Customer Satisfaction Measurement - The Leadership Factor

What makes something an experience?

I went to the theatre on Saturday (to see the superb Monkey!, nothing high-brow). As we were waiting for the show to start we were chatting about what it is that makes live performances so special. Whether it's a concert, a play, or even a conference talk, there's something magical about a live performance that a recording never captures.

I suspect the crucial difference is that you know a live performance is unique. It'll never be done in quite the same way ever again, and that makes it captivating. With the aerial antics of Monkey! it also gives you a slight feeling of dread that you're going to witness an accident live on stage!

Can organisations seeking to give their customers a great experience tap into these same feelings? Not easily, but I think it is possible for them to create the same sense that the experience is unique. To do so they need excellent staff and flexibility in their systems. Flexibility doesn't mean that the system isn't there or isn't competent—rock-solid support is as crucial for frontline staff as the wires used by the performers in Monkey!

The one thing you can't do is boilerplate a customer experience—if it's not unique then it's not an experience.

It's all about the experience

"Customer experience" is the buzzword of the day, but what is often sorely lacking from articles and talks on the subject is concrete ideas on what to do on the ground.

I've just come across an excellent list of 50 ways to improve your customer's experience, which is full of specific dos and don'ts. Some of my favourites are:

13. Don't give your customer too many choices.  You're the experts, so recommend a product based on what you learn from him/her.

This is really important, but so few organisations have grasped that choice is not always good. Too much choice bewilders customers and is likely to make them less satisfied with their purchase, not more.

15. If you can't fulfill a customer's need, suggest another company that may be able to do so.

Seems bizarre? Not if you're really customer focused. You can't make that sale anyway, but a helpful recommendation will make the customer like and trust you, increasing the chances they'll shop with you when they can.

16. Never ever say something negative about another company.

Any competent salesperson already knows this, but perhaps that knowledge should be spread through the rest of the organisation. This holds true even if all the criticisms you might make are 100% valid. It justs looks like sour grapes. What if the customer has already used the competitor? Are you telling them they're stupid?

Interestingly there's very little specifically "experiencey" about the list, no stories about Disney. It could just as well be a list of great "customer service" behaviours. Most of these things are timeless and universal, but that doesn't make them common!

Go and read the full list, or you can download it as a handy PDF from the blog.

The weird science of consumer decision making

A lot of the literature on customer emotions, the customer experience, and consumer decision making emphasises the idea that decisions are often largely unconscious. There is considerable laboratory evidence to support this view, although admittedly these experiments are very far removed from everyday life and the kind of decisions we're interested in. Lab psychology experiments are notoriously bad at transferring to social situations.

Experiments have shown that the "mere exposure effect" leads us to prefer images we have been subliminally exposed to, preferences which we justify and explain with all manner of clever rationalisations. They have also shown that free decisions can be predicted by brain imaging before they are consciously made.

Does this mean that our feeling of conscious free will is nothing but an illusion? Do we simply rationalise a decision made by our unconscious mind? In the May edition of Nature Neuroscience a team of researchers report on evidence that seems to support such a view.

Their research shows that volunteers' decisions of which of two buttons to press could be predicted up to 10 seconds before their decision was consciously made. The full article is subscription only (and fairly heavy going), but you can hear one of the researchers discussing their findings in the latest (May) edition of Neuropod, Nature's consistently excellent neuroscience podcast.

I think it's time to admit that we all massively overrate the role our conscious mind plays in our complex mental life...but that's no bad thing. The tremendous ability of our minds to make good decisions on very little data is a great asset—Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" makes much of this.

To understand ourselves and our customers we have to be comfortable with the role of the unconscious in decision making, and that's something we talk about on our Customer Emotions Briefing. Emotions may seem woolly and soft, but the science that says they matter is as hard as you could wish.

Customer emotions briefing

Last Wednesday Richard and I presented our Customer Emotions briefing in London. This half day session looked at the psychology of emotions and how they feature in decision making, the role of emotions in driving customer loyalty compared to rational evaluations and finally some tools to help you measure and manage all the drivers of loyalty.

The session managed to be both high brow:

and low brow:

with a whole spectrum in between.

We'll be running the briefing near Manchester in July, so if you're interested in customer emotions and you live up North (or couldn't make it to the London one) maybe we'll see you there?

Brand tags

Every so often the blogosphere comes up with a good idea. Once in a blue moon it's a really good idea.

Brand image has always been a tricky beast to pin down, but most people would define it as something like the sum of all the attitudes and associations that consumers hold about a particular brand. Some different ways of putting this:

It has always seemed to me that your brand is formed primarily, not by what your company says about itself, but what the company does. Jeff Bezos, CEO, Amazon.com

Consumers build an image [of a brand] as birds build nests. From the scraps and straws they chance upon. Jeremy Bullmore

A brand is a living entity—and it is enriched or undermined cumulatively over time, the product of a thousand small gestures. Michael Eisner

We have the power to shape brands to be what we want… Wally Olins

A brand image is shaped by the products and services themselves, by the consumption environment, by marketing communications and, perhaps most importantly, by the behaviour of the organisation and its employees.

So how do you measure something so vast and intangible? One technique is to ask people what associations they have for a particular brand, something along the lines of "what 3 words come to mind", and over a sample of hundreds some interesting patterns will emerge.

Brand tags is a website that does exactly the same thing, across a whole host of brands, and represents the results in the form of a "tag cloud" similar to the one to the right of this blog. A fascinating concept, and there are some revealing results. You can take part in the tagging or simply browse through the  brands.

Here's a snippet of the cloud for a famous sports shoe brand:

Can you guess who it is? If not peek at the image title/alt tag, or listen to more hip hop!

How do customer emotions impact your business?

Customer emotions are often overlooked when organisations think about the customer satisfaction levels they are getting, or how to improve customer loyalty. But, the evidence is that customer emotions play a key role in this area.

When the concept of customer emotion is addressed by a business, more often than not it seems that it is of the 'wow - delight the customer' variety, but is this really the emotional engagement that customers are looking for?

Well, you can find the answers to the above points and read an article that goes into much more depth in the most recent Stakeholder magazine (see my previous post for the link).

There's also a half-day briefing that's being led by two of my colleagues in London later this month. You can see full details of the customer emotions briefing and book your place by following this link.

Treating Customers Fairly?

The OFT has published a report measuring the impact on consumers of instances of unfair treatment by companies, which they term "detriment". They calculate a cost to consumers of £6.6bn over the last 12 months (which I suppose is about £130 each?).

They estimate that just over half of us have experienced a problem, and that only 64% complain. The findings from the UK Customer Satisfaction Index, a national measure of customer satisfaction we run for the ICS which also covers problems and complaints, show a more positive picture. UK organisations give an average of 17% of their customers a problem, with 72% bringing that problem to the attention of the organisation concerned.

Why the difference? Well the complaints figure is very comparable—the slight difference is probably down to minor variations in question wording. The problem figure is different because it's measuring a different thing. The OFT are asking how many of us have a problem with any of our suppliers in a year, whereas the UKCSI is focusing on a specific supplier for each respondent. I think that's a better measure of how frequently companies create problems for their customers.

Nonetheless the OFT report does make worrying reading, particularly for those sectors identified as the biggest offenders. Those responsible for most financial detriment were insurers, home maintenance and improvements and personal banking.

The largest number of problems were with telecoms, domestic fuel providers and personal banking, which tallies quite well with the UKCSI findings.

If satisfied customers defect....can defecting customers be satisfied?

Let's come back to those satisfied customers who defect. We tend to assume, because of the strong link between satisfaction and loyalty, that defecting customers are dissatisfied with us. If we accept the idea that satisfied customers defect, then some defecting customers must be satisfied. That must be worth thinking about.

What are the implications? Firstly, and most importantly, a satisfied defector is a customer who is not lost forever...yet. Handling the defection process well is the last chance we have to influence how a customer feels about us. Nothing we do should turn that customer into a dissatisfied defector.

Recently I signed up for a free trial of one of the leading online DVD rental services. The service was okay, I had one or two problems with faulty discs, but overall I was quite satisfied. When the trial came to an end I decided that it wasn't, on balance, worth continuing at the normal rate. So from their point of view I had signed up in response to an introductory offer and was now defecting, costing them money. In monetary terms I was a terrible customer but, importantly, I was reasonably satisfied with them. I would have considered signing up for the service at another time, and I would have said quite positive things about their service to other people.

That all changed when I went through the process of cancelling my subscription. There was no option to cancel online (by contrast to the super-easy online sign-up process!), you had to phone up. That's an irritating policy, and the reasons are transparent, so I was a little bit riled when I did call them. After twenty minutes of the most frustrating telephone conversation ever, including obnoxiously worded threats about returning DVDs on time or being charged, I was seething. But I did finally manage to cancel my subscription.

This company has recognised defections as a problem, probably because of its strategy of accepting a high cost of acquisition in the free trial, but it deals with the problem in precisely the wrong way. Instead of trying to manage my attitude about the company they tried to directly impede my behaviour by making it difficult to defect. In doing so they turned me from a satisfied defector, a potential source of profit, to a virulent antagonist.

Never try to keep your customers hostage. If they want to leave, make the process as pleasant and easy as possible. You will make priceless attitudinal gains, and that defecting customer is far more likely to use you in the future and say good things about you.

Customer Retention at Netflix

There's a great article on the Wired website about the effort that Netflix (an online movie rental company in the US) has put into improving its Cinematch algorithm. This is the bit of their website that says "if you liked this movie we suggest these movies as well". A tiny percentage increase in this algorithm's accuracy means fewer angry customers (because they haven't had what they perceive as 'stupid' suggestion) and that in turns means improved customer retention and loyalty. Read the full article here.

Free wifi

I'm posting this from the National Express train from Wakefield to London. Like many people I was a bit sad when GNER lost their franchise, and worried about what would happen when National Express took over.

One of the changes I have noticed is that the wifi connections available in the carriages are now free, which is a massive step forward. It's time the rest of the world realised that providing wifi and then charging the earth for it is far more likely to irritate customers than to satisfy them, and certainly won't earn you enough money to justify the aggravation.

Making it free, on the other hand, is a genuine benefit for customers, and has the advantage that it doesn't cost you much at all. You get a double benefit at the moment because so many companies are too stupid to see that they should offer it for free if they're going to offer it at all.

It may seem like a little thing, but National Express have just exceeded my expectations at minimal cost to themselves—good move.