Practical Innovation Training: The Responsive People Program

Three lessons online can learn from offline customer experience

An article on HBR today makes a lot of sense on consistency of customer experience online and off.

And it notes we have different expectations online versus off.

But the question is should we? When we talk about improving customer experience its often, where a business already cares about customer experience, a question of giving it the same emotional feel online as off.

This is difficult stuff. And it needs examples to help us shape a response.

Many years back I recall Doc Searls talking about his wife's annoyance with sign-ins and registrations online - the sort of barriers people seeking to transact in the real world rarely come across. And when we do... "Can I take your postcode please... and the number of the house?..." we feel something unnatural and data capturey is taking place, something we'd rather not soil ourselves with...

Lesson - The best experience requires no sign in and no registration.

And as I noted recently - online we may be cutting organisations more slack than we would in the real world... because no one sees us fail when we try to 'get in' to your online presence. The very human emotion of embarrassment is removed.

Lesson - Dance like no one is watching, by all means, but Test your online customer journeys like someone is watching.

Imagine you are a retailer who has built a reputation on no quibble returns - money back immediately? How can you replicate online the satisfaction provided by handing over the faulty item in person in the store and getting credited back immediately on the card you paid with (usually prompting an instant repurchase from stock).  If my transaction is recorded and available in all channels then this can be used to verify I do possess the product in question. In selecting to send it back, generating a postage paid printout address, or even a label to attach to it for pick up from home, I should be granted an instant refund - before the item is even boxed up to be sent back.

Why - because this shows me the retailer trusts me (and trust is reciprocal) and I am much more likely to repurchase from the same retailer, right now, to replace my faulty item - a loyal customer ready to tell friends all about my great experience.

If I fail to send the faulty item back what's the worst that happens? The retailer loses the full value of the item and the consumer gets blacklisted (but only after a period of reminder communications, of course).

Fearful retailers could trial limiting the value available to do this online, and/or providing vouchers which can only be spent with the same store. But I suspect the more trust you offer, the more you get back.

Lesson: Don't forget the core emotions you are trying to generate online. If you've built your reputation on no quibble in the real world, how do you remove all the quibble when online?

UX starts at the front door

What's the message you've designed?

No matter how good the customer experience is within your doors, if your customer can't actually get through those doors, everything else is wasted.
I had lunch in a steak house in Milton Keynes yesterday as I prepared for a meeting with a colleague.
I was seated near the window and close enough to observe as potential diners approached the entrance.
I think I could make one, simple, physical change to that entrance and at least double conversion.
In the short time I was there (a little less than an hour) I saw at least 15 people walk up to the front door, try to open it, fail, and walk away.
People rarely see your embarrassment at failing a simple test like opening a door on the internet (so perhaps they try again and again, allowing us to get away with poor online design?). But in the real world, in front of your friends and passing pedestrians on a Milton Keynes pavement, that embarrassment is real and all that you need to prompt you to keep on walking to the next restaurant.
By the time I came to settle the bill there had been so many failed attempts to get in that I felt it fair to point out the issue to the fella taking my credit card details. To confirm my point, it happened to another would-be customer as we discussed the problem. The member of staff dashed off after that one, but they'd already gone.
To put this in context, there were less people inside dining than had failed to get it. Half the revenue was failing to get past the front door.
What, I wondered, makes this door so great a challenge?
The door very clearly states 'pull'. And the instruction is correct. And to be fair, I had managed to get in, hadn't I?
The problem, I think, is that we typically expect an entrance to open inwards. My front door at home does this and, I'm pretty sure from the pov of entering the room, so do the rest of the doors in our home.
My guess is we come to expect doors to open inwards when they are entrances - no matter whether they are covered with explanations to the contrary (signs don't work, by the way).
The episode highlights how important it is to really push out the ends of end-to-end when we map customer journeys. Sometimes you must, literally, put yourself in your customers' shoes and walk it.
So Middletons, my free piece of advice to you today is, change your entrance door to one which opens inwards. You could double your revenue overnight.

High Streets as celebrations of the self

Image via: http://www.huntingdon-town.info/

I found out my local art gallery is closing down when I strolled in to get a couple of pictures framed.
Just another victim of the recession? Well yes and no. More a victim of a structural change in how we shop.

High Streets are becoming the home to those things which require our presence to benefit. And mostly to benefit means those things which give us some corporeal satisfaction or improvement: restaurants, coffee shops, beauty salons, hairdressers, nail bars and tatoo parlours. Even the estate agents are thinning out.
There are more places in my High Street (and I bet in yours if you live in any small town in the UK) where I could get a massage, than places I could buy groceries.

The supermarkets have supersized and stalk the edges of towns.

What's left in our town centres is a celebration of the self, where we go to make pilgrimages to pampering.
Oh - and what else? Banks and mobile phone shops.

My guess is that unless your business is serving physical need/improvement and you are surviving in the High Street, your business model just hasn't been disrupted hard enough yet. Yes, banks and mobile phone operators... your time will come.

What time is that? Well let's stroll back to that art gallery. The owner told me artists have used the web to disintermediate the middle man - the galleries. Today people wander into his gallery, see an original they like then go look up the artist and find they can buy something very similar for a few pounds cheaper direct.
And since the gallery has its High Street overheads, it can't compete.

So next time you are thinking about your next mobile phone contract - go online and see if you can't find something a bit like it (or a lot better actually, like giffgaff which features in my book) for less money and you'll be hastening the process those inside the large mobile phone retailers are already preparing for - the decline and relatively rapid removal of the High Street mobile phone store.
Now, what's next for banking I wonder?

How to treat your best customers worst - by First Capital Connect

Many organisations, the UK Government included, are frantically herding us online to reduce the transaction costs of having to deal with us pesky customers.

The usual pitch to us is that it will either save us money or save us time. There are even some companies who will offer us both carrots.

Well here's a warning about the hidden sticks - direct from the commuter's friend First Capital Connect.
It's not just a warning to fellow commuters, it's also a lesson in how to treat your best customers worst.

For my sins, I commute regularly from Huntingdon to London. My options include car (way too time-consuming and costly by the time congestion charges and parking are taken into account, and not exactly good for the planet, either), cycling (er, no), coach (really, no thanks) or - there in a monopoly position; a season ticket with First Capital Connect.

I have a season ticket. I pay First Capital Connect over £4000 a year for my 4 x a week commute. I give them that money up front. The whole lot, in advance, for a year. In their bank account, not mine. For them to spend. Not me.

I could go on about how my 'gold card' as it's laughingly labelled should deliver a level of customer service that it doesn't; I mean I do get a seat most journeys so my commute is a shining beacon of joy compared to many I hear about.

I reckon my lining their pockets with silver a full year in advance makes me a very good customer indeed. I only wish 90:10 Group had customers like that. Wouldn't we all?

So, back to that being herded online thing. This year (last October) when my season ticket was due for renewal I took the bait. I think it two off-peak train journeys was the freebie on offer for ordering online. And I figured I'd save some queuing time.

So, for the princely sum of two off-peak tickets (during which times there are always seats free so the marginal cost to FCC is zero) I saved them time, cut down their admin etc etc.

And as one of their very best customers I expect some modicum of reward when I need assistance.
Today my Gold Card stopped going through the ticket barriers. May not sound much if you don't experience the rush of the commute, but boy that can be a tad inconvenient.

When it failed on my way in this morning I was advised to take it to the station I'd bought it at to get a replacement.

Foolish me, I'd forgotten I bought it online. Well, it was last October. I'd had one or two other things to think about since then.

So when I rocked up at the station this evening with my photocard and Gold Card in hand (yes, all the gubbins ready) I was surprised to find I could not get a replacement. I had to go back to 'where I bought it' - and the station staff couldn't tell me where that was.

So penny dropping, I'd bought it online, I had to go online to get a replacement (not that there was any advice on that coming from behind the counter).

That's a monumental fail. That's putting the inconvenience on the customer for whom convenience was clearly important - hence the decision to buy online.
It's a fail in the disconnectedness of First Capital Connect services. Apparently it's 'not the same company' that sells tickets online (via the FCC site, I'll have you know).

Guess what? Your very best customers don't give a damn which agency is between us and you. Every time we are dealing with a service related to you (and I don't think the ticket for the journey can be any more related) we're going to assume you should take some responsibility.

As it stands, it's down to me, your very best customer (ok, one of) who has to go back to the site, remember my log in details, log in - and print out what is effectively a begging letter to station staff - with the appropriate code - to issue me a replacement card.

Let's look at this a little closer. The station staff told me they couldn't issue tickets which didn't match codes for ones issued at their station as a fraud prevention measure.

1. That's FCC's problem not mine. No, seriously, make a better, less counterfeitable ticket - don't put the inconvenience on your very best customers.
2. On the website it says any ticket office can replace a season ticket issued by any other.

My Season Ticket doesn't work the entry or exit gates. What do I do?
Please return it to the station of issue (or any ticket office) where it will be replaced free of charge.

However, if you are one of FCC's very best customers, who both paid them in advance and saved them money in the way your bought your ticket...

If you bought your ticket online, log in to your account and click on apply to replace a damaged season ticket.

At which point you generate the begging letter I referred to above, which you have to print out (at your cost in both materials and time) and take to the station... again.

So, congratulations FCC - you have managed to disincentivize buying season tickets online with some truly crass disconnected thinking (and thank you for reminding me what an absolute nightmare process involving duplicate payments it was last October).

Miffed? Damn right - and angry that I have no choice but to return with my begging letter to get my replacement gold card tomorrow morning.

I bet the staff thank the management daily for saddling them with this kind of stress-generating stupidity. And I do hope the staff are reporting back how their very best customers are reacting.

But just in case - I'll be sending you a link to this post and awaiting your response with interest...

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• Consumer rights: 'I bought a ticket online - but it was a scam' (independent.co.uk)

First glimpse of a new economy...

Online gamers have long talked about 'gold farms', but they have now been captured on film for the first time. In basic terms, they are sweatshops dedicated to procuring exclusive items from a variety of online games, which are then sold on auction sites and forums for real cash.
MTV was actually the first place to air the clip from a new documentary film which looks into the phenomenon.
You can watch the film here: http://chinesegoldfarmers.com/Index.html.

It's certainly evidence of a change in the global economy, with the young generation of blue collar workers now beginning to spend their working lives in repetitive virtual employment, rather than simply walking to the nearest factory every morning to work on a real-world production line.

The magazine is dead! Long live the magazine!

Spotted by Charley D: http://www.mediaweek.co.uk/news/index.cfm?fuseaction=details&nNewsID=597548
The magazine is not dead. Just the paper element...