Customerville

Know Your Customer Grades...And What They Mean.

2009-05-16T12:04:00.000-07:00

The highlight of last week for me was a conference call with the managers of a small specialty retail chain. These stores (which are actually owned by a much larger corporation) are attempting to completely reinvent how business is done in their space.

I don't know what tickles me more; The vigor with which these guys are approaching this mission or the fact that they're acting like a scrappy start-up even though they're a part of a billion dollar organization.

One thing I do know is that everyone on that team has their game face on. They're trying new things and working really hard at dialing-in a formula for a successful new business. On this week's call we heard energy, commitment and a little bit of swagger there I didn't mind hearing at all.

Customerville has had the pleasure of working with this company to measure the customer experience in these exciting new stores. The reason for our call this week was to try and divine from their customer grades what's working in their new store format and what is not.

Just a few minutes into the call we realized that there was something missing. These managers all knew what their grades were, but they didn't know what they meant. Put another way, in an area of the business where they were receiving a 4 out of 5, for instance, they thought this was good.

What hadn't been communicated to the guys on last week's call was a clear definition of what a good grade really is. The fact is, anything below a 4.5 on a five-point scale is flat unacceptable.

The grades a company's customers will give it are a very good predictor of sales growth. Companies which get nearly perfect grades on a consistent basis are highly likely to have strong same-store sales numbers. Conversely, companies with low grades tend to struggle to even make last year's numbers. Their marketing dollars are wasted just replacing attrition, rather than building the business.

The good news is that improvements on customer grades over about a 4.5 tend to have a magnifying effect on sales. These organizations create loyal customers who return consistently and bring their friends with them. Any company's objective should be to measure their performance on the things that count and not quit until they're in the high 4's on a five-point scale.

Once the guys on the call all clearly understood that their goal was to get grades of 4.5 or better -- and why this was important -- everything changed. They'll carry this understanding into the coming weeks by using this knowledge to fire up their own store teams to perform with customers in a way that really moves the needle. We look forward to seeing those sales follow.

The Red Flag Trap

2009-05-01T16:30:00.000-07:00

April was the busiest month in Customerville's history as organizations ranging from retail chains to medical practices rush to adopt frugal ways to get closer to their customers.

This is a culture change for a lot of these companies, and we're finding ourselves spending a lot of time talking with them about one lesson we've learned in particular: Be sure that your feedback loop stays generally positive in tone.

Drop me a line at misrael@customerville.com if you'd like to chat briefly about our latest thinking on why this is so important to get right.

For now, here's a reprint of a blog post from last Spring which we think does a lot to explain a pitfall which faces organizations who are new to live customer feedback.

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The Red Flag Trap
April, 2008

Over the past several months we’ve taken a hard look at a subtle – but extremely important – aspect of measuring live customer feedback. What we learned surprised even us.

Slow praise, quick criticism. Companies and franchise organizations use Customerville to allow their own customers to grade them. They check these grades via the web. Our system – and others like it – has the capacity to identify an upset customer, “red flag” that customer’s survey, and alert the appropriate person immediately via email or SMS message. This alert gives that manager a chance to address the situation quickly and save the customer from defecting.

But there can be an unintended consequence: These managers end up getting proactive, real-time feedback about things that are bad, but passive and significantly slower feedback about things that are going well.

Why it creates problems. The psychological effects on front-line managers seem obvious, though it took us years to fully come to terms with them. In some circumstances and over time, front-line managers and franchisees can come to associate customer feedback with criticism. Worse, this negative emotional association can create an aversion to paying attention to important customer information.

Positively true. Ironically, most customer comments are extremely positive. We generally find that customer comments are either mostly positive or exclusively positive over 85% of the time. At its best, customer feedback is used as a positive, uplifting leadership tool. This red flag trap, as we’ve come to call it, creates a distorted view of that reality.

This year will see us spending even more time studying this pitfall and working with our clients on ways to avoid it. We think this is so important that we’ve focused two out of the next three upgrades currently in development on addressing and preventing the red flag trap.

If you're Reading About Your Company on Yelp, It's Too Late.

2009-04-16T16:41:00.000-07:00

Lately we’ve noticed more and more companies with a unique job description: A marketing staff member responsible for monitoring online communities like Yelp for angry customer comments about their brand. This is like mopping up the water instead of fixing the leak.

For years we’ve counseled our clients to be mindful of making assumptions about how customer feedback affects them. “Your customers are already grading you”, we’d say. “You just don’t know what the grades are.”

Not providing a vigorous, visible means for your customers to give you feedback doesn’t eliminate feedback. It just removes you from the loop.

The advent of social networking sites and consumer reviews online has added an even more dangerous pitfall to companies who fail to engage their customers. Before, customers without a readily available means to share unpleasant experiences directly with you simply grumbled to each other. Now they have the ability to grumble to everyone.

Old fashioned feedback systems like comment cards or the “contact us” email link on a website were never really intended to be healthy, two-way feedback loops. More often than not they were essentially complaint boxes. To most consumers it’s easier and more gratifying to go to the web with their grievance.

Asking for customer feedback in a visible, vigorous way pays many dividends. One of them is that a significant portion of customers who have a bad experience with your company will come to you with it before they go to the rest of the world.

Google Phone Portends An Even Bigger Service Focus

2008-12-08T08:22:00.000-08:00

Conributor: Brian Doyle bdoyle@customerville.com

Technology is driving competitive pricing among retailers. The new Google phone can read bar codes and then list the prices of that item in local stores.

I saw the new Google phone the other day and it had one feature which really raised my eyebrows: a barcode reader. Before long, customers will be able to read a barcode from a shop's floor and see how that merchant's pricing compares to others nearby. Wow.

Service will have to be the determine factor to attract the customer over a competitor. We see that price and value are key in driving people to stores to buy, but service and customer experience is what is needed to "Wow" the customer and win their loyalty. In the future, more than ever!

Dealing with the 2009 Economy

2008-10-20T21:36:00.001-07:00

Contributor: Max Israel

The recent news on the economy has created a surge of companies contacting us, looking for ways of dealing with significant and sudden budget constraints. This month has seen more new companies contact us than at any time in the past five years.

Here’s why they’re calling us, and what's new about the role Customerville plays in their new 2009 budgets.

Customer Experience…On a reduced budget. It’s going to be harder than ever to get new customers, so it’s never been more important to keep the ones you already have. This will have to be done with less money than ever before.

Our existing clients are moving their customer experience measurement solutions to the top of front-line managers’ agendas. New companies who might have come to us in the past looking to add customer experience measurement as part of a broader package are now looking at us…period. We spoke with one company which anticipates slashing a $1 million budget for mystery shop into the low six digits.

We're being leaned on hard by clients to find new ways to engage their customers and employees alike at zero or near-zero new costs. This means practically no printed collateral.

Middle Management Strain. One of the most regrettable reactions to any economic downturn is a quick reduction in middle management. This means less oversight at the unit level and significantly more stress on the remaining managers.

Companies are looking at Customerville and tools like ours which allow a reduced middle management tier to smartly allocate their stretched resources. This means using customer feedback to drive travel decisions and manager bandwidth.

Training. Training is rapidly being cut. One national retailer we know just cut their entire training division. Training in other organizations we’re seeing appears likely to be reduced to basic compliance issues, with sales-related training going out the window.

Front-line managers may end up being left to their own devices. We’re being asked to make a fresh effort to keep these managers apprised of best practices on how they can use real customer feedback to motivate, praise, and lead their team members.

This isn’t a substitute for a robust training package, but it can go a long way toward enabling front-line managers to with a powerful teaching tool.

Red Flag Watchlist

2008-10-05T21:32:00.000-07:00

We've been buried in work lately, so sorry for the silent treatment these past weeks!

One great new feature we've just added to Customerville's platform is our long-awaited Red Flag Watchlist. For years our Red Flag feature has been a client favorite. Survey responses with a very low grade or "I was disappointed" check box would cause a text message alert to be sent to, say, a Regional Manager. That manager can then call the customer on the spot and save the day...you get the idea.

Our new Watchlist allows our clients to provide a list of words which can also trigger a red flag when detected in a customer's comments. For instance, a restaurant operator might include words like "cold" or "soggy" in their Watchlist.

What words would cause you to sit up and take note if your customers used them to describe an experience with your organization?

New Research Highlights Mystery Shop Pitfalls among Young Employees

2008-07-19T10:26:00.000-07:00

Young people overwhelmingly view the web as the center of their social interactions – including giving and receiving feedback – according to the recent study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. This should sound warning bells if your organization relies on hiring, retaining and developing young people. Do you have a feedback system that is relevant to them?

As we wrote last week, Pew found that some 93% of teens are internet users – and the vast majority expresses a knack for giving and receiving feedback via the web. Teens are also prodigious creators and consumers of web-based feedback. Nearly 2/3 of teens are online content creators, and the majority gives and receive feedback on the web.

The implications for employers hoping to use customer satisfaction information to guide employees couldn’t be more important. America’s youngest generations are uniquely able – and they prefer – to receive live customer feedback given to them via the web. They trust it, and they’ll act on it.

The inverse to this is a resistance to receiving feedback that isn’t perceived as genuine. We see this time and again in interviews with clients hoping to buttress existing mystery shop programs with live feedback. As willing as young people are to receive live feedback directly from your customers, they seem resistant to anonymous feedback or mystery shop feedback from hypothetical customers.

Is The Recent Pew Internet Study Your Wake-up Call?

2008-07-11T09:16:00.000-07:00

A recent study published by the Pew Internet & American Life Project is serving as a wake-up call for many American companies who seek relevance among America’s youngest generations.

The study, based on nearly a thousand interviews with teens over 2007, validated the increasing extent to which the web and its derivative technologies in cell phone technology have become a central part of American young peoples’ social lives.

Some 93% of teens are internet users – and the vast majority expresses a knack for giving and receiving feedback via the web. Perhaps more compelling was the extent to which young people themselves are content creators and consumers of web-based feedback. Nearly 2/3 of teens are online creators, and the majority gives and receive feedback on the web.

Think about this in the context of any enterprise seeking to engage America’s younger generations. People tend to gravitate to those relationships and institutions that mirror their own preferences for communication. Without a web-based means of listening to these customers’ feedback, how can any organization expect to be perceived as genuine by them?

All the marketing and PR in the world won’t convince a younger customer that you’re genuine if your feedback mechanism doesn’t reflect their sensibilities.

Next week: The consequences for employers. Does your organization give feedback in a way your employees can absorb?

Make That Drawing Work For You

2008-07-03T15:43:00.000-07:00

Keeping customers actively engaged in grading any organization takes some planning and creativity. As we've written in the past, a smart, well planned enter-to-win drawing goes a very long way in this regard.

But don't let this little promo stop working for you once it's done the job of getting customers to grade you. One of the things we love to see is when our clients really do a great job of making hay with the process of awarding the prize.

Hats off this week to our friends at Skyline Chili in Cincinnati. They used an enter-to-win drawing to spread the word that they were looking for customer grades. At the end of June, we drew a winner for them and they had a great celebration with the winner, Mrs. Cathy Headworth of Goshen, OH.

The pictures -- and a genuinely touching thank-you letter from Mr. and Mrs. Headworth -- will do a great job of creating excitement among Skyline's franchise community. We wouldn't be surprised to see Mrs. Headworth's picture show up in future Skyline enter-to-win drawing collateral materials, either!

Great work, Skyline and Congratulations to Cathy Headworth!

Gymboree Play & Music...in China

2008-06-18T12:22:00.000-07:00

Gymboree Play & Music is a fantastic company with a rich history spanning over three decades. Anyone with kids knows the brand -- and why Gymboree is known as the world leader interactive learning programs for kids. Customerville has been privileged to work with Gymboree for several years.

This month marks a new milesone for both of us. Gymboree's expansion into China has been a real success story, with that country boasting some of the busiest, most successful Gymboree Play & Music centers in the world. And, taking a page from Gymboree's playbook in the US, Gymboree China is now measuring their customer satisfaction in real time using Customerville's new multi-language platform. (More about that here.)

We wish Gymboree China continued success!

Making the Big Company Small Again

2008-06-09T11:12:00.000-07:00

One of the biggest challenges a growing chain faces is to not lose the authenticity that made the company successful in the first place.

At some point in every very big organization’s history it was small. Customers didn’t just view the people they met when they walked in the doors as employees of the company. To those customers, the employees were the company.

But as the organization grew, customers stopped seeing employees as individuals. Instead, they started seeing the company as a brand – an organization dedicated to replicating the feeling of authenticity.

Is this perception always true? Not always – especially in great companies. The people who really make the business tick are as important as ever. They’re still the company. The problem is often that the systems a larger organization needs to function can sure make it look to its customers like a faceless bureaucracy.

A Picture Says A Thousand Words. Of course, we believe a vibrant feedback loop between customers and front-line employees is essential – that’s our business. But how to make sure that even this feedback system doesn't give the appearance of just another big corporate initiative?

This year we’ve seen a series of our clients incorporate compelling photography into that feedback loop in a new way. They’re featuring photos of actual employees on their survey pages as a means of reinforcing that local connection between customer and employee.

Have a look at three examples below of the art which we used on each of these companies’ survey pages. No splashy logos or product shots here. Instead, we’re showcasing the employees to whom a customer’s feedback is directed.

The message to customers is clear: We're local, we're real and we're listening.

Life Entrepreneurs

2008-06-02T12:29:00.000-07:00

Last summer I had the pleasure of climbing Mt. Rainier with entrepreneur and author Christopher Gergen.

Christopher is a visionary. The concepts of developed by Christopher and co-author Greg Vanourek in their book, Life Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives, are powerfully relevant in today's economy and society.

In the book, Gergen and Vanourek synthesize findings based on interviews with over 50 entrepreneurs, gleaning lessons on blending life, work and purpose. Whether you're an entrepreneur or not, I highly recommend this timely book.

PS. I let Christopher in on one of my little secrets, which he’s faithfully kept between him, me and the readers of U.S. News & World Report. Oh, well. Now you know!

Getting the Greeting Right

2008-05-20T08:49:00.000-07:00

Does every employee on your front line know what’s expected when a customer walks through the door? That moment can be a defining one for most companies. How you evaluate your success on this issue says as much about your business as does the grade you get.

Over the years we’ve come to advise our clients not to create a specific time frame on how quickly customers are greeted or, for that matter, overly rigid rules about what that employee should say.

Why? We think that the interaction at the front door is too important to leave to a simple formula. Rather, we’d like to know that employees understand your overarching objectives and are then using their own social skills to do the right thing based on what they see. Customers are always glad to tell you if your employees are making these decisions well.

“I felt welcome." We learned a great way to ask customers what happened when they walked in the door from one of our favorite Northwest companies – Hanna Andersson. This Portland-based retailer of high-quality children’s apparel likes to ask if its customers “felt welcome” when they walked in the door.

The Skills We All Have. What I’ve always loved about Hanna Andersson ’s approach to this is how it puts the responsibility on each employee to use their best judgment on how to greet a customer based on the circumstances. People – your people – generally have good social skills. They can naturally spot a person who’s looking for a gregarious welcome, and one who might be more comfortable with a lower-key greeting.

Think about that. Would you be able to tell me whether or not you made people walking through your door feel welcome? I bet you could. Wouldn’t you get a better results if I left the details up to you instead of instructing you to greet everyone with a certain phrase within 10 seconds?

Putting the onus on employees to determine the best way to greet individuals through the door is a good idea -- especially when you consistently show them how customers rate that interaction. It results in customers who feel comfortable spending time in your business, asking questions, and getting to know your team.

Customerville Welcomes Guest Blogger Rich Carr

2008-05-12T06:36:00.000-07:00

Last week's post on tapping into the contact information your customers volunteer when they grade their experience with your organization garnered a ton of feedback -- and requests for more details.

This week we asked marketing guru Rich Carr, CEO of Carr Knowledge, to share his thoughts on typical response rates and -- more importantly -- the essential elements of leveraging this type of information. Feel free to email Rich your questions.

Guest Blogger: Rich Carr

2008-05-12T06:29:00.000-07:00

While email open rates differ from site to site, concept to concept, and campaign to campaign, there is absolutely no question that an email that was given to you by a customer is one of the most valuable pieces of information you own. Why? With that email they're literally saying, "Send me something relevant and I'll do more business with you."

An average reported open rate for a typical, reasonably targeted marketing email to an opt-in list would be between 22% - 26%. However, knowing what to send to that list, or segments of that list, can result in openings as high as 80% depending on many variables including subject line, content of the email, day sent, time sent, offer included, behavioral targeting, and many other nuances it takes to court a customer through Email Marketing.

What's more important than the Open Rate is the Conversion Rate - also known as Return On Investment. Goals should be set for every email that leaves your Outbox with your name on it. If you're sending an email and you get a low open rate, you're just not relevant to the receiver.

Email Marketing metrics, a strong strategy, goals on each send, testing and the reporting and segmentation of your email list into groups of customers that react differently to your emails will always result in higher opening rates and higher conversions.

Your Hidden Piggy Bank

2008-05-05T14:05:00.000-07:00

There is a huge secondary benefit to having a healthy customer feedback platform on the web: A rich database of customers and their contact information that grows every day.

As you read this, people everywhere are going online and grading our client companies. To encourage this we work with our clients to devise an incentive – a bounce-back coupon or a sweepstakes drawing, for instance – to get these customers online and grading.

Survey respondents are generally willing to include their contact information when grading companies they like and trust. They’re even more willing to do so when they’re getting an incentive. After all, we have to contact them if they win.

Most of the people who see customer grades within any organization are operations folks. The VP Stores, Regional, District and Store Managers log in to check grades every day. It’s part of their work process.

But that’s not always true for the marketers in the business. We’re making a point these days of introducing ourselves to the marketing department within our client companies to be sure they’re aware of this potential treasure trove of information – freely available to them!

Most marketers would kill to have lists of their retail customers and their contact information. This information is even better because we also know a great deal about this customer’s last visit based on their grades.

Marketers use this information in a variety of ways, including targeting email offers to their existing customers based on the feedback they gave. Did that customer give a perfect score on the question “I’d recommend you to a friend?” I’m sure your company’s marketing department could help them do that.

Any company with a healthy online customer feedback program has a hugely valuable asset in the contact information customers leave when they grade you. Don’t leave this money on the table.

The Red Flag Trap

2008-04-28T10:42:00.000-07:00

Over the past several months we’ve taken a hard look at a subtle – but extremely important – aspect of measuring live customer feedback. What we learned surprised even us.

Choose One Thing

2008-04-21T12:55:00.000-07:00

One of our all-time favorite lines comes from the movie City Slickers, where veteran actor Jack Palance tells his urban charges that the secret of life is to focus on “just one thing.” His point – lost on Billy Crystal and the gang at the time – was that the “thing” is different for everyone. The secret is just to have something on which to dedicate yourself.

We frequently get asked questions about how to start sharing customer grades with employees. We promise never to take ourselves so seriously as to think we’ll be the guiding philosophy in anyone’s life, but we do think that Jack Palance had it right: focus on just one thing.

It hardly matters what the “thing” is. Just start with a low grade on the store report, let everyone know that it’s the thing we’re going to fix, share ideas on how we fix it. Then circle it with a big red pen and promise to come back in a week and share the grades.

I’ve attached a terrific chart which one of our clients shared with us. The store team started by identifying one question – and temporarily ignoring all the rest – as a big area where they needed to improve. After only a week the grade started to improve.

Just as important is what happened to the rest of the grades – many of those things took care of themselves once customer-facing employees found themselves in the habit of thinking about it.

Our One "Must-Do" Step

2008-04-04T11:44:00.000-07:00

If we had to pick one “must-do” step that absolutely must go right in any implementation, it would be a launch contest between stores to galvanize awareness among front-line managers.

This week was a special one for me. We launched our platform for Taco Time – a famously successful quick serve restaurant chain in the northwest US which has been a family favorite for us since I was a kid.

These guys are no dummies, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me when their senior management stepped up - even before we suggested it - with a great contest and a real attention-getter prize for the winning store.

Here are the basics. On the day your company begins gathering customer grades, make a point of also launching a 30-day contest between stores with an award for the highest volume of customer grades. (You can segment this between like-volume stores to keep things fair.)

Note that I said “highest volume”, and not “best” customer grades. Working on improving grades isn’t the first step. That comes after getting front-line teams totally comfortable with their involvement in asking customers for feedback and confident that those grades are a tool for positive guidance – and not a punitive measure.

A great contest does exactly that. It charges the system with plenty of grades, recruits customers into helping you grow and wins employees into a great feedback loop.

Is It Really About The Prize?

2008-03-26T15:52:00.000-07:00

Enter-to-win sweepstakes drawings are a fantastic way to get customers interested in grading your business. They're quick, fun and easy to implement. Here are some good things to know about getting this right.

Keep the Farm. I recently saw customer feedback reward drawing for $250,000 and just about went bananas. Let me tell you, if you need to offer your customers a quarter million dollars to tell you what they think of your business, you've got problems even we can't solve!

Our clients nearly always find that a gift-card drawing in the low hundreds of dollars works like a charm. What's more, you can do the drawing as frequently as you like. Customers tune into the gift card amount, but generally don't care how frequently you do the drawing. You marketers can almost always find a great PR opportunity around giving the award, too!

Know How To Message. When you advertise or distribute collateral in your stores or restaurants, be sure to get the message right. We usually see the best traffic when the message starts with the headline: Win $XX, and then says "We'd love you to grade us". The website address should usually be last in line on the page.

Get the Legalese Right. You've got to include the rules, and they need to pass muster with your State's sweepstakes laws. Drop me a line via my profile email link if you'd like our boilerplate version and I'll make sure you get it.

Is It Really About The Prize? Here's the biggest surprise: No. Customerville's system allows our clients to use either a sweepstakes drawing or a printable gift certificate. The redemption rate of the gift certificates is a tiny fraction of the number issued. In speaking with our clients' customers, many of them express to us the sentiment that it's not really about the prize. They love shopping with you and just want to be included, listened to and valued!

A well planned sweepstakes drawing or printable coupon is like a warm "hello" when you meet someone new. It's not essential to the conversation that will follow, but it sure goes a long way toward whether or not they want to talk.

Are Your Smart Employees A “Plus”…Or a “Minus”?

2008-03-20T23:11:00.000-07:00

Just a few weeks until Ironman Arizona, which means lots of training and lots of time and money spent in my local bike shops!

I keep seeing examples in these stores of a situation that offers much promise – and so much peril – for store chains who sell technical products: Smart employees can help you…or they can hurt you.

Bike retailers are such a great example of this. A customer walks through those doors looking for “a bike”. That’s often all they know. And learning about what bike to buy and why can be intimidating.

Explaining any technical product to a customer needs to be done in a way that’s approachable to the customer. Bike shop sales floors are filled with guys who know a ton about bikes, but not enough about the right way to convey that information to the customer. You can just see customers stiffen and shut down when a sales associate starts spouting techno-jargon. It’s almost like they’re trying to show how smart they are. Your customer’s nodding as if he agrees, but really he’s just feeling intimidated or – worse – kind of dumb. He’s looking for any excuse to exit the conversation. And the store.

Employees who explain the product need to learn to ask the right questions first, listen carefully to a customer’s answers and then explain why a product or service meets the customer’s needs. And they need to do this with a bare minimum of techno jargon.

Mike Olson owns the Trek Bicycle Superstore dealerships in San Diego. You’d be hard pressed to find a better place to buy a bike anywhere on the West Coast. Part of the reason for this is that Mike places such a premium on explaining their products in ways that don't make newbie customers feel self-conscious. I asked him the other day whether he’d rather have a new employee who had a talent for connecting with a customer, or one with unusually deep technical expertise. Mike: “The connector guy. It’s not even a close call."

Would you grade this store?

2008-03-12T14:46:00.000-07:00

We're right in the middle of an implementation for Road Runner Sports' retail stores. I love these guys and have been a customer of theirs for many years and many triathlons! (Note: Ironman Arizona coming up on 4/13!)

This week we spent some time with Road Runner Sports’ marketing folks to answer their question: "How are we going to get our customers to grade us?” Getting this right is extremely important. Once you have a system in place for your customers to grade you, you should always be inviting them to tell you how you’re doing. There are lots of opportunities to do this, and you always want to be using a mix of at least 3 of them at any one time.

Here are some great ways to let customers know that you're looking for feedback. Remember, at any one time we’ll only see about three of these in play.

Window clings on the shop doors
Counter clings at the cash-wrap area
Signage in an acrylic frame at the cash-wrap area
Printed message on receipt tapes
“Grade us!” message with website printed on bags and other consumables
Inexpensive printed collateral as bag-stuffer
A visible button on the website.Check out how Tully’s does this.
Monthly or quarterly blast email to internal customer list, especially if we can send specifically to customers who recently purchased

I’ll post more later about the specifics of crafting this invitation – including offering an incentive – but for now let’s look at just the impact of having a mix. When Tully’s Coffee Company first launched their Customerville platform – telltullys.com – they soft-launched using only a message printed on table tents located around their stores. In the following weeks, Tully’s rolled out a graphic link on their own website which invited customers to grade their experience and then, some weeks later, new and better signage featuring an enter-to-win drawing. Each additional step resulted in a 300-400% increase in customers taking the time to grade their experience.

Customerville’s clients typically mix up their 3-prong approach several times a year to keep things fresh. This communicates both to customers and front-line employees that listening to customers is always a priority.

The Truth About Language

2008-03-08T10:45:00.000-08:00

Let me start by admitting that I was totally caught off guard by how some of our clients looked at our plans for this.

Our upcoming multi-language functionality is one of the coolest things we've come up with in a while. Essentially, every aspect of our software, from customer-facing survey pages to employee-facing reporting, will be viewable in a selection of languages. Participants can easily switch on the fly.

We originally conceived this feature to better serve our client companies who have international operations. But when we sat down with some of our favorite front-line managers to get their thoughts they had a totally different take. For them, the bigger language hurdle was Employees in the US for whom English isn't a first language.

The subject can be awkward, but we've got to be open about it. The fact is that a huge part of how a customer will grade your company has to do with how they felt they clicked with the employees they dealt with. That chemistry’s just got to be there.

It isn't necessarily about speaking English, either. Last December we spent some time working with a franchise client whose quick serve restaurants struggled to get good grades on questions relating to customer-employee interaction. When we really dug down, we discovered that their non-English speaking employees had a tendency to work heads-down and not make eye contact with customers. It turns out, this was mostly out of self-consciousness.

We spent some time connecting with franchisees and front-line managers and eventually figured out that practically none of the Spanish-speaking team members were reading our Store Reports. Helpfully, these reports were printed in English and posted on the back room whiteboard.

A little time invested in communicating with employees about where customers felt things could improve yielded huge dividends. The simple action of focusing on looking up, making eye contact for a few seconds and giving a genuine smile raised store grades from “poor” to, in many cases, “excellent”. What a game-changer.