A Virgin Atlantic customer’s free limo failed to pick him up at his hotel (apparently the customer waited at the wrong door). So, he called a cab and arrived at the airport angry, running late and nervous he would miss his flight. A Virgin agent spotted him and tried to calm him down, apologized for the limo mix up and rushed him through the security staff lane to get him to his gate. She even reimbursed his taxi fare out of her own pocket. The passenger boarded the plane on time thanks to the Virgin agent’s ability to turn a negative customer experience into a positive one.

Unfortunately, when the agent later recounted this story to her supervisor and asked to be reimbursed for the $70 taxi fare, her supervisor asked if she had a receipt and refused to repay her without one. Branson pointed out that had any Virgin employees learned of the agent’s trouble with the supervisor, they would be unlikely to act in similar manners when other potential customer service issues arise. Agents would hesitate to steer from procedure to help customers if they knew their jobs would be at risk. That’s definitely not a good thing for Virgin’s customers, and therefore, not a good thing for Virgin.

Luckily, the airport manager heard about this story and intervened. He informed the finance team that he approved the reimbursement and educated the supervisor on the merits of “catching people doing something right.”

Branson writes, “Good customer service on the shop floor begins at the very top. If your senior people don’t get it, even the strongest links further down the line can become compromised, as the story shows.”

Train your employees well enough and instill faith in them that they can always act in a way where they’re “doing as they would be done by.” When your employees are happy, your customers are happy, and therefore, your company is happy as well.

TheStreet points out that the survey echoes a 2006 Journal of Marketing study regarding the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). That study revealed the top 20 percent of companies in the ACSI combined outperformed the Dow by 93 percent, doubled the S&P 500 and nearly tripled the Nasdaq.

This year, Nordstrom saw increases in its ACSI as well as its net earnings, and it currently leads all department store retailers. It boasts an ACSI score of 83 out of 100, up 6 points from 2009, and saw a 44 percent boost in net earnings, a 17 percent jump in net sales and a 12 percent increase in same-store sales in the first quarter that ended May 1.

Jim Bush, American Express Executive Vice President for World Service, thinks some companies should rethink how they view customer service. “It’s important to see [it] as an investment, not a cost.”

It’s an investment with an infinite payoff. According to the survey, 75 percent of consumers claim good customer service will make them spread the word about a company that treated them well. Today’s digital age makes that easy for them to do. Reward your customers, and they will reward your company.

According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the quarterly index tracks satisfaction by interviewing customers about how they liked certain products. The index looked at food, apparel, beer, cigarettes, pet food, soft drinks, athletic shoes and personal care product companies. The index was founded by a University of Michigan professor of business administration.

In the food category, H.J. Heinz Co. was top dog with a score of 89, two points higher than its closest competitor. In apparel, another long time trusted brand, Levi Strauss saw big gains by rising 6.4 percent to an 83. In beer, the industry score rose 1.2 percent to 84 out of 100, and Anheuser-Busch, in particular, was up 3.7 percent to a score of 85.

The index predicts fourth-quarter spending to increase between 2 percent to 3 percent. It correctly predicted the third quarter increase of 3.35 percent.

Price promotions may be playing a role with these brands, but Heinz, Levi’s and A-B are far from the discount leaders in each respective category. Only time will tell if this is a resurgence of the long-trusted brand. However, the trend is that sales performance is directly linked to customer satisfaction.

That seems to be the theme of a blog authored by Bruce Tempkin on Customer Experience Matters. In it, Tempkin puts out his wish list for customer service in 2010. Here are his five wishes and some explanation:

“Forget about average handle times.” Focus more on delighting the customer rather than getting them off the line. Fast handle times often represent inattentive agents, not a quick and effective problem solution.

“Learn from every interaction.” Every chance you get to speak to your consumer is an opportunity to lean about their needs and how you can meet them. This is perhaps the most valuable kind of consumer research that you can acquire.

“Recover quickly and be proactive.” Even a good solution that is drawn-out or difficult can still lose a customer. A sense of urgency will always create goodwill and eliminating problems on the front end is even more effective. Many companies are finding great value in allowing customers to talk and help each other.

“Make customer service a product attribute.” When we design and develop new products, one of the first things we do is make a list of product attributes. This is the time to build in customer service, “as a key component of your offering.”

“Engage reps in customer experience transformation.” Transforming the customer experience is largely dependent on transforming your employees’ experience. The attitudes and experience of an empowered customer service staff are directly reflected upon the customer. If they enjoy their jobs, they will enjoy helping people as an end result, not just simply handling x number of calls.

Service metrics are important, but they are only a snap shot of the real job at hand. When choosing or designing any customer experience touch point, place the emphasis on delighting the customer, and everything else will fall into place.

Although all companies have some type of Customer Service Department and some have adopted customer experience programs to measure and react to the data, most do not have an integrated approach to apply the learning across the organization and back into the marketplace. What gets in the way of integration? If customer programs are used at all, they are used and isolated within organizational silos. See if this sounds familiar. Marketing owns the Customer Satisfaction Survey, Operations owns the Mystery Shop Program, Market Research owns the Customer Intercepts and Human Resources owns the Employee Engagement Program. But who owns the customer relationship?

The reality is that marketers don’t do this with any other asset in their company. The COO makes sure that the widget is the sole focus of the company from raw material to distribution. The CFO makes sure that every bean is counted along that path and knows exactly what the effect of a bean spent in Silo One means to Silo Four. Perhaps it is time to introduce the CCO, the Chief Customer Officer.

Don’t laugh. We have a high ranking executive to champion every other asset in the company, but we don’t have one whose sole purpose is to look out for the, “most important asset.” Companies are already moving quickly into the area of Social Media and you will soon see the advent of the Chief Community Officer, so the development of this new C-suite position makes sense and should not be out of the realm of possibility.

If the customer is truly your company’s greatest asset, then stewarding that relationship has to be more than lip service. The customer experience has to have a seat in the board room and filter its way all the way through the organization as an integrated strategy focus. Now that would be walking the walk.

How can you know if your policies are turning customers away? One way top retailers find out is through mystery shopping and customer surveys. Professional mystery shoppers pose as ordinary customers, testing out policies, staff, the store environment and your merchandise. They objectively report their observations, which retailers use to amend employee behaviors, environmental or product issues, and policies. Customer surveys are also very useful, offering a subjective look at what your customers really think.

David Rich, President of ICC Decision Services, offers his perspective. “We provide clients with one source for all their measurement tools. We design and coordinate each piece to complement the overall program goals. There is no ‘finger pointing’ – the program responsibility rests with us. And our team of market research professionals and industry experts work closely to optimize the effectiveness of your unique Customer Experience Management (CEM) program. Specifically, our mystery shopping programs drive frontline staff performance improvement, and increased revenue. We recruit, test, certify and closely monitor our shoppers. Fully customized and integrated with in-person, Web site, call center and telephone-based components, our mystery shopping programs include dynamic and static 24/7 graphic reporting powered by our proprietary state-of-the-art Web-based technology. Our programs leave no doubt as to what your customers really think of your store and your products.”

But as you get ready to devour your meal-in-a-box, reality hits. This burger looks nothing like the picture. In fact, it looks more like a two-year-old slapped it together from pieces of other burgers. You, my friend, have just experienced one of the underlying themes shoppers complain about most often: a disconnect between a brand’s image and the actual customer experience.

If your store’s brand doesn’t match your typical customer’s experience, get on the phone to HR right now. You may not have much time to undo the damage that’s been done. While many customers will put up with an occasional snafu in service or expectations, consistently disconnecting from your brand with bad customer service and substandard products will kill interest in your product. When this happens, your only hope is to prioritize the training and monitoring of your frontline staff to revive public interest and match your service and product with those pretty pictures in your advertisements.

True, customers are fickle. One day they want you to leave them alone to wander the store, and the next day they complain no one is helping them. But the bottom line is, customers who consistently have poor experiences will look for someplace else to shop. And they tell their friends. No retailer wants to suffer bad word-of-mouth. The Internet has made it all too easy to turn the tide of a brand’s popularity with a few truthful, albeit wicked, stories in a very short amount of time.

Retailers must be seriously supportive of ongoing training and coaching for sales associates based upon the principles of excellence in service. This is the only true competitive advantage in an industry where your brand may sink or swim based on public opinion. Companies who seek assistance in developing and maintaining strong training and coaching programs often need a comprehensive mystery shopping program to cultivate the strong frontline staff that drives sales, and provides managers and store owners with the ongoing, meaningful data necessary to maintain and continue to build on those increases in both sales and customer loyalty.

Historically, gauging consumer “experiences” has been the primary responsibility of the customer service department.

But in my experience, customer service departments have become little more complaint departments. Or even worse, a place to go for customers to go and replace unwanted merchandise. Let’s face it, you can’t use the current customer service department model as a way to gauge the health and vibrancy of your company’s customer relationships – it’s an outmoded model that is spread too thin in terms of responsibilities and is not advanced enough to handle all the measurements that need addressing across the company.

Enter the mystery shopper.

Sometimes stereotyped as a subjective and slightly campy approach to evaluating customer service (think trench coats, wigs and dark sunglasses) mystery shoppers actually embody the complete customer satisfaction program.

How so? By measuring both the tangibles and intangibles of a company’s customer experience program. Mystery shopping is a the answer to the question “How can managers seek to understand their company – and its product, service, or idea – from the customer’s perspective?”

Let’s face it, the level and quality of service you deliver to your customers is critical to your company’s success. In fact, it may just be the ultimate barometer of your success. Many company’s don’t realize it, but their customers’ total experience with the business and its employees dictate whether the company will succeed or fail…whether you will be profitable or not. Simply having expectations about what sort of experience your customers will have is not enough…you have to measure, you have to inspect. In the form of good, solid, effective mystery shopping programs, objective, anonymous, third-party assessments of the customer experience will provide the information you need to ensure that your expectations for customer experience are carried out in reality.

What do you think? 

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What happens when the majority of department stores sell similar brands at competitive prices? Retailers then need to start focusing on customer experience and customer satisfaction as differentiating factors.

For instance, retail electronics giant Best Buy offers in home tech support with Geek Squad.

Can you think of any other examples?

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I think that for some who have allergies, improved labeling would provide better service. Also, in general, people are now eating healthier and are more interested in what they are putting into their bodies. However, most labels are hard to understand and read. If a company can make the effort to make labels easier to understand, then they will have a competitive advantage.

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Currently, the customer experience at most banks cater to the Silent Generation and Boomers who more frequently bank in-person. To reach the younger generation who are much more mobile and rely on more heavily on online interactions, banks will need to focus on the online customer experience.

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A new Luxurycollection.com site offering travel advice and photography from National Geographic Image Collection was launched July 8 to convey this message.

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Let’s say a retailer can afford to increase their frontline staff. Is that enough? What drives customers to Apple Stores in addition to customer service are the ambiance, layout, and design of the store. All these components make up the customer experience.

“More than half of time pressed Americans eat their meals on the go, but are forced to choose fast food because of busy lifestyles and time constraints,” the company said.

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Companies that saw their ACSI score decrease also saw their companies’ share prices
move in the same direction with. Market capitalization dropped roughly 1% to 5%.

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Self-service kiosks are great for those customers who want to be in and out of a store. There are shorter lines and less hassle. Or is there really less hassle? My experiences have been mixed. Sometimes the self-checkout system does not cooperate and that’s when things can become frustrating. Usually there will be one attendant watching over six machines. Consider yourself pretty lucky if the attendant is not helping out anyone else and can assist you right away.

Two weeks ago, I was at a grocery store picking up eight items. I started scanning items and then a glitch happened. I quickly started looking for the attendant who was helping another person. I had to wait maybe another 3-5 minutes as the attendant helped a first time self-service kiosk user. Retailers need to have adequate help for these self-checkout systems.

Will cashiers disappear by 2012?

There will always be cashiers. Self-service kiosks are great for quick service but cashiers can be a great opportunity to gain competitive advantage. Staff can provide extra customer service or promote and sell specials at the cash register.

What can service workers do to improve tips?

When times are tough, service workers need to pay special attention to customer service. Happy and satisfied customer can lead to higher tips.

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