What is the purpose of delivering the Ultimate Customer Experience®?
For many, the primary goal is become distinctive from the competition. There have been numerous companies that have built themselves up by filling the niche of delivering excellent customer service. The Ritz Carlton, for example, famously authorizes every staff member to spend up to $2,000 per day to give each guest an exceptional experience. And the Ritz Carlton stands apart even in the world of luxury hotel chains as delivering truly exemplary customer service.
However, outpacing the competition in offering the Ultimate Customer Experience® is not limited to major hotel chains – or even big business. Plenty of smaller and supposedly “less glamorous” companies employ customer experience techniques that set them apart from the pack.
Using the Customer Experience to Conquer the Marketplace
Unless you’ve been traveling by train in France, you likely haven’t heard of the company Captain Train. Prior to its purchase for $187 million by Trainline Europe, it was a small travel website used to buy cheap French train tickets. What’s more, the market for selling cheap train tickets in France was already dominated by Voyages-sncf.com.
Captain Train saw an opportunity to offer something that consumers weren’t used to getting with their train tickets: an excellent customer experience. CEO Jean-Daniel Guyot created a policy where the company pledged to not only answer but also solve all customer inquiries withing 2 hours. When Captain Train actually delivered on that promise, they were able to achieve a whole new level within their industry.
(If you’ve read my latest book, “ICONIC,” you know how critical I believe it is that your PROMISE is congruent with your PERFORMANCE!)
Replacing Lost Items
One example of the Ritz-Carlton’s over the top customer service includes the hotel overnighting a laptop charger to a guest who had left it behind — along with an extra charger!
Smaller companies can also make up for the little disappointments in life. Kinsa Health manufactures thermometers that come with a small plastic cap to protect the tip. This is not sold as a stand-alone item. However when customers contact the company to request a new one, the company sends a replacement — without charge — along with a handwritten note.
Win Over Critics
A large part of the customer experience in a luxury brand hotel is making sure that no one is having a bad time. This should also be a concern for everyone seeking to deliver the Ultimate Customer Experience®!
Making certain that critics are taken seriously is especially important in the food industry — a lesson which Julia Baldwin, the CEO of After Dark Cookies has taken to heart.
Using the NPS score (Net Promoter Score), the company reaches out to their harshest critics, asking what went wrong. When people were truly dissatisfied, they are refunded AND given an additional free order, in the hopes they will have a more positive experience. Sometimes the most valuable feedback has come from these encounters…not to mention new raving fans!
Finding Strength in Small Size
Sometimes the solution for a growing organization to delivering the Ultimate Customer Experience® comes from realizing that your expanding size might mean that you need to do things differently from the traditional norms of customer service.
Wistia, a video hosting, creation and analytics company realized that they were not able to deliver quality customer service to scale via phones. Yet a large part of their success was based on the customer service they offered — especially going above and beyond throughout the set-up process.
They made the difficult decision to remove their phone number from their website. They switched instead to a robust online system of support. This included personalized welcome material such as emails and videos that help guide new customers through the set-up process. It has helped Wistia to continue being greatly admired for their customer service.
All too often, the examples of companies setting themselves apart with their customer experience come from the major players. We’ve probably heard enough stories about Apple, Amazon, Southwest, Nordstrom and the usual suspects.
It’s critical that small businesses – and even entrepreneurs and solopreneurs – discover that they should not be afraid to invest their resources to make themselves shine by delivering the Ultimate Customer Experience®
Back in the days that I was working a little bit in
television, one staple of every newscast was the day’s stock market report. Each
day, every report would let you know what had just happened on Wall Street.
Yet, while you might be able to decide the stocks or funds
in which you would invest, seldom would you have any control over what those
companies did that would make your money expand or contract.
This past week, I spent time in Atlanta at the “Take the
Stage” event with my friends, Suzanne Evans and Larry Winget.
There, I saw first-hand committed individuals who were making
an investment they could have some control over — for they were underwriting
themselves.
When I was a student at Franklin College in Indiana, I
couldn’t help but notice a quote from Benjamin Franklin that was strategically
positioned on just about everything printed by the school: “An investment in
knowledge always pays the highest dividends.”
Some of the people in the audience where I spoke this week
will obtain significant returns on their investment in knowledge. Others will
not achieve anything.
The primary reason is
because not only do they control their investment — they also control the
actions they will take based on the knowledge they have obtained.
Several writers have observed that there are infinitely more
“wannabe” authors than published ones. It’s not just a function of talent. It’s
because…writers write. The oft-cited line is that the way you become an
author is simply “put the seat of your pants in the seat of your chair.” In
other words — to borrow from Nike — you just do it.
Please don’t misunderstand: you should have a well-balanced
portfolio and diversity in your investments. I’m not suggesting you
should invest in yourself…and nothing else.
Yet, I also do not believe it can be overstated that when you
invest in yourself, the dividends are not merely financial. There are a myriad
of benefits to personal and professional growth.
Scholarship money concept. Hand of male or female putting coins in jar with money stack step growing growth saving money investment
As we enter the final stretch for the year — and the decade — now might be a good time to look at your self-investment.
And, it’s also a great time to examine if you are taking the
action required to make it generate significant returns.
One more thing: it’s been “Ultimate Customer Experience ®
Week” on my podcast, PROJECT DISTINCT! We’ve briefly reviewed the Five Steps to
the Ultimate Customer Experience from my forthcoming book, “The Ultimate
Customer Experience” that has been totally revamped, rewritten, and rebooted. If
you didn’t catch this week’s episodes, please visit: https://ProjectDistinct.com –
In the next few weeks, we will be sharing how YOU can get
your complimentary copy of the book — just for listening to the podcast and
subscribing to my blog. It’s part of how we hope to create a “UCE” for YOU!
Have you ever read something on social media or elsewhere
online that sounded really persuasive…then, perhaps you “liked” it or even
added a supportive comment…without really knowing for certain whether the post
was accurate?
Sadly, many of us – including me – have done exactly
that.
Not to be political, this is just to cite one example: the
President’s son, Eric, retweeted a post that featured comedian Tim Allen
stating that the costs associated with President Obama’s website for the
Affordable Care Act were higher than those to build the border wall advocated
by President Trump.
First off, that’s not true: Bloomberg fixed the
HealthCare.gov costs at $2.1 billion – estimates for the wall, according to
President Trump, are in the $15-21 billion range.
But, secondly, Allen never said it. This isn’t to say that
the “Home Improvement” star isn’t in favor of the border wall – it’s just that
he never made the statement attributed to him.
However, like many of us have done, Eric Trump saw a quote
he liked from a source he appreciated – and reposted the falsehood. I’m not
attempting to suggest he knew it was untrue; most of us just assume the
accuracy of a statement when we like, repost, or comment positively on a meme
like that.
I’m currently reading the new book by the great author,
Malcolm Gladwell. The thesis of the book is, basically, that even highly
trained experts like CIA agents and Federal judges cannot effectively ascertain
when someone is telling the truth. In other words, we all suffer a bit in the
accuracy of our analysis of information.
All of this does indicate, though, that we need to do just a
little homework before we proceed to spread information in today’s wired world.
A while back, I heard from an author who was simply
gobsmacked: she’d subtitled her first book – one she had worked long and hard
to write – with exactly the same title as my first business book. When it hit
the market, many people said to her, “You do know Scott McKain’s book on this,
right?” And, while book titles cannot be trademarked or copyrighted, it’s hard
to stimulate a strong public response for an idea that appears to be
derivative.
In other words, she had done all the hard work
to write the book – but evidently never took the time to do a simple Google
search on the title.
Our company owns the Federally registered trademark on a
term I first started writing and speaking about in the early 1908’s: “Ultimate
Customer Experience. ®” We have legal intellectual property protection for all
training, education, speaking, and knowledge-based efforts. It’s my brand…my
mark…in the customer experience world.
Yet, we are constantly dealing with training companies,
research firms, speakers, and workshop leaders who are trying to deliver
programs on how to create an “Ultimate Customer Experience.” It appears that
they can’t be bothered to do the homework of checking with Google or performing
a Trademark search to see if someone else owns it before they launch their
programs.
It’s akin to constructing a
house on land that is someone else’s – then acting as if you’re upset that you
can’t own the structure. Wouldn’t you at least check first before you started
the building?
The point of all of this is just a simple reminder that I
need – and perhaps you do, as well. It’s easier than ever to post, re-post,
advertise, and share information than ever before. And, all in all, that’s a
great aspect to the world we live in.
However, it also requires of us the added responsibility to
be certain that we’re not inadvertently sharing – or even profiting – from
content that isn’t true…or isn’t ours.
My great friend, the “Dean of NFL Officials,” Jim Tunney,
always ends his weekly “Tunney Side of the Street” posts with a “Will you?”
question. With appreciation and admiration for him, I’ll simply ask:
Will you think about the truth – and consider
the proper ownership– of what you share on social media and elsewhere in the
future?
