Expectations

I'm working with a busy, talented vendor who does great work. The biggest drawback is they struggle with communication.

A work request goes on their To-Do list, but they can't or won't estimate when it will be finished. The work is brilliant when it comes in, and deadlines are met, but the awkward silence during the development process can be disconcerting. You have to decide whether the level of work is worth the silence.

If you do awesome work and your dance card is full, you can let customer service slide. Most of us don't have that option.

Dilligence

I spent some time at an expensive boutique hotel last weekend, and enjoyed both the stay and watching the place at work.

Waiting for a friend in a side lobby I was able to watch the staff tidy up after a social hour. This was more than the cursory pick-up-glasses-and-wipe-down-tables exercise. Each chair had an exact position to return to, as they were as much a part of the architecture as the windows and doors. Most were moved, then checked, adjusted, and checked again before moving to the next one. The staff took their work seriously, and they were meticulous.

This required two things: staff who were willing to be extraordinarily diligent, and the time to be diligent. You must have both.

The room only took about 15 minutes to fully reset to its perfect default, but could have been done in 5 if clean was the only goal. Some would think that's a poor use of manpower, taking three times as long to do everything as the minimum, building inefficiency into the system.

I suspect for that hotel, serious margins come mostly from those inefficiencies.

Peter

Consistency

As humans, we don't like to change much. We relish our routines. Since we're prone to doing the same thing again and again, we self-justify why we make the choices we do.

If I eat lunch at the same place every Tuesday, I will quickly understand the range of deviation in my experience at The Tuesday Place. The more trips, the more I can explain away a bad lunch, because I have so many more positive lunches to balance against it.

In other words, it only takes two or three consistent experiences to lock in, for better or worse, where you will live in that customer's mind.

Peter

Relationships

We all have those things that we happily pay a premium for.

The well designed product that does more than promised. The vendor that always pulls off your ridiculous request. The barista who asks "The usual, Pete?" when you get to the counter. You perceive value above the price premium you pay, and as long as you continue to find that value, you will happily continue paying extra.

The hard part is finding ways to deliver that level of value to others. It's often more complex than learning customer's names and regular orders.

Peter

Easy

Does your website have your email and phone number at the bottom of every single page?

Why not?

Yes, it will generate more calls and emails- from people who probably want to do business with you.

It may be worth your time.

To go even further- do you have an FAQ that's easy to find? Is your menu of services up to date? If visitors like your offerings, is it easy for them to download the paperwork they need or use your shopping cart mechanism?

It seems obvious, but almost daily I encounter someone who has made the buying process hard for no good reason.

Peter

The Soft Middle

Of the group who use your product or service, there is probably a sizable subgroup that doesn't choose you over the other guy as much as they allow others to choose you for them. It's why some marketers place such a heavy emphasis on "influencers". They drag many others along for the ride.

When you are on the good side of the influencers, things are dandy. Fail a few times with the influencers and you lose not only their business but those who pay close attention to the things they do. Much is at stake.

Do you know who the influencers are? Probably, but you can never know the full roster, especially those who are coming on the scene.

Its best to treat each customer as if they have a hundred future transactions in their pocket. You just never know.

Peter

Everything To Everyone

The Postal Service has painted itself into a corner by setting expectations too high.

For over a century they have delivered the mail to every home in America, six days a week, at extremely low cost.

But the drop in mail volume has resulted in deficits, so we, the taxpayers, have a choice to make.

- We can accept that daily mail delivery is something we believe adds value to the economy and our quality of life, and absorb the costs into the Federal Budget;

- We can insist that the USPS run itself like a business.

- A hybrid of the two.

Running the USPS like a business will mean some combination of the following:

- Mail delivery only a few days a week
- A surcharge, say $100/year, if you want home delivery. Picking up at a box would be free.
- Closing of thousands of post offices in Rural America
- The price of a stamp doubling or tripling
- An end of flat-rate postage. Every item will be priced by weight and distance.
- Extra fees if you want Saturday service of any kind.

I'm not advocating any of these ideas, and we will probably see some of the service cuts and surcharges rolled out, while deficits continue to be the norm. Deep down everyone likes the service USPS provides, but nobody really wants to pay for that level of service. But the USPS created this situation by being Everything to Everyone, and now none of their options are going to be popular.

The Buffet

When you order an entree, the kitchen staff tries to put the best possible experience on that plate for the price you are paying. Your expectations are limited to what is on that plate.

At a buffet, the goal is to put out a lot of low to medium quality food, and your goal is to eat enough to feel you got your money's worth.

The value equation switches from quality to volume.

The same thing has happened in cell phones. Once, usage was billed by the minute, so competition was as much on quality and range as on price. Telcos has incentive to upgrade their networks to attract users.

Now with bulk pricing and essentially buffet data plans, we use as much bandwidth as we want, and the telcos give us the minimum level of service that will keep us renewing our contracts.

The buffet plan has won because we prefer to use our phones without having a meter running in our heads, but our level of service has probably dropped. That's exactly what we told the telcos we wanted, too.

Just good enough won.

Peter

Signaling

The biggest expectation signal in a restaurant comes from the menu. Is your entree going to cost you $10? $25? Is a price even listed? Your expectation will then rise or fall to meet the price given.

While an unmarked entree had better be amazing, deliver amazing and you can charge almost any price.

Peter

Efficiency

I took one of those shuttle vans from La Guardia into Manhattan a few weeks ago, and noticed the oddest thing- the van didn't have an EZ Pass transmitter. It paid for its trip through the tunnel with cash.

I assume this van wasn't an occasional user of the tunnel, but rather that it went through a toll booth of one kind or another multiple times a day. Yet it wasn't using the tool to make the trip a tiny bit faster. Odd.

The message it sent to me was: We don't care about your experience with us. You chose the cheap route, we'll treat you like crap.

Sometimes the low end solution can get away with that.

Peter

The Leverage of Baggage

By charging for every checked bag, the airlines have changed the relationship with their customers in unexpected ways.

The game is now to avoid checking and getting as much into the cabin as possible, which has led to comical scenes of travelers like myself trying to change the laws of physics in the overhead bins.

But once the passenger carries a large bag through security, they have some leverage. It is in the airlines interest to get as many bags in the belly of the plane as possible. Often passengers can simply "gate check" their bags- as their boarding pass gets scanned a gate check tag is attached to their bag, which they leave at the end of the skyway before boarding. The bag goes in the belly with no money changing hands. Passenger wins.

On my last flight I witnessed the following exchange at the gate:

"I'll give you a drink coupon if we can check your bag."

(Clearly and experienced traveler) "I'll check it for two drinks and the snack box."

"Sold."

Coupons were exchanged, the bag was checked. Experienced Traveler then enjoyed two drinks and a box of random snacks while the his seatmates (including me) nibbled their peanuts and drank their sodas. E.T. used his leverage- a checkable bag- to increase the quality of his flight. Well played.

Changing the rules has unintended consequences. In this case turning gate agents into Monte Hall. Probably not why they got into the business.

Peter

Opportunity

While on the road last week i passed through the Delta terminal at La Guardia. Much of the grief airlines receive is earned, but I did notice a bit of intelligent planning to meet traveler needs.

Amongst the ten gates that are clustered together is a kiosk with eight telephone receivers. The phones have no buttons- when you pick up, the phone dials an operator somewhere. Out of curiosity, I called.

(Side note: the kiosk also has a shelf and power strip on either end for the charging of your various electronic devices. I charged my cell phone while talking to the Delta rep. Smart.)

The Delta staff was very helpful, and answered my question about how many frequent flier miles I. The kiosk seems designed for when a flight gets canceled and a hundred people need to talk to a service rep right now. But that's the key- service capacity was put in place to be used only at moments of high demand. Its free and easy to use. No hunting for the 800 number on the Delta website. Just pick up the phone and call.

Its the same philosophy as putting your 800 number or email address on every single page of your website. Don't make your customers hunt for it- put it out front. They may never use it, but knowing they could builds a lot of trust in the transaction process.

Peter

Disillusionment

When the reality of your customer's situation falls below their expectations, you've got a problem.

Fortunately, if they choose to interact with you again, their expectations will be lowered as they come in the door. Perhaps you can meet them and try to cement the relationship.

If they come back in.

Peter

The Value Equation

Costco succeeds because it has chosen to provide a lousy shopping experience.

The store has zero ambiance- it's a warehouse.
The selection is horrid, often limited to one brand of a product, usually in one size.
You can only buy products in gigantic portions. A gallon of ketchup, anyone?
The checkout takes forever because they is only a skeleton crew.

But the prices are so cheap that you accept all of the limitations. Happily.

Businesses that succeed make a similar calculation of what their customer's priorities are. Costco shoppers will endure all of the downsides to save money. Neiman Marcus shoppers value quality goods and insane service over price.

What part of business is your company choosing to do badly in order to deliver great value in another?

Peter

Planning To Be Ordinary

I had a conversation once with a manager of a fast-growing start-up. It had a self-service design, which required a fair amount of training and hand holding of customers at the beginning, but became mostly automated once the initial learning curve was climbed.

I asked how the follow-up interactions were going once a customer was up and running.

"We don't reach out once things get worked out."

"Why not?"

"Because if we reach out once a week now, when we are double our size six months from now we'll only be calling once a month at best, so the customer will perceive the quality of their service has gotten worse. We can't scale service like that, at least not while we're growing."

Translation: Said Manager was planning on interacting as little as possible with his clients to avoid the impression of quality service, which may be construed as the company caring about its customers. Wouldn't want that.

The Manager was unwilling to scale staff to maintain a level of service, because he was looking at an automated cash cow, and exceptional service in the form of additional staff would ruin the margins. Wouldn't want that, either.

The start-up probably isn't going to make it for a variety of reasons- but I suspect the Plan To Be Ordinary didn't help.

Peter

The Expected Way

We generally wander around with shockingly low expectation of the quality of our interactions. If someone manages to serve us without messing up the order and is pleasant to be around, we will spend days bragging about our awesome experience.

There's a lot of opportunity for anyone willing to build a system that can exceed our expectation of doing things "The Usual Way".

Yes, it takes thought and effort. Yes, it may cost more to be slightly above average. Great is more expensive still.

But I expect the returns exceed the marginal cost difference between "Usual" and "Great".

Peter

Service

We all have details in our work lives that can suck up all of our attention. We mentally go thorough our To Do list and can forget who is on the other end of our actions.

But viewing each thing we do from the perspective of the user flips our day on its head.

Approaching each action of each day as an opportunity to serve someone else, to bring a moment of joy or surprise or pleasure, recreates the relationship you have with your To Do list. The order of importance may change.

If you are not bringing joy or surprise or pleasure, you may not be economically relevant very long.

Peter