CYA is not CX
The other day I spent about 45 minutes round-trip (short by standards…read on) and about $45 mailing Christmas cards. Happy Holidays to our family and friends who receive one from us!
I use the word “mailing” deliberately because that’s all I was doing. I wasn’t shopping for them, digging through my computer to find the file where I keep my list, writing them, addressing them, or stamping them. This was just to mail them. Some of them are a bit bulky, and the box of cards we bought this year (a very clever, diverse, and creative collection of truly lovely cards with lots of adornments and festoonery) even came with the caveat that they “may require additional postage.” So, just to be safe, I bundled up and headed out to the post office. At this time of year, doing that at 5pm wasn’t the best idea, but I got lucky and headed right to the front of the line. That’s where my luck ended. […]
CX professionals are the best (and worst) Customers
The Wall Street Journal has a daily column called “Best of the Web Today.” Its originator, James Taranto, created it as a bit of a light-hearted end-of-the-day quick-hit piece with a bit of political commentary thrown in as well. A recurring gag is to make little jokes about headlines published around the Web that, regardless of the actual story attached, sound funny or irreverent when read on their own. A meme he used a lot was to append a clever label to such headlines as, say, “Florida man critical after bout with runaway gator” pithily with: “Everyone’s a Critic”. When it comes to Customer experience, all of us CXers are, well…critics, no?
And if we’re doing it right, if we’re truly curious and hungry to learn about CX broadly, we’re actually looking for the good and the bad in our experiences with brands. Just like a food critic doesn’t want it known that the restaurant he or she is visiting is being evaluated, lest they go all out to deliver a spectacular meal just for the review, and just like a theater critic wants to (to the extent possible) see the performance through the eyes of his or her readers, we as CX professionals won’t learn much if we all treat each other better than the average Customer.
That has an upside and a downside. We as CX professionals can be the best Customers but also sometimes the worst. […]
Some non-CX thoughts on Tony Hsieh
The turn in the narrative regarding Tony Hsieh’s death has been striking over the past few days as stories (like these in the Journal and Forbes) began to come to light based on accounts from those who knew him better than the rest of us who had merely admired him from afar. While the universal impression remains that it’s a shame to lose such a great mind and spirit who had so much left to offer, those who have revered Tony as an inspiration (not only to CX and business in general, but also his philanthropy, sense of community, and overall joie de vivre) having never known him personally may be left wondering: What was that all about? […]
Communication is key
One of my Five Principles of Good CX is Communication. You can screw a lot of things up with your Customers and they’ll still forgive you, but if you’re keeping information from them or leaving them in the dark, there’s really little excuse. Sometimes you don’t know things, but letting them know you don’t know is at least better than leaving them to wonder if you’re even paying attention. […]
Your CES isn’t telling you enough
With all due deference to Matt Dixon, sometimes “effort” is a tricky thing to define. I worked with one team that ran around and around about it constantly it seemed. Matt’s Customer Effort Score (CES) metric basically asks the Customer to rank his or her satisfaction with the amount of effort expended to solve an issue or otherwise accomplish something.
Now, right away you can see the question begged: How do we even know the issue has been solved in the first place? This, of course, goes to an age-old conundrum of how we can ensure a Customer’s issue has been solved before we send out a survey for feedback, regardless of the survey type. After all, it’s insult added to injury if we ask, “hey, how’d we do?” while the Customer is still waiting for a solution. But let’s put that issue aside for now as it’s a common concern (NPS, C-SAT, and all the others have the same limitation). […]
Unnecessary escalations
This spring and summer have been rough on travel. My partner and I actually had a hotel cancel our reservation after the world ended. It was complicated by the fact that we’d used a combination of credit card points and cash to make the reservation for two different rooms, one for us and one for my partner’s mother.
It was probably the somewhat complicated nature of the way we originally placed the reservation that made getting our refund such a mess. Over the course of two months and four separate interactions, we spent upwards of six hours on the phone or in a chat with agents; some credit card people, some ‘points’ people (a lot of folks don’t know that in many instances, the loyalty program isn’t run by the same company with whom you have loyalty).
It was a comedy of errors each time we reached out and tried to reconcile the issue, and the refunds and return of points actually dribbled in over time with some points for one room here, the credit on the card back for the other room there, and so forth. We couldn’t figure out what was so complicated, even given that we were dealing with two different entities, especially considering the cancellation was initiated by them in the first place.
While my partner was frustrated, I was embarrassed. Embarrassed for our industry. […]
