John Winsor

Is Your Customer Service Ready for the New World of Openness?

In a great example of how companies need evolve their customer service in the new world of openness, I wanted to share this story with you. My 8 year old son, Harry, loves to draw planes. In fact, that's all he likes to draw. After drawing a couple of hundred pictures over the last six months, Harry had a great idea. He'd send one of his favorite drawings to Boeing and ask them if they'd like to build his new jet he designed. He was so passionate about it and must have rewritten the letter a dozen times. We sent it off. You can only imagine what happened.

Yep. We got the form letter, above. It's the standard fare that most legal departments send out to make sure they aren't at risk of any IP infringement issues. As a business owner, I get it. It is logical. But, my sense is that companies who don't figure out how to do customer service and innovation in the world of openness will, in the short-run, stunt their growth and, in the long-run cease to exist. And, if you don't ave any customers you certainly don't need customer service.

Some brave companies are venturing into the deep end to figure this out. Zappos, Best Buy, Nokia, Starbucks and Dell have all set up web sites to accept customer input in new and open ways. These are the leaders of the revolution. They are the early winners in the first days of the age of openness.

Now, I have a moral dilemma. Do I show the letter to Harry and kill his dream of being an airplane designer or throw it away and tell him I didn't receive anything so he keeps his artistic passion alive.

What would you do?

Sometimes it's Just That Simple

I went into the dressing room at the Prana store today to try on some clothes and noticed this whiteboard. What a cool idea. Start a conversation exactly at the moment when the customer is interacting with your product.

Sometimes, we make it all so complicated. Maybe we should just keep it simple.

Customer Service Odyssey, Part Two

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the beginning of my customer service journey with my Olympus Tough Stylus 6000. I started the journey by posting my problems on their customer service page on their web site. Two days later Michael Bourne, from Olympus' agency, Mullen, was on it and reached out to me suggesting that I try a different number and email address.

Instead of using Michael's contact info that day, I decided to wait and see what a couple of days to see what kind of response I would get from the web site. Two days later I got an email from Olympus customer service with a Ticket # in the Subject line. Oddly, there was nothing in the email. What a missed opportunity to communicate with a customer.

After waiting a week and not hearing a word I thought I'd send an email to the address that Michael suggested. Well, it's been four days and no answer. Is anybody home at Olympus? It seems like I'm working pretty hard as a customer. Looks like I'm going to have to buy a repalcement camera. Do you think it's going to be an Olympus?

My experience is a good reminder to all of us that our customers want to engage with us in a dialogue. It's not the big marketing ideas that trip companies up, it's the simple things. Like returning an email, being kind on the phone, or finding a way to turn a bad brand experience into an experience that creates an advocate for the brand.

The journey continues. I'll keep you posted on what happens.

Beginning a Customer Service Odyssey

Today, I took my brand new Olympus Tough Stylus 6000 (ok, it's a week old) on a mountain bike ride and, during the ride, I stopped to take a picture. With the leash around my wrist, the camera slipped five inches onto the top tube of my bike and cracked the LCD. I was really surprised. I ride with cameras a lot and they always seem to get knocked around. I've never broken anything before.

The big reason I bought this camera was because of its name. I figured if you put the word "Tough" in the name of your camera it's going to be tougher than the average. The front of the camera doubles the promise by saying "1.5m/5ft Shockproof."

Naming is such an important part of branding. It holds a promise that binds the customer with the brand.

Tonight, I sent a note to Olympus to see what kinds of solutions they have to fix my camera. It will be interesting to see how they respond. Not only is naming important for brands but, today, customer service is critical. Social media is forcing companies to no longer look at customer service as appeasement. They must be proactive. Bad experiences move quickly across social networks, threatening a companies reputation in the blink of an eye.

Now that the conversation has started with Olympus, I'll let you know how it goes.

Radically Transparent

Back when Mike Gilliland and Libby Cook started Wild Oats in 1987 that did something pretty cool. They printed their home phone number on the side panels of the grocery bags. We all know the success story of Wild Oats, becoming a national phenomenon and selling to Whole Foods.

Well, Mike and Libby are at it again. Mike and Libby are opening a location of their new chain, Sunflower Farmers Market, in Boulder and they decided to put his home phone number on the opening flier welcoming shoppers to the Boulder store.

How many other wildly successful CEO's have the guts to take calls from their customers at home.

Now, that's cool.

Expand Your Services

Bridget and I wanted to go to a movie last night at the Flatirons Crossing Mall near Boulder. Before the movie, we stopped in at Bloom for a quick bit. As always, we were running a little late and felt rushed when we arrived at the restaurant. Imagine my surprise when the waiter offered to run over to the movie theater and buy our movie tickets for us! How cool is that.

No matter what business you're in, the lines are blurring. Either you can offer new services that your customer wants or someone else will.

Help!

Don't get me wrong, I love my Blackberry Pearl. But today, I am totally frustrated. Somehow, a series of buttons were tapped when the Pearl was in my pocket this morning. The phone now wants to highlight all emails, not allowing me to open anything. I can see an illuminated arrow in the upper right hand corner of the screen, signaling the change to the keyboard, but I'm not sure how to turn it off.

So here's the real frustration. If I had my print manual for the phone with me I could find the answer in a second. Instead, I'm stuck with the very beautiful Blackberry web site that can't answer my question. It relies on me to adapt to it, by asking the right question, instead of adapting to me. Lot's of companies haven't figured out how to give customers want the want, an answer, without wrapping in a wonderful graphic interface that gets in the way.

My advice: MAKE IT EASY!

Maybe not just right...

No sooner than I wrote my last post about the great experience I had at the Kimpton Monoco, San Francisco than our relationship went horribly wrong. When I left the Monoco on Friday the Front Desk Manager he told me that he would book another room for me this week and call my cell with a confirmation number. Well, I hadn't heard from him so I called the hotel last night only to find out that they were sold out! Sold out! But he told me he'd take care of it.

It goes to show that a brand can do everything right in it's marketing and product but get tripped up on a simple thing like keeping a promise. Unfortunately, Kimpton is now off of my "Just Right" list.

Does Verizon Know Their Cents?

I got an email this morning that shared this story:

A customer was told by Verizon Wireless that his roaming data rate in
Canada would be .002 cents, however when he got his bill he was
instead charged .002 dollars. After multiple attempts with multiple
call center agents none of them could realize the difference between
dollars and cents. After a couple of failed calls, the guy recorded
his next two phone calls with Verizon, posted them to YouTube and
created a Blog. It's pretty funny actually...unless you are Verizon.

In less than 30 days the original YouTube posting of the recorded
audio reached the #1 Top Rated in the News and Blogs category. As of
today the audio has been heard by nearly 1/2 a million YouTube
viewers. The audio is also on a site called PutFile.com and has over
100K listens there. Who knows how many more sites this has been
posted to?

Listening to the YouTube audio is a painful experience.

It's a good reminder that in the connected world in which we live in every customer interaction is critical to the success of your brand.

The Sad Reality of Retail

Yesterday the snow fell fast and furiously in Boulder, piling up to over 30 inches on the ground. I was planning to do a little Christmas shopping after work yesterday. Unfortunately, most of the stores were closed by 2. The thought occurred to me that many small retailers might miss out on important last minute sales.

Well this morning, nothing opened. Around 3 I decided to get out and see if I could get at least a little bit of shopping done. All of the local retailers were still closed. Yet, there was Target, open as usual. And, it was packed.

It makes me wonder how many dollars where taken away from the local Boulder retailers and, instead, spent at national chains, like Target. I know for me it totaled $74.31. These days, there is so much pressure on local merchants between the value channel retailers, like Target, and Internet retailers the last thing they need is a big snow storm. It's a good reminder that some things still can't be controlled.