In preparing for a talk to a group of customer contact center managers, I’ve come to the conclusion that customer service ain’t what it used to be.  There is a brand of new customer service in play today.

Time was, customer service was a post-purchase business function aimed at fixing customers problems.  The ultimate goal was service recovery — that is, correcting a problem well enough that the customer would be satisfied and return to purchase again.

Today, new customer service is a critical element of customer experience, woven throughout the customer journey — with the goals of not only restoring the customer with the problem but also differentiating the brand, increasing perceived brand value, and contributing to sales and marketing efforts.

An illuminating summary of this new customer service reality comes from @RandyNasson in a recent piece, The Transition from Customer Service to Strategic Sales. “When it comes to connecting with customers online, a number of multichannel and ecommerce retailers are still stuck in the ‘customer support’ mindset; one that views contact with a customer as a necessary evil rather than an opportunity,” Randy writes.  “Most businesses view customer service as a cost center. .. Making the transition from support to sales requires a strategic mind shift within your organization in which customer engagements are viewed as growth opportunities.”

To embrace these growth opportunities, Randy explains, “This may require agent training or new hires if your current contact center model is based on troubleshooting and rapid resolution rather than customer experience. It may also require broader organizational alignment to facilitate this transition and prevent lack of ownership or internal politics from undermining potential gains.”

@blakemichellem adds that customer service agents must learn soft skills.  In 5 Tips To Scale Soft Skills Training For Your Customer Service Team, Blake writes, “Don’t think for one second your customer service agents aren’t part of the sales process. Every single experience, every single touch point, and every single conversation the customer has with your company—has an impact on how that customer views your company. Every interaction that customer is deciding two things: if they ever want to work with you again, if they would recommend you to anyone else.”  She goes on to provide five tips for hiring and training agents to have “the best people skills on the planet” — it’s a very helpful read.

Another way to facilitate the transition to a more proactive, brand-building approach to customer service is provided by @toister in The Preemptive Acknowledgement.  The “Preemptive Acknowledgement,” Jeff writes, “is the customer service professional’s secret weapon against negative emotions,” and he explains it involves three steps:  “Spot a problem before the customer gets angry.  Acknowledge the situation before the customer complains. Re-focus on a solution.”

Two additional pieces emphasize the multi-dimensional and emotional nature of the new customer service today.  In a HuffPo piece, @rhondasharf encourages companies to be aware fast customer service is not always adequate.  “Speed is not the only way to evaluate efficiency…Customer service matters in efficiency. Attitude, accuracy and empathy matter. Smart systems, processes and deliveries matter.”

And @jeannebliss explains how apologies from companies need to be just as robust.  In We Want You Back – How To Prove It To Your Customers, Jeanne writes, “The speed, content and tone of a company’s apology is crucial in a digitally connected world. Your motivation is to make customers whole — to earn the right to continue the relationship. However, repairing the emotional connection with customers in distress can be costly…Don’t consider the job done until the emotional connection with customers is restored.”

Learn more about modern customer service from brand book bites from “Hug Your Haters”, my write-up and author interview with Jay Baer on his new book.

The post customer service ain’t what it used to be appeared first on Denise Lee Yohn.

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

“On May 8, I spent an evening with a woman who is changing the world. I don’t usually employ dramatic statements, but some people demand hyperbole,” said Robin Clifford Wood after meeting with GPI Founder Cristi Hegranes.

Hegranes was interviewed by Clifford Wood as part of Bangor Daily News’ “Conversations with Maine” series.

Read the interview, titled “Woman’s vision trains, empowers truth-tellers worldwide,” here.

By Alice Korngold, Co-Editor, Giving Thoughts, and author of A Better World, Inc.: How Companies Profit by Solving Global Problems…Where Governments Cannot and Elaine Weidman-Grunewald, Corporate Vice President, Vice President of Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility at Ericsson. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) build upon the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and converge with the […]

In the weeks after the Fed raised interest rates in December, global financial markets trembled and inflation expectations, as measured by the bond market, declined significantly. On February 9, market-based inflation expectation over the next five years fell to just 0.93 percent, the lowest level since the Great Recession. This drop in inflation expectations fueled […]

Why has Tide been a top detergent brand for so long? Why is Heinz Ketchup, popular everywhere, still so particularly popular in Pittsburgh?

Tide has a 40% share of the market and has held this market lead for decades even though it’s more expensive than its competitors. Heinz, launched in Pittsburgh in 1876, has a better share in its hometown than in other cities. Tide and Heinz are just two examples. There are countless other longtime packaged goods market leaders and many other brands that have their best share in their home market* Why?

Eight Theories That Don’t Work (at least not completely)

1. Product superiority: Tide works better, smells fantastic. Heinz is thicker, has a secret formula. No doubt that actual product quality plays a role but it doesn’t explain why Heinz does better in Pittsburgh than anywhere else. Blind taste and use tests often show no significant difference between brands. Other factors are in play.

2. Buy Local: Local people support local brands and local brands support the local economy. Seems logical for Heinz which has always been active in a fiercely loyal community but it doesn’t explain why, for example, Milwaukee’s Miller Beer has always done so well in Chicago. (But maybe that’s, in part, because it’s at least not St Louis’ Anheuser-Busch.)

Consumer-Based Theories

3. Mother Knows Best/Habit: This can be a factor. Buying Tide/ Heinz may be for some a tradition passed down in the family from generation to generation. Buying products with this heritage is both reassuring and familiar and gives you one less thing to think about when you are at the store.

4. Conditioning: After a while, people get used to certain aspects of products that may be technically quite similar. The taste of Heinz, the smell of Tide, the thickness, the packaging, the color.

Competition-Based Theories

Then there are theories that speak to the power and advantage that a leader enjoys and can leverage:

5. Distribution advantages: Market leaders become retailers’ category captains influencing what gets on the shelf and benefit from being able to justify more skus than anyone else. Tide’s “wall of orange” crowds out everyone else at the point of purchase.

6. Fixed Costs: Many of the costs of doing business as a CPG company are fixed. Trade ads, for example. These can be absorbed with much less P&L impact by Tide than by smaller players giving Tide a continuing margin advantage that it can either bank or spend on other marketing activities.

7. Brand Equity/Marketing Investment: One place that they can spend those extra dollars is building up brand equity and connecting the brand to the important category drivers. Years of marketing spending build a strong brand foundation that’s difficult to undermine.

8. Competitors Are Followers: In large part, competitors have not tried or been able to disrupt the category by coming up with big enough product innovations.

This phenomenon is more pronounced in CPG products than in other categories. Being one-time leaders hasn’t helped retailers like A&P, Sears and Kmart. It’s not helped Yahoo!, aol or many others in the technology sector either.

Perhaps that’s because CPG products differentiate more by their identity than by physical factors? If consumers can’t differentiate between products (at least not in blind tests), they need to rely on other factors to make their decisions.

So, Can Anything Dislodge A Package Goods Market Leader? Yes, If:

1. The Leader Falls Sleep At The Wheel: The #1 brand is well protected from the competition for the reasons described above. And usually such brands have time to recover even if they make a series of missteps (New Coke?). But protracted neglect and no marketing investment may give challenger brands at least an opportunity.

2. Big Market Changes Happen That Disrupt The Model: Typically, the pace of change in CPG is relatively slow compared to other categories (like consumer electronics) and there’s less chance of a leader being caught completely unawares of new trends. Changing demographics (e.g. the rising influence of the Hispanic consumer, preference for healthier, natural foods) can have an effect and certainly creates opportunities for brands that previously were considered niche to become more mainstream (e.g. Nescafe Clasico).

3. Category Reinvention: What business is Heinz in? Just ketchup? All condiments? BBQ vs. other meal choices? In the end, the biggest danger for market leaders like Heinz may come from the declining relevance of their categories. If ketchup becomes a less important part of the American dining experience, Heinz will suffer even it stays the leader. And, today, all packaged goods are suffering from the center-aisle problem with fresh alternatives on the perimeter gaining ground.

Bottom Line: If you are a #1 brand in a CPG category, congratulations. You are in a strong competitive position for all sorts of reasons. Unfortunately, you’ve still got plenty to worry about. Retailers are scaling back shelf space for packaged goods to give more room to fresh products and, at the same time, they are launching own-label brands that are becoming more and more of a threat. That’s where the real battle is these days.

* Current share in markets of origin for brands launched back in the late 1800s and early 1900s is 12 percentage points higher than their national share. Source: Brand history, geography and the persistence of brand shares by Bart J. Bronnenberg Tilburg University, Sanjay K. Dhar University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Jean-Pierre H. Dubé, University of Chicago Booth School of Business

The Blake Project Can Help: Measure The Equity Of Your CPG Brand

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Licensing and Brand Education

FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers

At a landmark TED salon last spring, economist Steven Levitt and author Malcolm Gladwell crossed swords over the real reason New York City crime dropped in the 90s. In The Tipping Point, Gladwell credited the innovative policing tactics adopted under NYC Mayor Giuliani (which focused on softer “lifestyle crimes,” like subway graffiti and zoning violations) for the reduced murder rate. At the salon — and in Freakonomics (which had just been published that week) — Levitt begged to differ. The hidden cause, he argued, was the legalization of abortion, which had prevented thousands of unwanted children from being born roughly 20 years earlier. (Levitt further argued that New York’s drop in violent crime was merely the leading edge of a nationwide trend, consistent with the timing of respective states’ abortion laws).

Who had the last word? Well that’s an open question … Nearly a year later, they’ve picked up the thread, trading persuasive posts on their respective blogs. Gladwell re-opened the discussion, Levitt and Dubner responded. And you can watch it progress from there …

Sometime ago I came across the above picture [1], and it instantly stuck me as a superb metaphor for ‘design thinking vs. traditional project management approaches’. Let me explain what I mean.

Recently, I spent 6 months in Paris. When you are walking on the streets of Paris and trying to go somewhere, you often have only a sense of orientation. You may even lose that sense of orientation off and on. But you keep moving. And then you suddenly get a glimpse of a famous monument or the Seine or a well-known boulevard or something you are familiar with. Once again, you become aware of which direction you should be heading. “3 blocks down South and 2 blocks East”, doesn’t work for Paris!

I think what you experience on the streets of Paris holds true for design thinking too. When you are working on a complex problem, you only have a vague sense of direction. But you keep moving and keep trying out things. At times, you come to those vexing roundabouts of several possibilities. On those occasions, you use your best judgement to pursue a certain possibility. You are also faced with incomplete information and/or ambiguous data, but you once again use your best judgement to move ahead. Sometimes you can come up with an explanation for, why you did what you did. On other occasions, you just have to say, what Blaise Pascal said – “The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing!”

If you are from outside, it takes some time to get used to the ways of Paris and of design thinking. But once you get used to them, you start to fall in love with them. There is something charming about digressing to that unusually narrow cobbled stone street, and discovering a cosy brasserie. There is something charming about letting your mind loaf a bit, and then discovering a pattern in your research data or ending up with an out-of-box idea. There is something special about spontaneity.

Ernest Hemingway says in his memoir – “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast”. Shall we say, something similar holds true for design thinking as well? Once you have experienced design thinking, it becomes your second nature and you carry it to whatever you do…for the rest of your life.

What do you find beautiful about design thinking? Think about it as you listen to the playlist, flâneur parisien.

To stay tuned with me  Follow @nbhaskar888

[1] Picture credit: ‘Paris versus New York: The Complete Series of Two Cities’, by Vahram Muratyan

Adams says her father especially enjoyed the cream of mushroom soup; it was a new recipe she made for him: “I’ve always known the importance of food through bringing people together and nurturing them, but I also learned that food can be enormously healing. This was how I could say goodbye with love. I put all of myself into that soup.” She also shared that “through my father’s death, I learned so much about life.”

Joy is one of 20 well-known chefs whose personal stories of loss, along with favorite family recipes, are included in a new digital cookbook, “The Endless Table: Recipes from Departed Loved Ones.” The book also reminds readers how important it is to have conversations with family members about their end of life wishes. It even has a helpful guide to getting what is not an easy conversation started.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ellen Goodman, who co-edited the cookbook, is also co-founder of The Conversation Project, which works to encourage families to have these often difficult, but necessary discussions.

Goodman shared in a TED talk: “For some, talking about death is like letting it in the room. The end of life isn’t just a medical thing that happens, it’s a human experience. People aren’t dying the way they want to or having their wishes honored…so having a conversation like this is a gift you give your family.”

As another Boston chef, Jasper White, put it: “Love never dies. Neither do recipes, and it’s a wonderful way to remember someone.”

What family recipes mean a lot to you that you would like to share with us?

CNN, 4/18/16

The post The Endless Table: How recipes can keep your memories alive appeared first on The Good For You Network.

By Alex Parkinson, Associate Director, Society for New Communications Research of The Conference Board The Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) of The Conference Board (SNCR)—a 501(c)(3) research and education institution dedicated to the advanced study of how new and emerging communications tools and technologies (such as digital, social media, and mobile) are affecting business, […]

I recently had a great conversation with David Dufresne, CEO of Bandzoogle, an amazing company that probably a lot of you already use to build your websites. Bandzoogle is based in Quebec and have made a major impact on the independent music scene giving tools to musicians to help build their career.

In our conversation we discussed ways you can ensure visitors to your website are converting into fans and spending their time and money where you want them to, website dos and don’ts, apps and responsive websites as well as knowing your audience and who consumes your content. With David’s background as a venture capitalist he shares his unique perspective on this new music industry.

This episode was edited by Andy Warren of  www.applesandchocolate.com

Take a listen below!

Aaron Bethune.

Music Specialist. Creative Collaborator. Author. Musicpreneur.

Take a listen to the interview here.