How many times have you seen a sales training program that claims to teach us how to "close any prospect in one conversation" or something similar? I know I have, and in fact have attended many of those programs personally hoping to learn the secret of great salesmanship. I came away from those programs feeling a little short changed, however because most of them - yes, even the good ones, rely on some degree of trickery or salesman slight-of-hand in order to close the prospect.

In thinking about my own dealings with clients and sales prospects in all stages of business development I have developed an understanding that leads me in a contrarian direction to what most of the gurus preach in their programs. Indeed, closing a sale should be a non-event. Let me try to explain.

Too many of us rely on a selling process that is very inward facing. We satisfy our own sales process milestones in order to advance the sale through the funnel - initial meeting, needs discovery, capabilities review, and so forth, and no where in sight is the customer's process considered. With such a complete and entire focus on ourselves we lose sight of the customer and the fact that they have a process too, and the penalty for not recognizing it and aligning with it is often the loss of the sale.

Truly astute sales professionals recognize the customer's process and work to align with it, acting more as customer advocates and facilitators and not as somone needing to show advancement with self-serving metrics and sales measures. Those that do it well recognize that the close, like the rest of the phases in the client's own processes is a relative non-event if played correctly, and never should it resort to deception or fancy-footwork as some preach.

Strong recognition and alignment with our customer's buying process allows us to follow their milestones and know when the customer is ready to close. Prematurely moving to the final phase of the process will drive a prospect away fearing over zealous (or worse) salesmanship. Delaying too long may miss the window and realize the customer bought elsewhere.

In short, we must be very focused on customer process and the experience we create for him during their buying process needs to be facilitative, not heavy handed. Being client centric in our style will allow us to know where we stand with prospects at all times and with proper alignment make closing the maximum amount of business part of the natural flow of events and not a carnival side-show.

Marc Mandel is a client experience transformation consultant at Strativity Group, the premier customer experience consultancy. More information about Marc and the firm can be found on our website, www.strativity.com or by calling (201) 843-1315.

We've already taken a number of close looks at the payers and how healthcare reform coming out of the current administration is forcing the powerful hand of change, but let's take a fresh look at providers and especially, hospitals.

Having had the personal misfortune of being a patient in a hospital a month ago for my very first time, I wanted to share some observations about the experience.

While I came into the hospital via the emergency room and because I was transported by ambulance I was wisked into the triage process rather than being left for an unpredictably long amount of time in the waiting room, being brought in was where the positive patient experience ended and the mismanagement and bureaucracy began.

The admitting nurse took my name and insurance information while another took my vitals.The grilling continued with duplicative information being provided to a series of interrogators for close to 20 minutes prior to them strapping on my ID wristband and parking me in the hallway on a gurney where they left me for the next six hours.

I am not sure if this was a steller example of best of breed healthcare, but I'll suggest it likely fell short in terms of the overall experience I received from the hospital. Never before had I felt like such a number and dehumanized by an overtaxed process run by doctors and administrators who have found more loopholes in the payer process to shake a stick at, all in the spirit of ensuring maximum financial compensation for minimal services rendered.

While I was "parked" in the hallway, nobody paid much attention to my repeated efforts to secure a room - even one with a roommate. The spot in the hallway they left me was in a busy area where my IV stand was bumped into more than once by doctors with other patients pulling on the needle delivering pain killers and other drugs into my uncomfortable body.

When I was finally discharged the doctor and nurses were kind and attentive in filling in their forms and computer records and sent me on my way.

There was no interest in ensuring comfort or even timely attention to the reason I was at the hospital to begin with. Not to be purposely alliterative, but marvelous modern medical management it was not.

While my personal hospital experience is limited, that first and only experience left me feeling cold and somewhat mishandled. 

That said, had I come into the hospital as part of a Medicare program, there has been recent regulatory change mandating my satisfaction as a patient before the hospital receives 100% of their payment from the payer system. In short, if I don't give a rave review, the hospital doesn't get paid. 

In my opinion putting that level of scruitiny toward the patient experience brings a new attention to care and how it's delivered - at least to those in the program. I'm imagining a day when all insured patients, whether through government programs like Medicare or otherwise can take on more power in the process and allow us to bring a voice into the accounting. The level of medical care would skyrocket since their payment hinges on my satisfaction. Until that day, I'm afraid we'll remain mistreated numbers with colorful wristbands parked in hospital hallways being ignored by overworked doctors who charge the payer system inflated rates for minimal services rendered.

In this patient's opinion, that day can't come soon enough.

There are notable exceptions to the rule, however most of the significant ones are in hospitals that operate nontraditionally and are generally for profit businesses as opposed to the more typical not-for-profits we see in our communities. Generally, the for profits are specialty providers such as Procure, the cancer treatment center, for example where they launched their treatment centers following not only the charter of providing the world's best medical care, but doing so in a setting that would both rival the great hotels and administered by patient advocates and front office staff that are warm and attentive. A vast contrast to what I experienced locally.

It's a shame to suggest this, but profit is a major catalyst for change and either threatening to block specific payments or resort to a for-profit destination hospital half way across the country leaving local hospitals with empty beds may be the drivers for the change the system needs to one and for all improve.

It's all about profit and accountability, I believe. At least in my experience.

Marc Mandel is a Customer Experience Transformation Consultant at Strativity Group, advising companies both in healthcare and other industries how to delight their customers and drive deeper, more permanent and profitable relationships with them. More information about Marc and Strativity Group can be found at www.Strativity.com or by email at Marc@Strativity.com.

As I write this post, I just completed a limited review of the primary Voice of the Customer platform companies, looking for their specific positioning relative to multichannel VoC. While I'd never claim that my search was exhaustive, I'd strongly suggest it was inclusive of most of the top players and some of the secondaries. What I found surprised me and I think shows a clear opportunity gap in the VoC platform space that needs consideration and hopefully, innovation.

Most of the companies I reviewed have recently upgraded their platforms and related website collateral to reflect the notion of multichannel VoC. For those uncertain about what I mean by multichannel VoC, consider how many ways a custmomer has to communicate either with, or about a company. We can certainly write emails. Surely posting on social media websites has become the norm. Calling the company remains available to us. Even postal letter writing. Of course these same companies also send us invitations to complete surveys as well, either regarding recent transactions or our more general views about the company and its services. 

Initially, the challenge brought about by so many choices was how to best integrate feedback from each channel into a more complete, 360-degree view of a customer's feedback. This process created some large technological challenges relative to data integration, and specifically identifying specific customers across multiple channels, each with its own underlying data model and potentially, unique customer identification.

Companies in the VoC platform space have been hard at work to create a "customer hub", strategically integrating the feedback and providing cross-channel reporting and analytics. For some the vision has been well realized and for others it appears to be a harder to hit bogie they're still working toward. The challenge of meaningful integration is further hampered because for some, the availability of additional communication channels is either via external syndicated data feeds such as social media firehose feeds or via 3rd party solutions which have been acquired and begun to be integrated into the company's "stack". This integration is extremely powerful and critical to truly empowering companies to be active listeners to their customer conversations. 

In thinking about what I learned by reviewing those company websites was that too many of those companies appear to have stopped at integration of the inbound data with limited cross-channel reporting. I'd like to assert this may be insufficient going forward and that the most leading edge companies will demand further integration with intelligent workflow, routing, and messaging solutions allowing companies to not simply accumulate and report on customer comments and feedback but to bring a level of enterprise-class intelligence to how the incoming data is analyzed, summarized and routed back out of the hub to key business stakeholders in near-realtime, allowing them to take immediate action and provide excellent service recovery.

Now, this in and outbound handling of customer conversation data and related analytics may already be implicit in the solutions, but the marketing messaging was not making that obvious on any of the sites reviewed. The marketing information was entirely focused on integrated collection, not realtime handling, and I think the platforms need to support that level of service recovery and the collateral needs to make it obvious to even the least informed reader.

The inherent problem in my mind with the hub metaphor is that the solution becomes the "Roach Motel" for customer feedback -- you remember, where they 'check-in, but never check-out.' The connotation here is that the data comes into the system from each channel and is integrated and held in the system, awaiting a user to generate a report or some amount of data extract. It's very similar to ten-year old thinking about data warehouses and the notion of the permanent data store. In this case, however, a strong customer experience demands swift and intelligent service recovery and meaningful integration with crucial complimentary capabilities to inform and alert those that need to know, when they need it will be critical. 

I want to propose an idea for consideration -- rather than promote a hub metaphor, let's reconsider the approach and instead, substitute a 'customer nervous system'. If we thinik about our own body's central nervous system, it's the part of us that receives all sorts of messages from a variety of internal and external stimuli and immediately sends messages to other parts of our body in response. Think of the example of putting our finger on something hot. Our Central Nervous System detects the heat, alerts our brain about the potential for injury and our brain sends messages to our hand to pull back and immediately take it off the heat source. In many ways, I envision a future where we will handle our customer conversations similarly.

Messages will come into the system from one or more channel and get integrated into a holistic reflection of the customer and his situation. This may also involve an automated review of non-VoC data sources such as our CRM system or other enterprise data system needed to compliment the Voice of the Customer. There will be a fully automated analysis of the situation with key messaging generated and dispatched by the system to those that need to be informed with very concise and low latency messaging allowing them to take action and satisfy a customer who may be in distress.

It's this new metaphor of the central nervous system that in my mind makes the one-way, in-only doorways of the customer hub into large, two-way streets carrying critical information in and out of the platform.

The business case for strong service recovery is obvious. Strativity Group research has shown us that a company's ability to immediately provide strong service recovery is a top, crucial driver of long term customer loyalty and satisfaction. Indeed doing so ranks as high or higher than the product sold or the price paid in many cases. Having the best technology to provide us a complete situational view with intelligent access to critical information when and where needed in support of that vsion will propel the most innovative companies to superior customer experiences, longer term loyalty and greater market dominance. 

As I’ve often written and spoken about, we as professionals in our respective industries and companies need to come to terms with the opinion that employees, our human capital create our company’s customer experience. As a collective of individuals, employees set the cadence and tone of their customer interactions, decide when and how to empathize, agree to break down previous organizational challenges such as inward facing silos or product centric thinking and truly align with customers and delight them.

Highly engaged employees who are empowered to truly serve their customers and who have the right mindset of how to are often rewarded with customer delight, loyalty and profits for their employer. Conversely, those that are simply going through the motions in their customer interactions are often transparent in their detachment and will soon be seen for who and what they are by both coworkers and worse, customers.

This holds true for all employees, whether customer facing in their roles or those confined to what we’ll call “experience enablement” roles in the back offices. We are all responsible for positive customer experiences and delight, and the degree of our sincerity in our engagement and empowerment determine the likelihood we’ll deliver on the promise of great customer experience and create lasting, favorable memories in our customers’ minds.

What should a company and its leadership do if it recognizes a large amount of organizational misalignment and employee detachment?

Sadly, in my work over the years helping companies to develop customer centric strategies and delightful customer experiences, I’ve often been asked whether they should simply hang inspirational posters in their workplace to motivate their employees and drive them to new and presumably higher levels of satisfied engagement. While having strong internal transparency around company strategy and direction, communication programs if handled incorrectly or used as a stand-alone tool without going deeper will only be putting lipstick on the pig and stand to drive further detachment and potentially worse, a resentful workforce and culture.

Allow me to be as clear as possible about this, posters and other marketing campaign work are not the answer.

Instead, if our goal is to truly create an empowered customer centric culture and empower our employees to rise to the occasion in how they engage customers as well as one another, may I promise a simple and seemingly obvious success formula but one that is too often overlooked by most?

First, we need to ensure that as a leadership team we are not simply paying lip service to the notion of the truly empowered employee. Too often company leadership say they want employees to successfully own the experiences they create, but deflate the argument as soon as its made by pulling the rug out from under them by instilling a culture of fear, top heavy decision making, or even a lack of systematic recognition for those who succeed. If our employees are fearful to rise up for fear of being reprimanded or worse, or we hold such tight control over our people that the notion of empowerment is for the few at the top of our companies and not for the many, or we do not recognize and reward successful teammates showing creativity in how they engage and delight, our organization will simply not succeed in its desired outcomes.

Instead, we must agree to loosen the reigns a bit in our command and control approach to management, demonstrate trust of our teams, incentivize and recognize successful attitudes and behaviors and agree that at the end of the day we all have a common mission around customer delight and a common set of tools with which to offer it.

Second, we must understand what is currently holding our people back from already being able to delight their customers in each and every interaction. We must understand the challenges the front office as well as those who support them face in their daily work at each and every touch point in the enterprise. While we can certainly prioritize touch points based on customer validation, touch points are often little more than people and given almost every customer interaction is really a personal exchange of trust and delight, having a deep and actionable understanding of the daily challenges our people face will allow us to begin to address them.

Gaining a better understanding of what’s holding our people back however, while valuable may expose unpleasant truths, because in more than a few cases, we’ll learn that we as a management team are sometimes to blame, either directly in how we engage and empower, how we measure and compensate, how we educate and support, or how we ourselves lead by example, and we need to be ready to face these truths should they arise.

Finally, we need to communicate, and not simply brand our employee and customer experience. It’s not about a campaign with posters and water bottles, as much as its communicating with full transparency the standards to which we want each of our employees to perform, consistently.

This communication program is not intended to be a heavy-handed operations manual written by operations management gurus as much as its meant to be a guide for all of us to understand what’s most important, what my guidelines are in the delivery of the important parts of the desired experience, and to inspire me to deliver on the new promise of customer centricity daily.

If, in aggregate we as a management team have successfully aligned around customer centric strategies and have agreed to strive for a truly empowered culture, coupled with walk-the-walk approach with agreement to discover and address challenges that are holding our teams back from delivering on the experiences we truly want, and have done a good job of communicating those standards in a consistent, easy to understand and inspiring manner, then sure, hang all the posters you want, but doing so without those other building blocks will in my opinion have the opposite effect and outcome and do more damage than good to our customer and employee experience.

Marc Mandel is a Client Strategist at Strativity Group, the leading Global Customer Experience Transformation firm. Marc and the Strativity team invite you to join them for a free 10-part instructional webinar series on how to develop and operationalize a customer experience strategy. The next webinar is on Thursday September 22, 2011 at 1100am ET. More info is available at: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/722086606

The recent announcement from Kana Software about their acquisition of Overtone, one of the early generation text analysis tools companies with a handful of very strong enterprise accounts and half-way decent software caught my attention. Overtone was by no means the first text analytics platform to get acquired and rolled into a larger stack. Indeed, nor will it be the last. I've felt very strongly over the past four or five years that text analytics is a component and not a solution onto itself, given the nature of data and the fact that structured data plays an integral role in operational analytics and the desire for holistic intelligence and insight is critical.

If we think back to the first acquisition of a significant pure play, we think back to 2006 when Business Objects, prior to their own acquisition by SAP picked up Inxight Software for a reported $70 million. The argument made at the time in support of the deal was that the Business Objects reporting infrastructure was a natural outlet for a unified analytics play and Inxight was one of the strongest players in the unstructured arena in its generation. It was the first solution to support multilingual data and incorporate a data integration capability supporting multiple enterprise data sources which would funnel into the ultimate analysis. While at the time the move was a strong and some would say obvious move for Business Objects, especially given the fact that Inxight had been shopping themselves for sometime given a lack of interest from their own financial backers for additional rounds of investment, it feels that in hindsight the integration failed because the tool, while strong as a stand-alone got lost in the shuffle. The Business Objects acquisition by SAP only deepened the old Inxight team into the post-deal valley of the lost souls and the tool long forgotten by many.

ClearForest, another early contender in the pure play space was acquired as well but under very different circumstances. Reuters, prior to their own acquisition by Thomson Media bought the company and rather than bury it into a larger offering, remained committed to the idea of intelligent news and chose to both use the platform as part of their own internal "data factory" in producing their news media, also chose to open the tool which had previously commanded a six-figure price tag as a freely given away solution, at least in part. Open Calais was born from the ashes and has since created a significant headroom for itself in the open source extraction-based metatagging tools in and amongst the media and content producing companies worldwide. The trojan horse effect in the giveaway was to further establish the Open Calais approach as an industry standard amongst a whole variety of industry content firms such that as Reuters produced its own media content its control over the high value meta content would be largely dominant. Interesting play, and of course we've seen a great deal of this play out, and more - indeed much more to come.

Fastforward to today with the Overtone/Kana deal. Kana, dominant in the multichannel CRM and call center space wanted a social play, it seems, and Overtone was an easy transaction. Overtone offered amongst other things social analytics and would stand to be both an inexpensive acquisition for the larger Kana as well as an easy integration into the overall stack, giving Kana some new sizzle which has long since left the steak, in their case. The deal also gives Overtone, a firm who seemed a little "tired" and past its own prime with a revolving door of executives and financial investors an exit and an ability to recover some of their own investments on the way out.

Who's left in the space, with a dominant platform given all of the recent repositioning? Clarabridge, Attensity and a handful of others less prominent or technically complete. 

Can Attensity be bought? While I'd say sure, I'd think twice about my answer before betting on it. Attensity as a pure play was bought, quietly a couple of years ago and rolled into a holding company operated by European investors and members of the old technology player Inxight, mentioned above. The pure play was combined with other tools that were bought similarly and combined into a larger, more comprehensive offering than the others, offering rich reporting, analytics, data collection and such. It is truly a complete stack onto itself, but the capitalization of the new business makes the enterprise value too pricey for a quick snatch acquisition, and frankly I'm not sure Attensity wants to be acquired. They're doing quite well as is and continuing to innovate given their newly enlarged offering, management team and staff around the world. I'd say Attensity is well positioned to remain as is for the foreseeable future, but there remains the potential for a future deal with a company like Oracle or SAP.

Clarabridge on the other hand remains a pure play. The founding leadership team remains intact almost 7 years after launch and while they continue to grow their customer base and revenue have never sought to broaden their offering beyond textual analysis of customer comments and survey feedback. Their strategy and in turn their valuation would make them an attractive acquisition target and given their founder's history of having built and sold their prior venture, the similarly named Claraview, an exit and cash-out could be in the cards. Who'd buy Clarabridge is anyone's guess, but rather than believe the enterprise data guys like SAP and Oracle, I'd propose a more focused solution company like Salesforce.com once they finish digesting Radian6. It's a potentially interesting play for the CRM tools company rounding out their own ability to capture and synthesize customer data and build analytical reports around it. Indeed, that would be my guess.

The net-net here is simple. Text analytics is not going away. Instead text analytics will become part of a broader unified analytics approach and then in turn integrated into another more comprehensive offering. It's just the natural progression of things.

If I were a CEO of a text analytics tools company I'd prepare my company for acquisition given the fact that the deal floodgates are open and not be the bride left at the altar for the long term. It gets awfully lonely there.

Marc Mandel is a Client Strategist at Strativity Group, the leading Global Customer Experience Transformation firm. Marc and the Strativity team invite you to join them for a free 10-part instructional webinar series on how to develop and operationalize a customer experience strategy. The next webinar is on Thursday September 22, 2011 at 11am ET. More info is available at: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/722086606

It seems that I'm noticing a greater than ever number of once significant retailers closing their doors. Only last month I wrote about Borders and how in my opinion, had they spent half as much effort and resources innovating a unique and memorable Borders customer experience rather than trying to mimic Barnes & Noble, they'd likely be still relevant and even potentially dominant. Today, I'm going to write about Blockbuster, unfortunately in a very similar vein. 

I remember the first time I visited a Blockbuster video store. It was years ago, when the video industry was littered with independents renting VHS tapes because at $129 for a movie they were just too expensive for most of us to buy. That was long before the DVD, let alone video on demand and iTunes. I remember walking in with my friends, taking in the seemingly endless number of movies on the shelves and wondering how I'd ever run out of video entertainment again.

That was a lifetime ago, it seems.

I also remember reading the business news about a very experimental strategic partnership announced years ago between a nacent Blockbuster and Enron to create a huge home delivery network for video content, long before the Internet grew sufficiently sophisticated to offer the same for much lower costs and no significant infrastructural investment. Similarly, I remember when the partnership was disbanded, which in hindsight given the strange bedfellows involved and the ultimate disposition of Enron, maybe no harm, no foul.

But think about it. Blockbuster held true to their convictions around video content for rent through their retail storefronts. They, until relatively recently charged a premium price for the rental and even in an era of "no late fees" continued to charge them the moment the movie wasn't returned as promised. 

Ten years ago startups like Netflix came onto the scene and through similar partnerships with movie production companies built their own strategy to flank the huge retail investment Blockbuster made and deliver content direct to consumers and without late fees. Imagine, no stores to wrangle with and I can keep a movie as long as I want without financial repercussion. Quite something, at least at the time.

Sadly, the once great Blockbuster was sold for scrap yesterday in a New York City bankruptcy auction. Dish Network, one of the leaders in Satellite home entertainment successfully bought the company's carcas for $300 million or so and plans to position the assets as a retail gateway into their satellite empire. At this point we can only speculate what that really means, but I'd imagine they will use some of the locations as customer service and cross-sell locations.

I pull my hair out in frustration when I think about this. Blockbuster, the once unbeatable category leader was not only beaten by smaller, less capitalized upstarts, but out innovated. Irony will show us that perhaps if Blockbuster chose to advance their own video on demand business like they set out to do with Enron and diminished their reliance on fixed retail assets there would be a very different outcome today.

At least here in the US, there is such a diluge of fibre optic capacity available to the telcos and ISPs that they in essence can light the dark fibre at anytime and boost typical capacity to a sufficient level where every man, woman and child in the country can enjoy robust connectedness and have access to more hosted content than we can shake a stick at. More so, the only bottleneck it seems is economic greed in the media distribution game by those looking to lock in higher-than-necessary license arrangements which could be offset by even larger back-end deals should those companies be forward thinkers. This day is coming, and hopefully soon. When it does, the place that companies like the once mighty Blockbuster will fade into our memories for good, much like record stores have given the new dominant online distribution business that's grown seemingly overnight for audio entertainment.

It feels like Blockbuster should have seen the coming of their own demise and considered how customer focused innovation could maintain relevance given a growing competitive threat from newer, possibly smarter startups building new business models and growing their own relevance at the expense of the stalwarts. They, it seemed, had begun a death spiral years ago which only accelerated in recent years, with one foot in the grave more than five years ago. Nobody, I'm afraid, should be surprised.

I, for one am a huge believer in digital content delivery to my home. My wife and I enjoy video from Internet sources and frequently bring content into our home from online stores such as Apple's iTunes which gives me even greater selection than Blockbuster with the immediacy of online, satisfying the "I want it now" syndrome, and does so at a nominal price that's at parity or below the competition.

While I'll miss the video store just like I miss the record store, we cannot allow ourselves to grow complacent in our belief that no matter how relevant and innovative we once may have been, innovation cycles are accelerating and competitive differentiation has the shelf-life of milk, it seems. If we choose to rest on our laurels, a competitor we've never seen nor heard of will eat our lunch, take our customers, and drive us into irrelevance. 

As we emerge from the economic downturn of 2008-2011, we must realize that the time is now to consider innovation, deliver exceptional customer experiences, and create unique and cherished memories for our customers that stand to differentiate us, capture additional customer loyalty and allow us to live another day until we need to do it all over again.

Marc Mandel is a Client Strategist at Strativity Group, the leading Global Customer Experience Transformation firm. Marc and the Strativity team invite you to join them for a free 10-part instructional webinar series on how to develop and operationalize a customer experience strategy. The next webinar is on Thursday September 22, 2011 at 11am ET. More info is available at: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/722086606

WE HOPE IF YOU HAVE AN INTEREST IN CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE EXCELLENCE THAT YOU'LL CONSIDER JOINING US ONLINE FOR THIS EXCITING PROGRAM!

As a professional Customer Experience Management practitioner, I have come to realize that while I have a good eye for a great experience, I am also a tough customer. I am tough because I've seen what great customer experiences can be, and often feel that anything else other than great is simply a let down. One such experience happend to me this week, personally, and I wanted to share my thoughts about it with you.

My wife and I decided to visit Walt Disney World for a long weekend in the sun given a long and ardous winter in New Jersey. Disney has always been a place I held in high regard, both in terms of the memories it created in me growing up and more recently as an adult going back. Disney has even begun selling its secret sauce to others looking to emulate the "Disney Experience" in their own efforts. Having not been there in years, I was so looking forward to the time away and revisitng some of that magic, myself.

While it is not my intention to use this article as an indictment of poor customer experience, I feel in writing it I need to at least bring you, my valued reader into the experience with me. I will not, however mention which hotel property we stayed at nor will I mention specific individuals' names in order to avoid unnecessary backlash.

Here at our firm, Strativity Group, we often mention that customer experience is largely about the memories we create. Interestingly, in terms of my Florida visit and stay at Disney, the most lasting memories, the first and last impressions, are largely disappointing and not in any way indicative of the WDW visits of the past.

Let me elaborate.

The property we booked our visit at is a resort with multiple guest lodging buildings spread around large grounds. The buildings, some as far as almost a mile from the main building are in turn encircled by a roadway where the busses that carry guests to the parks pull up. For argument sake, we stayed in building 7, which to my understanding was the furthest from the main building and a significant distance to walk.

Upon check-in the front desk agent with whom we spoke told us our intended check-out date was incorrect, even though we made the reservation. She insisted we are staying for three nights when in fact the plan was to stay for two. She insisted, it seems, because her computer said so, and was not going to accept anything we said to the contrary without first meeting with her shift manager and three other agents about the apparent discrepency. 

Eyeing my wife and me as somewhat tired travelers and visitors without kids, she said she'd put us in a nice quiet room overlooking the quieter of the two pools - an adult pool that had few if any kids. She also said she'd ensure my ride back to the aiport at the end of the visit would be all coordinated for me with their airport shuttle and we'd receive our specific instructions the night before departure in the room. She also said that she is the type of person who takes great pride in exactness in detail, which at least at the time struck us as odd, but only later did I see how ironic. I said I appreciated her understanding and help. 

We left the check-in wing of the main building and journeyed to find our room to at least drop our bags before heading to lunch and out to the park. I won't mention that one of the bags was at the time missing, courtesy of the airline but that's a different story and posting. None of the buildings, nor signposts were well marked and finding the room took some work, but after 15 or so minutes of walking around looking, we found the building, and in turn, the room. It turns out our pool view was actually a parking lot view, which disappointed but did not stand to get in the way of what would expectedly be a good time anyhow.

Leaving what bags we did have in the room, we decided to head to the park. The exacting check-in agent failed to mention that the bus stop assigned to our part of the resort was out of service and that busses would only be availble at other stops, again, a significant walk away from our non-pool view room in the back edge of the resort. So much for details and exactness. I wasn't phased, however because I knew I could use the exercise and the additional walking would do me good. But again, details and exactness set the expectation and she wasn't even close.

The food at the resort was bland, overcooked and mediocre at best. Fast food restaurants would be tastier, but eating on-property was easier, even given the almost a mile walk from our distant room back to the main lodge and restaurant. In the future off property will be a better option for food knowing what I know now.

The final straw and largest deal-breaker came on my final day there - day 3. We had planned a third day in the park and looked forward to it. Waking up that morning we found the weather changed for the worse overnight and we were having a significant thunderstorm. Going to the park would not be an option and instead we decided to check out even earlier than originally planned.

Having packed our belongings we set out to walk back to the main building to check out, in the rain, for that almost a mile walk. The rain was coming down hard and the wind was blowing it sideways into our eyes. We were getting drenched. During our walk back, at least four different guest trasport vehicles - elongated golf carts - wizzed by us ferrying other guests to and from the main building. Those carts each had significant amounts of open space but no driver chose to slow down and offer a ride, especially given the weather. There was no acknowledgement of us whatsoever dragging our suitcases through the rain, puddles and mud by any of them. By the time we got back to check-out, we looked like drowned rats.

Checkout was smooth and I guess and the invoice was right, but even that rubbed me the wrong way when the agent, following her script, wished me a "magical day". You should have seen the look on my face.

The final straw? Needing earlier transport back to the airport than planned I asked the concierege how to make the arrangements. He directed me to the red phone on the counter to call the transport desk, which by the way was only 50 feet away. I called and was confirmed on the earlier bus, leaving in an hour. When I got to the bus loading area and ready to board for the airport, I was denied access because I had no voucher. I was simply not given one and nor was I told I needed one. I asked expressly what paperwork I'd need and i was told, none.

I eventually got a voucher and got on a bus. Headed back to the airport and failing to catch an earlier than planned for flight home, enjoyed my final 6 hours in Orlando at the airport feeling trapped and anoyed. At least I made it home.

Now, as I said earlier, I am a huge fan of disney and I was so looking forward to the visit this week. I have such respect for the Disney Experience and could not wait to experience it again. 

I wish Walt could have seen what this week was really like at his namesake. He'd be rolling over in his grave.

I just had the pleasure, or maybe experienced the sheer pain and agony of visiting one of the Borders Books locations slated to close as part of their bankruptcy process. The store's specific location doesn't much matter, but for simplicity sake, let's say it's a high traffic mall location. I've been at the store before on prior mall excursions and the store was surprisingly empty each time I went. The specific location is a large, single floor floorplan with approximately 15,000 square feet, if not more. Typically on prior visits there were no more than 20 or 30 other shoppers there each time I went. Somewhat surprising considering the busy mall foot traffic just outside the door.

Today's visit was very different. There were hundreds of people in the store, literally arguing with one another about who'd be able to take the last $1 2011 swimsuit wall calendar or generic James Dean poster. The walls and windows, you see, were plastered with huge signs saying the store is closing and everything was on sale. The shopper experience there was neither caring nor innovative, but rather every man for himself and a sort of "You're on your own, buddy" which was somewhat disconcerting. 

People packed the store looking for bargains. People were willing to accept a poor customer experience at the store in favor of bargain hunting, it seemed. The ironic twist, however is there was not a single bargin to be found in the store. Just the simple act of placing store signage indicating the sale price and "all sales final" was enough to create the perception and drive the traffic. What shoppers fought over and tolerated substandard customer experiences were, however no great deals. The pricing, even after the discount was relatively non-competitive and indeed, higher than other booksellers who also provide a superior customer experience for their shoppers. Books that were sticker priced at $39 were discounted to $32, or so and people literally scrambled to grab the last ones, hoarding merchandise for themselves when in fact the same product could be bought elsewhere for less than $30 and if you're an astute shopper, far less.

One of the interesting takeaways for me was that people are still bargain crazed and lose sight of substitute pricing realities in some situations, but never are thees situations sustainable. Borders can only have a "going out of business sale" for so long, and then will need to close. Companies on the other hand looking for a sustainable strategy need to position and build a strategy around value and customer experience and not just fire sale pricing. 

People are funny. Shoppers are fickle. Sellers are growing in their own desperation. Yet, firesale strategies are really only suitable for companies on fire. Driving revenues alone is almost never a suitable substitute for driving PROFITABLE revenue. Firesales are not the answer for profit maximization nor sustainability. 

Oh, and that $39 book? I passed it by, along with the $3.29 magazines and the $22 DVDs and left empty handed because the value of the merchandise was insufficient to me to tolerate the substandard experience I received.

Marc Mandel is a Client Strategist at Strativity Group, the leading Global Customer Experience Transformation firm. Marc and the Strativity team invite you to join them for a free 10-part instructional webinar series on how to develop and operationalize a customer experience strategy. The next webinar is on Thursday September 22, 2011 at 11am ET. More info is available at: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/722086606

A great deal has been written in the business press in the past week, at first anticipating the bankruptcy of Borders Bookstores, and then reporting on it. Borders, one of the largest and presumably most successful booksellers of our time is closing, or at least, downsizing into oblivion. The changing markets, the on-going shift to digital, and consumer demand for convenience as much as price, and ultimately, the lack of strategic differentiation and customer-focused innovation appears to have done in the once leading chain.

While I'll say I've been a fairly loyal Borders customer, my loyalty, if in reality at all is largely a function of laziness. My local Borders is approximately 8 minutes closer to my home than the nearest Barnes & Noble. I frequented Borders because the one nearest to my house is also joined at the hip by another large, favorite retailer of mine, Best Buy. And, if truth be told, the third store in the same plaza is a favorite of my wife's who I can often have join me on shopping junkets by suggesting she can visit her favorite while I visit my own.

The point I'm raising is not an unimportant one, and as such I do not want to simply gloss over it. There is nothing uniquely special about Borders that causes my apparent loyalty. The shopping experience has been profoundly "me too" in terms of merchandising, pricing and marketing, and even the inclusion of a magazine laden coffee shop which, if you simply transposed the B&N logo, you'd never know you weren't in one. Borders, it seems, succeeded significantly because of luck, proximity, and being a good imitator, and not because they created a sustainability strategy driven by superior shopper experiences. They simply were convenient and met expectations set by competitive sellers which at least allowed them to be as good as the others and as such, because of the other reasons mentioned, had my loyalty.

As it turns out, the Borders nearest my home is being spared, and while the others in the area are soon to be shuttered and turned into either large empty spaces with "For Rent" signs in the windows or worse, another Pet superstore or similar. 

What could Borders have done to cross the parity line of simply meeting my, and other shoppers' expectations through flattering amounts of competitive imitation? They could have invested in becoming much more customer aware and consumer centric, and by which, chosen a go to market strategy built around differentiation as opposed to imitation. They could have listened better to customers who cried out for a "Kindle Killer" 3 years ago and not just entered the digital delivery markets this past holiday season with an also-ran ebook reader that nobody wanted, which by the way had its own launch delayed by months due to technical snafus. They could have organized their stores to not look and feel like the competition, but considered reinvention of the book buying experience, if, they even chose to remain focused on books and music as 95% of their product selection at all. The possibilities, it seems were endless. Instead, they struggled to imitate and found instead that competitive immitation only seems to lead to an inescapable death spiral and along the way, substantial profit and customer loyalty erosion.

The key lesson to take away from the imminent failure of Borders is we must innovate and not imitate. We must be much more customer aware and customer centric in our daily business lives, and through such centricity become more nimble in setting and executing strategy. We must be able to capture people's imaginations and even cause people to dare to dream again about the experiences possible. Future carbon copy merchants will struggle to keep up and the differentiation will drive flocks of buyers to spend increasingly larger wallet share at the most innovative, cutting edge stores while others languish and ultimately face the same fate as Borders.

It's not too late for many to change and in doing so, not only sustain their businesses but thrive. It's a choice that needs to be made now, because the longer we wait, the wider we open the door for the other guys to make the same decision and execute a day faster, or even just a little better. 

Marc Mandel is a Client Strategist at Strativity Group, the leading Global Customer Experience Transformation firm. Marc and the Strativity team invite you to join them for a free 10-part instructional webinar series on how to develop and operationalize a customer experience strategy. The next webinar is on Thursday September 22, 2011 at 11am ET. More info is available at: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/722086606

I have had the great fortune to work with numerous insurance companies in the past five or six years, both in terms of assisting with their own business processes and organizational culture in an effort to drive a more innovative and customer centric environment. I've been fortunate to call many of these clients and more so, professionals who work there, friends. Many of these people have come back into my life in the past two or three years, specifically seeking ideas and process to create superior customer experiences both in terms of their broker dealers and consumer policy holders. These companies have begun adopting customer centric thinking and recognize that superior customer experience will deepen the relationship with the outside ecosystem of agents and consumers and ultimately drive loyalty and uplift in lifetime value of each member, participant, policyholder and agent.

It occurred to me during one of my earliest professional engagements with one of these companies that the relationship dynamics in the insurance industry are dramatically different than almost every other industry and company. In other industries, the perception of a company's value in the eyes of its customers, and similarly, the value of the customer from an insider's point of view often directly align. Companies and customers value similar ideals and attributes of a good, well working relationship can be often agreed upon. Indeed, very frequently, one of the principal markers of a good commercial relationship is measured in terms of how often a given company's product is consumed such that more can be bought, and equally used. Companies love it when consumers use their products to a point of depletion, only to come back and replace the used product with another, and the cycle repeats.

Identically, consumers in most industries attribute the greatest value to specific purchases by the derived utility of the good or service purchased, which is often measured in frequency of use amongst other measures such as ease of use, and of course, price. Think, for example of the consumer in the Northeast who invests $1,500 in a top of the line snowblower for his home to only find the winter weather abnormally warm and without snow, or the hobbyiest weekend boater with the new speedboat on the trailer ready for the water but rainy weather delays the launch of the boat or indeed, cancels the season if on-going.

The buyer of the snowblower or speedboat will feel as though his money was wasted given no net marginal utility, even if circumstantial and temporary. 

Now, in thinking about the insurance industry, there appears to be a conflict in terms of derived value of a customer relationship. I'm not saying this idea is either new thinking or unique to a specific company or small group of firms. It's part of the system. 

Insurers manage a portfolio of risk, and the more policies sold that go on without a claim, the more profitable, and less risk associated with the given customer. The more profit and less risk, the better the perception of value of that specific consumer relationship. Flipping the coin over, that same consumer who continues to pay his annual premiums into the insurance company in order to maintain the policy but who does not need to take advantage of it because of no illnesses or injury while on one hand may consider himself lucky, on the other, perceives little utility. Again, much like the snowblower and speedboat customers unable to use their purchases, the consumer without a history of claims has little to show for the investment other than peace of mind.

When the economy constricts and family budgets tighten, tough choices are made about what household spending is continued with and which is tabled or cancelled. Depending on the severity of the dip, families with little if any claim history grow cavalier and consider cancellation of their personal insurances in the belief that money is better spent on "necessities". 

There is an inherent conflict between the two points of view. The company values customers with little if any claim history the greatest while families with similar histories place the least value on their own participation in the plan. Similarly, policyholders with the most frequent claim histories who have derived the greatest utility from the policy and coverage afforded are deemed the riskiest, and least desirable to the company insuring them. They'll never agree, it seems.

Many of my consulting engagements with these same insurers came to similar sets of action items and recommendations in terms of creating the desired customer experience and behavioral outcome. I urged these companies to build strong value added engagement, educational and communication programs that are designed to touch the customer with increasing frequency in a non-regulatory or compliance-driven manner, and well outside of a claim cycle. I wanted these companies to consider holiday cookbooks of low glycemic food ideas for consumers known to battle obesiety and related deseases. I urged the use of the Internet to create social communities of consumers who actively share ideas and even friendly competition with one another. I even urged the promotion of "bike to work week" to help these insurers to promote healither lifestyles but in a soft, value added, non judgmental way lowering their risk position at the same time.

History, and some of these specific assignments have shown us there is a clear-cut linkage between engagement outside of a claim cycle and the perception of value, and given a higher value perception, a lower likelihood of consumer attrition. Longer lasting consumer households only drive higher and higher total lifetime value of a given policy, lower the chance of unexpected future churn, and deepen our ability to analytically predict specific risks and an ability to provide ample arbitrage for them.

Insurance companies desiring longer lasting, more loyal customer behavior need to think more like marketers and less only like accountants seeking the minimal risk exposure. Customers will value the relationship more deeply and in likelihood, think harder about cancellation, even in the most challenging financial climates.

Marc Mandel, part of the team at Strativity Group (www.strativity.com) invites you to join him and Lior Arussy, Strativity's founder and President for the Customer Experience Boot Camp program - a series of free instructional webinars geared for anyone with an interest in Customer Experience excellence. More information about the upcoming September 22, 2011 boot camp is available at https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/722086606