Customer Experience Leadership

Assuming the Helm

"On the Mississippi River, in Mark Twain's time, there were riverboat pilots who only knew a few miles of the river.  I mean, conditions changed so much, you couldn't know the whole trip.  Floods, sandbars, fallen logs...all a riverboat pilot could do was to know his little piece of the puzzle.  So for the next few hours, this is my ship.  We start our approach..."

--Robert Duvall as Captain Spurgeon "Fish" Tanner, Deep Impact, (1998)

Greetings, Customer Experience Leaders:

I'm Edward Lopez, a management consultant with Synovate Customer Experience.  I have had the pleasure of working with or meeting with many of you, and I look forward to meeting you all--even if only through our conversations on this blog.  As of today, I will author this blog and maintain the momentum we have built in our discussions on Customer Experience.

I want to thank Brian Lunde for being the pioneer and building a forum for us to share our experiences.   We are here because we know that customer satisfaction is no longer enough to win in today's marketplace.  We are here because we believe a differentiated customer experience will lead to enduring success for us and our companies.  We are here because customer experience is a relatively new frontier, and we know that the lessons we learn (and share) here will expedite progress for all of us on the 'Customer Experience Journey.'  We thank Brian for starting the conversation and for keeping us engaged with his sharp wit and thought-provoking commentary.

I'm excited for the opportunity to take the helm for this part of the journey.  When you check this blog, you'll read views, observations and experiences built by years of consulting Fortune 500 companies on the Customer Experience Journey and a lifelong love of marketing and customer strategy.  It's true--I have known since the ninth grade that my passion is marketing and attracting/retaining customers. 

I have worked with people and companies at all stages along the Customer Experience Journey, from new investigators to experienced companies with a deeply embedded customer focus.  I specialize in services businesses, so I will look to those of you in manufacturing companies to help balance my perspective.  From time to time, my posts may reflect other things about which I am passionate, including movies, music, sports, fitness, theater, travel and fatherhood.

Thank you for the contributions you have made to build this community.  I look forward to getting to know you and learning about your individual perspectives on Customer Experience.  Thank you in advance for checking in and chiming in when you can, and for welcoming other customer experience leaders to our community.  Working together, we can all move toward advanced competencies in Customer Experience Management that will wow our customers and leave our competitors behind.  Let's start our approach.

I Hope You've Enjoyed The Show

Today is my last day with Synovate Customer Experience; I'm moving on to a new opportunity. I just wanted to publicly thank those of you who have kept up with my blog posts and especially those of you who have engaged in the conversation with your comments. I've had a lot of fun and I hope we've all learned a few things along the way.

I understand Synovate plans to keep this blog alive, so don't change your bookmarks or RSS subscriptions yet! Hopefully you'll continue to find this blog a source of fresh ideas and interesting commentary on all things customer experience.

I don't think this is the end of my blogging days, so hopefully we'll meet again in the proverbial blogosphere!

To the future--

Brian Lunde

Revisiting the Airline Question

Back in June I posed the question, "What would YOU do if you were an airline CEO?" (see post here). I promised to give you my own thoughts on this question...and I was reminded of that when I read a news clipping today about Delta Airlines' being the first and only U.S. airline to offer broadband Wi-Fi access on its entire domestic mainline fleet. More on that in a moment.

If I were an airline CEO, I would initiate a major strategic initiative to transition the management culture to focus on the basic principles of the "service-profit chain." I wrote about the man who coined the term, James Heskett, in a recent post here. To put it simply, concentrate on employee relationships as the key to rebuilding customer relationships. This may seem counterintuitive for a business that is so capital-intensive. But I would argue that there is so much about the customer experience that airlines cannot control--weather delays, FAA-imposed ground stops and arrival holds due to congestion, the dehumanizing process of TSA security procedures, etc.--that focusing on employees becomes a critically important management option. And, focusing on internal branding--helping employees learn how to "live the brand"--will translate into a branded customer experience in all of those interactions between travelers and airline employees on the ground, on the plane, and in the call centers. An airline with a human face...

So this puts Delta's move into a different light. I don't diminish the temporary advantage that this might give Delta, but it's not strategic. It is a technology play that can be easily copied, and even more importantly, it is brand-neutral; it does nothing to reinforce Delta's specific brand values as a part of the experience, which means by definition it cannot provide any real differentiation. Like the "bed wars" initiated by Westin's launch of the Heavenly Bed® in their hotels, the profit advantage of this investment will be quickly competed away, failing the necessity of balancing shareholder value and customer value.

Working Hard for a 10

At a recent hotel stay in New York, I received this card in my check-in folio. Many of you will instantly recognize this for what it is: a way to game the customer feedback system to maximize this property's score. This is a common trick among auto dealers as well, who pressure you to give them the top score on the follow-up sales or service survey sponsored by the manufacturer.

None of these "gamers" are considering the impact of this practice on customer experience. This kind of communication transmits the following message:

"We don't really care about your experience; we care about getting a good score because it's money in our pockets. Now, it just so happens that to get the money we need you to either (a) feel good about your experience or (b) feel personally responsible if that doesn't happen, so your guilt makes you give us a top score. It doesn't really matter to us. So if you don't take the time and energy to speak up and ask us to fix whatever it is that prevents (a), then it is obviously not our fault, and (b) is your only option."

What's sad is how easy it is to avoid this. What kills the "Working for a 10" card is the opening sentence, which screams, "This is not about you, it's about us." The rest of the card almost works as-is (I'd get rid of the references to a "10" and use language that focuses on the customer benefit). Without that self-serving introduction, the card would have the same--possibly even a better--effect on motivating guests to speak up if they have a problem. And it would send a completely different message: we actually care about what the customer experience is for you (and we're going to trust that will show up in our scores).

Some of this stuff is so simple.