Phoenix Rising

All I Ask...

Yesterday I wrote a post about my dilemma with a few vendors of late - wondering if I was expecting too much from my vendors as their customer.

Your responses told me resoundingly that I was not expecting too much - that we all have some basic expectations when it comes to customer service.  Many of the folks who responded were even more outraged than I expected by the treatment I'd endured at the hands of these vendors. Wow  - I guess I'm not expecting too much after all.  That's so nice to know! 

Your responses got me thinking about the basic things I want from a vendor with regard to how they treat me as a customer. So today, I thought I'd list the things I ask of a vendor. So, here we go.

All I Ask of You Mr. or Ms. Vendor:

• When I send a request, an email, leave a message for you - please respond. Don't ignore me and later tell me you have too much on your plate to pay attention to me. I paid you my money, so at least acknowledge my communication, even if it's to say you'll get back to me later. When you have the fifth email request from me and you still haven't responded - you might ask yourself "Is this how I'd want to be treated as a customer?" I bet the answer is No!

• Treat me as if I matter to you - even if I really don't (which is yet another discussion). Telling me how important you are, that the money I paid you is paltry compared to your other customers, is certainly not the way to make me feel special. It surely doesn't compel me to want to do more business with you. Keep doing that and I'll spread the word to everyone I know about how poorly you treat your customers.  Is that what you want?

• Treat me with respect.  Maybe that's covered in my first two requests, but there's more. Don't talk down to me from your pedestal.  Just because you think you're important, smart, rich and I'm not doesn't give you the right to be condescending to me. Be respectful.

• Be honest. If you're too busy to respond  to me, at least tell me that truth. Don't act like I'm inferior because you don't have your act together to respond to your customers. That's passing the buck - and I already paid you those bucks. 

• Be consistent and keep your commitments.  If I signed up for a monthly session with you and you aren't communicating about it - don't jump down my throat and get nasty because I question what's happening. I paid for those sessions and if you can't deliver them - you're the one not meeting your commitments.  I'm not the bad person for asking.

• Treat me the way you'd want to be treated.  Yep, that's great advice for us all.  Ask yourself, how would I feel if someone took my money and then ignored me, told me I wasn't valuable and treated me like dirt.  Treat customers the way you'd treat your mother or sister or best friend. Not the way you'd treat your enemy.   And frankly, I wouldn't even treat my enemy that way, so shame on you.

• Please remember - without me and other customers like me - you wouldn't be here.  Even if you think I'm small potatoes, you still need me and others like me. I may not spend as much money as those big important clients - but there are lots of folks like me out here. If you keep behaving the way you are right now - I won't be around much longer, and neither will you.

So that's my list - what did I miss?  Please - let me know what you'd add to this list of simple requests from a customer to a vendor.

Do I Expect Too Much?

I was raised with some pretty specific rules about behavior.

Say please and thank you, treat people as you would want to be treated, be courteous and polite. Then there was the 'be on time' dictate. My mom taught me that being late for a meeting with another meant my time was more important than theirs - so always be on time. 

There were lots of other rules - but you get the drift.  Those rules did well for me  - in my personal as well as my business life. For me - it's simply common courtesy.

Am I expecting too much?

I'm really bugged these days by some behavior that I find disrespectful at best and more likely rude.  It's really been bugging me so I decided to write about it and get the perspectives of my readers. So help me out, please!

Here's my story in a nutshell.

I'm working with a number of different groups right now. I'm actually the client in all cases. Not that it makes any difference - I tend to treat vendors as if they were my clients - makes for a much better relationship.  But that's not my story.

What has me so confused?

I send emails to these partners - asking for updates, providing information, checking status, confirming that a step has been taken.

In one particular case, I wait and I wait - and I never hear anything back. This place is a total black hole!  I tried to push early on to get a response, pointing out that I'd emailed and asked multiple times. The response? I was told in no uncertain terms that said partner had more important clients and I should wait my turn given that I wasn't paying as much as other clients. WOW. 

In the other cases - I do get responses, eventually. But not as I'd expect. I never get a confirmation that they've received my information. I only get requests for more info or clarification - and sometimes those take days.

If I treated my clients this way - I'd expect them to fire me.

Maybe it's because I work with Boards of Directors and C-level executives who expect responsiveness. Maybe it's because of my Mom's teachings. Regardless, I could never simply ignore emails from someone who had paid me money. Nor would I think of failing to reply when a client sent me information. I'm just not built that way.

So - what do you think? Am I expecting too much, based on my own training and beliefs in how client service should work? Am I out of line thinking that maybe this isn't the best way to treat a client? Have the rules changed in this day and age - and I'm an too old fashioned?

Tell me what you think. Please....

3 Steps to Customer Intuition

Wanna be a market leader?  Apply your intuition.

You know what I mean, that feeling that tells us a product idea has legs, a story is going to sell, a customer segment is going to love our new idea.  You just know when you're on the right track. If you think like your customers.

Custom intuition makes or breaks our business. When we're in sync with our customers - we soar. Just look at Apple. When we lose our gut feel for our audience, we spiral downward.

Customer intuition used to be an easy thing. Not anymore. Customer intuition is a tricky thing in today's warp speed world. Our intuition can go from 'right on' to outdated' in a matter of months. We have to stay in touch with our customers to keep our gut feel tuned to their thoughts and needs.

We get lots of chances to tune our customer intuition.

We’re involved with our customers on a daily basis. We interact with our markets and competitors and partners all the time.  What better way to tune our instincts than grounding our intuition in pure market reality.  How?

1.    Talk with customers and partners often. This is a no-brainer but too often we forget.  We get stuck in the office for week after week. Before we know it we get stuck in a rut, assuming what our audiences want based on history.  That's a sure way to let intuition go stale. What was true six months ago could be on its way to ancient history today.

2.    Speaking of history - study it. Just don’t wallow in it. Great strategies leverage lessons from yesterday's successes, and failures.  Note, I said ‘leverage’ not 'repeat'. What  happened in the past won’t work today. Apply that experience, tune it to match today's customer reality.

3.    Talk to Objective Experts.  No matter how hard we focus, we can still be stuck in the status quo. That’s where experts come to the rescue.  Find an expert who eats, breathes and lives the intricate details of your market and customers. Use them as your eyes and ears. 

Numbers and facts will tell you the same thing that everyone else, including your competition, knows. 

Your customer intuition is what sets you apart. Find it, and use it!

Keepers of the Truth

Reality comes from our markets, not ourselves.

I seek customer, prospect and partner feedback before I ever begin to brainstorm a strategy.  Clients often ask me why I don’t take their word for where they are and what they do.  It’s not that I don’t believe them. I do. 

It’s that I don’t believe any of us can clearly see today’s reality through the eyes of our buyers.  We’re too busy managing the day-to-day in our overloaded lives. We need clear perspective - and that comes from the keepers of the truth – our audiences.

We all think we know our markets, know that we can promote what we believe to be best for our buyers - which happens to be our products. Unfortunately - that's just not the case anymore. There was a day when advertising and marketing could sway a market - but no more.  The internet and social media changed that forever.

Today's buyers control their own destinies through information.

Everything we need to know about our present and future is in the eyes and hearts of our customers. They know their present needs and can offer advice to improve and enhance our value.  They  also know  the progress they want to make, the challenges they expect to face.

Our audiences put their money where their beliefs are.

Since those dollars represent the holy grail we seek – I follow them, not internal opinions. I care what internal players believe - but I also know that the customer is my Keeper of the Truth. Customer opinions are the only ones that matter. Creating strategies in the vacuum of our own corporate legends is how we fail. 

Ask yourself- when was the last time you made a decision based on real-world audience input, instead of the opinions of your executive team, or that engineering manager or sales leader?

What customers see as true value is  very different from what we believe. That’s a fact that must drive every value, opportunity and growth decision we make.

If we haven’t validated our decision with multiple and varied customers and prospects, then that decision is just an assumption.  Usually it’s an assumption based on our own status quo thinking.

And we all know what happens when we assume, now don’t we?

It's the Little Things

I found inspiration on my way to a horse show.

My trainer is always better with caffeine in hand, so I was motivated to find her coffee. I stopped at a little Ma and Pa gas station - the fourth place I'd tried. The others  were out of brew and too busy to make more on this particular morning.

The pot was empty here too - what are the chances?  As I turned to leave the owner stopped me - offered to make a fresh pot. It wouldn't take 5 minutes, while I was waiting he'd run my truck through the car wash for free. Thelma (my F-250) was definitely due for a bath - so why not?

I paid for the coffee and asked for a key to the restroom. Inside were fresh flowers, a beautiful picture of a woman in a field of wildflowers, girlie soap, clean and smelling so sweet. What an unexpected delight!

A smiling teenager, holding a big soapy mop, met me at the entrance to the car wash. She scrubbed Thelma front to back. I'd expected a quick run through the auto-wash. Instead I was getting the works!  All because of a cup of coffee? When the wash was over I tried to tip her as she dried the windows - she declined with a big smile. All part of her job.

The owner had the coffee poured and waiting. I complimented him on his service and he grinned like a proud dad.  "I can't beat the big name prices - but I can sure beat their service. I do little things for my customers, and hopefully they see their way to come back."

As I drove out I looked at his gas prices. They were five cents more than the big guys.  Yet his pumps were full - while the big name station across the street looked pretty lonely.

There's a lesson here.

Many are cutting back service and the smiles that go with it - forgetting our customer's experience. This SMB owner is bucking that trend in a highly price competitive market. Thanks to his customer focus and the personal touches he shares, he's getting a slight premium price and outselling the bigger competition hands down.

The next time we start cutting price to match the competition, slimming services to make up for the lost margin - maybe we should think again.

Could little things make the customer difference?

All I Wanted Was to Buy an iPhone

“I'm sorry, we can't find a way to sell you your iPhone.  You'll have to wait.”

Those are the last words I expected to hear in  the AT&T store. I’d run in all excited to purchase my new iPhone yesterday. You see, my Palm Centro is on its last legs. After playing with my friend’s new iPhone on Sunday, I was jazzed.

I ran home on Sunday night and placed an order with Apple. I even paid for fast shipping, so I could get it ASAP. Yes, immediate gratification was in charge!  Monday morning, I received a notice from Apple, stating that the phone would arrive by Friday or the following Monday. You call that ASAP shipping?

Strike #1 Apple.

I called Apple's customer service desk, and explained my situation to the nice man in India five times. He kept explaining that five to six days was fast shipping. In whose world?

Strike #2 Apple.

He finally accepted my opinion on his fast shipping, after I explained my locale and situation. I live 6 hours from the Apple distribution warehouse so a week is not ASAP.  After much pushing and begging, he offered to reverse the order so that I could go buy the phone in a local store.  I remember thinking "Why does buying something have to be so hard?" Little did I know...

I headed out later on Monday to the local ATT store to buy my new iPhone. I was so excited – I love new toys! I found a salesman, Jeff, who got a kick out of my excitement! We picked out my iPhone, accessories and headed for the checkout. Jeff entered my phone number, started to check me out – and then got this confused look on his face.  “Have you already bought an iPhone?” Ah, the Apple thing. I explained what had happened. He shook his head and took a deep breath.

“I have to talk to my manager. I don’t think we can sell you a phone."

WHAT???

Long story short.  Apple did cancel the order. But it takes 3-4 days for Apple to clear the transaction from ATTs system. In the meantime, they put a hold on my ATT account – so no new purchases or changes can be made.  So basically – I can’t have a new phone until Apple's system releases my account. You gotta be kidding me? What transactions takes 4 days to clear in this digital age??

Strike #3 and you’re OUT Apple.

I’m a customer ready to make a purchase. I have cash in hand. And I can’t buy?

To be fair - the ATT manager offered to sell me an iPhone at full price for the week. I’d return it when Apple released my account. ATT would sell me a new one at the discount for my upgrade – and then THROW AWAY the brand new iPhone I bought at full price.  OMG – what a waste!

I declined.  That just didn’t seem fair to poor ATT.  Just because Apple can’t ship in a timely way and saw fit to highjack my account, why should ATT pay for it?

So here I sit, no iPhone and helpless to do anything about it.

Sigh, I can’t even go buy a Blackberry Storm. They stopped me from buying anything.  I called Apple again and finally found a manager after a long begging session with another outsourced rep who badly needed to buy a clue.  That manager stepped up and attempted to get my iPhone here sooner, due to my inconvenience.  So I’ll have a phone by Wednesday (we hope). Now why didn't the first rep offer that same timeline???

I give Apple three strikes and a BIG OUT for Customer Service.

What do you think?

If You Talk the Talk, You Better Walk the Walk

Businesses large and small are jumping into a social media presence these days. It’s a great opportunity for real communication with your audience.  If you walk the walk.

But what happens when the talk isn’t the walk?  When a customer pushes past the social persona. Do you walk the walk - or do you crash and burn?

Two cases in point.

CASE ONE: The Social Media Guru

Take a certain large corp that's into social media big time. This company is a rare deal - a successful business in an industry that is going down fast. Well, I had a nightmare customer experience with my brand new, high dollar product from this same company.  One of the worst. Trust me, that says a lot.

A friend suggested I ping the social media exec with my story - to give him the feedback and let him work his magic. My initial reaction was that my complaining to a big corp wasn't going to matter. I'm a gnat on their derriere.

But my friend persisted and so I Tweeted the social media guru. Guru Tweeted back an email address and asked me to share my story. Good!  So I did. 

• A week later, no response. I thought maybe he was just too stunned to reply. So I Tweeted and asked what was up (a private DM).

• DM a few hours later. “Sorry, I'm busy, my email is backed up, I'll get back to you soon.”  Not exactly endearing, now was it.

• I DMd back that thanks to him, I now fully understood my importance to the company. (Note:  I know, bad form, but at the moment I just couldn't stop myself.)

• Response in  half an hour. "I can't respond because I need feedback from others. I'll get  back to you." 

Why the change in attitude? “Guru probably just now read your email, figured out he's in deep *** and is making excuses,” says my social media maven/sis.  It never even occurred to me that he wouldn't have read my email after I DM'd him with my plight.

That night I watched as Guru Tweeted on and on about sports, movies, the Stanley Cup, great restaurants and more.  Yep, he’s WAY too busy to care about me and my issues.

Fast Forward Two Weeks: To be fair - I had a different ending written for this story until Sunday night.  But the company called me on Thursday. We set a time for Friday but they were late for the call.  A whole 7 hours late. But they left a message so I'll call them. There is hope. Still....

CASE TWO: A Young Internet Entrepreneur

I responded pretty strongly to a pesky Twitter MLM peep who wouldn't take NO for an answer. Don't ya hate it? Snakeoil. Ick.  Ping, an immediate reply. "What the ..."  I opened the email, ready to blast away. Stopped short. It was from a totally different person and company.  Seems I replied to the wrong email.  OOPS!

Sy Whitehall, the voice of www.myebook.com*, had emailed and offered to introduce me to his site personally. I'd responded to his email with my, er, blast.  He told me later he felt 'chucked in the gut'.  What had he done, what was so bad about his website, his offering? What could he do to help me?

I quickly replied, explained I'd made a big boo boo and thanked Sy for his responsiveness. Poor guy!  He chatted with me on email for a while, and then we Skyped late last week and he gave me tips and pointers. Good stuff here, I'm using it on my website now!

I left a happy and satisfied user - impressed by Sy's dedication to his business, his customers and his own brand of social outreach with such a personal touch.

Who's Walking the Walk?

You can decide for yourselves. For me, it's pretty obvious.  Right now I'll do everything I can to help Sy get his business going.  That's why I named him in this blog. He deserves a BIG and public pat on the back for his dedication to his business and his customers.

As for Guru? The jury is still out on that one. 

The Bottom Line

Walk your Talk.  Someone will find out when you don't. Thanks to Web 2.0 - that bullet can be shared around the world. Besides, it's the right thing to do.

Keep your integrity and do what you say. You may not win all the time, but you’ll win more than most.

______

*www.myebooks.com is a FREE site to create and distribute interactive, multi-media eBooks. Try it out!

Objectivity is a Beautiful Thing

I met a new client a couple of weeks ago.  We spent time over dinner discussing his company and their strategy for diversification and expansion. The guy is sharp, and the opportunity he unearthed is strong.  All the  prerequisites for success are there: current customers are clamoring for the solution (it save them major money), there's an un-served and significant market demand, minimal investment is required and there's a 'sky's the limit' upside.

He hired me to help him communicate that strategy to his board and fellow executives.  The next morning we met to dig into the story. It didn't take long before we were both drawing pictures on the white board, talking all over each other, passionate and excited about the opportunity, about telling his story clearly so everyone could see the opportunity. It really wasn't that hard, really.

He was wowed by my 'quick uptake' and what he viewed as 'expert' suggestions. I thought it was plain ole business sense.   By the end of the session, we had the fundamentals of the story down pat. Yes, it was and is compelling.

So why was I able to capture that story so quickly when he'd struggled for weeks, even months? I'd like to say it's because of my brilliance, but that's not true. My experience did help - all that practice does payoff after all.

I brought one really helpful thing to the table: Objectivity.

I didn't do or say or create anything my client didn't already know. After all, he's the one that gave me all the fodder for the story.

The difference was my objectivity.  He'd lived and breathed his business and strategy for a couple of years. He knew it inside and out.  So much so that he couldn't see the story anymore. He was mired in the details, in everything he knew that others didn't - at least not yet. Being objective, I was able to elevate the key points, and downplay the details that were distractions.

Objectivity is a beautiful thing.  This is just one example. We all can think of more - from the way we read emails to what we hear in other people's statements. Unfortunately, all too often we lose the very objectivity that helps us create business value.  We simply get too close.

At the risk of sounding self-serving, objectivity is one of the best reasons to ask for an outside opinion. We are, after all, human.  As we begin a new project we start out passionately objective. But then we dive deeper, gather knowledge and fall into a subjective state of the 'known'.  We listen less and finish sentences more, assured of our course. It happens to all of us; at some point we lose that objective edge. As I said before, it's part of being human.

Seek out the objections to be more objective.You don't have to hire a consultant. Go chat with an associate.  Test your thoughts with a client who is known to be 'cantankerous'.   Sometimes I play a game of 'Stump the Chump' with my clients - asking them off-the-wall and pointed questions, poking holes in their strategies. More often we reverse roles - and I play the Chump to be Stumped.We have a lot of fun, but we also find those known truths that are holding us back.

I found this quote and I think its says it all.  "A creation needs not only subjectivity, but also objectivity*."

It's great to be a subjective expert. Just be sure to keep checking in with your objective self along the way.

* Stephen Chow