thomas.wieberneit@aheadcrm.co.nz
Customer Experience Management and Customer Expectations

Customer Experience Management and Customer Expectations

by | Aug 9, 2016 | Blog |

In the past weeks I found more and more articles like  this one that talk about the importance of continually exceeding customer expectations to be able to deliver a positive customer experience. Only this way, companies get advised, will they achieve customer loyalty and advocacy. I, frankly, find this more than a bit disconcerting. To me this seems to be a very wrong objective to put the sole focus of customer experience management on. Minimally it is a very short sighted objective. Not to be misunderstood. As a customer I like my expectations exceeded, too. Why is the objective wrong, then? Where we are at … For a starter, and that may be true for many other customers, consumers as well as business customers, we have grown to expect very little. This is probably following many disappointing encounters where already the basics go very wrong. I am talking about basics customer experience failures like: Being ‘targeted’ by and served with irrelevant marketing e-mails, or plainly with too many of them Complicated onboarding processes Unavailable, uninterested, or plainly overly busy in-store personnel, or the personnel not having information at their hands Long wait times in the customer service lines, even in chats Inadequate solutions to problems Different experiences when using different channels, like the necessity to repeat information Delivery windows that span a whole day Information about delays not being provided Confirmations that differ from the agreement Privacy policies that almost need a law degree, are very long and that put the customer on the back foot Loyalty programs that clearly rather serve the company than offering value to the...
A Bank Tale of Mystery and Imagination

A Bank Tale of Mystery and Imagination

by | Jul 11, 2016 | Blog |

After some investigation into SME CRM Nimble and Freshsales and travel management software traform today is the day of a reflection on customer orientation in one of the industries that managed to become almost indispensable in our lives. Banks. So let me tell you A Bank Tale of Mystery and Imagination But not an invented one. This is life in 2016. Imagine the following extremely uncommon scenario: You want a mortgage for a house. Imagine also that you have a fairly good income, so you want to pay down fast. After all interest rates in NZ are still pretty high compared to other developed nations – although they are very low for NZ standards. And remember – one of the basic premises of neoliberalism is that everybody has equal negotiation powers (the Kiwi in me says “Yeah, right” to that one …). What are the variables you have in a mortgage? The total amount, interest rate, pay down period, term of fixing the interest rate, unless you go floating, that is, and the start of the pay down. So you start doing some maths on what you are able and willing to regularly pay and start negotiating a rate, finally coming to an agreement, clearly communicating that you want a fixed term of one year, and a calculated pay down period of, say 10 years, and weekly payments. You are happy. The documentation arrives, actually three pieces of it. A summary of the agreement Terms and Conditions on about 30 pages of legalese. No need to go through it here; it basically details out that the bank has all...

Customer Service – The Great, the Bad, and the Ugly

by | Sep 27, 2012 | Blog |

We recently read Peter Shankman’s raving experience report about Morton’s Steak Houses where essentially the management of the restaurant chain went out of their way to provide a loyal, valuable (and influential on the web) customer with a surprise meal after he jokingly tweeted that he is hungry and would really enjoy a porterhouse steak on the airport. Morton’s made this happen and excited a customer who created a buzz on the web in terms of tweets and re-tweets, an intensely discussed blog post, numerous mentions in other blogs (including this one here). The consequences of this not so simple action are obvious: [unordered_list style=”green-dot”] An influential and already loyal and happy customer turns (even more) into an advocate. He talks about his amazing experience – and justifiably so A customer originated marketing message is sent that promotes the brand Morton’s brand perception increased even more (I didn’t even know of them before, but then I am a German who lives in New Zealand…) [/unordered_list] I really would not be surprised if the incremental revenue that is directly attributable to this smart move of a company that is consequently and consistently active on the social web outweighs its cost by orders of magnitude. This episode clearly shows the potential for businesses that lies in actively using the social web. Unluckily it is still an outlier. Reality looks different. Let me bring three examples of very different businesses in Germany that could use Morton’s as a guiding light. The businesses are A major railway operator A leading mobile carrier An online bank Three very different businesses – yet they share...