your VP of Marketing has to love the new direction like you do, then have the VP sit in. Miscommunications cause delays, carping, and less-than-enthusiastic participation, none of which move you forward at Maximum speed.

4.  Numbers: Revenues, customer base, profitability, employee retention, web stats… what’s bugging you? Any designer who’s going to help you get numbers up has to know something about the numbers. Once, design of all sorts was “for pretty,” and why it didn’t help you grow was your problem. These days designers of all stripes, but especially multidisciplinary Experience Design firms, want to do fine work that also has real value. Maybe they’ll even tell you your numbers are pretty good, and you can relax a little while you go through the redesign.

5.  Photos, lots of photos of your space, if this meeting can’t take place in person. Send them via email in advance. (Tip: Look up! Good designers want to see your lighting, which is tough to show in a photo.)

6.  All printed materials. From business cards to packaging, from brochures to invoices, gather it all.

7.  We’ve already dug into your Internet presence, to scope you out. (What? You think you’re the only one?) Pretend you don’t know we’ve been lurking, and highlight key points at your website or blog for us.

8.  Your Vision. Don’t be afraid to write something out. A little half-love story, half-rant telling who you are, why you are, and how on earth you (as a company) got to the point you’re at will do fine. Philosophically, strategically, I mean. You got the numbers together for #4.

9.  The best possible outcome. Where, in an ideal world, is the company going? As I said, good designers want to get you there. Increased number of customers, increased sales per customer, decreased costs, better “standing in the community” (warning: hard to measure), stop losing customers to the competition, more Internet sales without decreasing store sales, world domination… ?

10.  What happens if you do nothing? If you’ve never done a Change-Nothing Analysis (#2 on Brian’s list), this is well worth doing before you start an Experience Design project. (The answer, of course, is utter ruination. Even your cat won’t have anything to do with you. Do your own, and you’ll see.)

Discovery meetings are for more than gathering data. They are for gathering attitudes, sticking points, dreams, and goals. They can solidify internal support for Customer Experience initiatives, or show up stakeholders who are not ready for change. That buy-in is crucial, so now is the time to make everyone a cheerleader. The first choices about how this project is going to go are made today.

It’s like going to the doctor’s office: You know what’s wrong, where it hurts, and what outcome you’re hoping for. If you’re a parent, you go with the kid; you don’t try to schedule a follow-up meeting to “get on board.” Nobody wastes time, and you get your solution sooner.

This meeting can take an hour or two, max, or it can become six meetings that take an hour each if you haven’t done your homework before inviting your designer in to start theirs. We have a lot of work to do with you. It’s going to take cooperation and communication, which you can get started now. Your Solution is waiting for you.

Discovery meeting or not, put this list together today, and make a plan to update it quarterly. How does doing your data gathering help you aim for improved Customer Experience?

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

Who Drives Better, Men or Women?

This is part thirteen of 13 (whew!) in the Experience Design 101 series. For links to all the articles in this series, click here.

Growing Your Business, Organically

There was a time when a firm could pick a target market, put ads where the target audience would see them or send direct mail to their home, and wait for responses.

In a society cluttered with intrusive “push” messaging, the consumer is moving past this model—and businesses of all sizes are scrambling to catch up. According to Forrester Research [free registration may be required], in 2006 only 15% of consumers agreed with the statement, “Advertisements help me decide what to buy.”

What does help? Word of mouth (WOM if you’re into acronyms), based on the Experiences your customers are having with you. One study suggests that only 3.4% of face-to-face word of mouth conversations are [directly] stimulated by promotional efforts (Journal of Services Marketing, via Buzz Canuck blog). You may not pay moms to start word of mouth campaigns about your newest carseat, directly creating word of mouth, but you can create the great Experience with your product that will organically grow word of mouth, and grow your business in the process.

Who Drives Better?

Some suggest women are better conveyors of word of mouth.

Our experience at VisionPoints suggests that those who have benefited from the power of word of mouth are better at making quality referrals, and perhaps this is a more traditionally female province, as in the carseat discussion above.

However…

There are many professionals who are used to relying on referrals for their business (doctors, lawyers, financial services professionals, architects…). Men and women in these professions know they need word of mouth to help the next client find them, because traditional advertising has never been as successful for industries of a personal nature.

As blogging and web search-engine optimization catch on, even more men (still the majority of bloggers and web developers) are exposed to the power of word of mouth, through Internet growth concepts like linking out, commenting, and trackbacks, which are essentially cyber-referrals. Consider Leo Babauta, who used layers of cyber-word of mouth to grow his readership to over 21,500 in just six months. (There’s a great interview with Leo about his blog’s phenomenal growth at ProBlogger.)

Will bloggers make more referrals in their “real” lives as a result of discovering this power?

Mars and Venus try WOM

As I finish out my baker’s dozen of Experience Design 101 articles, I am appropriately back at my favorite bagel shop.* There’s a group of afternoon regulars (three men and a woman) at the table next to mine, and they are giving a wild, rapid-round of referrals to each other. Although the group varies a bit, it’s always like this—I’ve heard the group go through financial advisors, investments, even dates! Today it’s doctors.

The woman gives details, stops to find an extra business card, looks through her cell phone for the number for a specialist. The men give briefs, running through a checklist of about twenty suggestions in just a few minutes. The men are engaging in word of mouth, but aren’t the guys more likely to go to the doc the lady suggests—card and phone number in hand—than to remember one doc in a list of 20 from one of the other guys?

(Or will they call the friend later to say, Who was that doctor you mentioned who works on Foulk Road….)

I’d say at this table Mars and Venus are going to have different results from their WOM efforts.

CUSTOMERS drive better sales

One usual customer satisfaction measure is, “How likely are you to refer this provider?”

I’d rather see the other end of this referral, and ask, “How likely are you to act on this referral?” In all practicality we can’t do this, but to grow, this imagined question is an important focus.

What can your firm do, to ensure more detailed raves, and referrals that are acted on? The woman above didn’t rattle off everyone her friends and family had ever seen, but rather concentrated on really trying to convince the folks seated with her to see the people she thought were tops. She gave “actionable” referrals because she was a fan of the two docs—I heard her describe the experiences as “friendly,” “quick,” “personal,” and “efficient,” among other phrases. She even contrasted them with other docs her family had tried and been unhappy with in their two specialties. She was a loyal, engaged customer of these doctors. The conversation was not directly stimulated by a marketer.

Maximum Customer Experience created the opportunity for growth here, one trusted conversation at a time.

Organic growth like this is not controlled by you, the business owner, but cultivated, and encouraged. Like a natural garden, with patience, planning, and careful execution, you’ll see results far beyond your original efforts.

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

*Einstein Bros., Marsh Road north of Wilmington, Delaware

P.S. Join the conversation! We’re just getting started, encouraging WOM about Experience Design. Subscribe to the Maximum Customer Experience Blog for free, and get email or RSS updates using the subscription area at top left!

P.P.S. TX to Brian Clark of Copyblogger for his Blueprint for a Brilliant Blog Launch. (I hope this is half so brilliant.) Brian, did you have any idea that a launch could span three months?

Just Tell Me Where It Hurts…

In sales and marketing circles you will hear a lot of advice about finding a prospective customer’s “pain point.” A pain point is the when and the why, the reason customers choose you: the point at which they realize you offer the solution to their need (their “pain”). I choose Lowe’s when I have a home improvement need because they’re comprehensive, generally helpful, and nearby; I choose a nail when I want to hang a picture because it’s simple, cheap, and readily available. The Mexican restaurant I choose most frequently, I patronize (when I’m hungry!) because it has the good fortune to be quite near to me, but mainly because my daughter, who rules our roost, is treated like a young lady there, and she loves their food and the fish they keep in a tank in the dining area. I’d bet they wouldn’t guess at least two of those pain points (Upscale Mexican restaurants satisfying small dictators? Fish tanks?). They’ve (probably accidentally) solved my pain points. This can be planned.

Today’s Experience Design case study: A friend is a loosely associated stakeholder in a local pub. They’ve got growth issues, as in they aren’t getting enough. My friend knows this and has been knocking around some ideas about how to pull in more patrons. We talked briefly about a somewhat gimmicky idea he’s had (it might have some merit), and then I asked the question not everyone is ready to hear: How about the basics?

How About the Basics?

My friend is one of many with an interest in the pub. I gave him a few thinking-points to go back to his group with, including most of the questions below. Try these to start your strategic thinking:

• What is the growth plan for the business? In other words, how do you know you’re not reaching your target, and how will you know when you are?
• What’s the overall Vision? Why are you in this business, doing it this way?
• Do you know why current customers choose you? (This is their “pain point.”)
• What is current business like (in terms of numbers, typical order, time in store, etc.)? Do you have regulars (fans), or once-and-done guests?
• (This pub has a fairly captive stream of actual foot-traffic, actively NOT choosing them, so also) Have you asked about the habits of prospective guests who are not coming in? (Why are you not their solution to the pain?)
• Do you patronize the pub when you’re nearby?
• What’s your Internet presence like? (I did my homework–theirs is distinctly uninformative and uninviting.)
• Are your signage and entry drawing people in?
• What’s the atmosphere like (interiors, fellow patrons, noise level)?
• Is your menu clear and inviting? Do guests have to guess at or hunt for information?
• Have you anonymously evaluated the service?
• How’s the food (the drinks, and the wait)?
• Have you interviewed the bartender, the chef, and your servers to get their opinions of what is and is not working? Remember, these internal stakeholders may be much more in tune than office staff to the problems and the potential of your business–they interact with customers every day!
• Before throwing good money at gimmicks, what efforts are you currently making in publicizing the business? What sort of return do you see on these efforts?
• Have you devoted enough effort to the research and strategic planning that will tell you whether an (expensive) gimmick is the right step for the pub?

I invited my friend to suggest VisionPoints if they’d like help working on growing their business. Will I hear from them? Sometimes prospects are not yet ready to listen to your message. (Just like the patrons they want to draw in to the pub!) Their pain is not yet acute enough to see the need for an outside solution.

What would you add to this list? What basic points should owners and managers evaluate to discover the holes in their current Customer Experience? How do you find and resolve the “pain points” of your current and prospective customers?

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

P.S. Still thinking about gimmicks? Don’t miss Seth Godin’s take on transforming gimmicks by adding customer value.

ROI: Can You Really Measure the Power of Experience Design?

This is part eight of 13 in the Experience Design 101 series. For links to all the articles in this series, click here.

 67 % of all consumer decisions are primarily influenced by word of mouth (McKinsey, via Buzz Canuck blog) (See Part 1 of this series)

 69 % of small business owners involved key friends and partners extensively in developing and marketing their products and services (National Federation of Independent Business) (See Part 2 of this series)

 94 % of the top 50 Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Private Companies in America 2007 have been in business less than 10 years (Inc. online) (See Part 3 of this series)

 well over 100 % increase in interest in Experience Design over the past 3 years (as measured by Internet search frequency) (Google Trends, which does not yet give exact numbers) (See Part 4 of this series)

 6 % of the top 50 Entrepreneur Hot 100 Fastest Growing New Businesses in America 2007 have a Vision Statement on their company website (Entrepreneur online) (See Part 5 of this series)

 28 % of Internet users click on the first organic result that comes up in a search for their term (University of Utah) (See Part 6 of this series)

 48 % of small business owners still do not have a website (National Federation of Independent Business) (See Part 7 of this series)

Can you measure the power of Experience Design? Lots of marketers don’t want to do it, citing “brand equity,” “goodwill,” “share of mind,” and “raising your profile.” Don’t fall for this. What you want to know is, Will we make more money?

If you are willing to control for variables you can measure the Return on Investment of Experience Design, and you and your design firm will benefit from the scrutiny. (It helps to have definite implementation dates for the stages of your design, rather than a trickle of smaller changes.) If you already keep a close eye on your books, watch these key metrics to see the impact of Experience Design:

Top line:

Number of leads generated

Quality of leads

Time from lead to sale

Acquisition rate

Average number of contacts needed to close sale

Total sales revenue

Average dollar amount of sales

Customer satisfaction, loyalty, repeat business

Referrals

Internet/ Lead gathering:

Clickthroughs from email campaign or other advertising

Homepage visits

Average number of pages visited

Average time on site

Leads per (thousand) visits

Sales per (thousand) leads

Bottom line:

Cost per lead, cost per sale

Employee turnover, productivity, attendance, satisfaction

(See Part 4 of this series for definitions of these and other key terms.)

If you don’t already track these numbers, stop and immediately implement a system for tracking number of leads, close rates, and costs in your traditional and online lead generation. There are many relational databases designed to automate this tracking for you. You’ll save time, eliminate guesswork, and be able to quickly spot strengths and weaknesses in your marketing and sales efforts.

Measure these numbers at three and six months after implementation of your new Experience Design plan. It may take time to see the improvements, but many firms can start seeing improvements even sooner.

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

Next up in the series: Part Nine: Firm growth (not) guaranteed

P.S. If you’re enjoying the Maximum Customer Experience Blog, subscribe today (at top left) and get updates delivered by email or RSS. It’s easy and it’s free!