Firsthand Customer Learning Always Beats “Behind the Desk”

Harvey Chimoff Leave a comment

For sustained business excellence, engage and learn across the corporation and outside the office.

Business leaders need to avoid the ivory tower syndrome and get out into the market for real learning. There’s only so much you can accomplish sitting at your desk. If you’re not interacting with everyone and everything that makes your company tick, that’s a problem – and a lost opportunity. For marketers, it means building connections and relationships across the entire business, both inside and outside the office.

To really understand what’s happening with your business, obtain and maintain a fact-based assessment of your customers.

  • What do they truly require to achieve success?
  • How are your products and services making a difference toward their success?
  • Why do they do business with your company?
  • How do they perceive the members of your team with whom they interact?

It may not be immediately obvious, yet there can be multiple layers of customers, such as direct customers and ultimate end-users. It’s important to understand customer layers, and factor that into marketing and sales strategies and plans. For instance, an ingredients company’s primary customers may be food and beverage manufacturers, who sell finished products to consumers. Those consumers are the ultimate end-users.

Consider transportation company Uber Technologies.

During the last two years, senior executives, including CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, have been driving cars transporting passengers and delivering food. It’s been part of a concerted action plan to secure the quantity of drivers required to effectively run the business. Critical to that was understanding and addressing driver grievances. (What Happened When Uber’s CEO Started Driving for Uber. Preetika Rana, The Wall Street Journal.)

Uber’s primary customers are ride-seeking passengers, hungry consumers, and food operators wanting a rapid distribution mechanism to service their hungry customers. At the same time, Uber’s drivers can also be considered customers. Without a reliable supply of top-performing drivers, there is no Uber business.

Khosrowshahi and the Uber team gained valuable firsthand information and detailed understanding about what worked and more importantly, what needed to be fixed. Some examples:

  • “Clunky” sign-up process for people versus food
  • Poor training on how to interact with restaurants for food deliveries
  • Trip destination information not included

There was even a necessary improvement that probably would not have been uncovered otherwise:

  • The company’s product head “found the company’s maps could be difficult to read while driving. Arrows marking turns were in colors that made them hard to see when sunlight reflected off a phone’s screen. It was simple to fix—but hadn’t come up when he tested maps in the office.”

Khosrowshahi and the Uber team now acknowledge a more comprehensive view of their customers, and embrace achieving a broader satisfaction. “Historically, we’ve always put a premium on the rider experience.” Now, they also need to win the “hearts and minds” of drivers.

Find the best ways to stay connected to your business and your customers. It doesn’t have to be a version of Undercover Boss. Just find out. What to do with that information and data is your next challenge!

More ideas and examples are in my new book, available on Amazon: Strategy First, Then Tactics.®: How Practical Marketing Discipline Provides the Winning Edge.

Harvey Chimoff is a global marketing executive whose experience and expertise span consumer packaged-goods brand management, B2B manufacturing, and plug-in marketing leader consulting. He is a customer-focused leader who connects marketing across the organization to drive performance and achieve business objectives. Harvey is the author of the new book Strategy First, Then Tactics.® How Practical Marketing Discipline Provides the Winning Edge, available on Amazon. Contact him at harveychimoff.com.

Is this the Best Customer Service Feedback Question?

Harvey Chimoff Leave a comment

If you want the best input and feedback, ask the right questions.

In every situation and context, asking the right questions can make all the difference: to understand customers, gain early warning about issues, for problem-solving, to interact with team members, and overall to help run your business effectively.

When I participate in customer surveys, I pay special attention to the questions. More often than not, there’s nothing special or surprising.

However, I recently was stopped in my tracks with a question from the Dental Dental insurance company after I called their customer support for some assistance. Here’s their question:

  • If you owned a customer service company, would you hire this representative?

This is a brilliant question to obtain an immediate macro assessment of how the customer feels after a direct interaction with a support team member. It may also be the best customer experience question I’ve ever come across. It’s simple. It’s direct. It cuts to the chase. It captures the most critical essence in one easy snapshot. Now, of course, if the answer is no, further diagnostics will be in order. Even for the “yes,” it would be good to know “why” so that behavior can be reinforced and copied across the organization.

By the way, this question is a bit similar to the net promoter score question (would you recommend this product or service) but seems better geared for immediate experience and/or talent assessments.

Here are some other posts I’ve written on the topic of customer feedback and questions:

Harvey Chimoff is a global marketing executive whose experience and expertise span consumer packaged-goods brand management, B2B manufacturing, and plug-in marketing leader consulting. He is a customer-focused leader who connects marketing across the organization to drive performance and achieve business objectives. Harvey is the author of the new book Strategy First, Then Tactics.® How Practical Marketing Discipline Provides the Winning Edge, available on Amazon. Contact him at harveychimoff.com.

Marketing-driven Highway Safety Signs Blocked by Feds

Harvey Chimoff Leave a comment

The marketing grades are in: “A” for the New Jersey Department of Transportation. “F” for the Federal Highway Administration.

The headline: New Jersey recently deployed clever road safety messages on electronic highway signs carefully crafted to connect with local drivers so important safety communications would be absorbed. The government’s response: STOP.

The beauty and marketing essence of the program is that the department of transportation team was able to effectively target drivers based on a strong understanding of the local population, including social and cultural norms and language (i.e., their customers). However, the federal government stepped in, slapped New Jersey’s hands and essentially told the garden state not to effectively communicate with its residents. While New Jersey may have violated some fine print in the federal transportation guidelines for electronic highway signs, the government has classically missed the forest for the trees.

Photos: NJ Department of Transportation via New York Post newspaper.

One of the most basic and critical fundamentals for business success is being able to effectively communicate and engage with your customers. That means truly understanding who they are, what makes them tick and how to talk to them to achieve desired influence, action and outcome. This includes using plain, direct language and humor if and when appropriate.

It’s exactly what the New Jersey Transportation Department did:

  • “The Department wanted to be more creative in how we present our safety messages. We are trying a few new messages that are both fun and catchy in hopes that people will remember the message to drive safely.”

Further, they optimized taxpayer dollars by utilizing in-house creative resources for the messaging. Here’s what the department’s social media manager said about the initiative in a LinkedIn post:

  • “Grateful for the opportunity to venture out of social media world and create new messages for NJDOT’s VMS boards. My team and I had a lot of fun adding humor (and sometimes sass) to these important safety messages.”

By the way, the Texas Department of Transportation takes a similar approach and they are now wondering if the highway sign police are coming for them next.

Photo: Texas Department of Transportation via NBC 5 News (NBCDFW).

So, when it comes to important safety messages on electronic highway signs, why not craft the messages to appeal to most of the drivers on the road? New Jersey had the right idea. The federal government crushed them. Are other states next?

Harvey Chimoff is a global marketing executive whose experience and expertise span consumer packaged-goods brand management, B2B manufacturing, and plug-in marketing leader consulting. He is a customer-focused leader who connects marketing across the organization to drive performance and achieve business objectives. Harvey is the author of the new book Strategy First, Then Tactics.® How Practical Marketing Discipline Provides the Winning Edge, available on Amazon. Contact him at harveychimoff.com.