Home » Customer Expectations » Page 11

Category: Customer Expectations

Anticipating Your Customers’ Needs

I had the slot right after lunch. A lot of speakers hate that slot. People are tired after lunch, or they got an email that morning that required them to spend their lunch hour putting out a fire, or they have so much swirling around their brains from the morning sessions they can’t stay focused. You know what I mean. Siesta time.

The host took the microphone to introduce me, and as she had for the morning speakers, started with her obligatory blah blah blah, turn-off-your-phones, surveys-are-on-the-table, housekeeping announcement.

I could see heads already starting to nod off.

I switched on my microphone, put up my first slide of me in a super hero costume and said,

“Thank you, Margaret. Yes, I am Phil Wrzesinski and I am going to be your Super Hero today. First, since I know you just finished lunch, I am passing out dessert. Chocolates. Dark chocolates to be exact. The healthy kind. Full of antioxidants to get you going. Second, I have some housekeeping of my own. Go ahead and turn your phones back on. If I can’t keep your attention for the next hour, then frankly, I am not doing my job. And today I feel up to it. You’re going to learn some things today that you’ll want to share. Please do. Finally, go ahead and grab those surveys. Under the section about handouts go ahead and mark that a 5. I have complete notes of this workshop available for everyone right after I’m done. You might as well mark that first question a 5, too. We’re going to have fun. You ready?”

Do you see what I was doing? I was anticipating my audience’s needs before I even got on stage. I knew they would be a little groggy. I knew they needed something to pick them up. The chocolates served multiple purposes. It got them engaged right off the bat. They were opening packages, opening candies, passing them from table to table, doing something active. It woke them up, both from the small sugar fix and more importantly from the here-is-something-you-don’t-see-every-day-maybe-I-better-pay-attention opening of my talk.

The bravado in my speech was to transfer confidence to them that what I had to say was worthwhile. It also was a bet. I just bet them I could keep their attention enough to keep them off their phones. They were paying closer attention just to see if I could make good on that bet.

I knew the crowd would be restless, sluggish and unfocused. I anticipated that. Then I took steps specifically to help them change their mood to the mood I needed to sell my product. You can’t sell the unwilling. You also can’t sell the unprepared-to-buy. You have to get them in the right mood first. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling toys, pet supplies, floor tiling or ideas. If you don’t anticipate your customers’ needs and take care of those needs, you cannot build the relationship necessary to make the sale.

Here is a simple exercise for you and your staff to do. Answer the question, “What does my customer need the moment she walks through the door to get in the right mood for shopping?”

If it is cold and snowy, she made need a place to take off her coat and boots. If you are off the beaten path and you get customers from a long drive, she may need to use the bathroom. If you are downtown or in a mall where she has been shopping other stores, she may need a place to put her packages. If it is early morning, she may need a shot of caffeine. (Heck, that could work late in the afternoon, too.) Solve that need and your customers will be ready to buy what you’re selling.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Getting my audience to fill out the survey in advance, while bribing them with dark chocolates, not only got me a higher score on the survey, but more importantly gave them more time after the talk to come up to me to do the real buying. I was speaking to group of downtown development directors. None of them were there looking for speakers, but out of the 60 groups represented I got a dozen opportunities to speak because I made them more open to buy.

PPS Sure your product has to be good.  At the end of the day it is always about the product. But no matter how good your product, if you don’t get people in the mood to buy, they won’t be buyers.

Get the Simple Things Right

I made three trips to a local service provider today. First, I checked their website for their hours. They had a beautiful, informative website. But no hours anywhere I could find. I know of other service providers in their category who open early, so after dropping my son off at school at 7:20am, I headed over.

They weren’t there.

No hours posted anywhere. There was a sign on the door saying they would be back at 8:00am, but I couldn’t make it back this morning. I swung by at 1:00pm while running other errands.

They weren’t there.

The sign on the door now said they would be back at 2:15pm. It didn’t say how long they would be there. Fortunately, my schedule for the afternoon was more flexible. I got there at 2:15pm, ran in, got what I needed, and was out the door in just over a minute.

Three trips for a 78-second transaction. A lot of wasted gas. A lot of frustration. No hours on the website. No hours on the door. Not a happy camper.

If you can’t get the simple things right, your customers will wonder what else you can’t do right. 

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS I understand certain service providers will close their offices for lunch. I’m okay with that – as long as I know it is going to happen. That’s why you need to post hours on your door and website.

Retailers take note. Don’t assume customers know what days and times you’ll be open. Make sure you have it on your website, on your Facebook site, on Google, and on your door. I have a twenty year history with this service provider, but I have no room in my brain for memorizing their quirky hours.

Don’t Build Your Own Obstacles (Part II)

If you’re a BBQ lover in the Detroit area, you recognize this door. Behind it is the tantalizing flavors of smoked meats, refreshing liquids from the Great Beer State, and an aroma that pleasantly stays in your nostrils for hours. You know it as Slow’s BBQ. In fact, you take pride in knowing those natural-colored thin planks stacked tightly together is the actual door of entry, not the door to the right going upstairs, nor the door ten feet left of the picture covered with stickers and locked, nor the locked door leading to the patio another fifteen feet to the left and directly beneath the sign on the building telling you that you’ve arrived.

Those were the three doors I tried first before finding the actual opening.

If there hadn’t been a sign on the building telling me where I was, this would be a different post. It would be about Over-the-Top Design and Sharing Secrets. It would be about how you felt like an insider because you knew the red and black building without a sign and with a hidden doorway was home to some killer ‘cue. You only knew because someone told you, making it (and you) feel even more special.

Instead, I felt like an idiot. I felt like I was made to feel stupid before I ever set foot in the joint. That’s a big obstacle to overcome. If the food or the service had not been stellar, just average, I’d probably never go back. It would be a nagging feeling just below the surface.

As I was leaving, there was a guy outside having the same struggles I had. Apparently the design of the door wasn’t over-the-top enough to get people to talk about it, only about the food. Their fancy, hard-to-find door didn’t generate word-of-mouth, only frustration. You never want your customers walking into your establishment frustrated. Make sure they know how to get in the front door.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS The other alternative would be to remove the sign on the building altogether. Sure, it would make it harder and even more frustrating for some people to find the joint, but since most of these places get their new business from word-of-mouth, it would ratchet up the need for people to talk about the design elements and ratchet up the feeling of knowing something others don’t. It would have changed my feelings of frustration to feelings of discovery and being in-the-know.

PPS Of course, at the end of the day, if you’re a restaurant, you better have over-the-top food first and foremost. Slows brought it. I saw a few items on trays passing by that will get me back. They overcame the obstacle. Not many stores and restaurants do.

Don’t Build Your Own Obstacles

We’ve all heard the phrase KISS – keep it simple, stupid. We’ve also been exposed to Occam’s Razor – the simpler explanation is most likely the better one. But still, as business owners, we forget that and build our own man-made obstacles to make our lives harder.

For example, I went to a restaurant in Phoenix call The Arrogant Butcher. By the name you would guess they were likely a steak house or possibly a BBQ joint. That was my expectation as I entered. Sure enough, the menu had a couple steaks and some ribs, but was dominated by seafood dishes. I asked my waitress what they were known for. She said the seafood. Their oysters were flown in fresh from California daily.

Image result for the arrogant butcher

I was already mentally halfway out the door, but decided to stick it out and give it a try.

Much to my delight, the seafood was delicious. The staff was friendly. The dessert was awesome.

But because of the name, if anything wasn’t up to par, the night would have been a huge disappointment. Because of the name, my expectations were completely different to the experience, and almost a deal killer. Because of the name, everything had to be surprisingly delightful.

I sat at the chef’s table and watched the cooks at work. None seemed arrogant. None looked like a butcher. I didn’t see a lot of steaks or ribs, but the oyster shucker never stopped shucking.

At the end of the night, I am happy to say they overcame my original disappointment. But they had to be perfect to do so, all because of the obstacle they put up all on their own.

Retail is hard enough as it is. Don’t make it harder on yourself. KISS.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS I understand that good, fun, unique names are catchy and stand out. I drank beer and played guitar at a pub with Poison in the name. But when your name screams a certain expectation, you have to be exceptionally excellent at what you do if your actual brand doesn’t match that expectation. Few businesses pull that off consistently.

You’re Not Perfect

You’re not perfect. Far from it. Me, too. You will make mistakes. You will ruin someone’s Christmas. You will cause someone gray hairs. You will make someone miss an appointment because they had to deal with your carelessness.

You will have some problems that aren’t even your fault. Maybe your vendor screwed up or the customer had a completely unrealistic expectation even after you explained it for the third time. Maybe you get the good spouse, bad spouse routine.

No matter what type of retail, you are going to have the unhappy customer.

I believe two of my favorite companies – Ritz-Carlton and Zingerman’s Deli have it right.

(source unknown)

They both empower their entire staff to be able to take care of a customer’s problem. Everyone from the assistant bottle washer to the garden boy to the valet have authorization to take a customer’s wrongs and make them right.

It does beg the question… Would you leave the fate of your customer service reputation in the hands of your lowest paid employee?

Yes! If you train them right.

Here is the easy format for handling about 98.7% of your unhappy customers.

  1. Apologize. It doesn’t matter who is at fault. They are angry. They perceive you have slighted them in some way. Apologize to them. “I am really sorry that this happened.”
  2. Ask. Ask for a complete description of what happened and what went wrong from their perspective. Don’t interrupt. Let them say what is on their mind. Don’t assume you know what happened. Let them tell the whole story. Apologize again, if necessary.
  3. Amend. Make it right. The best way to make it right in their eyes is to ask, “What would you like us to do?” Most of the time, especially if you have done steps 1 and 2, they will ask for far less than what you are prepared to do. Do what they asked, and then a little more. Yes, even if you’re giving away the farm (figuratively, of course).
  4. Learn. Let your staff make the customer happy. Then have them report back to you what they did. As long as they made the customer happy, tell your staff, “Well done!” Then show them a better way to handle it the next time if necessary.

You have to train your staff to do this. It won’t happen overnight. You have to role play it at meetings. You have to spell it out in writing. You have to remind them that the store’s first and foremost goal is to have happy customers and their job is to make those customers happy. Your job is to teach them how.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Unhappy customers are people, too. Treat them with respect and dignity (apologize and listen fully to their complaints) and they become a lot less unhappy in very short time. In fact, they often become your best ambassadors.

Is Customer Service Dead?

I just spent several days in Las Vegas for the ABC Expo, the largest trade show for the juvenile product industry.

Las Vegas. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas (btw, they mean the money you gamble stays in Vegas).

NO BEER FOR PHIL

One thing that didn’t happen in Vegas was me drinking beer. Not that I didn’t try.

I ordered a beer in a burger & beer joint in one casino. Took almost 20 minutes to arrive. I probably would have had two if I hadn’t filled up on water waiting for the first one.

I ordered a beer at another restaurant just as I started my meal. When the waitress finally returned to see if we wanted our check, I switched it from a tall to a regular.

I understand the concept of not bringing the check in a restaurant until they ask for it, on the hopes that people will continue drinking and run up the tab, but I wasn’t getting either the drink or the tab. It’s hard to pay 20% on over-priced meals when you get service like that.

NO PRICE LISTS EITHER

It wasn’t just the restaurants, either. I was in one of the largest booths on the trade show floor. I asked for a price list so that I could place my order. The sales rep said she was instructed not to give them out.

Huh?

I’m about to write an order equal to one month of your salary. You have a stack of price lists in your arm that I can see clearly. And you won’t give me one? Did you forget why you were here?

Time after time, booth after booth, I had to ask to make sure they gave me a price list with the catalog. It was baffling how hard many of these vendors were making it for us to do business with them.

CUSTOMER SERVICE IS DEAD

Another store owner and I, while waiting for our dinner check, had plenty of time to discuss the general lack of customer service everywhere. We shared stories of trips to the big box stores, department stores, mall stores, and yes, even indie retail stores where the bar was not met.

Think about it. Here are two retailers who understand the challenges of retail. Our bar of expectation is probably more forgiving than others. Yet we were lamenting how we couldn’t find anyone to consistently give us even simple basic customer service.

Yet a new survey from SAP SE says that one of the keys to future growth is, “Improve the in-store experience, because while a focus for many years on the in-store experience has paid off, retailers must continue to evolve and innovate to keep up with changing customer needs.”

CUSTOMER SERVICE CPR

The key phrase is changing customer needs. Actually they aren’t changing as fast as you might think. But if you aren’t hyper-focused on your customer’s needs, whether it be a beer or a price or just a friendly smile, your customer service is dead and dying.

My fellow retailer and I came to a simple conclusion. Customer Service is really quite simple…

Give the customer exactly what she wants.

WOW Customer Service is not much more difficult.

Give her exactly what she wants and then a little more.

We didn’t find that in Las Vegas. But if you do that in your store, it will pay off in ways the slot machines never can.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Your brick & mortar competition (chains and big-box behemoths) have pretty much given up on Customer Service. You know who hasn’t? The online stores. Amazon is hyper-focused on the customer. Other major online sellers are doing the same. If you can start exceeding your customers’ expectations, you can own the b&m landscape. Need an idea of how to raise that bar? Download Customer Service: From Weak to WOW! in the Free Resources section.

Coupons Aren’t Bad (When They are Rare and Special)

Back in the 90’s we started a direct mail newsletter for Toy House. We sent out a mailing every other month.

Conventional Wisdom at the time said we needed to include a coupon with each mailing to help us “track the effectiveness” of the mailing. So we included a $20 off a $100 purchase coupon in each mailing.

Coupons

Two things happened…

First, we never really were able to “track the effectiveness” of the newsletter, only the effectiveness of the coupon (which grew considerably in November, but waned in other months). It was hard to say whether the other articles were even read, let alone acted upon. In theory, we were told the coupon would mean that people would at least read the newsletter without throwing it away (although today I’m not sure if that was the case).

Second, we were training customers to save their big purchases until another coupon arrived. I would be showing a customer a new car seat and the first question was always, “When does your next coupon come out?”

Bed Bath and Beyond just announced that their coupon program was backfiring and causing them to lose profit as people just waited for the next coupon before they shopped. We learned that from sending out six a year. They send out one or more a week.

BEING RARE

We decided over a decade ago that sending out multiple coupons wasn’t the answer. We shifted the direct mail newsletter to email newsletters (no coupon) and shifted the coupon to a postcard mailed only in November. Our response to that direct mail piece doubled the ROI of any previous mailings because it was Rare and Special.

BEING SPECIAL

Even with that shift to a once-a-year coupon, we have seen our annual mailing become less and less effective over the years. Although it is Rare, it is no longer Special. It is a foregone conclusion.

Until this year.

We’ll be doing a different type of coupon this year for two reasons.

  • First, we need to make it Special again.
  • Second, we want to shift away from the expenses of direct mail, so it will be an email coupon.

We have already begun marketing to our customers the importance of being signed up to get our emails. We have already begun prepping them that something new is going to happen this year. We have already begun the buzz and excitement as our customers are wondering what will happen.

You can use coupons in your marketing tool box. Just remember that to be most effective, they have to be both Rare and Special.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS I’ll tell you how we are going to manage an email coupon in an upcoming post. Make sure you and your fellow store owners have signed up to get this blog in your inbox.

The Need to Keep Raising the Bar

Bed Bath and Beyond just announced that their coupon strategy is backfiring and that their profits are hurting because everyone is waiting for the coupon to do their shopping.

Umm… yeah. When you send the coupon out every week and never enforce the exclusions or expiration date, you pretty much send out the message that everything in the store is always 20% off. Anyone paying full price in that store is either lazy or an idiot.

What used to be special is now considered the norm.

BBB faces a dilemma. They either have to drop the coupon program and wean customers off the 20% discount (a daunting and dangerous task), or raise the bar on the coupon program to make it special again.

They said in the article, “Bed Bath and Beyond says it plans to draw in more customers through marketing.”

Okay, but how? A bigger, deeper coupon every so often? (further eroding profits) or something else?

THE LESSON

If you are doing something special for your customers, eventually it goes from special to expected and the marketing pull from it will taper off. If it is a discount, that discount will have to grow over time to remain equally effective.

If you consistently go above and beyond your customers’ expectations, eventually they will come to expect it, meaning you’ll have to raise the bar even farther.

As you choose your marketing strategy, remember that the special things you do today will become the norm tomorrow. Make sure you have room to raise the bar when the effects start tapering off.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Surprise and Delight are the best tools for attracting new customers because you’ll never run out of new and fun and inexpensive ways to surprise and delight your customers. Check out these two Free Resources to get some ideas of things you can do to raise the bar and attract more customers – Generating Word of Mouth and Customer Service: From Weak to WOW!. I doubt either of these will be strategies employed by BBB (although they should).

From Your Customer’s Point of View

Legend has it the day before Disney Land opened, Walt and crew arrived to do a walk-through. Upon entering the gates, Walt immediately kneeled down at the front of the park. His entourage was curious as he begged them to kneel with him. Once everyone was kneeling, he explained that this was the height of the customer he was most concerned about pleasing and he wanted to see the park from their perspective.

Do you look at your business from your customer’s point of view?

I took a trip last weekend to the Upper Peninsula in Michigan. Took my son to see Michigan Technological University and my family to see Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. I snapped this picture of one of the lookout platforms.

Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore Lookout Platform
Viewing window for little visitors at the lookout platform for Miner’s Castle at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

See the window built into the wall of the platform? They got this one right. This family-friendly park made sure the entire family had a view of Miner’s Castle and Lake Superior. No dangerous lifting of young children over the safety of the wall. No little ones complaining that they couldn’t see. No unhappy faces feeling forgotten or ignored.

Little things like that window make a huge difference in how someone views and remembers their experience.

Walt knew this. He built his park and empire by looking at how his best, most important customers would experience it. He made sure the people he wanted to impress the most would be impressed. He looked at everything through their eyes.

Have you done the same?

Have you asked these questions?

  • Who are my best customers?
  • What is their minimum expectation when they visit my store?
  • How can I design my store and its policies to make their experience even better?
  • How can I surprise and delight them even more?

I’ll bet Walt asked these questions. You should, too.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS One easy way to do this is to look at every single interaction your customer has with your store and ask just these two questions…

  1. What does the customer expect to happen here?
  2. What can I do that will surprise and delight them here?

It is a perspective that changes everything (for the better).

 

 

A Simple Tip to Change Your Customer’s Lasting Impression

I figured this time it would be different. This time I was handing the cashier $33 for a $32.53 bill. This time I was only going to get change back. This time they wouldn’t place those bills in my hand first, then dump the change on top of those bills so that it could slide off the bills and onto the floor, the counter, or the road beneath the door I couldn’t open in the drive-thru lane.

I was wrong.

He placed a receipt in my waiting hand, dumped the change onto the receipt, then watched with apathetic disdain as the two pennies slid off the receipt, rolled back across the counter and fell somewhere below his feet. With a half-hearted apology, he bumbled around under the counter until he found the two pennies. I was ready to leave, already pissed off that no one ever taught him this simple trick.

Place the coins in the hand first, followed by the bills, followed by the receipt.

First, if you’re counting back change – something you should learn to do – then you will always do it this way.

Second, it is far easier to grab bills while holding coins than to grab coins while holding bills. Try it.

Third, this is usually one of the last impressions a customer has of your store. If that impression is your half-hearted apology, or worse, her having to scramble on the floor to get her money back, then you aren’t sending her out on a positive note. She will have that bad taste in her mouth next time she decides where to shop and she won’t even know exactly why she chose not to go to your store.

It isn’t all that hard to train. It isn’t all that hard to do. It seems like a small thing, but because of where it happens in the grand arc of her experience, it takes on a larger significance.

I didn’t want to wait around for two pennies. But I did, getting more frustrated with every passing second. I didn’t even want the receipt in the first place. I used to try to teach these cashiers the right way to do it, but decided that wasn’t my job. Nowadays I just shake my head and make note of which businesses could use a training program (hint: every fast food drive thru, almost every chain store on the planet, and way too many indie retailers).

It is simple to give the change first. Plus, it makes a difference in the lasting impression she has of your store. Why more stores don’t teach this technique is beyond my understanding. Wouldn’t you think big chains like Subway would know this?

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS This is a non-negotiable for my staff. During training they are told that if they are ever caught giving back the bills first, they can seek employment elsewhere. There is no excuse for not doing something this easy the right way each and every time.

PPS Although I teach them and encourage them to count back the change, I am not as tough on that particular skill, so long as they hand over the change first. They instead say something to the effect of, “Your change is $1.58. Here is the 58 cents. Here is the dollar.”