C.B. Whittemore at her rather unusual business blog, tells the story of her mother shopping for carpet. It's the usual horror show, told in three installments, with confusion, too much choice, things going wrong, no one explaining, mom getting frustrated....
Among the things that happened to C.B.'s mom, (who I have to think is beyond the age where you want to hump furniture around by yourself), was being asked to move her own furniture. She wasn't told she could keep the waste carpet. She wasn't told a lot of things, in fact. I guess she was just supposed to know.
Are you relying on your customer to keep track of everything?
The thing that really struck me about this story was that the customer had to do the work of integrating that the company had not bothered to organize. In fact, the company was relying on her to know what was going on.
I think consumers/customers have come to expect this kind of headache, and it stops them from buying some kinds of things that they might otherwise do e.g. new flooring, new kitchen -- anything that might be complex to organize. Because we know no one will really help us, and if things go wrong, we are on our own.
Consumer Confidence
When economists talk about consumer confidence, they don't mention this, do they? That we are confident that things will go wrong, confident that the delivery will be late, confident that the installers will have muddy feet or whatever. Confident that the hassle may well outweigh the good times.
You have to live with everyone's reputation for service, not just your own
If you are in a customer experience kind of a business, it's not just your own reputation you have to deal with, unfortunately, it is the reputation of everyone who has let your customer down in the past. Your experience might be flawless, but they don't know that yet. You have to overcome their bad memories of those other banks, other contractors, and other carpet retailers.
Testimonials, service standards, guarantees, etc.
Overcoming other people's bad behavior is one reason testimonials are effective. It's not just you saying, "we're different" -- it's your customer saying that.
Service standards also help here, especially when you make them public, so people can hold you accountable. Money-back guarantees used to accomplish this, before people started hedging on the guarantee commitment by asking you to return the thing in the original box, and similar nonsense.
References:
Here's the link to the story, Endless Frustrations [and what an apt title!]
C.B'.s blog is about floor coverings, and marketing to women. I just love her title, which is Director, In-Store Innovation. Maybe you should give that title to someone in your organization and see what happens.
