Speed Theory is not your ordinary bike shop.

Besides selling some sweet Cervelo, Felts and Argon bicycles for your next Ironman, it is also a place where anyone can get a great bike to compete in the local mini triathlon or just to cruise on some backroads.

Speed Theory makes great use of its real estate, even when the shop is closed. When I arrived at 5:30 am, the temperature was –22° F and I watched people trickle in — carrying their bicycles and trainer apparatus — until there were about twenty of us in all. They were all coming for spin class, but this was not like the spin class you did at the gym last week.

The Santos Tour Down Under from Australia was playing on a large screen screen in front. While there was some music in the background, the main attraction was the race. Our instructor, Trev Williams gave us some commentary on what was going on and we incorporated what the pros were doing during the class that lasted a little over an hour.

Besides being a cool spin class, what was pure genius was the fact that the owner, Paul Anderson, is making the most of his space even when the store is closed, maximizing his rent. By doing this, he is creating a bond with his customers and creating a strong emotional experience with him and his shop. I would have walked out with $300 worth of merchandise if I didn’t have only a small carry-on bag with me for my return to the US.

Paul’s expansion solution works because it is within his company’s DNA. Building excitement for cycling is what Speed Theory is all about. As we have seen from some businesses, though, it is easy to become confused about what maximizing your space really means. You don’t want to become a bagel shop selling pizza slices.

Kelly Swallow makes chairs that make people smile.

To do Service with Boundaries well, you need to start off with a solid foundation. You have to know who you are. Who is Swallow? She’s the designer who makes chairs that make people smile. It is short, simple and direct.

In setting and sticking to her core DNA, Swallow’s entire business has a natural flow to the other two formula components: Listen to your customer… most of the time and You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Swallow knows generally what customers want and her customers trust her to design a chair that will delight them.

Finally, her measurement for success is simple and immediate; did the customer smile?

I’m vacationing with my family in Europe over the next week, visiting Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam. One of my favorite places to visit when I am in Paris is Le Relais de l’Entrecôte. I like it mostly because they have defined the boundaries of dining experience

They serve only one entrée; steak frites cooked rare, medium rare or medium. You order your steak the way you like it and the server writes it on your tablecloth, then brings out your salad — lettuce topped with walnuts and a mustard vinaigrette.

After your salad starter, your steak is brought to you in two stages, with one half held back to keep warm, so you can enjoy it at its best and is accompanied with more freshly prepared frites.

The only wine is red.

And they don’t take reservations.

The only choice besides the steak temperature you have to make at Le Relais de l’Entrecôte is your dessert. You can choose from a selection of cheeses and a dessert list with profiteroles, meringue and other ice cream confections.

The service is prompt and efficient and the rules are easily stated. Show up, wait if needed, order your steak and beverage, eat, leave. There is no calling ahead, no menus to pore over and no substitutions.

Le Relais de l’Entrecôte is the perfect example of a restaurant that has embraced Service with Boundaries. They have thought about who they are, staking their entire success on one entrée. A quick glance at their Yelp page shows they listen to their customers, but not too much and they measure their success with each meal service. When the line stops forming out the door and around the block, I’m certain they will rethink the formula.

In the meantime, Le Relais de l’Entrecôte will continue doing business and setting their own service boundaries.

And we decided to help them.

STELLAService tests online retailers by purchasing and returning real products as a normal customer would. Usually they return the items, but due to poor customer service they were stuck with this stuff.

Turning rain into rainbows. In this case, wrapping present bows.

Folks from ICC who participated in the event were Patty Rivers, Nanette Brown, Kevin Leifer, Alex Montanile, Lauren Botsolas, Emily Stotzer and me.

Happy holidays everyone!

A solid mystery shopping program consists always of three components:

- Objective measurements
- Never a “gotcha” program
- Action, not just reporting

Often misunderstood and even more often not implemented correctly, mystery shopping are one of the most important tools you can use to measure, manage and improve the customer experience.

A few things you may or may not know. Mystery shopping is the only objective way to measure the customer experience. Why is that important?

Unlike customer surveys — which are great in their own right — mystery shopping measures what actually happened rather than measure what people felt happened. It’s much easier to improve performance when you have specific behaviors to focus on.

All too often, initiatives are used to benefit the executive suite and companies become information rich but execution poor. The wonderful thing about mystery shops is the information can be easily disseminated and cascade down from the corporate to the region to the district level — all the way down to the store level and even the associate within hours.

The most successful mystery shop programs are not “gotcha” in nature. Instead, they help us understand the difference between where the performance level is and where it needs to be. They create this whole process to help everyone to get from point A to point B collectively.

They are not so much motivation but rather, inspiration.

Too often, though, we see budgets allocated and approved for the mystery shopping program but little budget dedicated to helping improve performance. This is akin to buying a car but not spending anything on gas or insurance; buying a house but not paying the property taxes or going out to eat but not leaving enough in your wallet for a tip.

Without a follow up plan to act on the result of a mystery shopping program, it is destined for failure from the start. A solid mystery shopping program that includes execution at the end will help you avoid the common pitfalls most mystery shopping programs face.

This post is part of a series with a group of bloggers from different professions and world views, each exploring a theme from his/her world view. This was about exploring the theme, If you can’t afford the tip, you can’t afford the meal. To explore how others handled the theme, check them out below.

VW – Automobiles
If you were a car company, you may say the retail experience for the customer begins when the customer enters the showroom and starts looking at the cars. But VW would disagree with you. Watch the following video about their factory in Dresden, Germany.

Where most car manufacturers hide the assembly line behind walls, VW has made the line an extension of their showroom. Each step in the process becomes a performance that the customer can watch — and even take part in.

Amali – Restaurant
Most restaurant web sites focus on their locations, their menu and getting you to make a reservation, but Amali in New York City focuses on a different mission for its website. The owners would prefer that you are hungry before you arrive at the restaurant. By leading with stunning photographs of menu items on their front page (and every other page) your tastebuds and stomach are already seated long before you arrive at the maître d’ stand.

KrispyKreme – Donuts
What can we learn about customer experience from the simple, ubiquitous donut? As it turns out, a lot!

A few years back, I attended a conference in Las Vegas. Since I was taking the redeye home, I had a few hours to kill after the conference ended, so I wondered into the tunnel that connects the Luxor to the Excaliber. As I got closer to the Excaliber, I noticed a crowd of people pressed up against a glass wall. When I made my way to the front, I saw KrispyKreme donuts dancing in a lazy river of frying oil, through a series of elaborate racks and flipping machines and finishing up in a shower of sugary glaze. Every person pressing against the glass were engaged in the show, eagerly awaiting their turn in line to buy their box (or boxes!) of hot, delicious donuts.

These are just three examples of companies who refused to adopt a “build it and they will come” approach to the customer experience. Instead of waiting for the customer to come to them, they reached out and included the customer into the process.

When does your customer start experiencing your product or service?

Customer Experience programs come in all shapes and sizes. It can be overwhelming. We at ICC strongly believe in a balance of objective and subjective feedback, a bias for action and a win-win mentality.

What I have been seeing more and more lately are companies who have made things far too complex and in turn, jeopardize the success of their companies and careers.

Here are a few tips I’d like to share:

Commitment From Beginning To End
Too often, companies get excited that they “checked the box” by having one of many kinds of customer experience programs (i.e.. Customer Satisfaction Surveys, Mystery Shop Program, Customer Intercepts, etc). However in our experience, if things are not set up right from the start it really does not matter. It is sort of like buying a piece of exercise equipment and not using it the right way or not at all. You may feel good about the purchase at first; but if you don’t get the results… what’s the point?

It Is Not About Data Collection. It Is About Action On the Data
Collecting lots of data might make everyone feel good, but in the end a company can’t demonstrate a return on the investment of time and money. At ICC we call this the packrat syndrome, or in other words, they are information rich, but execution poor. Besides a web report or a deck with lots of charts, what is the plan to make the information come alive?

Partner With a Company That Cares About Your Success As Much As Their Own
In our experience, we have found that companies that understand who they are and what they are (and are not) capable are the ones that succeed. Nothing is done in a vacuum. All great performers and performances had a coach behind them.

Does the shopping experience at a brick and mortar store end when you are done shopping or when you are done checking out?

For many who live primarily in a digital environment, the experience ends when they are ready to check out. The check out process for them is a necessary evil, one they are defining as more and more unnecessary. They can check out in 1-Click on Amazon.com; why can’t they check out in a few minutes at a mall clothing store?

In truth, brick and mortar stores don’t make 1-Click check out as part of their brand promise and have set no expectation that they need to live up to. For most of them, checking out at a register is part of the shopping experience. In fact — done well — it is necessary as that is one more opportunity for the sales clerk to up-sell additional merchandise.

As the digital shopping experience push further and further into the culture, retail stores will probably need to begin to address this issue more overtly. Some will choose to incorporate the check-out experience (or wait during the holiday season) into the shopping experience by engaging with customers as they wait or even check them out in line with a mobile solution. Still others may want the shopping experience to end as quickly as possible and staff the registers more to move customers through a frictionless process.

Some retailers rely on the checkout procedure to build a relationship with their customers, especially those that give their customers a more DIY experience while shopping. For example, Big Y grocery stores will be eliminating self-check out in favor of cashier-assisted checkout, saying its customers were not saving time as “self-checkout lines get clogged as the customers needed to wait for store staff to assist with problems with bar codes, coupons, payment problems and other issues that invariably arise with many transactions.” For these customers, Big Y chose to include the check out process as part of the retail experience.

Still others manage the check out process by setting expectations early, like Whole Foods in Columbus Circle in New York. They post a sign in store and on their website with wait time expectations. The customer can then choose what kind of shopping experience they want just by selecting the day and time they come into the store.

However the retail shopping experience will change in the next few years depends first on the retailer asking, “Who am I?” early in the process. Once they define who they are, they can begin crafting the retail experience around that which contributes to setting expectations for their customers.

Take a good look at the photo above.

I was walking past this shop on Saturday and realized; I have no idea what they sell.

At first glance, you may say, “they sell bagels” but then when you read a bit more, the badly-hung ad hoc sign in the window says “2 SLICES + SODA CAN $3.75.” As the shop is in New York, the implication is 2 slices of pizza.

Wait, what? I thought this was a bagel shop.

Are you confused? You are probably not alone. As confused as the customers are, think about how confused and scattered the employees must feel. The owners look like they are scrambling to sell whatever food item they can. If they need to sell pizza in a bagel deli to make the rent, they do.

Many cafés fall into this trap. They start off with a concept and instead of marketing to an audience who identifies with the niche, they panic and start adding things to the menu. In the end, they will most likely fail because they will become nothing to everyone. Nothing separates their bagels from the deli down the street or the food cart two more blocks over.

When providing service with boundaries, it’s important to never forget Rule One: You can’t be everything to everyone.

To read more about Service with Boundaries, start here where it all began.

The most recent HBR (Harvard Business Review) features Kevin Peters, president of Office Depot, taking on mystery shopping himself (at first) to drive results. He discovered what most of our clients tell us; Mystery shopping works.

The problem is most companies (and unfortunately sometimes their supplier) don’t do it correctly. When they don’t get the results they hope for, they end up “throwing out the baby with the bath water.”

In summary,
- Office Depot had a mystery shopping program that did not work.
- The president went out the stores and did the job himself.
- Peters found they were not measuring the right things.
- Office Depot is now recalibrating and rolling out to its stores
- Talking directly to his customers in the store yielded information that Peters was not getting through his executives or customer satisfaction survey program.
- Peters wanted to find more ways to find out why people are leaving the store without making a purchase.

Our take on the story
The mystery shopping program was set up for failure before it ever began.

It is unfortunate that Office Depot probably wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars in what could have been easily identified upfront. “If you don’t ask the right questions, you will not get the right answers.”

We love Harvard Business Review but they did sort of take the angle of the president doing the old “if you want the job done right do it yourself” mantra. While this was novel for the article, in reality really cannot happen across any chain in a meaningful or sustainable way.

Although we do not know it for a fact, the provider they mention is probably not doing their new program anymore (nor is Peters) and the person or team who brought the provider in and managed the program is probably not at Office Depot either. The person or team in charge of Customer Experience has a great opportunity in front of them; not just because they recalibrated their mystery shop program, but because they still have huge opportunities.

The opportunity is the huge open gap on the non-purchaser side of the customer experience.

There was something else that was alluded to but not pointed out. What about the people who made a purchase, but would have bought more? They are screaming for customer intercepts. I wonder if the president will do them too?

My bottom line
I love that Peters got his hands dirty in the store and actually talked to the customers. it is a great lesson for all retail executives. We just want them to be successful in the long term; not because HBR said so, but their customer, their employees and their stock price need them to be.

If you would like additional insights on why most mystery shopping programs do not work (and what to do about it) or are interested in finding out how to understand why customers leave your store and do not make a purchase, let us know. In the meantime, we look forward to sharing future insights that can help you succeed in your position and create a future full of possibility.

Come join our growing team! For over 30 years ICC/Decision Services has been working with the world’s largest retailers, restaurants and brands interested in measuring and improving the overall customer experience.  We are seeking people who are looking to jumpstart their career growth in a work hard environment focused on entrepreneurism and growth.

Job Description:

ICC/Decision Services is seeking a Field Coordinator (FC) to recruit, manage and schedule our field associates from our network database.  We are interested in an energetic and outgoing Field Coordinator to join our Field Recruitment Team.  This team is accustomed to meeting weekly and monthly deadlines and is committed to providing service that exceeds our clients’ expectations! Our ideal candidate will be detail and deadline oriented, and work well under pressure. Tremendous growth opportunity within this promotable position. 

Job Responsibilities:

• Identify applications for Field Associates that meet our clients’ specific needs
• Manage the entire hiring process; recruitment, placement and follow-up
• Source for new Field Associates based on our clients’ needs
• Develop relationships with our network of new and existing Field Associates
• Must meet all assignment deadlines; weekly and monthly
• Be resourceful and creative when filling open assignments to meet deadlines
• Build and manage relationship with Field Associates; resolve issues, address concerns, answer questions and coach where needed
• Follow up with Field Associates to ensure assignments are completed prior to all deadlines

Candidate Requirements:

• Organized with excellent time management skills
• Desire to set and achieve goals
• Works well under pressure and understands the critical nature of deadlines
• Strong decision-making ability
• Confident and persuasive with the ability to read and manage people 
• Outgoing personality, positive attitude with enthusiasm and integrity
• Self-Starter, proactive and resourceful
• Experience as a recruiter preferred
• Familiarity with Google Ad Words, Facebook and Twitter a plus
• Proficiency with MS Office, Internet and comfort with technology

This position includes benefits, insurance and 401K plan. This position is located in our Wayne, NJ office.

If you are interested in becoming our next Field Coordinator and want to work with people who are passionate, hard working and dedicated, at a fast growing company, please email your cover letter, resume and salary requirements to careers@iccds.com with the subject: Field Coordinator Position

© Copyright Richard Wood via Flickr

Flash mobs have become a major trend. They’ve even been featured in Hollywood movies, often with a group of people in a public place breaking out in a choreographed dance. That type of mob scene is all in good fun, but there is a new trend that is far less innocent. In recent months, a number of different retailers have been hit by a phenomenon now referred to as a “flash rob.”

It is primarily youth that have been involved in this trend, but they are managing to create chaos. They organize a mob using social media and meet to ambush a store. The sheer number of individuals involved is what makes it so hard to catch the crafty shoplifters in the act.

Are your employees flash rob-aware? Do they know the signs of a flash rob mob forming? Do they know how and when to act? They will only have minutes; maybe seconds to put your plan into place.

Is your retail location being targeted? Do you know? Do you listen to the chatter on social media and can you tell if there is a flash rob plan underway? Would a heightened level of engagement on social media encourage or thwart a flash rob? Do you know?

Shoplifters working in groups is nothing new to asset protection officers, but an overwhelming mob to create diversion is. Retailers need to focus on security techniques that protect them from this type of theft.

It has been mentioned before – that stigma that the mystery shopping industry faces that the goal is to catch employees up to no good. In most cases, this is not the real goal. Instead, it is to identify where staff may benefit from further training to improve customer service. There may be one exception to this rule, however, and that’s mystery shopping to ensure compliance in alcohol and cigarette distribution.

What Makes Alcohol/Cigarette Compliance Different?

There are certain guidelines that should be followed when providing any type of customer service for the sake of client satisfaction. However, there are also a number of reasons why that isn’t the top priority in alcohol/cigarette compliance:

1. It is illegal to sell liquor or tobacco to underage individuals. Businesses can immediately lose their licenses and their livelihood if caught breaking the law, and there can be hefty fines. The penalties vary by state.
2. It doesn’t matter how friendly or helpful someone is when illegally selling alcohol or tobacco to minors.
3. There is really no “training” that can be provided to someone who is caught distributing alcohol or cigarettes to someone that is underage. It’s not black and white like delivering different levels of customer service – they simply need to check identification for those that look young.

Most mystery shopping companies will not send underage individuals into stores to assess compliance as this would be committing an infraction. However, younger looking individuals of legal age can be used to determine if in fact employees are refusing to sell to anyone with a young appearance if they haven’t checked their ID first.

What do you think? Would you agree that alcohol/cigarette compliance is the one area that the common mystery shopping stigma should ring true?

Whether employees recognize it or not, the financial industry is one where they have substantial responsibility. After all, they are tasked with guarding the investments of and personal finances of their clients. People walking into a bank, for example, have far more to lose from a “poor” customer service experience than someone making a purchase at a retail outlet. A lack of attention to detail by an employee could mean (at least temporary) financial stress for clients.

Mystery shoppers can help in the financial industry too, in order to ensure that the highest level of customer service is being delivered to protect the assets of their clients. It is often a stigma that it is the job of mystery shoppers to catch employees doing something wrong. In the financial world, there might be an even greater perception that this is the goal, because employers can then have grounds to fire individuals that they’ve suspected of stealing if they are caught in the act. This, however, is not the only thing that can be accomplished.

As stated above, in the financial world customer service is important – both in the traditional sense and in another definition of the term as well. Of course the attitude of employees matters, but even more importantly, clients care about attention to detail and accuracy. A client in a bank will always appreciate someone who is friendly yet focused on their job over someone that goes out of their way to make nice, because that may distract them from what is important.

As a result, the evaluation of mystery shoppers in the financial sector may be a little bit different than in other industries. The jobs are simply more demanding when there is more at stake and that cannot be overlooked. So in this world, using mystery shopping for security doesn’t mean that it strictly takes on the role of walking and talking security cameras – it’s about ensuring people are doing their jobs well and providing feedback on areas where employees may benefit from further training.

• The majority of the shops in Cambridge are smaller retailers that have staff more dedicated to customer satisfaction (in many cases, the staff are also the owners or there is a large owner presence).
• One of the businesses, Catherine Jones Jewellery, says that the secret is really valuing customers and having customers that appreciate good customer service.
• Customers surveyed claimed that they appreciated the experience the city had to offer because of a good mix of stores, the fact that the shopping area was always clean and tidy, and 90% said that feeling safe makes for an ideal shopping experience.
• The fact that price was not one of the top factors mentioned by individuals surveyed indicates that a bargain shopping experience does not necessarily forgive poor customer service.

Many retailers brush off the importance of mystery shopping, thinking that the results will not have an impact on their business model. What this shows is that customer service truly matters and those that do not put their focus there should be looking at making changes.

Based off the findings, ICC/Decision Services has determined that 56% of shoppers measure the customer experience via customer satisfaction surveys for customers who made a purchase (receipt invitation) and 51% via mystery shopping (trained observers); however only 34% actually implement both methods to gather subjective and objective data from both viewpoints. This research highlights an obvious reality: Companies have taken the initiative to put in place metrics in evaluating the customer experience but they are falling short in terms of understanding the full picture. Ultimately how an improved customer experience leads to higher customer satisfaction and loyalty rates with a direct correlation to increased sales.

“Mystery shopping is used to help understand the gaps between where performance is and where it needs to be” says David Rich, President and CEO of ICC/Decision Services. “Once that gap is closed,” continues Rich, “customer satisfaction will increase, missed revenue opportunities identified and both the customer and the retailer will win. With the economy as uncertain as ever, getting closer to the customer is more imperative than ever to maximizing your competitive edge.”

About ICC/Decision Services

ICC/Decision Services is a privately held company headquartered in New
York City serving customers around the world. Since 1979 we have offered
hands-on experience designing and executing highly successful Customer
Experience Management programs. Together our management team has more
than a century of expertise developing creative solutions for some of the
world’s leading retail brands such as L.L. Bean, Coach, H&M, CVS, and
Walmart. For more information: www.iccds.com

Customers visiting retail and restaurant establishments care primarily about walking out with what they came for. In the case of retail, it is whatever consumer good they were seeking. In the case of restaurant, it is a good meal and a full stomach. If they get their product, they aren’t as worried about what happened on the journey to it.

Unless of course, they had a really bad experience. Unhappy people tend to be the loudest. It is those unhappy people who had their feathers ruffled that will fill out the customer satisfaction surveys provided to them (often on their receipt.) The people that felt that their overall experience was “as expected,” — whether good or bad — are less likely to share their feedback.

This, of course, is unhelpful to business owners. Customers may feel that their experience was status quo, but that does not mean that they don’t have valuable information to share. There is always room for observation and improvement.

So what needs to be done to get the much-needed feedback?

There needs to be an incentive. After all, if the customer is going to help out a business, they need to feel as though there’s something in it for them. A couple of dollars off, the opportunity to have two-for-one appetizers, bonus points added to a store rewards card; these are all things that can encourage participation.

There are ways for businesses to get something out of these incentives too. Businesses can control who, what, when, where, and how the incentive can be used. This can allow them to drive in traffic during slow periods or sell products that are not meeting sales goals. It ends up being a win/win for all involved!

A mystery shopping company can also help facilitate the survey process and/or work with customers to learn what incentives and programs may appeal to them.

The discussion panel will share how social media will become an increasing part of the mystery shopping reporting experience. The experts will also discuss the ever-increasing changes in social media, and in SEO (search engine optimization). The mystery shopping companies will learn how to use social media, in order to gain new clients, and to keep their clients satisfied.

Many companies are realizing that in order to keep their customers satisfied in today’s economy, simply creating new advertising on products isn’t enough anymore. Times are hard economically, and retailers are having to work extremely hard to earn the trust of the customer, to create more revenue income. Keeping the customers happy, and going out of their way to engage customers is the way the many retailers are staying alive in a very tough economy. Learning how to leverage the information gained from social media and mystery shopping combined will help businesses to provide the type of customer satisfaction experience that will create return business, when other businesses are failing, and closing their doors. This conference will address all these issues, and more, to help retailers to stay competitive, and thriving.

David Rich is the President & CEO of ICC/Decision Services, a privately held company headquartered in New York City serving customers across North America. David has spent close to two decades in the retail and customer experience management and, as President and CEO of ICC, he develops creative solutions for some of the world’s leading retail brands in many of the largest retail vertical markets.

ABOUT ICC/DECISION SERVICES
ICC/Decision Services was founded in 1979 to design and execute Customer Experience Management programs. ICC/Decision Services offers a wide range of qualitative and quantitative business tools. Clients include Coach, 7-11, L.L. Bean, Rite Aid, Eddie Bauer, Foot Locker, Walmart and others. The company is headquartered at 561 7th Avenue, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10018, U.S.A. Phone: (800) 444-1717. E-mail: info@iccds.com. More information is available at http://www.iccds.com