Tag Archives: customers

AT&T Proves It Knows Zilch About Positive Customer Experience

by on February 4, 2012 in Customer Experience

Want to know how to quickly turn a new customer into a vocal ex-customer? Offer pretty talk without delivering meaningful results. This is my personal experience dealing with AT&T.

First the set-up. As a part of our family’s end-of-year review of finances, we realized we were paying too much for cable, internet, and phone with TimeWarner. We went out and researched other providers and settled on AT&T’s DSL and phone bundle (we decided to nix cable for a while) based primarily on price. We placed our order on January 9 and were told the effective date would be January 17. So far, so good.

The evening of January 17, I plug in the DSL unit and nothing: no phone, no internet. I call tech support and I get a friendly guy who tells me there’s something wrong with our account but because it’s after-hours, he can’t get more information. No problem, I’ll call back in the morning. When I call New Services the next day, the individual I talk to verifies the problem and tells me the internet order has been pushed out 45 days. Why? Well, she couldn’t be sure but would get it resolved. Just give them a couple of days and it would be taken care of. A couple of days later, we are met at our door by a tech who says he’s come to turn on our phone. My first thought was, “Why the hell are you here on Friday instead of Tuesday like you were supposed to be?” But I’m happy we’re finally going to get our service – as promised – so I say, “Great, go ahead and help yourself to whatever you need.” Thirty minutes later, he returns to the door and says there’s a problem with our line and will need to come back with new equipment. Unfortunately, we don’t see him again that afternoon and I guess AT&T doesn’t work weekends so we don’t see another individual until Monday. Never mind the fact the tech screwed up the phone line and we were without home phone service for the weekend.

Monday morning another tech arrives to fix the problem and after 2-3 hours of work feels confident he’s got us all sorted out…without fully checking that both phone and internet actually work. Unfortunately, I have the mother of all sinus infections that day so I take him at his word. Later in the evening, I check on the DSL unit and I’m amazed to see the red blinking light that tells me it’s still not functioning properly. The only service that appears to be working is the phone but it only works if using the phone jack in our upstairs office (the downstairs kitchen jack that is our preferred location is broken).

Next day, I try to call New Services but because of the labyrinthine phone tree, I think I ended up talking with a central call center rep. Yes, there appears to be a problem with our account. No, she can’t determine what the problem is. Yes, I’m still going to be fully charged starting on our effective date of January 17 even though I haven’t received close to satisfactory service. Yes, she’ll make a note of my objection.

If you’re keeping score so far, I’ve spoken to at least three AT&T contacts over the phone and two techs. And our service problem is far from being resolved. Not exactly the best experience you want for a new customer, particularly one who works in customer experience.

I decide to take a different route and contact AT&T via Twitter and see if I can get someone to give a shit about my problems. I manage to get a fairly quick response from @ATTCustomerCare on January 26 and am told to send an email with an accounting of our problems.

Hallelujah! A response from Algeria, Social Media Manager at AT&T. Finally, someone who will own my problem and finally help me get our service started. Right?

Imagine my raging frustration when all I get is more sweet talk about wanting to help and escalating the issue without seeing actual results. Since the nine days since @ATTCustomerCare told me I could expect a call about resolving this issue, I’ve received ZERO calls. But I sure have received plenty of tweets of apology and reaffirmations that I’m important.

Guess what? Every one of those tweets might as well read, “Blah, blah, blah you unimportant asshole customer, we’re big and we really don’t care.” Do I believe Algeria was sincere? Yes, but it doesn’t matter if everything she says is counteracted by a company without a clue when it comes to delivering a positive customer experience.

So as I mentioned yesterday via Twitter, AT&T has not only lost a new customer but gained a very vocal detractor who will be more than happy to share his customer experience with anyone, anytime, anywhere. All the nice words, all the marketing and PR bullshit, all the empty promises mean nothing if a problem isn’t resolved. Because in the end, that’s the power all customers have over companies that prove they really don’t care through their actions.

Marketers Are Hypocrites

by on January 9, 2012 in Marketing

Yep, big fat, stinking hypocrites. Why? Because we perpetrate the same marketing bullshit that annoys us to no end on our own prospects and customers. Think I’m joking? How many times have you secretly – or publicly – wished a company would treat you like an actual human being in their messaging? Wished they would actually send you information that recognized your own special snowflake qualities?

Now, turn it around: when was the last time you actually tried to give the same level of appreciation with your own prospects and customers? Do you see each name and recognize it belongs to an individual?

Before you answer, honestly consider about how you think about that house file in your CRM. Think about how you organize your reports. Think about how you’re rewarded in your job. Think about what really matters in your success.

None of this is intended to point fingers (hell, I know I would already have three fingers pointing right back at me). Instead, my intent is to stir some awareness that things need to change. And that change should start with the language, syntax, imagery we use in marketing. As my esteemed friend and fellow marketer, Russ Somers, notes in his Human Marketing Manifesto (and also the genesis of this post):

I am not traffic. I am not driven by your marketing to your site like a lemming is driven by instinct to a cliff’s edge. I am a person who had a need to know something…Where am I in your funnel? What a stupid question. Who the hell wants to be in a funnel?

I don’t have any definitive answers…at least not yet. But it seems to me that if marketing as a discipline is to evolve toward where the world is going, we better get ourselves together and plot a new direction. Else, we don’t need to wait for the comet to wipe out our profession, we’ll have done all the damage ourselves.

Clearing The Air About Ethnography

by on September 26, 2011 in Research

Everyday there is evidence that ethnography is entering the general business vernacular. And there is also plenty of evidence that it remains woefully misunderstood. I’ve heard it bandied about as just another tool for getting information about customers and users.

However, the fact is that ethnography is more than just a set of tools. It’s a practice which means there is a whole way of thinking that must go into applying the tools in an honest, coherent way. This is why I get incredibly frustrated when untrained individuals think they can just go out and do ethnography. That’s like me saying that I’m going to go out and build a skyscraper. Just as you wouldn’t want me to be your architect, don’t be so fast to employ some fast-talking market research consultant with zero actual training to do something that requires careful study, preparation, and understanding.

  • Ask them for some credentials. Where did they study or get their ethnography training? If it amounts to zilch or appears dubious boot them out.
  • Ask them about the ethics of conducting ethnography. Are they aware of possible ethical situations that might arise? If they seem clueless or cavalier about it, then boot them out.
  • Ask them about their prior experiences and demand they give examples. Don’t fall for ethnographic techniques that are just interviews in disguise. If they don’t know the difference between interviews and ethnography, then yes, give them the boot. Hell, give them another boot for trying to pull a fast one on you.

And one more thing. While no social science has a monopoly on conducting ethnography, it’s purpose isn’t to reveal individual customer or user psychology. Don’t expect to know how a product makes someone feel or understand personality traits of a buyer or focus on a person’s psyche. If that’s what you want, hire a psychologist for answers.

What we do as business-oriented anthropologists is to help our clients understand how a customer, user, or buyer ascribes meaning to their everyday world. We seek to understand how people situate themselves in their existence. We look at how their actions match or contradict the words they use to describe themselves or their behavior. We view people holistically and seek to understand them within the context of their cultural surroundings.

Why would you want this information? Because it will mean the difference between whether your sparkly new product or revolutionary new service not only sells but gets used, gets talked about, gets people coming back for more. Because we help clients create things that make a difference in the lives of their customers.

Sorry yet another rant but I can’t sit idly while I see misinformed people continuing to degrade anthropology and ethnographic methods in order to be something they clearly are not.

Does Your Website Have The 5 Abilities? Now With More Meat

by on September 6, 2011 in Marketing

Note: A couple of months ago, I wrote this post for PR Soup. Ever since then, I wanted to add some examples to illustrate my points. So here it is…I’ve taken my Soup post and added some more meat to it. Enjoy!

Since my company is currently undertaking a website redesign project, I’ve been thinking a lot about websites lately – in particular, what makes them successful as a marketing tool. In a quest to learn what other companies have done, I’ve visited dozens upon dozens of business sites for clues to their potential success. And I’ve seen quite a few that I would categorize as the web equivalent of the black pit of despair. What I think I’ve discovered is…

It takes five -abilities to make your site a successful marketing and business development machine.

Justifiability: What do you do and why do I need it?
Your site has to make a convincing and fast value proposition to a potential customer. That means you can’t pummel them with countless feature sets, services, and all the things that YOU think make you great. Know why? Because it’s not about you…it’s about the customer. So you better be able to succinctly describe what your business does and why it matters to them.

Who gets it right: Infochimps

What Infochimps does is simple: they provide an ever-expanding selection of datasets in which businesses can build apps and analytics. It’s right there on their front page. And their data search bar sits prominently just below the header. You can’t miss it or the value you might get from working with this company.

Capability: How will you solve my problem?

While it’s not necessary to go in-depth into how your business works, it is necessary to show you understand your customer’s challenges and then offer how you can uniquely resolve them. Conduct some market studies and learn your core customer’s pain points. Then use their language (not your own cryptic in-house terminology) to demonstrate how you can make their lives easier.

Who gets it right: Silverpop

Marketing automation platforms are a fairly new and fast-growing industry segment so there’s lots of competition out there. I really love how the folks at Silverpop drive home the value of their solution by focusing on how they solve common marketing challenges. Who doesn’t need to increase ROI or conversions? The answers are right there.

Easability: Is it easy to work with you? Is it easy to buy from you?
No matter how incredibly wonderful and life-changing a product or service might be, no one – REPEAT, NO ONE – wants to buy it if it only leads to a painful experience. Your site needs to not only be easy to use and navigate, it needs to mirror just how easy it is to work with you.

Who gets it right: Uservoice

There are plenty of quality services out there with easy to use, freemium models. I just happen to adore how Uservoice does it. I needed to find a quick, yet dependable solution for collecting feature requests for my company. Within 5 minutes I was signed up and didn’t need to give any credit card info to do it. That’s truly making it easy for me to get to know your service.

Credability: Can I trust you?

We all know that trust is a cornerstone of business. Prospects want to know that your company isn’t some fly-by-night operation that’s not going to deliver on promises. It’s why so many sites have those areas on their home page showing logos from companies they serve. That immediately implies credibility by getting us to think, “Well if [Company X] trusts them, I can too.”

Who gets it right: Radian6 and Spiceworks

It’s pretty standard issue for companies to show the logos of their best customers. What I like about these two companies is they go beyond this to build greater levels of immediate trust. When Radian6 tells me that half of all Fortune 100 companies use them, that gets my attention. And when Spiceworks shows me how many IT pros and companies are using their services right now, that instills a sense of comfort in users. When this happens, taking the next step toward a sales contact just got a lot easier.

Dependability: Will you be there when I need you?
Just like credibility, prospects want to know that once they make the decision to work with you they’re not going to regret it. They want to know that you’re there when something doesn’t work. They want to know that you’re listening when they have an idea or suggestion. They want to know you’re going to be a partner in their success.

Who gets it right: Solarwinds

Because of their business model, Solarwinds is all about offering great support in several different methods. Their thwack user community is strong with most issues handled peer-to-peer. They also have a multitude of videos, docs, and other support resources in addition to actual live customer support. You know when you work with Solarwinds, someone has your back. And that’s a very good thing if your business is dealing with skeptical and anxious IT pros.

Take a look at your site and ask whether it meets these five criteria. If not, what can you do right now to change that? I guarantee it will be worth your time and effort.

Hassle Mapping The Customer Experience

by on August 3, 2011 in Customer Experience

A benefit of working at Journyx is our CEO, Curt Finch, has an uncanny knack for having wonderful conversations with some of the smartest business thinkers out there. A few weeks ago, Curt talked with Adrian Slywotzky who wrote The Art of Profitability and just penned the upcoming Demand: Creating What People Love Before They Know They Want It. I’d highly recommend you add it to your reading list (or just go ahead and preorder it now).

One of the key points in their conversation – which can be found in Curt’s Inc blogpost – centers around generating greater market demand and improving a customer’s experience through the creation of hassle maps. Slywotsky defines a hassle map:

Whether you’re talking about a consumer or a corporation, a hassle map defines all of the actual steps that characterize the negative experiences of the customer. Think about these questions: Where are the emotional hot spots, the irritations, the frustrations, the time wasted, the delay? Where are the economic hot spots? And then think about this: What are the ways that businesses can radically improve the hassle map for both the customer and themselves?

Many companies face a problem when it comes to the user or customer experience. It’s rarely one huge catastrophe that sinks them. Rather, it’s more akin to death by a thousand cuts. Our customers or users experience a hassle here, another hassle there…eventually, the hassles build up to a point where the negatives outweigh any positives. And another otherwise satisfied customer leaves for something better.

Let’s get a better handle on these hassles – understand what they are and ruthlessly rip them from our customers’ lives. At Journyx, we’ve started developing a Hassle Map Program to collect and catalog how customers interact with our software. I thought I’d share a bit of how we’ve set it up.

Step One: Collect feedback through conversations and observation.
We’ve piloted the program using local customers, which gives us the advantage of getting some face time with them. It’s always a benefit when you can put names with faces…and let the customer do the same.

For these in-person sessions, I record use a Kodak Zi8 video camera and tripod. I love this camera because it’s unobtrusive and still provides pretty good picture and sound quality. And since I also want to ensure I’m capturing every move and mouse click, I set up a recordable GoToMeeting session. I find the combination of video camera and G2M give me several angles in which to understand the hassles our customers experience when using our software.

Step Two: Build the Hassle Map
When it comes to developing the hassle map, I’m a big fan of the mind mapping technique. While it can be done on paper, I much prefer electronic because we’re going to want to build a database of hassle maps. Of all the mind mapping software out there, I highly recommend Mindjet MindManager. It’s pricy but it does something that few others will do: it allows me to conduct searches across maps. So if I want to look for patterns of frustrations across customers, I type a keyword and let the program perform its magic.

Step Three: Put the Maps into Action
It’s not enough to gather the data, right? For the whole Hassle Mapping program to be productive, the data needs to be put to use in your market strategy and product planning. Factor it into your roadmap. Start sharing the outcomes throughout your organization. More than likely, you’ll uncover some hassles not just around your products and services…you’ll learn about hassles with support and sales. If so, make sure that gets to the right folks in your organization.

If you want to know more about our Hassle Mapping program, come to ProductCamp Austin this weekend. I’m proposing a session called Hassle Mapping Your Way to a Better Product Experience. If you can’t make it and would like to know more (or if my session isn’t chosen), reach out to me and I’ll make sure you get the PowerPoint and session collateral I’m preparing for the event.