Photo: Jason-Morrison

That’s the question that came to my mind after reading Robert Passikoff’s recent article on Forbes.com, “The Final Frontier: Customer Expectations.” Passikoff points to a shift in the past 15 years: customer expectations have increased significantly, rising 24 percent in all categories. That number has increased even more in the technology sector. An entire book could be written (and probably has been) on why customers’ expectations are on a sharp upward trajectory.

But my question is not the focus of Passikoff’s article. He notes that measuring customer expectations is a tricky business and turns to customer loyalty as a correlating metric. After explaining how customer loyalty is measured and providing an example from the wireless carrier industry, Passikoff concludes, “… brands that are able to better meet – even exceed – growing customer expectations always end up on the top of the list.”

Fair enough. On the surface, it’s a good point, and one that seems hard to argue with. But I’m going to argue it anyway. Because here’s the thing: Customers seek out businesses because they have needs, and they expect those businesses to solve those needs. The business either solves the problem, or it doesn’t. Period. End of story.

Expectations are like averages; they don’t exist in the real world (only in your customer’s mind, and perhaps subconsciously at that). Therefore, to “exceed customer expectations” is a weak goal. I’d go as far as saying that expectations are a “false god,” sapping a lot of focus, energy and resources from what should always be the goal: solving the customer’s problem.

Passikoff started a great conversation about customer expectations and satisfaction, but then took us down a road that’s essentially a dead end. Tying customer loyalty scores to customer expectations is not the answer. Why? Loyalty scores are important, but they don’t take into account all the reasons customers stick with a company. The “how well” question is the field of loyalty. The “if/if not solved” is the field of performance.

Take the example in Passikoff’s article that examines how wireless carriers rank on the Customer Loyalty Engagement Index. AT&T came in first, followed by Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile (in that order).

Passikoff notes that this list correlates very highly with customer behavior, such as churn figures, and that, according to the latest data from the Better Business Bureau, AT&T had the fewest complaints and lowest complaint rate of these four wireless providers. All this, even though there was speculation last year that AT&T would see an exodus of customers to Sprint and Verizon when the iPhone became available on those carriers. It didn’t happen; AT&T continues to outsell Sprint and Verizon.

Although these numbers seem to confirm the Customer Loyalty Engagement Index’s ranking, there’s something the data does not reflect: captive customers. I happen to be an AT&T customer, but I am is because I can’t get out of my contract, and when I’m at a point where I can, it’s difficult. So, I perceive I am stuck – loyal, but captive.

How many people are in the same boat as I am? Locking customers in prohibits a measure of loyalty AT&T should trust. Until we come up with a “complacency” or “frustrated and stuck” index and begin dissecting truly loyal, enthusiastic consumers from those who don’t have the time or resources to navigate the breaking of a contract, loyalty is one metric—but not the most important metric we can fully trust to drive improvements in customer experience and organization performance.

Which brings me back to a goal we can trust: solving the customer’s problem. AT&T solves my need for road-warrior connectivity and that’s why I show up in the positive in their revenue and profit performance.

Now, think about the problem or need your company exists to solve. The desire that triggers them to act. Do you know how often, and how well, you solve that need? Do you provide an effective solution? This is where we should focus our time and energy: On solving our customers’ problems.

I confess I was not a consistent follower of Andy Rooney, the rumpled but sage commentator from the CBS news show 60 Minutes. Yet when I did catch Andy, he never failed to provoke a chuckle or a question or a smile. I like that. Hoping to work until he died, Andy very nearly did, passing away on November 4.

In honor of Andy, here is my simple story:

My .42 ounce bag of peanuts

I was handed a package of lightly salted peanuts. It’s small. I note it contains .42 ounce of peanuts. I found 23 peanuts in my bag when I matched the halves to make as many whole peanuts as I could.

I wonder, what drove the decision to include .42 ounce of peanuts? Did the folks at Delta do a study that determined .42 ounce of peanuts is just the right amount to satisfy a traveler on a fairly short flight?

I don’t think so. My guess is that in a past life this bag of peanuts was .5 ounce and someone said:

 ”Let’s cut product costs by 20%.”

Then viola! My .5 ounce bag of peanuts became a .42 ounce bag.

Now I know the best investments or decisions a company can make are in the things that customers value most. Conversely, investments or actions for things customers do not value – and therefore will not pay you for – are the best candidates for the trash (or the very least, the bottom of your budget or priority list). I fly Delta because they provide me with a fairly flexible way for me to get to the places I need to be as a very frequent flier. Also because since the merger with Northwest, I don’t hear the flight crews openly grumble as much as they used to and that makes my flights better.

I don’t fly Delta because they give me peanuts. But as I stared at my empty .42 ounce bag, I realized that if they apply the 20 percent cost reduction idea to peanuts one more time, and consider a .37 oz bag, I think Andy would agree with me that in that case, they ought not to bother with peanuts at all.

Thanks for all the great lessons, Andy Rooney.

Related:

10 things I’d do if I were in charge of an airline’s customer experience

Andy Rooney, a Cranky Voice of CBS, Dies at 92

One afternoon in the spring of 2010, a colleague and I ducked into a fruit smoothie place in Manhattan. We had just finished a meeting and were halfway back to our hotel, put off by record breaking 95 degree heat and humidity on an afternoon in April. I settled in, opened my email and found a note from Aimee Lucas.

I’ve devoured Domino and am a follower on Twitter and am reaching out to begin a conversation….

…and I’ve been honored to say “I know Aimee Lucas” since that day. Aimee has been a force of nature at Crowe Horwath, one of the largest  public accounting and consulting firms in the US. Over the past 2 years she has convened and driven teams of leaders and subject matter experts to define and execute a client experience strategy for the company. In a role that bridges both center of discipline and internal consultant customer experience leader roles we have discussed here before, Aimee champions the client across the enterprise and across channels.

I caught up Aimee recently and thought you would value hearing about what’s happening at Crowe – one leader and firm’s experience strengthening client experience and organization performance:

Across Crowe Horwath, is there a shared understanding of the target or ideal experience for your clients? Creating exceptional client experiences for our clients is one of the key elements of the firm’s strategy.  So having a shared understanding of a definition of client experience is very important for us. We see that it’s both about what we and the client do and deliver but also about how clients feel as we work together.

Previously, we were thinking about client experience narrowly within service delivery ….when we delivered the technical work. Now we see the whole journey from the client’s point of view. And we have done a lot of work to define and agree on the common elements that embody “Crowe” in any engagement and which are also known to be important to our clients.

How does that guide your efforts?  We are evolving our client – focused culture, with an understanding that success really starts with our people.  Our core purpose is “building value with values” – and our client experience efforts focus on how we deliver value to clients – and subsequently to our people and the firm.

What are you working on now?  Every day I have conversations that are about helping our people understand and get engaged in the big picture of our client experience vision, and about half my time is spent on executing quick wins. With the time leftover, attention goes to a couple of longer-term efforts we’re starting, and on-going work maximizing the value from our voice of the customer program. (Kind of like Yogi Berra’s quote about 90% and the other half…)

What is it about customer experience that energizes you?  The work I do impacts our clients and I get to help our people be more successful. Right now, we’re in “the fuzzy front end” – what is it? What will drive performance for us? How can each person in Crowe see a link between what they do every day and the vision for clients? Finding the intersection of what’s valuable to clients and helping our people be successfully delivering that is such rewarding work!

What is it about customer experience that energizes you?  The work I do impacts our clients and I get to help our people be more successful. Right now, we’re in “the fuzzy front end” – What is it? What will drive performance for us? How can each person in Crowe see a link between what they do every day and the vision for clients? Finding the intersection of what’s valuable to clients and helping our people be successful delivering that is such rewarding work!

What customer experience books, blogs, etc. do you turn to for insights and opinions? One of the first books I read was Domino. And PEAK by Chip Connelly. What I loved about Domino was that it was not just strategy but also an actionable approach. PEAK did a great job of describing how experience can be a covenant between employees, customers, and the organization –that matches our Management Philosophy: Win³ – balancing the needs of our clients, our people and the firm and delivering value to all three. Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness is a more recent impactful read that drove home the connection between client experience and an organization’s culture. I’m a voracious learner and seek ideas from numerous blogs, authors, and twitter chats.

If you were looking back on yourself at the beginning of your customer experience journey, what advice would you give you? Reach out and talk to people at other organizations who are doing this. Build camaraderie with people in the same place of the customer experience journey that you are – or even ahead of you. See how others are putting all the great thinking that’s out there into practice. Help others too. As I’ve been working in this area, adopting this approach helps me balance the big ideas with the tactics and detailed implementations.

Advice you’d give others who are in an internal consultant, or functional discipline role for their organizations? Like other shifts in thinking capabilities – know the context of what and who are driving decisions across your organization and where customer experience contributes to performance overall.

Follow Aimee on Twitter: @Aimee_Lucas

Photo: Aveus LLC

I recently sent out a tweet about B2B customer experience asking people to brag about their company or the work they’re doing.

The silence was deafening.

I even sent the tweet out again a few days later and still came back with nothing. It’s not often that you can’t find at least one person willing to brag about the good work they’re doing.

Frankly, I’m not all that surprised. When it comes to customer experience it’s almost as though B2B doesn’t exist. Just take a look at Bruce Temkin’s recent loyalty ranking report where retail dominates the top 20 (garnering all but three spots). The 2011 Experience rankings are nearly the same.

Of course business customers have experiences with the organizations who serve them, and B2B leaders acknowledge the importance of it in driving performance. So what’s going on here?

I think there are a few factors contributing to the lack of acknowledgement.

First, there seems to be a misperception about how B2C and B2B customer experiences are vastly different.

Whether an organization is consumer- or business-facing, any customer experience follow the same steps. Like their consumer counterparts, B2B experiences start with a person who has a triggering need, problem or desire they would trade something of value to have solved. Customers learn about options, try them out, buy and use the product to solve a need and then evolve to a new need over time. Scorecards are the same, too. For customers, it’s about if and how well their need is solved. For business leaders, it’s about solving enough needs so well that the organization will meet or exceed revenue and profit goals. These are some of the 7 truths common to every customer experience.

But, even though B2B and B2C companies share the same customer experience steps, the execution at each of those steps is indeed different. B2B leaders must accommodate more stakeholders. More often than not, business customers aren’t alone in the shopping, decision-making, or after-purchase use and evaluation. They take in the advice, opinions and suggestions of many influencers. In fact many of those involved in the experience don’t consider themselves customers (even though they most certainly play influencing, input or veto roles). We often define “customer” as a single individual who hands over the money to procure a good or service, those who buy on behalf of their organizations. But that’s not complete in the case of B2B customers. Because of multiple stakeholders, B2B buyers invest more than their company’s money. They invest their own reputation or political capital. They act to serve, or protect others. They are simply “more.”

Added to the multi-layered, multi-stakeholder customer experience is the fact that B2B firms more often often sell through retailers, wholesalers, brokers, or independent agents of some kind, creating a more complex “multi-channel” selling model than most consumer leader live in. This means they control only a fraction of the entire customer experience. At best they can merely influence the rest of the process.

I hope that B2B customer experiences start getting more attention. The social, or community interactions of these experiences are easier for us all to see, and some good things are happening. I see blogs like Social Media B2B following how businesses like MarketingProfs, Hubspot, CME Group, and Cisco are using social tools to engage their customers. Let’s hope it’s only a matter of time before we have a bunch of great blogs touting the B2B customer experience.

All that said, I want to return back to my original tweet. I’d love to hear about some great B2B customer experiences. Do you have any you want to brag about? A few you’ve been a part of?

Here’s the full deck—it’s full of examples, case studies and, of course, 10 actionable tips.

Here’s a link to the full recording and Q&A which is free for MarketingProfs PRO members.

Three tips from my presentation that really stand out to me are:

Know which platform works best when.

Knowing when your customers are in their experience is absolutely key to choosing the right tool to solve their needs. But knowing which tool to use in which phase is just as important. If customers are in the research and evaluation phase, it might make sense to use blog and YouTube content since those are highly searchable formats. If you’re looking to serve existing customers’ needs, Twitter might make the most sense.  I’ve created this handy PDF tool above to demonstrate when and where different social media can best affect customer experience.

Focus on your customers—not your competitors.

It feels a lot like the mid-90s doesn’t it? Back then, everyone was launching a web site. And some companies were launching sites just because their competitors were. Same goes for social media right now. Don’t explore tools just because your competitors are exploring them. Go back and focus on your customers and the needs they want solved. And see which social tools can help you do that. Nothing more.

Align your troops. Regularly.

One issue that’s not discussed as much as it probably should be in online circles (or among senior management, for that matter) is the notion of aligning your internal resources and putting the full weight of your teams and people into solving your customer’s problems. I work with and see organizations every day smartly managing teams, staff and actions across departments and groups as a “system” (i.e., a performance chain). This is just a matter of applying that same concept to the use of social media channels. I used Sleep Number as an example in the presentation—what I see them doing online in terms of solving customer needs leads me to believe they’re highly integrated and aligned across the organization.

Those are my favorite tips. What about you? Which of the 10 were most useful for your target experience and need you’re solving for your customers? What suggestions would you give to brands looking to strengthen their customer experience through social media tools?