Customer Experience – Next Competitive Battlefield

Today on road in Mumbai and again ashamed to see the condition of the roads across the city. Its not post monsoon but pre monsoon and 6 months after the last monsoon.  Who is in charge of the city roads? Hope our corp-orators are travelling by road and not by helicopter ofcourse not by train. Just callous attitude of the people in power and people busy with their daily duties ignoring collapsed infrastructures.

This happens when there is no mind for Customer (Citizen) Experience.  People who votes and who are suppose to be served are ignored for various other priorities. Citizen comes last if at all.

Now moving to the corporate. Customer Experience is also not a priority here.  Customers are adjusted to sub standard customer services and experience.  My earlier post r CEOs PASSIONATE abt their CUSTOMERS? I had stated that problem is at the TOP.

Culture percolates from Top to the bottom.  Amazon CEO Bezos is a great fan of creating wow customer experience. He had stated about Inverted 30 : 70 Ratio – Customer Experience. Companies spend huge sums of money on marketing but hardly work on creating amazing customer experience which in turn will reduce marketing spend, shorten sales cycle and build powerful brand through word of mouth.

Enough is Enough. Be it government or companies , time has come that non performers or rather non wowers will be out of the business. If your government is not focusing on citizen need or company is not focusing on creating superior customer experience, all other competitive advantages will soon become history.

In his recent blog post Jacob Braude , vice president of strategic planning at Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness rightly writes that Experience Is The Next Frontier In Marketing.

I think time has come for every entrepreneurs to embrace new battlefield and start working on customer experience design. In Govt space Gujarat and Bihar govt has already embraced and made the citizen their focus area.

Competitive landscape is changing and focusing on customer experience is the right strategy for everyone be it corporations, government or NGOs.  Strategy for Next Financial Year – Customer Centricity – Customer Delight – Referral Marketing – Improving Net Promoter Scores  { Rest all strategies and parameters will be taken care of }. 

* Inviting interest from readers to join Customer Experience Professionals Association of India.

Innovation is not about LABORATORIES , its about Mindset.

” When you choose to be an active BLOGGER, you become a keen observer of things round you. “  John Jantsch of The Referral Engine

Yes you start observing things keenly , small but different things. Similarly small innovation is natural and originates not from laboratory or after brain storm.

Autorickshaw in Mumbai are small lifeline and they in thousands in number. In many cities its a means of commuting for millions of people daily. There is nothing new about it.

                                                                                                  

Newness and innovation comes when you see an autorickshaw which is a moving library cum book selling store cum social service activist.

Yes name is Sadanand an Autodriver has converted his vehicle as library and  book store.

He displays religious books at the back of his seat. Commuter can read the book of their choice for a free while commuting . Now if commuter likes the book he can buy the same from him immediately while finishing his commuting. Library cum book store done.

Now if you dont want to buys even through he will give you some  religions book or pamphlet for a free i.e. social service.

Read, buy and get it for free if you don’t want to buy. All these when you have nothing else to do but waiting and killing time some how.

This small innovation is interesting. Its a clue to many service providers and entrepreneurs to think of something which can add value to the customers time while dealing with your enterprise of-course over and above what is expected from your enterprise.

Autorickshaw is taking commuters from one place to other place i.e. primary expectation and everything happening in between is innovation and value addition.

Bettering customer experience requires just a mindset to offer something better, extra and  pleasantly unexpected and relevant value addition.

Pause , Check Business Processes and  Innovation Index of the Enterprise , NOW. WOW!! can happen only then.

Totaram’s Tea – Lesson for Every Brands

I encountered Totaram’s Chai ( Tea ) in Surat while I was travelling in Karnavati Express to Baroda earlier this week.  This tea vendor boarded the train from Surat and started selling his so called branded Tea as Totaram’s Chai. Rest all Tea vendors were selling Masala Chai and  this guy was selling Totaram’s Chai.  Immediate differentiation and visibility.

How to make your difference known to your target audience even if you are selling commodity products ? Totaram is the answer.

I inquired to my fellow passenger  – What this Totaram is all about ?

He was so over whelmed with the brand that he told me – you just had a tea but now you taste this Totaram’s tea and feel the difference. { he recommended } . He didn’t stop with just recommendation but even paid for my tea and refused to accept money from me.When you are selling WOW!!! experience and customers r your brand advocates, customer will go to any extent to  make their peer group consume that WOW !! experience. When we have WOW !! experience we love to tell others and even want others to experience similar WOW !! experience to make them know our taste and reach.

Brand Advocates are passionate about the brand. They become the seller and aggressive seller of their passionate brands.

Its all about little innovation and one can make even commodity a reputed brand.  Tea was marginally better than the one earlier I had but  sheer way of his selling style and branding differently than mere Masala Chai (tea), this Totaram has become favourite of the commuters.

& ofcourse he was selling tea 20% costlier than other commodity masala chai.

Bottomline:

- Little thinking and innovation can make even commodity a branded product. Simple product like ready made Tea can be made branded by giving a brand name , making & selling with passion.

- Brand Advocates are more aggressive than even brand sellers

- This kind of commodity brands can fetch premium in the market

- It gets noticed and become talk of the town. Even media reports about the same

- Customers become sellers and media becomes PR agency – all for free.  Just offer WOW !!! Experience. No need for wasteful advertisements.

Unfortunately there was only 1 Totaram from among 10 tea vendors.  Same applies to all products and services.  Wowers are rare breed of entrepreneurs and they are the winners. Two kinds of businesses never face bearish phase – entrepreneurs doing unethical practice and the other who are offering wow!! experience.

Word of Mouth or Marketing Campaigns – What Sells for You?

“Pan Singh Tomar” What?? was the utterance from a friend who I invited to see the movie.

Yes no star and low budget movies are not marketed extensively hence not known to many and most film goers.

As against this RaOne was hugely publicised movie and hence though product was (technically superior but was) low on entertainment value was huge grosser.

Huge Hype can sale Inferior Product also. Similarly most products , not market extensively though better than highly marketed products and services are less known and hence less consumed. However things are changing , and changing fast.

In the case of Pan Singh Tomar Social media i.e. consumers themselves have taken up the job of marketing the product. Word of mouth publicity for the movie is drawing crowd to the theater. Problem with huge campaign and low product is that now social media can take out the air from their Tyre and same social media can add extra stepney to the good but lesser known products.

Kolavri D can go viral to become huge success similarly political unrest and rising can over throw governments – this is the power of social media. Companies rather than going for huge campaigns should now start spending & spreading on social media and whatever is saved can be used to better the product. In the case of movie invest in script and music. Let the people take charge of collective Chief Sales officer.

Feedback to Feed Forward

Feedback is the most POWERFUL tool to know how enterprise is performing. Feedback from customers, vendors and employees.

Free and Fair feedback from these stake holders will shape the management policies to navigate into the future.

TOP Management does lot of things assuming our stakeholders must be happy about it or with whatever I /We do is always correct. Who better than us can know it better ???

Its always a myth. Feedback from Family made Valmiki a GREAT SAGE. He was notorious as long as he was living of his OWN without the feedback for whom he assumed he was doing what he was doing.

Does yr company has feedback system which regularly map the performance against the expectations of three stake holders stated above??? (Shareholders will be anyway happy if the other three stakeholders r happy).When was the last time your company took feed backs and it also reached to the TOP management?

Are we awake or DREAMING???

We Sell , What We Communicate

I fail to understand WHY insurance companies are not FOCUSING on Health Care for People in their mass communication and ad campaigns and focus on selling insurance policies only???

Advantage: (Manifold)

1) Wide spread health care campaigns will do over all health improvement across the population

2) This will be social awareness along with brand building. People will feel that U are genuinely interested in their health management and disease prevention. (& Not only interested in selling yr products)

3) Better health will make lesser health claims

4) Better health means longevity so longer duration of fund management for life insurance companies

Still I do not see any insurance companies talking about preventive health management as their mission or communication they use. They only talk abt their plans and policies using costliest possible BRAND ambassadors.

This is what happens when companies are internal focussed and how they ACT when they have COMMODITY selling mindset. NOW this applies to every companies insurance or otherwise.

How to Wow !!! – White Paper on Consumer Focused Companies

Welcome to the Community of WOW !! Experience Creators. 

When CIO of Dell Jerry Gregoire says ” Customer Experience is the New Competitive battle field. ” , its an awakening call for every CEOs.

” We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.”  Jeff Bezos, CEO Amazon.com

Every enlightened CEOs are thinking , talking and executing WOW !!! Customer Experiences. Rest all are internal issues.

Check out white paper on How to WOW!! for Consumer Companies – Banking- Travel – Hospitals & Retailers. 

Share your thoughts & proposed actions.