Sometimes good service is to tell to the customer they are not right?

I was recently at US on a business trip. At hotel restaurant I put the bill to my room bill. It was my first day there and I didn't remember my room number correctly, which I didn't notice. Then few minutes later the waiter came back being really sorry that She had made some mistake and I need to sign the thing again. I wondered a bit with the bill but eventually noticed that, the room number was actually the issue there.

For me, as a European and Finn, that's a bad service. I would have been much more pleased if the waiter would have just come to say, that she thinks that I may have entered the wrong number.

At the trip there was even a second similar thing that happened. I'm pretty sure I was at the wrong place and others had to make changes due to me, but others just kept telling, it was their fault.

I admire polite honesty on a customer service more than a fake pleasing. There's enough faking in the world.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Don't listen to your customer, watch them

One of the best advices, for creating great products and services, I've heard is: "Don't listen to your customers, watch them". Asking people what they want or would prefer often gives irrelevant answers. When watching how people behave, there can be noticed patterns, that will tell how they would like things to work. Their verbal answers might tell a different story.

Watching people's behavior will guide to the sources of what people really are missing. It's quite common to say different things than actually do. People try to be smarter than they really are and try to give creative answers to the question about how would they like things to work. Watching the behavior, is for that reason, more important than just listening.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

How easy it is to lose a customer in web

I'll tell a story about me. I'm a web consumer, I buy lot of things from many different webstores around Europe. I have been quite loayal consumer of Chain Reaction Cycle's, but they lost my loyalty with a thing that wasn't really their fault. I think it's a perfect story of how easy it is to lose a customer in web nowadays.

For my triathlon hobby I was looking for aerobars for my bike. As I've used to I headed to CRC to check their offering. And as usual they had really good offering and very competitive prices for aerobars. I selected one set of aerobars and checked from the details view, that clamb diameter 31mm was suitable for my handlebar. I went on and I bought the item.

About week later aerobars arrived and I went straight on to try those on my bike. I was bit amazed to notice those didn't fit, those were for 26mm handlebar. I started to investigate why this had happened and noticed that CRC had different information in buy and description sheets of that product. I had actually ordered aerobars for 26mm handlebar by accident.

I mailed them to tell what had happened. In couple of hours they mailed me back saying that this was unfortunate, but it my own fault due that information next to buy button had said it to be for 26mm handlebar. I could return the product, but I would need to pay the postage.

I do agree that it was part of my fault, but that is not the point in web consuming. Person who was handling my ticket should have noticed that I was a loyal customer. I had ordered within 6 months 953 euros worth of equipment from them in six different orders. He could have said that they are sorry for the mixup and pay the postage back for replacing aerobars to suitable ones.

What did happen was that I started to look for other options. I hadn't even looked for options for a long time. Now I started searching and got a really nice deal from another webstore. Just like that they lost one loayal customer.

These type webstores are all about small profits and they are trying to cut down costs on every possible place. These kind of webstores are still more than anything else all about cash flow and masses. They should do everything possible to keep customers happy. And this was all about 15 euros worth of postage expenses. Not much for me, and nothing for CRC.

To note, I have nothing against CRC. I still think it's an exceptional webstore with really good pricing and product catalog. This is just a story of me noticing they are not the only ones.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Great example of clear but bold website layout

Much too often news websites are designed to be newspaper like. Small pictures are here and there between the text. Layouts of the page are optimized for small screens and don't really use the capabities of the screens nowadays.

Cyclingtips is a fresh exception to the too common website layout. They really use big good pictures to fill the screen and the story. Check for example this article about tour de France's yesterday's stage - Chasing The Tour | Stage 11 – The Nail In the Coffin.

Here's a screenshot of their page.

Other news websites should learn from this. When people start to scroll they can scroll further. Large good quality pictures really make a difference.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Perfect customer experience, answer questions before those are asked

I was reading Trendwatching latest issue on (R)etail (R)evolution and they mentioned Threadless in their article. I went to their website, because of interest on cool concepts and T-shirts.

Living in Finland has one disadvantage, often the new cool stores don't deliver to here. Often you need to go through the whole website to find out if they deliver here and what it costs.

I was so pleased, when after skimming 10 seconds of skimming thought the website, I noticed that they answered to my question before I even asked it.

As a customer experience fanboy and product manager, I just love what they do. This is the perfect way to serve a customer. Surprise customers with answers they haven't yet even asked. Thanks to Threadless.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Social media has ruined headings

Many websites title their texts with headings that don't tell exactly what the text is about. Those use headings with falsely sets the expectation about the article, but then at the end article isn't really living it's promise.

I blame social media for this. Some websites think they can drive traffic to their site, with interesting headings. Then they post the title to all the different medias and hope for people to catch the link and come to their site. Headings role has changed from telling about the text to being the sales guys of the text. Heading is the one time shot to get person to be interested on the text.

I really hate this. I check tens of texts a day because of a title shared in social media. Too many of those are disappointments due false headings. Headings and the text don't match at the end.

I already have a list of sites I never go since they always exaggerate with their heading and don't really tell anything valuable with their texts. They just make headings out of speculations or copy news from others. Or then they do the worst tell old news with new headings.

Fake article with striking header

Too often there's headings like: "Google's social site is doomed. Will be closed in few weeks!", and then the news is about ending Google Buzz, which no one cares about anymore. So they are not totally lying, they are just setting totally different expectations towards the text.

This tactic might work for a while, but hopefully people will start to realize, that these companies are always playing tricks on us. Setting expectations higher than delivering, is never really a good tactic. I believe that delivery (here meaning quality of the content) is the key to success. Even sites are getting faster growth rates with sensational or striking headings, it still might turn out to be more valuable to make truthful headings about the content in the long run.

I would imagine, that in some companies there are discussions ongoing, that we should concentrate on the texts and contents, not just driving the traffic to our site. Traffic is important and valuable, but traffic with high bounce rate and unsatisfied customers will hit websites to their own ankle in the long run. I would hope that there comes a time, when deception is not a good strategy. With a world of quarterly business plans and short term bonuses, deception is a really good strategy to meet the targets. It's just not good for us the customers.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book review: DNA of customer experience by Colin Shaw

Customer experience in it's all forms is my favorite subject. I love to analyze how things could be done better and what makes a good or bad customer experience. Lately I got my hands on the book DNA of Customer Experience by Colin Shaw. It's about the emotional side of Customer Experience. It was a really exciting book experience for me.

Book introduces four major categories (or clusters as called in book) of emotional states, which affect customer experience. Those categories are explained really well with many good examples. Those categories are further broken down to emotions. Emotions in those categories really seem to make sense and finds a true counterpart in real life situations. This gives a good start to deeper understanding the meaning of emotions to customer experience and business figures.

The categories introduced in the book are Destroying cluster, Attention cluster, Recommendation cluster and Advocacy cluster. Most of those are quite self-explanatory. In the Destroying cluster are the feelings when people are disappointed and frustrated towards a service or a product. Those are the worst ones and maybe the easiest to fix. Then on the other end there is the Advocacy cluster, in where are the feelings to really feel belonging to something. It's the most happiest feelings towards a service you can get.

What I like in this book is, that it acknowledges that improving customer experience might need a strong business cases behind those activities. In order to get support from management there might need to be prove that it helps the business. The book makes a business case out of almost all examples. Some of those seems a bit artificial, but at least there are numbers behind improving customer experience. Those might really count in some organizations.

I've been a big believer of emotional side of customer experience already before reading this book. This was the book that gave me lot more facts on top of my own thinking. Emotions are really important when dealing with people. Even you give a good service, you might be missing something to really affect the person. In many business areas this is vital. People can be really loyal, when they have a good reason for it, or then they can swap between companies, if they are not emotionally attached to it. Emotions really matter. If you don't believe it, read this book.

My only criticism towards the book, is that it uses a lot of Beyond Philosophy's methodologies and terminology on measuring customer experience with emotions. This means that you can't really implement these things directly to your business, but you should actually buy the services from them. So there's a slight taste of marketing material in this, but you should get over it, due the actual content of this book is so brilliant and important.

I really recommend this book to everyone. This book is the key on understanding why some services or products just feel better than others. Even you wouldn't be directly involved in dealing with customers, you should read it. This is such an important book to understand what customer experience is all about.
Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Does everyone need to have their own web stores - two stories of bad customer experience

I've stated it earlier that I'm a big buyer from online stores. Nowadays I buy most of my stuff from online stores. I've just recently had couple of really hideous experiences with online stores which are side products of a service. One is from airline loyal customer program and second is from sports website.

Here's the first story. With airline loyal customer program, I got notified that some of my points were going old. As I didn't have enough for any decent flights, I thought I order some stuff from their online store. Everything went well and I placed order successfully, only small things was that products never arrived. As I had waited for a 6 weeks (look at my patience), I gave them a call. As usual, then number on their website couldn't answer to my worry and I had to call to another number. From there I got a responsible person to the phone and she told, that it has been very unfortunate that some of the items in my order are not available and they need to wait for those  before sending those to me. She promised that in 3 weeks I would receive my package.

After 3 weeks, nothing arrived, and actually nothing arrived in 7 weeks. I had almost forgotten the whole thing and then an email came and said, that they are sorry for the delay, but some items are still missing from my order. It stated that they will add a special gift to the package. This time they didn't give me any estimate of delivery. It haven't yet arrived. Let's see if it arrives for Christmas.

Fictional Web Wanderer store

The second story is about sports website. I really love the site and they are doing really good work on their sports journalism. That was one of the reasons, that I decided to order some sports equipment from their web store. Everything worked like a dream, order went well, I got notified that they posted me the package next day and it arrived two days later. The only thing was that it was missing 2 out 5 items I ordered. There was no notification of partial delivery or actually it didn't have any document at all. I decided to wait 3 more days, if they were just sending the order in two parts.

As you might guess, nothing happened. I emailed the company, and CEO of the small company got back to me soon, saying that 1 of the 5 items had been out of stock and it's coming to me in 2 days. I stated again that there were actually two items missing, but I didn't receive any answer. Again I waited a week and nothing happened. I mailed the CEO and he told that it should be there today or if it's not, then he's going to send me those again. Not very convincing, since they are not sure if it was send or not. This case is also still open and I'm eagerly waiting what's going to happen with it.

What's common with both of these cases is, that online store is a secondary business for them. For airline, keeping loyal customer is a key thing, but actually operating the store isn't. Same goes with this sports website, their main thing is to make good journalism and then they make some money out of their web store for selling sports items.

Maybe in both cases they should consider partnering. There's tens of excellent web store all around the world, and I would imagine one of those would be really happy to co-operate on selling their goods. And I bet they could even find someone to operate it totally under their own brand. Definitely their profit per sale would decrease, but also their cost per sale might decrease at the same level. Also there might be real savings on time spent on web store compared to their main activity.

These companies are in totally different situations. For an airline, running a online store is not a big cost, but they might consider it to be strategically important for keeping loyal customers happy. Then for small sports website, having an online web store might be a vital to keep the cash flow. In both cases still they need to improve their customer experience. If they are having a web store, they must do it well. It might cause them much more harm than there is benefit, if they serve their customers like I got served.

Most of the customers are already sharing many of their experiences around the web. This trend is not going anywhere, but it will increase over time. Default level of customer experience have raised a lot with web stores. People expect to be always aware of their order status. They expect to be notified on any delays or changes. That's the basics web stores nowadays have to come up with. If they want to please the customers, they need to do lot more.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

How easy it is to serve customers well - case Garmin

So often I've been facing poor customer experiences with broken products, that I was again ready for a fight when charger from our Garmin Forerunner 110 sports watch broke down just after two months of usage. I found the local Garmin warranty and maintenance phone number and took the call: 

"Hi, I have Forerunner 110 and clip connecting the charger to the watch broke down. I've had it only for 2 months."

Lady in the phone responded:

"Was it Forerunner 110?"

Me:"Yes"

"What's your address, so we'll send you a new one."

I was so amazed on this service they provided. It just made my day, because it was so easy and I've been a big fan of Garmin products for a longer time. Now I'm a fan of the whole company.

It's so easy to always complain about bad services, so I thought it's time to also credit the ones who really know how to serve the customer well. Thanks Garmin Finland for great service.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

IKEA just gets it

Yesterday I was at Ikea and noticed how cleverly they place their goods. They are really thinking the whole consumer experience and actual needs of the person. That of course helps on their sales, but it’s also really convenient for the customers.

So what they actually do, is when you are in section for frames and paintings, there’s small sets of tools to hang those in the wall, spread all around that section. So when you pick a frame, you actually realize I need to hang it on the wall and I need some tools for it. Ikea jumps in here and offers set of tools to be picked up also. How convenient.

This same approach is taken all around. So where there are beds, there’s small amounts of pillows and blankets next to those. Still there’s their own sections for all of these separately. So if you are only there for pillows and blankets, you can go to that section directly.

That’s just clever.

This was originally posted 17.2.2011 at lostinux.wordpress.com. I've closed that blog of mine and I'm re-posting some of the most popular and best posts from there to here.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

What can we learn from UX in Grocery store

Have you ever thought user experience on grocery store. They have been thinking it for much longer than anyone on IT. Here’s my observations.

Often first ones when you come in are the fruits and vegetables. I think those have a couple of meanings. First those most often look nice and give a fresh look to the store. Second those actually takes most of the time in store, so having those first make store look popular, since there is always people there. Third, most of the people will always get something from that section, so it is convenient to have it first, to minimize the trouble from everyone.

Shelves in the store are designed so that in the level of the eye and hand there are the most popular and most used items. In the top and bottom shelves are niche products, which users of those will find even from non optimal places.

Many stores also use the trick on placing products, which have a best before date coming sooner, on the right side of line of products. There are more right-handed people, so those products will get sold before the date from the right side.

Then thinking about cash desk. There are products which are often bought impulsively, like candies and soft drinks. Also close to cash desks there are products which are easy to steal, so cash personnel can try to take an eye on those ones.

In addition, there’s lot of stuff ongoing in the background making sure there are things to sell and those are fresh. Logistics and everything is meant to be silent and unnoticed, still having one of the most important parts of user experience. If there’s nothing to sell in grocery store, user experience is always terrible.

If you compare this to any software, it’s not that different. You want your customers to think this is fresh and easy to use. You want to look popular. You want your content to be there. You want people to exploit some new stuff also on the way. UX in grocery store and SW are not that different. And I actually think no user experience is that different from another.

This was originally posted 6.12.2010 at lostinux.wordpress.com. I've closed that blog of mine and I'm re-posting some of the most popular and best posts from there to here.
Written by +Henri Hämäläinen