Showing posts with label feedback. Show all posts
Showing posts with label feedback. Show all posts

Thursday, October 07, 2010

Creating an Atmosphere of Collaboration

Improv teaches us to work with anything we are given (a prop, a line, an opportunity, a rejection, a bad economy…). No matter what it is, your FIRST answer is always yes. I want to use television as a metaphor for work.

IMPROV:
Whose Line Is It Anyway is an improvisational television show - a great example of working with anything and having fun doing it. The performers respond affirmatively to anything shouted out by an audience member. They work with what they are given and make us laugh. The energy seems to grow and grow.

"REALITY"
Now think about the reverse situation. Reality TV is an emotional wasteland where participants scream at each other and argue constantly. Sure, it's a human train wreck, and fun to watch for fifteen minutes and a beer, but would you really want to live there, 24 hours a day? You can almost feel the energy draining out of the room...

Where would you rather work: at the IMPROV or the Jersey Shore? What kind of office environment have you created?



Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Forming a Great First Impression

Every Chef knows that how the food looks is as important as how it tastes.

LIkewise, you may be prepared to sell a service, but does your customer see preparation in your delivery? Or, does your customer see a wreck of a website or a nervous person sitting in front of them.

In Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Malcom Gladwell confirms years of research into first impressions and then takes it one step further. He says our decisions occur much faster - instantaneously or in less than two seconds.

In Gladwell's research, he finds we do this whenever we meet a new person, or when we have to make sense of something quickly or encounter a novel situation. "Snap judgments are, first of all, enormously quick: they rely on the thinnest slices of experience. They are also unconscious."

When we meet a person, our primal instincts are hard at work trying to gauge if this person is a threat or not. We are unsure how to interact with them. We don't know their temperament and basically we want to figure out if they will hurt us or help us.

Our minds act with lightning speed, calling upon all of our senses during any first encounter. We listen to the timber and tone of the stranger's voice. Our eyes focus on movement and other non-verbal cues and our noses try to detect any foreign or threatening smells.

While our brains are busy sorting through all the input the other person's brain is doing the exact same thing. In the case of the web-based sale, emerging systems track customer movement and make recommendations to the administrator.

Although it sounds like a joke, that last sensory input (smell), may be the final frontier of the online experience. It's hard to imagine, but sooner or later, scent will become part of the online experience. I just hope it's not a two-way technology...



Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Listening to the Service Experience

Creating a great sales effort begins by hiring people that have the raw ability to learn and to:

* fully understand products or services
* effectively deliver presentations fearlessly and consistently
* care about their customer's experience by listening and learning.

How? Here are a few ways to listen and learn:

Live Chat
Eliminate phone tag and offer service on demand. Even if you run a small businesses you can provide real-time support for visitors to your website. Organizations like LivePerson.com, BoldChat and Live2Support.com provide outsourced support services at competitive rates.

On-Demand Consumer University
Learning isn't limited to employees. In fact, consumers can benefit (and appreciate) the same information you provide your team.

Video FAQ and How-to's
You Tube offers a video plug-in for your site, that gives you the chance to quickly and affordably post content, like how-to videos that can make life easier for your customers.

Social Media
Services such as Facebook help you connect to multiple communities. Tools like Visibility and Radian 6 allow you to measure the effectiveness of your outreach to those groups.

Staff profiles and Blogs
Customers want to follow the team members they talk to everyday, not necessarily the CFO or COO. Get over your need for control and let your people blog. Employees may pleasantly surprise you by attracting even more customers.

Independent Reviews
Customer reviews and feedback are part of a richer online experience. Some companies, like customerreviews.com, offer widgets that can enable a review function within your own site. Others, like tripadvisor.com offer 3rd party reviews for specific services, in this case, hotels and travel services.

Friday, June 25, 2010

10 Questions to Ask Emerging Leaders

Gather your high-potential employees together–those employees you have identified as future and emerging leaders–and ask them what they need in order to succeed. Do it now, before they leave.

Here are some questions I might ask your emerging leaders:


1. How do you define success (visualize it five years from now...)?

2. What are the biggest challenges facing employees today?

3. What changes are occurring within your department, and what is needed to address them?

4. How are you improving employee performance and the customer experience?

5. Do you see your personal philosophy and the organization's as different or 100% aligned?

6. In five words or less, how would you describe this organization's leadership experience?

7. If you could work anywhere in the world (doing anything you want) would it be here?

8. What should an emerging leader be required to do, above and beyond any job description?

9. What do emerging leaders like you need from this organization?

10. Anything else...?


Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Every Customer Interaction is A Learning Moment

It’s easy to forget that education is part of every sale. From planning a dream vacation to selecting a cardiologist, every consumer learns about your products or services before, during and after the sale.

Some companies sell items that require education on the spot, such as a one-day only discount, or certain ingredient or a unique process that makes the service experience unique. These are all learning moments, and the best companies never forget that fact.


The most successful organizations weave learning moments into every product or service. Disney takes an ordinary roller coaster and, with excellent design, signage, staging and sensory cues, elevates the ride into an exceptional experience. You learn to expect that level of entertainment from the Disney brand. Apple turns ordinary components (a hard drive, a LCD screen, a microprocessor, etc.) and elevates the final product from a mere commodity into a lifestyle statement. You learn to expect well-designed products that work intuitively. Experiencing their brand of service is a learning moment for every visitor or customer.

Success depends upon the customer’s ability to understand and recognize elements that differentiate companies and make their services better than the competition's. Every point of contact is simultaneously an opportunity to educate the consumer, while the consumer educates your organization.

We measure service “performance” for all of our clients. This relatively simple audit tells us how well a client has defined the service experience, observes customer interactions, and learns from customer interaction and employee experiences.

We also "eat our own dogfood" by reviewing our services. Our website has been tested extensively and...our users have challenges with the home page. It's too busy, too many touchpoints, too confusing and not enough differentiation. Although our intention was to create a highly interactive landing page, the final result is to muddy.

Perhaps when you read this, the website will be cleaned up. Hopefully you will see a home page that is warm, engaging, yet easy to understand - that is our service goal. Our customer interactions are a continuous learning moment for us too.