When you can’t answer, “Why?”
I wrote recently about an incident at a local grocery store that sparked some thought about how sometimes we provide excuses instead of offering solutions. Likewise, sometimes at my gym, I come across a piece of equipment that’s out of order for some reason or another. Usually, there’s a note pinned to it alerting us that it’s not to be used. To some degree, I’m sure the team member whose job it is to put that sign on the equipment considered his job ‘done.’ The person whose job it is to fix it? That’s another story.
Anyway, the punchline of these and other similar experiences is that Customers aren’t as interested in hearing about why their experience can’t be better (what we’d call in other scenarios “excuses”), they just want them to be better. […]
#CXQOTD: When to survey?
There are lots of places to ask… but just as important, don't insult your Customers by asking when/where you know you won't be doing anything about their concerns: pic.twitter.com/uAvdiVllCT
— ✵Nicholas Zeisler (@NicholasZeisler) January 7, 2021
Whose problem are you solving?
I’ve written about Customer Effort Score (CES) before and kind of chided the intractability of defining it specifically. Of course, it’s not fair to pick on CES, as I’ve written in other instances, even common definitions like First Contact Resolution runs into definitional problems when they encounter actual Customer opinions (we all have our own definitions).
But specifically, when it comes to Effort (or, as I sometimes will call it, “hassle”), I remember a wise Process Engineer who used to work for me once noted: “we’re defining ‘hassle’ from our own perspective.” And he was correct to point it out in that instance. I wonder: Are you doing the same? […]
Kick off the New Year with a podcast:
I was on Nancy Munro‘s podcast this week to ring in 2021. She’s the brilliant CEO of Verbal Transactions. Check out the recording at this link.
It’s the experience, not the channel
Surely I’m late to the game on this but I had always found it curious and interesting to read accounts of peoples’ CX and more specifically support experiences through Twitter. The concept of pinging a business via their public handle and then getting a resolution seemed pretty cool to me. It’s mostly anecdotal but I feel the vast majority of those instances were travel-related. It may be because that’s all I think about these days, what with the world shut down. But if I remember correctly it usually had to do with people otherwise having issues checking into a hotel or in-the-moment flight cancellations and such. The scenario usually went somewhat like this: I had an issue with this airline or hotel chain right there at the gate or in the lobby checking in. So I pulled out my phone and tweeted them and within a few minutes, I was all squared away thanks to their crack team of tweeters who jumped on my case and resolved it for me right away. The vision I conjured in my mind was a cadre of little elves flipping switches behind the scenes, unleashed by this great new immediate technology. Needless to say, I was skeptical but intrigued nonetheless.
Recently, I gave it a shot myself. I performed an experiment wherein I engaged with a couple of big companies through their Twitter. I’ll reserve the names because none of them really came through the way I’d anticipated. […]
Throwback: A little bit of Seoul
Here’s a throw-back article I wrote back in 2017, as United Airlines was retiring their 747 airframe. It’s tangentially CX-related, and although I’m no PointsGuy, I think it does a pretty good job as a travelogue. And if nothing else, it’s a reminder that we used to be able to get out there and travel. Enjoy.
Earlier this year my partner and I took a trip. Okay well we take trips all the time. But this time we took on an experience.
With United Airlines retiring their fleet of 747s, I wanted the opportunity before it was gone to take a trip on the Queen of the Skies. So we booked a flight to Seoul, South Korea.
Now, normally an annual vacation overseas would center on an exotic port-of-call or historically significant or colorful locale. Seoul truly was all that and more, but this time around the journey, as they say, was even more important than the destination. […]
