The CEO's Challenge: CCO, End Your Own Job

My friend, customer service leader Barry Dalton, just came up with a great challenge on his blog, http://custservicestories.blogspot.com/. You'll enjoy the read.

The short of it is to imagine yourself as the Chief Customer Officer of a large corporation. You're all ready to charge into 2010 when the CEO calls you into his office and says,

"Your challenge for 2010 is to bring us to an entirely new level of service as a company, elimanating your postion in the process. You act with my complete support. What is your plan?"

My reply is posted on the comments section of Barry's blog, along with those of a few of the Blogosphere's other great minds in customer service.

Link to this post: http://bit.ly/7zO04m

The Customer Is... Sometimes Right?

What do Nordstrom and Chick Fil-A have in common? Fast food and upscale retail. Tough one, right? Here's a hint: they're both market leaders.

How about Lexus and Wegmans? Luxury cars and price-competitive groceries. International footprint and 70ish stores in the Northeast. Tough to see a connection?

How about Connecticut's Griffin Hospital and Diamond Plumbing of Greater LA? Yes, they have something in common with each other, and with each of the other brands I've mentioned.

Oklahoma's Loving Care Home Health Care and Four Seasons Hotels. Saratoga Technologies and Stew Leonard's, "The World's Largest Dairy Store." Mitchell's ultra-retail clothiers, with rack upon rack of $3,000 suits, and Ooh-la-la Jewels Du Jour, with tables-full of $8 bracelets.

Give up yet?

These organizations all function on the same bedrock principal: The Customer is Always Right. And guess what? They are each wildly successful. They lead their fields or their markets.

I've gathered a vibe lately that perhaps the ages-old adage "The customer is always right" has fallen out of fashion with many self-proclaimed "thought-leaders" (aka experts) in business and even within the realm of customer service.

Guess again.

Being right will never be out of fashion - or more to the point, who cares what the latest trend is, if what you're doing is winning the day with your customers.

The next time someone tries to tell you that the customer can sometimes be wrong - not in a literal sense, but from a business-philosophy perspective - ask them how that attitude is working for them. What corporate ship do they steer? How are they faring against the competition? How many of their customers brag about them on a daily basis to their friends, coworkers, even strangers in line at the bank?

These remain tough times. Be careful who you take advice from.

Too Big to Thrive?

Is your company too big for its own good?

Size amplifies culture, for better or for worse. That's why most enterprise-sized corporations are such disappointments in the human arena - their leadership is mediocre at best, and so it duplicates itself in the form of... you guessed it, mediocrity.

Compare that to Wegmans, the grocer that keeps growing - slowly but steadily - and keeps winning lifelong loyalty from its customers, year after year, store after store, region after region. Or Nordstrom: same deal - they're always amazing, coast-to-coast. Or Four Seasons Hotel. Travel the world, and Four Seasons is stunningly great no matter where you land.

Excellence is contagious. Culture doesn't just matter, it is the only thing that matters. Ignore this law of business at your peril.


*****

Barnes & Noble update

Are you ready for the latest on my friend Ken's Barnes & Noble saga? Here it is...

Nothing new. He has still not connected with anyone at B&N on Twitter or via their customer (dis)service 800 line. Wow, nice going, guys.

Meanwhile, have you read The NY Times' article on the technical aspects of the Nook today? These guys have more than just a customer service problem, it seems.

Is your company too big for its own good?

[Ken's story is two entries down.]

Spoil Your Customers Because You're Smart. Period.

Let me throw something out there for you to think on for a minute: companies that provide top-tier customer service, that upper one percent, are more profitable than their competitors.

So as a business strategy, it’s not only nice to spoil your customers, it’s essential. If you don’t, you’re leaving money on the table – and probably even worse, you’re leaving a big, fat hole open for your competitors to drive right through. Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does the marketplace. If you don’t provide outstanding service, it’s just a matter of time before someone savvier comes along to steal your customers.

I promise.

This is the “Why” of spoiling your customers rotten: don’t do it because it’s nice, although it most certainly is. Don’t do it because you’re grateful to your customers for feeding your family and paying for your mortgage and vacations, although I hope you are. Provide five-star customer service with every customer, every day, across the board, because it’s foolish not to. As a business strategy. As a career decision. Doing the right thing is smart.

Customer Service on Twitter: No Room for Half Measures

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but this is how I believe retail is supposed to work: you give the merchant your money - in the form of cash, for instance - and they give you the item you want. In the case you're about to read, that item is a Nook, Barnes & Noble's answer to Amazon's wildly-popular Kindle e-book.

Turns out I'm wrong, and not all retailers take cash anymore. Sound crazy? Read on...

I'm on Twitter just now (I know, what are the chances?), and something interesting flashes across my screen. Turns out thought-leader, graphic designer, and fellow blogger Ken Peters is having a ridiculously tough time making a simple purchase at Barnes & Noble.

* Here, let me insert one of my favorite business maxims: CONVENIENCE = PROFITS.

* And here's another I learned from my first multimillionaire-mentor: If someone offers you money, take it.

Back to Ken. He tweets about how B&N won't let him pay cash. Instead, they insist he buy a gift card to purchase his Nook. When he complains, the clerk gives him an 800-number which, rather than connecting him with customer service, brings him to a sex-line.

So at least he's got that going for him.

Now this is where the story gets compelling for all of us social media fans out there. For at the end of his second Tweet, Erin from Barnes & Noble tweets to Ken about his problem.

Yeah, social media saves the day, making enterprise-sized megacorporations seem small and responsive!! This is how business in late 2009 is supposed to work, isn't it?

...Except that Ken didn't like Erin's solution. And then Erin didn't get back to Ken very promptly. So I butt in and share this live saga with my Twitter followers as well. And I reach out to a fellow author and Twitter guru I follow with over 100,000 followers to see if we can engage him in this fascinating social experiment.

[Cool aside: I thought of this guru just then because he tweeted about buying 2 books at Borders. Coincidence, you say? Uncanny, says I!]

This will go one of two ways for Ken, and for Barnes & Noble.

1. It's going to be really hard for her, but with the right kind of customer service ethic plus the support of her company, Erin will come through for Ken, winning him back to the Barnes & Noble fold. In handling this complaint with aplomb, she will actually turn him from a casual customer to a raving fan. That's how these things work, when done right. Or...

2. Erin and her employer will not go the extra mile (or even a few extra yards) to fix Ken's wholly-legitimate complaint. And they'll have three bloggers spreading this story to their networks on Twitter, and... then Barnes & Noble may just regret its policy to not take cash for Nooks.

Stay tuned! Either way, there's a good lesson to be learned here.


Ken Peter's graphic design company: http://nocturnaldesign.com
Ken's blog: http://nocturnaldesign.com/cm/content/blog.asp
Follow Ken on Twitter: http://twitter.com/thinkBIG_blog/
Buy an Amazon Kindle: http://amazon.com