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Introducing the Customer-Centric Worldview
Oct 26, 2004
I walked into a Williams-Sonoma store here in New York a few days ago to return a gift that someone had sent me via the Williams-Sonoma website. When I got to the counter, I explained that I wanted to return the item - I already own something similar and just wanted cash back.
The clerk behind the counter said, "Sorry, sir, but we don't sell this item in the store. This is going to have to go back."
"What do you mean, 'go back'?" I asked.
"It has to go back to the catalog. We don't sell that item in the store."
I showed the clerk the purchase receipt. "This is Williams-Sonoma, right?"
"Right. But as I told you, there are some items that the catalog sells and we don't sell. This has to go back to the catalog."
I remembered the website stating that returns could be made in a store, so I asked for a manager. When he arrived, I stated my intention to return the product.
"Unfortunately," he said, "we don't sell that product in the store, so it has to go back."
This went on for a couple more minutes until, in exasperation, the manager said, "Sir, I'm telling you, it has to go back, so if you want to return it to us, we can only issue store credit for it."
I paused. "You mean I can return it here?"
"Yes, of course. We'll just have to return it to the catalog, so we can only issue store credit. If we sold it in the store, we could give you cash back."
Mystery solved: it was all a difference in perspective. The clerks were explaining to me how the product return affected them (they would have to call the catalog and manage the return) and not how it affected me (I could only get store credit). Had they simply communicated in my language, the interaction would have gone much better all around: "We'll be happy to take that back, sir, though we can only issue store credit for it."
I know that I'm not the only customer to experience this frustration: while I was at the counter, a woman came up with a gift return and began having the exact same conversation ("It has to go back") with the first clerk.
As a story about a confusing gift return, it's an amusing vignette, reminiscent of the old "Who's on first?" Abbott and Costello routine. But the ramifications are much, much larger. The clerk took the company's perspective, and lost the opportunity to create a good customer experience.
A difference in perspective: think of everywhere you've come across that in your dealings with businesses. Customer-hostile websites that mirror the organization's internal structure; tax forms filled with jargon and needless complexity; cell phone rate plans that are structured for the benefit of the carrier's network; health insurance claims rejected for arbitrary bureaucratic reasons; the list is endless.
My business partner, Phil Terry, likens it to the pre-Copernican view of the world. Like the misguided early notion that the universe revolves around the earth, many business executives today still think that business revolves around companies.
If that belief ever was true in the past, it certainly isn't true today, in the Internet era. Whether online or offline, customers now have unparalleled power to research and transact with companies exactly when, where, and how they choose. There is a new worldview at work that companies must either embrace, or ignore at their peril.
The Customer-Centric Worldview:1. Business revolves around the customer.
2. Companies that focus on creating a good customer experience will
succeed far above those that do not.3. This is the primary determinant of business success over the next
several decades.
This is no management fad, though management will play a role.
This is not another name for the "information revolution," though information technology plays a central part in it.
And this is not a tactical issue that can be solved with a laundry list of 218 guidelines.
To the contrary, this should be the central strategic issue of your company, starting now. It's not a problem to be solved as much as a way of doing business.
Stated another way: If you are in business, THIS IS YOUR LIFE for the foreseeable future.
I'll wrap up with a vignette of a company that is beginning to embrace this worldview. We recently ran listening labs for one of the top American retail companies. The executive team came into the labs with a company-centered perspective - thinking they knew the issues to be fixed, the questions to be answered - and at the end of a single day of research, they left with a new perspective. Not about a laundry list of usability errors (though there were a few of those), but about a strategic shift towards the customer. The president said she realized that their way of doing business had to change.
This is now your mandate: change your worldview. The universe does not revolve around your company. Focus on the customer experience.
CRM programs can, if designed correctly, make this work better. I called Working Assets Long Distance about something else. Then I said, "Hey, can I have the ice cream too?" The charming person on the other end of the phone looked at my record, agreed that I'd never gotten the gift, and the company started sending me Ben & Jerry's coupons for the next year. I thought it was a great experience -- an example of what a good CRM program and an empowered customer service rep can do when things go right.
I wish someone would introduce the Customer-Centric Worldview to Symantec, publishers of Norton Anti-Virus. I recently bought a new laptop when the old one crashed and burned...completely inaccessible. Naturally, I wanted to transfer my Norton subscription to the new computer.
I logged onto the website foolishly thinking I could login to my account and retrieve a key to unlock the download. Woah, Nelly! No log-in page. OK, I'll call customer service. No phone number - anywhere! I'm left with the only option of filling in an email form to which I recieve an automated response informing me that someone would get back with me within 4 (yes, 4) business days. This was a Thursday. Right on schedule, the following Tuesday I received an email telling me to call Customer Service and giving me an 800 number. ARGGGHHH! Couldn't they have just posted the number on their website?!?!
OK. Calm down. I call the number...for 5 days. Each time I call I get a recording informing me that they cannot take my call "at this time." Perhaps I'd like to call back between 5 and 7 a.m. Yeah, right. Finally, I get through...to India! Talking with someone with a very thick accent that I can barely understand, we eventually determine that she cannot access my account without my account number - which of course, is on the crashed computer. She gives me another number to call in the United States. I've now been trying to resolve this problem for 10 days.
The good news is that ONCE I WAS GIVEN THE RIGHT PHONE NUMBER and reached an account supervisor in the U.S., my problem was resolved immediately and the rep was smart enough to extend my subscription for another year at no charge.
Even so, I will NEVER do business with Symantec again. I offer this as another example of what NOT to do. It seems obvious that a clever (NOT) site manager decided that they could streamline (hahaha) customer service by filtering all requests through their email system. THIS IS NEVER A GOOD IDEA! The system was built on the company's view and completely ignored the customer view.
If Symantec had a Customer-Centric Worldview, they would have set up something similar to McAfee, whose firewall software I use. At the McAfee site, I was able to quickly log in, retrieve the needed software key and reinstall the firewall on my new computer. Total operation - less than 15 mintues.
Folks, let's return to the definitions page of the 1st semester BusMgt text: The "Customer" is the person who pays the charges. In health insurance, for instance, it's rarely the consumer; it's the employer's HR department who signs the HMO/Insurance/HMO_PPO contract.
It's a little deeper than just "customer/management"-- it's an aspect of a very fundamental human behaviour: people impose their world view on the world; people love to talk but are very poor at listening/communicating.
And the Williams-Sonoma (WS) experience gets better. When I attempted to cut and paste Mark's article to the WS "contact us" form so that their customer service people might get a clue; the form wouldn't take it; apparently for length reasons, and had no indication of why the form wasn't submitting. Being a sofware engineer, I figured that the length of the text box was probably the issue, but there was no error indication telling me that; it just wouldn't accept the user input. Three cheers for good user interfaces!
To address the flaw in Peter Snell's approach to "customer vs. end user" definition; we are basically discussing a subcontract situation.
If I hire someone to provide a service or product for one of my friends, relatives, co-workers (insert whatever relationship you want), and I find out that service provider did not fulfill MY customer expectations . . . well, my wrath - as the "customer" - shall then fall on the provider.
We call it "customer experience" out of functionality of definition. Really, we're seeking a better "end-user experience". Or both.
Hey Mark, did you think about returning the catalog item for store credit then buying something like a falafel toaster only to return it for cash?
I had a similar experience w/ DireTV. I got a call saying my account was $687 past due. The background is that before the call my TiVo/DirecTv receiver quit working. I was delighted when I called customer support and they said they would Federal Express me a reconditioned receiver for $49.95. The only catch was I had to return my other receiver or I would get charged full price for each. I did return the broken reciever.
So imagine my confusion when I asked what the ^00+ in charges included. The customer support department told (1) told me they had not received it and (2) that even though the package was billed to DirecTv's Federal Express account, I had to prove it arrived. My anger only increased when I told her I was looking at the delivery confirmation online and she didn't seem to care.
"Well that may be" the supervisor said, but "we have not recieved it." I was then told I needed to fax them the information.
So let me get this straight. They can send me hundreds of channels from a satellite in orbit, yet they can't track a package billed to their account. My high regards for DirecTv waslowered drastically.
While folks are exchanging CS war stories, I thought I'd throw mine into the mix. Beware Eddie Bauer's "lifetime guarantee", which they carry with all their products. It's too late for me, but you all can still save yourselves.
I had purchased a duffle bag from them about 3 years ago, and when the bag developed a hole along the underbelly I considered the lifetime guarantee that was supposed to come with the bag. I phoned the store to find out the terms of the guarantee, and they told me to bring the bag in so someone could determine whether the bag would be repaired or replaced.
So I went in to the store and spoke with a sales clerk, showing him my bag, and he told me to go pick out a new bag. I thought, "Great- that was easy! I love Eddie Bauer!" As I'm selecting a bag, the sales manager approaches me. She asks me to explain what happened to the bag, and then followed up by actually accusing me of cutting the bag with a pair of scissors so that I could get a new bag. (!?!) She capped off the whole experience by defining their "Lifetime Guarantee", which goes like this:
"We guarantee our backpacks against manufacturer defects for the normal lifetime of the backpack. A backpack’s lifetime should be about two years,
when used daily to carry an average amount of weight....In the past Eddie Bauer’s complete satisfaction guarantee has been misinterpreted to mean that our backpacks will last the user’s lifetime, or that they are returnable for a yearly exchange for newer styles or colors.
Unfortunately, this is not true."
So what if I used the bag only once a month or carried a below average amount of weight in it? Would that extend the terms of the guarantee? It was the most disturbing CS experience I've ever had.
Mark, I liked the post. It cuts to the quick. I'll save the war stories for some other time.
Read "The Support Economy" (www.thesupporteconomy.com) to get a historical perspective on why this perspective misalignment exists. It also identifies a growing consumer trend of Psychologically Self Determined consumers who are becoming highly agitated by the situation.