During a presentation the other day, one attendee asked me:

“do you think customer expectations are rising? Is it a race to the top?”

Answer: Yes.

But you know that.

So, what do you have to do to generate positive Word-of-Mouth so your customers will talk about you?

Bad news: there’s no one answer.

Good news: you can learn from others who do it…and figure out how to apply the essence of that lesson to your business.

Today’s example. The Mini-Bar in DC, which offers a 28 course menu, consisting of ingredients such as liquid nitrogen; agar agar; sodium alginate and calcium chloride.

What's better: You can only call between 9am and 9:05am to make your reservation, for the next month!

Now, that’s remarkable.

CAll me out of the loop, but I had never heard of  “Five Guys Restaurant” until yesterday.

Met up with Adam Goozh, Managing Director over at WashingtonVC and he went in for a bite.

He was incredulous that I wasn’t familiar with the chain.

Then, he proceeded to roll off a number of reasons why he absolutely LOVED the restaurant. It’s authentic story (just does a few things….very well with a basic menu), its high quality, and the ambience.

I was loving the positive WOM that the company had obviously generated.

As we were waiting for his order, I saw this sign at the soda fountain.

A lot of places have signs proclaiming their love of the customer, but it was great to see it at Five Guys AFTER Adam had already demonstrated that they live by it.

A great first impression made by a receptionist can send a meeting off on a positive direction, as I saw at the Motley Fool and Social Solutions.

Unfortunately, the inverse is true as well.

I spend a lot of time thinking about energy efficiency in my home. I even had an assessment done on my house (from personal blog) and have implemented many of the recommendations.

So, though I don’t listen to radio too often, I was intrigued when I heard an ad for 888-neverpaint and their energy efficient siding (not going to link, but it is at liquidsiding.com if you want to see it yourself).

I called.

I figured I’m a pretty good prospect for this type of purchase, plus as a blogger, I obviously like to talk about stuff! ;-)

When the receptionist answered, her tone made me feel like I was interrupting her, like I was doing her a disservice.

I said, “I heard your ad on the radio and it sounds intriguing.”

Her reaction was non-plussed. Non-chalant.

I did not get the warm fuzzies.

Based on those 10 seconds, I decided I wasn’t going to buy from this company. Just had a bad feeling.

She offered to send someone for an estimate, but the experience had changed from anticipation/excitement to time-suck.

“No worries, I’ll just look at your website. What’s the address?”
(The URL was not mentioned in the ad, just the toll-free number..which is ok-maybe…if your inbound sales person is any good)

And like that, the prospect (me) was out the window.

Lesson (again): EVERY single part of the customer experience, every touch point, every person matters. REALLY matters.

  Visited the Bottle King in New Jersey the other night (hey, it was market research) and noticed a trend that has probably been under way for a while now.

The 'upscaling' of bottles/packaging.

Now, I have No idea if Dos Lunas Tequila is actually better than the others (and after a few bad nights in college, I don't touch the stuff), but I'll say this...the packaging certainly could lead you to the conclusion that it does (though it does look a bit like shampoo.)

The point is this, as Dan Pink suggests in "A Whole New Mind", we are moving into the conceptual age and the "experience" around the product needs to appeal to, and delight, all of our senses.

And, I'll say, this applies to the services industry as well...

Word-of-Mouth marketing is not a 1 time event.

It's an ongoing activity. And, if it's not, the damage that can be done could be worse than if you hadn't begun a WOM effort to begin with. Of course, if you don't do that, you're headed to irrelevance.

Guess that leaves no choice, eh?

I really wish my wonderful experience with T-mobile hadn't taken a turn for the worse.

But, it has. It's inconsistent. And that's not good.

After hanging up with the fantastic customer service rep, I had 3 expectations.

1. she would call the loyalty department as an advocate on my behalf. Then, they would call me to say that my new phone was on the way
2. the rep would start my plan on the optimal day, as we had discussed
3. after blogging the story and emailing it to the CEO, that I'd hear something back.

Let's start with #3.

I emailed the CEO twice. Nothing. Not even a "hey, thanks." Kind of demoralizing.

#2 is TBD, so we'll see what happens.

On #1, big strikeout. I hadn't received any word, so I called back.

The loyalty rep said, "I don't see anything here in the notes and I'm afraid we can't give you a phone for less than $40 and a 1 year contract."

Bummer.

Am I leaving T-mobile over this?

No.

Is my enthusiasm as a "raving fan" for T-mobile as a "brand worth a weekend" diminished? Yes.

Fickle, maybe, but am I so different than any other customer today?

I've professed my love of all things E*Trade for a while now.

I offered them up as a "Brand Worth a Weekend."  And yes, there was the unsolicited proposal which my readers thoroughly torched (do I have to link to it? Ok, fine, here.)

As a professed admirer of E*Trade, however, and a customer with multiple accounts (I have a great financial advisor on tax minimization, lmk if you need one), and of longstanding, I have different expectations of my experience there.

I expect that they will know who I am.

I expect that they will send me only relevant offers.

In the last 2 weeks, they have struck out twice in this regard.

First, I was sent an offer to "open a new account and get reduced cost trades." Now, I had just opened 2 add'l accounts 2 days prior, so I asked if I was eligible.

Answer: No, only totally new account holders. Don't you hate when people with NO history with a company get preferential treatment to those who have been there for (in my case 9) years?

Second, as I'm now "going solo" on the business front, I applied for a 2nd credit card (one for biz, one for personal. Makes sense, right?)

REJECTED! Why? Because I recently established a new account. Well, this is true, but what about the other 10 that you've had for years.

I inquire about this and am told:

"It is E*Trade policy to only have one Credit Card per SSN."

I am sure there is some good reason for this, but it doesn't make me feel good, given the percentage of my portfolio and accounts which sit at E*Trade (most of it).

Expectations from your, best customers (and those who think of themselves as your best customers) are high and getting higher. I know you are a big company,but I also know that with all of the technology, data mining, and personalization capabilities out there, I expect a different type of relationship.

Maybe this is what Rohit is talking about after all...

When planning an in-person marketing event, the first thing I do is put together an "Experience Brief."

Much like a business plan, it is my vision for how the guests at the event will experience the day.

On March 31st, I'm facilitating an event for Microsoft's partners who sell into the Federal Gov't (Reston, VA--invite here).

Before I did one thing, I put the brief together so I could understand how things would play out...and effectively communicate to my extended team. What's more, it ensured that I stayed focus on the most important part of the event...the attendee experience.

Here's the brief.

And lest you think I only do this at work...yesterday, my wife and I hosted a gathering for 250 people to celebrate the birth of our 3rd child. We followed the same protocol. Here are the results.

I shop at Home Depot a lot (I do have some issues w/store organization and ability to find stuff, but generally, I feel like I get value for the money).

What bothers me, however, is when I go to the store finder to see hours of operation and it says, "call the store."

Why add a step to the process?

Why not have the store manager log on each night, update the hours as necessary, and log-off?

That would be one step instead of having his people answer dozens or hundreds of calls each day?

On top of that, it would improve the customer experience, since I get what I need ASAP.

Folks...each of us (and that includes Microsoft) has got to make it as easy as possible for people to do business with us.

I WANT to give Home Depot money...why add one step to that process?

And Kudos to Best Buy for getting it right

For the technologically advanced, one of the most frustrating things is to call tech support and be treated like a novice.

"Yes, I know where the 'start' button is.'

"Yes, the battery is in the cell phone.'

So, it's particularly rewarding when you call tech support and w/in seconds, the rep makes it clear that

1. he knows he is not talking to an average user
2. he knows a lot about the subject at hand.

Coming on the heels of Joey's presentation yesterday, this was top of mind for me....the customer experience.

While I think the Dash is a Blackberry killer, I did have one problem I wanted addressed.

Immediately, I was put into the PDA support department and Rudy knew that I didn't want to have my time wasted. We addressed the issue and I felt listened to.

Customer service reps can be cheap or expensive, but you get what you pay for, right?

Isn't it better for me to talk to one expensive guy once than 5 poorly trained/poorly compensated guys over the course of an hour? It's more expensive for the company and more frustrating for me, as the customer.

Invest in your front line folks...they are the first part of each new experience your customer has.

The average American has over 3000 customer experiences daily.

And Joey Coleman of Design Symphony understands what it takes to make a customer feel good about you.

In an era where "everyone competes on speed (thanks to ups, fedex) and price (china, walmart)," customers look at you through the lens of

• physical performance
• senses stimulated
• emotions evoked

Every single interaction (your lobby, business card, email, voice mail, how you dress) either shapes a good or poor experience.

How can you impact the situation so that a customer is WOWed by working with you or your company?

Joey spent lunchtime with a number of partners in the Microsoft DC office talking about this very issue.

First, he asked us to list our bad customer experiences.

Then, he asked us to list our good customer experiences.

He then worked us all through an exercise to reconfigure how we look at the experience we are giving our customers?

1. is your website bland or boring?
2. when you give your elevator pitch, do you say trite phrases like "Microsoft partner," "trusted advisor," and "outsourced IT?" or do you say, "I save the world by installing Exchange Server!!"  Ok, slight hyperbole, but you get the point.

I met Joey at the Seth Godin event at U of MD and he astounded me with his, yes, business card. It is the ONLY card I have kept in the last year!

The guy just gets it.

Flying to Redmond for a few days. I get an email last night from United re: automated check-in. Great!

I go through the process and then I see an offer.

Redeem 15,000 miles for a First Class Upgrade.

I figure, what the heck, let's give it a whirl (redeeming miles is so difficult anyway), so I "make the purchase."

When I confirm, I get a message:

"Due to a system-wide error, this purchase cannot be confirmed."

What was once painless has the risk of becoming painful.

• were my miles deducted?
• will I get the upgrade?

All I can see now is hassle...having to prove that in fact I didn't use the miles or having to figure out if I did indeed get the upgrade.

Then, I get to check-in counter. The lady there says, "that's not up to us, talk to the gate agent."

I get to the gate. He says, "We can't make the same offer to you here as you get online?"

Why not?

There's one airline. I'm one customer. Why should I have different experiences depending on where I am in your organization.

Are your customers and clients subject to inconsistent experiences from your company? What can you do to change that?

(Update: I did get the First Class Upgrade after all...though there were a few system glitches. My profile said: Upgrade Waitlist, but on the master Waitlist file, I wasn't there)

Read an article a few weeks ago in SmartMoney about high-end spas/resorts where the rich go to refresh themselves. They are in unusual locales, or at least that was the theme of the article.

For a work retreat last week, I went to Nemacolin which may be one of them. It's HUGE and has all of the amenities.

The resort was founded by the owner of 84 Lumber and shows, once again, that if you have a huge amount of money, there's really no limit to the extent of decorating you can go.

But here's one thing that annoys me....

Why, in a place like this, where you are paying through the nose...do they charge you $10 ($20 before 3pm) to use the pool or the sauna?

Why not just raise the room rates on everyone by $5/night (not like we're going to go to Motel6-nothing against them) and make it open access? You'll probably only get a few extra people and make more money at the same time, while not angering/irritating anyone.

Just feels like a nickel/diming scenario. Don't know about you, but that leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

Now, here's the question: where do you nickel and dime your customers? What can you do to change it?

When I started out in the Internet business professionally (c. 1996), the driving force that motivated me was e-commerce. Snickelways' (one of my first employers) guiding mantra (it's name in fact) came from the idea that the Internet would simplify transactions and facilitate business.

Now, 10 years down the road, I think about the transactions I made online...on Friday alone.

• sold two items on eBay (one to Poland) and bought 1 item
• bought a pair of shoes ( have wide feet) from Hitchcock
• moved money from my Fidelity account to my NetBank account to my Prosper account
• made a trade at eTrade
• bought a new printer/scanner/copier from Costco
• made a donation via Network for Good after researching the effectiveness at CharityNavigator
• reserved a book at my local library
• set up an affiliate link to promote the book, Moneyballvia Amazon (and get paid if someone buys) 
• and supported some of my partners doing events through Microsoft Partner Events

And it all probably took less than 1 hour...The cost of doing business and trying things continues to drop.

Now the question is...how are you modifying your business to

1. be prepared for this ongoing wave of change
2. take advantage of it