I have been, or should say had been, a long time loyal Hertz customer. It used to be that they were the only rental company that could provide preset documentation and agreements, had covered parking stalls for Gold customers and had the very innovative and high tech (for the 1990s) name boards. The name boards were a signature point experience that clearly reminded you how efficient Hertz was as a competitor and how personalized and streamlined they made the rental process for loyal customers. However, over time, the Gold experience became tarnished and made me feel like the premium I was paying to rent with Hertz was more like buying fools gold. The boards became very dated and clunky compared to the slick LCD displays of other information you would see in the airport, taking away from the high-tech, highly efficient brand signature point for Hertz.

Functionally, the boards began to run out of listing space, so if you’re like me, you may have stood in front of one of these leader boards late at night, in the cold, impatiently waiting for your name to scroll around and finally show up somewhere. The boards that once were signature point experiences became counter points, where they demonstrated that Hertz was dated, low-tech, and had a misperception of what being a Gold customer should represent. Working with companies on customer experience transformation and technology leaders in the world of mobile customer experience solutions, I kept wondering why Hertz was not moving away from the old name boards to something mobile. It seemed that Hertz was asleep at the wheel as their competitors chipped away with new value propositions and experiences, such as Enterprise. Enterprise has taken a very different strategic path for customer experience and value, relying on high customer interaction with cheerful career-building new graduates who will even bring your car to you.

This year, Hertz seems to have finally begun to catch up with executing on a new customer experience. Their heritage of being innovative, high-tech and highly efficient is now begin supported with specific customer proof points and signature point experiences. Hertz has launched a car rental app, Never-Lost rich content, and Mobile Gold Alerts, which now can give you your information on your specific car and stall location right as you exit your plane. No more need for the old “leader boards.” This is faster, more personal and higher-tech and once again becomes a proof point of the value of Hertz. However, this may also be easier to copy for competitors and therefore not as much of a long-term point of differentiation or signature point element.

Recently, Hertz CEO Mark Frissora is quoted talking about the launch of these innovative services including the new self-service kiosks. “More and more consumers are demanding the convenience of self-service options,” commented Mark P. Frissora, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, The Hertz Corporation. “By introducing these new innovations, we’re allowing customers to take control of their journey by giving them faster, more flexible options for renting and returning vehicles. In addition, as a company, we’re able to drive greater operational efficiencies while expanding the Hertz network with our ExpressRent™ kiosk program.”

I have been a long time fan of Hertz and want to believe that the customer experience will warrant the premium that I expect to pay as a business traveler with Hertz. With these new apps, I will definitely give it a try.

To learn more about how you can assess and set strategies for your own customer experiences on Signature Points, Proof Points and Counter Points, feel free to download a free ebook at ChangeThis.com, Putting a Signature on Customer Experience.

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Tom Horton, CEO of AMR (American Airlines) is taking on a major transformation of the company as it emerges from bankruptcy. In a letter to all employees he points out the top priorities for the turnaround.

“The key to our successful restructuring is a business plan with a clear objective. And that is to make American a world-class global airline – America’s flag carrier – that is competitive, profitable and growing. To do this, we must consistently deliver:
- A superior customer experience that earns loyalty and drives revenue
- A work environment that recognizes excellence and rewards success
- Attractive financial returns for our investors and stakeholders”

Reprint of full letter in the New York Times

It is very encouraging to see the focus on customers as the top priority and the recognition that by focusing on customer experience, the loyalty and revenue growth will follow. Customer experience is becoming recognized as a key lever in driving overall company strategy and transformation. A recent Forrester study titled “The State of Customer Experience, 2011″ noted that 63% of companies are aiming to be the leader in their industry for customer experience in three years. Further 29% of companies are aiming to be a leader across all industries. These goals will not be easy to achieve, but as the topic of customer experience becomes a priority starting at the top, as evidenced by Tom Horton’s letter, the emphasis and leadership is at the right place to treat this as a major strategic lever and not a customer service or loyalty tactic.

I fly American frequently and have had some very good experiences. Knowing that a transformation rooted in customer experience is the best way to turn a company around, I wish all the best to the American team in emerging as a global leader out of the restructuring they are working through now.

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With Spring break and Summer vacations being planned right now, many of us are thinking about trips that will involve air travel. It is a good time to explore the concept of customer experience on airlines. The TV show “PanAm” shows how air travel used to be and reminds us how it truly was a great experience. Today, it has become a concept of what one can endure or tolerate. Taking a long flight is something like planning for an adventure backpacking trip. You pack up your provisions of water bottles (after the security lines), granola bars in case you need sustenance along the way, and select reading materials to help you drift away as your cram into your small cocoon of a seat as if you were crawling into a one-person pup tent.

BNET posted an interesting article about Delta Airlines’ response to helping to create a better customer experience. Their thought is that the best way to improve things is to send their customer service teams to a sort of charm school. Many companies, frustrated with low NPS scores and slipping market share will look at fixing customer experience by trying to patch a bad overall experience with polite service. This is almost never the root cause of the issues. Usually, employees are frustrated with processes and systems that don’t support great a customer experience, they are not sufficiently trained, and teams are not well managed or motivated for success. Also, if employees do not have basic manners, then it really makes more sense to improve the hiring profile and turn-over the people who can’t be polite.

However, what the article points out well is that if management wants to improve relations between employees and customers, it would be better served by fixing policies and systems that pit the two against each other such as the checked bag fees and ticket change policies, which are flash points in the customer-airline interaction today. This is not to say that being polite isn’t important. However, a phony polite scripted line will never overcome poor systems, policies and authentic caring delivered from carefully selected and developed employees.

If you want to share a laugh and make a good point with any managers who still believe that consumers don’t know when they are being delivered a scripted corporate line, share this video from Ally Bank. I made the same point in our book about the dispassionate, “How may I provide you with excellent service today?” greeting that many companies mandate, but it is really brought to life in this video.

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Customer Experience is fast becoming recognized as a key driver of revenue growth, customer loyalty, and reputation building. There is a large scale trend where customer experience, as a cross cut to many traditional silos, is becoming a focus by top executives to drive revenue growth and profitability. In fact, a recent IBM Global CEO survey revealed that 95% of CEOs as high performing companies identify getting closer to their customers as the most important strategic initiative over the next five years.

This focus on customers includes generating what I call “Brand Integrity” where the company brand, what the product delivers and how the company engages customers all align and mutually reinforce each other.

In this case, the video highlights how iRobot is known for helping people save time. The Roomba, a robotic vacuum cleaner, is simple to use and saves people time on household chores. To support that with a customer experience that saves time and is simple to use, iRobot provides customer service and support through multi-channel programs (e.g., social, mobile, web, phone) and has become a leader in leveraging social media to engage their customers.

As you watch the iRobot video, think about your own company and how your customer experience can become your brand and where it may be out of alignment as well.

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Last month I delivered a keynote speech to a group of business leaders in Athens, Greece. The HMA had adopted the concept of replacing the old concept of trying to do “more with less” with the concept from our book, “doing more ON less.” I loved the signage for the event. The concept of “more with less” is completely overused and in crisis situations just results in lots of under-funded activities, diffused leadership attention and gridlock of any progress. Doing “More ON Less” is about reducing the focus to the highest impact activities, concentrating funding on those items and focusing leadership attention on just a big initiatives. Here is how the idea of transforming through “More ON Less” could be applied in Greece today.

It was very interesting in preparing for the speech to apply this concept of transformation through focus to such a complex, broad and pressing issue as the Greek economy. Through interviews, research and using some full-system assessment models to understand the best assets to leverage in a transformation, I would suggest three transformation initiatives to consider for Greece.

1) Innovation: Build an innovation cluster and engage younger talent in building new businesses in Greece. There is a disproportionate level of unemployment of youth in Greece today.This would require alignment across silos of business, investors, educational institutions and government policies all targeted at encouraging and enabling entrepreneurship.

2) Industry Clusters: Greece has several industries that compete well on a global scale. Recently, too much of the economy was based on government spending and domestic business. Specifically focusing on advancing industries that drive international revenues for Greece should be the focus. This may include leveraging shipping further as well as the technologies that are being adopted by that industry (e.g., software, RFID). Gaining a greater market share of cruise embarkations in the Mediterranean is another potential focus area as well as building share and keeping more margin for key food products such as olive oil (#3 producer in the world, but a majority is sold wholesale at lower margins), yogurt and feta cheese.

The More ON Less play here would be to create business-led groups that would include the full economic ecosystem of major international business leaders, regional business leaders, government officials, investors, educators across these sectors and fast-tracking a small number of initiatives to accelerate growth in those market areas.

3) Tax reform: There is a downward cycle of high taxation rates and low collection enforcement that has been causing much of the deficit spending in the government. The upward cycle would include a focus on three areas: increasing tax collection enforcement, providing business tax credits for growing new businesses and jobs, and encouraging export related business expansion to strengthening core industries to drive greater revenue (and thus taxes).

Even if these are not the final set of initiatives, the overall key to unlocking the turnaround of the economy will be to get tightly focused on a few initiatives that business, government, civic, education and other leaders can agree to implement in alignment with each other and with great speed. Transforming the Greek economy may not be simple, but applying the simple concept of focusing on a few key initiatives and doing “More ON Less” would certainly be more effective at turning the trends rather than simply more austerity cuts and cries to try to do “more with less.”

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Free mini-ebook on Customer Experience

At a recent inaugural meeting of the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA), a group of professionals in customer experience, including executives from Cox Communications, Sprint, Fidelity Investments, and UPS gathered in Boston to discuss the latest trends and tools in the field of Customer Experience.

One of the top unanswered issues was, “how can we get Customer Experience to be on the strategic agenda for CEOs and other top executives?” Some people were concerned that the tactics of re-engineering customer service touch-points might overshadow the strategic value of creating a customer experience that is amazing, unique and memorable and drives revenue growth, premium margins and customer loyalty.

This month, ChangeThis published a manifesto, “Putting a Signature on Your Customer Experience” which hits on two specific ideas and frameworks for framing CX as a strategic issue. Since merging a strategy/transformation firm with a brand/marketing firm two years ago, we’ve been working with companies looking to differentiate and spark new growth based on customer experience strategies that drive transformations in performance.

This article captures the essence of the best innovative thinking from that work and is a blend of design and strategic business thinking that generates innovative growth strategies, inspires employees to deliver greatness, and drives customer loyalty and evangelism. I hope you’ll find that the mini ebook holds useful keys to unlock the full value of doing Customer Experience work at a strategic level.

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Mobile devices are now a core part of customers’ daily lives and therefore potentially a core part of almost any customer experience. Similar to company web sites offering up a new facet of customer experience in the early 2000s, mobile devices have the potential and will become another unique experience element of equal or more impact.

In the fourth quarter of 2010, IDC reported that there were 92.1 million traditional computers sold and 100.9 million smart phones. Smart phones and tables have now become a core part of the overall customer experience between companies and their customers. Even if you do not have a mobile device customer experience strategy, customers are hitting your current website from those devices or are calling your call centers from those same devices in greater numbers.

Mobile sales and service apps should be considered a core channel for both consumer and B2B markets today. CMS Wire polled readers to test just how important mobile channels were as compared to web and other channels. Over 28% of people noted that mobile had become as important as web channels (full article). Different than bricks (physical channels) and clicks (web sites), which took a decade to evolve into  integrated cross-leveraged channels, mobile is on a faster pace because it is jumping off from where web services have left off.

One example is Redbox’s Android app. With this app you can pre-order a movie to be picked up at a particular Redbox kiosk in a store. This is a fairly traditional e-commerce extension to mobile, but is interesting in that it allows a new level of access and convenience on a purchase that is more impulse and convenience-driven than other online purchases.

In addition, mobile apps can enable new service conveniences. I almost feel bad constantly using Apple as a shining example of innovation, but they just keep getting customer experience innovations right. In this case, an Apple Store app allows customers to access information real-time about wait times, appointments and workshop start times. Especially during busy times, this helps customers plan their time and puts them more in control of the service experience.

Mobile apps have moved well beyond marketing gimmicks and into core commerce and service applications that directly tie into the overall customer experience. The market leaders will not simply replicate their websites in a smaller screen format for mobile devices. Mobile devices can generate new and unique signature customer experiences that even more closely integrate the real-world experiences (retail store or kiosk) with the online experience. As you begin to think through how to integrate mobile customer experience into your web and physical customer spaces, think about the following questions and what signature elements you might be able to deliver to your customers.

- What real-time data would be personally useful in a customer environment?

- What conveniences can we create for customers by allowing mobile access to transactions, information and services wherever they may be?

- How can customers control or shape their own experience in a business or retail environment by having access to applications that they can manipulate and control?

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For me, the question of how much to spend on customer experience is a trick question. Customer experience is an investment and can be an asset. It is not always viewed that way, especially when revenues lag and there seem to be unnecessary costs that could be eliminated with no immediate and direct impact on revenue. A great example are the Nordstrom piano players.

Just recently, my local Nordstrom re-designed their escalators and designed out the grand piano area. I had heard that Nordstrom was eliminating piano players, but thought it wasn’t wide spread until it hit home in my own shopping experience.

For several years I have been quizzing audiences when talking about customer experience on things like, “which retail store has a grand piano player?” Brand recall is amazingly high for the Nordstrom piano players and people always get this right away. The person answering usually has a big smile on their face and often follows up with a positive comment about the experience.

In my work with management teams, we refer to these types of customer experience elements as Signature Points. That is, an element of the customer experience that brings the entire brand to life in an experiential way. Signature points are authentically delivered, consistently executed, and perfect demonstrations of a company’s brand differentiation. These are hard to find and establish, and very hard for customers to forget. That is why it was so surprising to see Nordstrom drop this Signature Point.

Searching online for some customer perspectives, I found these two contrasting points of view. One is from a customer and one is from a retail analyst.

Customer:

“I, for one, am shocked that Nordstrom has decided to do this. For me, live piano playing is the hallmark of the Nordstrom brand. Without it, I might as well shop at Macy’s.”

Analyst:

Black, the retail analyst, said she’ll miss the piano music, but the public company must consider profits before ambience. “We’re heading into a tough retail environment, and all retailers are cutting expenses,” Black said. “It’s nice, but I don’t think it’s necessary.”

I have a tremendous amount of respect for Nordstrom’s management team. I hope that their choices on this move truly represent more of a shift in customer sentiment and expectations rather than just cutting costs. The customer quote above painfully hits home on the point that the details of a customer experience can make all of the difference in a tightly competitive world. The piano player was a touch of elegance and refinement that you don’t find in any major retail chain and really set the Nordstrom experience apart from the crowd.

In the end, eliminating the piano players may allow Nordstrom to extend into a new positioning with a new demographic. However, I’ve read that the core Seattle stores are keeping the piano players while others are dropping them. So, one way to think of this is in eliminating expenses; the “cost” of selling floor space used for a piano plus the compensation to the piano players. That’s fairly easy for an analyst to calculate. On the other hand, this move may “cost” Nordstrom a highly memorable and meaningful source of differentiation from Macy’s. The ultimate cost of that move is hard to calculate and may be much larger than the expense calculation.

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Innovative thinking is a highly valued capability today. By working specific mental exercises as a deliberate part of your day, you can increase your ability to integrate left brain (creative) and right brain (logical) thinking patterns into a mix that generates more productive innovative thinking.

Any edge to think and act with more agility, innovation and creativity is highly valuable. An article on the LIVESTRONG blog recently shared some practical exercises you can use to build your abilities to integrate right and left brain thinking. This enables you to be a source of innovative ideas that can be implemented in practical ways or to generate creative sparks at the right time while implementing structured processes.

We tend to categorize employees, and sometimes ourselves, as being either left brain OR right brain driven. But the most effective people entrepreneurs and business leaders actually work across both worlds of being wildly creative at one moment and then thinking in painstaking detail the next. Some famous business leaders who are known for this ability are Steve Jobs (Apple), Micky Drexler (The Gap), and Bill Gates (Microsoft). Those leaders are able to modulate between far reaching visions for their companies and then down to specific design and technical details seamlessly.

My experience working with transformational leaders who are able to successfully spearhead strategic big ideas and have those executed by large teams to generate big results, share these same capabilities. It is a leadership capability that can be improved and honed. The specific exercises in the LIVESTRONG post are some of the most interesting and practical I’ve seen. Try a few of these next time you are stuck in an airport or are stuck trying to find a solution to a tough problem. These exercises will connect the two sides of your brain and will enrich and expand your ability to generate practical and innovative solutions.

Left Brain - Right Brain Exercises

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Very often I am asked, “do we really need ‘every’ department to participate in our customer experience initiative. My quick answer is usually, “if a department truly has zero impact on customers, then maybe they should be eliminated or outsourced.” Many times this drifts into a follow up question to test the edges, “…well, what about our legal department for example.” I’ve seen this too many times and have a great recent example to share with you on why even legal departments can make a huge difference in customer experience.

Recently while booking a business trip, I found a good deal on a flight on my normal carrier, which is United. After booking it, I realized that the return date may need to flex and was wondering what any change fees or penalties may be for this potential change. That’s when I was hit with this perfect “Counter Point” example where legal language makes all the difference in the customer experience.

I clicked on the link labeled “fare rules” on United’s reservation website. United had a 13 page document that was too long to show as a full visual, other than as thumbnail images of the pages below. But to give you an idea of the confusing language, here are some quotes taken from the document.

This is all taken from the first page of the 13 page document, so it is not that I was searching for obscure references to make a point. This is right up front in the document.

“Transfers: 4 transfers permitted on the pricing unit - 2 in each direction fare break surface sectors not permitted and embedded surface sectors permitted on the fare component. Note - fare break surface sectors are not permitted.”

“Combinations: double open jaws not permitted. add-ons not permitted. end-on-end end-on-end combinations permitted. validate adjacent line of flight fare components only. Travel must be via the point of combination. provided - combinations are in any rule in tariff CPR - between the United States-Canada DFT - within the United States FBRNAPV - within North America VPCR…”

What are they talking about? And more importantly, will I get charged for changing my flights or not?

Here is the full online document that you get when clicking “fare rules” on the United site:

Suspecting at this point that Southwest Airlines, which focuses on customer experience, might have a different approach to fare rules, I searched on their site. I went to Southwest’s website, clicked on their “fare rules” link and got this….

This language I can understand because it has no airline industry jargon, is simple, and fast to read. It was clearly designed with the customer in mind. The design is aimed at ease of understanding for the customer, not a corporate shield to justify additional fees or to protect the company from people who may try to “game” the fare system. This makes me want to fly Southwest more. It makes me trust that I won’t end up at a gate at the airport trying to not look like an unruly customer while attempting to understand and argue arcane rules with an agent who equally has to try to type endlessly in their computer system to look for how the rules apply…and if I will be charged hundreds of dollars or nothing at all. This makes me feel that Southwest isn’t trying to push technicalities on me that will result in surprise charges. I trust them and they trust me not to try to “game” their system of fees.

United has very convenient flights, good core quality of services and comfortable seating (at least in Economy Plus or choice exit row seats). This post is not intended to bash United overall and certainly not the great people I’ve met who work there, but rather to point out such an important example of how a customer experience can be set up for failure by what many companies may believe is just a back-office issue of the legal department developing a fare rule document for the website.

When working on your customer experience, don’t overlook these critical points of interaction and keep a vigilant watch on your full set of interactions with the customer. Customer experience is not just about the direct customer service or sales interactions. Every department, even legal, can make or break your customer experience.

Image source: Fairrington

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