How much work would you ask your customers to do?

On a recent trip to see a good friend, he and I went to dinner at a steakhouse he was excited to show me. The source of his excitement was their unique take on meal preparation. He described a flat stone heated hot enough to cook on and brought, with my steak, to me for tableside grilling. The twist: I get to do the grilling myself, preparing my steak to my own desired doneness.

This didn’t seem like a terrific idea to me as a customer. I go to restaurants to have professionals – better cooks than I – prepare my food for me. That I was going to play a significant role in my own service experience while I knew there was someone more qualified and paid to do it standing through a set of double doors didn’t excite me.

Still, I’m always up for a new experience, and I trust my friend completely. (military basic training followed by 4 years of college together tend to do that) So, I mustered up some excitement to accompany the anxiety that came with the prospect of cooking my own tableside meal.

An immediate benefit of this format was that I got to see the main ingredient raw. You can’t hide bad product when the inputs are raw, and this steak was spectacular. I grew a little more excited.

As I started searing my steak, I began to see the participation benefit. Rather than a distracting hassle, the experience let my friend and I share an experience along with each others’ company.
The quality of the product, the way every other detail was taken care of and the result created accomplishment satisfaction that surpassed what consumption satisfaction would have provided.

Customer role is often overlooked in development of the service encounter. Most businesses fail to realize the potential of the service-producing capacity that also pays the bill, and how in some cases, getting a customer to do more work may actually increase their satisfaction with the encounter.

As you way how to include the customer in producing your performance, be strategic, but don’t overlook opportunities to push the boundaries of how you can apply their service capacity. Like a restaurant owner that says, “I know! Let’s get customers to cook their own meals!”

More service than is reasonable.

Give more service than our customers think is reasonable.

If you take one message away from Chris Zane’s new book “Reinventing the Wheel”, that’s it.

Service is fundamentally about making and delivering on promises. That means different things to different businesses. For Zane’s Cycles, that means the biggest, most audacious promises they are willing to make without scaring themselves. (And sometimes even when they do.) It also means delivering on those promises with exceptional reliability, continuously executing on fundamentals, finding defects and driving them out of the business. The promises that Zane’s makes are the kind that stretch well beyond customers’ own expectations. Its good theater and good business. The extent to which they’re willing to go amazes, but their ability to deliver on them wins them loyal customers while keeping the actual outlay on amazing promises to a minimum.

Zane’s pushes the envelope in providing service that others can’t or won’t deliver by using Customer Lifetime Value as their compass. As a service business, they make decisions based on the relationship - like we all say we should, rather than on the next transaction - like most of us do. One of the most refreshing aspects of the book is that they have chosen a service philosophy as a stern guide, but use trial and error more than a Fortune 500 would in finding ways to follow it. They don’t always get it right, but when it does, the results are spectacular levels of differentiation from their competitors.

There are other ways to run a successful service business - delight isn’t a strategy that anyone can or should follow. In fact, Zane’s Cycles relies on the fact that competitors that try to follow their service lead often hurt themselves financially trying to live up to a service level their people and processes aren’t prepared to support. Zane’s story demonstrates only how they did it and how they intend to continue into the future.

But while Zane’s success may not be a blueprint for everyone, the lesson that everyone can take from their story is that to develop true service business – customer relationships make service decisions based on the lifetime value rather than the profit involved in the next transaction. That logic applied consistently will make it feel to your customers (and competitors) like you provide more service than is reasonable.

What is Service?

As the service community active in social media rushes to define terminology that supports still emerging business models, (where SCRM begins and ends, how to make CX & CEM meaningful for everyone, and “now that we’ve got one, what the heck is a Chief Customer Officer supposed to do?”) I’m spending some time on a simpler question.

It’s not new, but one I see peers, academics, industry experts, even the Twitter #custserv group struggle with from time-to-time. The confusion is partially born out of our deep bank of experiences as consumers, which gives definitions for "service" a Potter Stewart, I-know-it-when-I-see-it kind of fuzziness.

Adding to the problem is that service has three accurate and potentially concurrently applicable meanings. We use any and all of them, based on our own experience and perspectives from within the organizations we work.

It can be a business model that relies on a performance or process to satisfy customers. In this sense, service can be the rough equivalent to a “product line” of intangible goods, or even an revenue model for an entire company.

It can be the process or performance act itself – either the entire operation that delivers an experience to customers, or a part of it.

It can be the support provided to customers that interact with a company’s products or services – what we tend to consider when we’re talking about “customer service”.

The distinctions between them are important, but only to an en extent.

Whether you’re speaking about an enterprise or a customer encounter, whether you use it for internal or external audiences, the core idea is simple, and it is the same: Service is the process of making and fulfilling promises to customers.

You can put the act of making and fulfilling a promise into each one of the definitions of “service” that are typically used, and they not only work, but are made even more distinct from each other.

I’ve said here that service is important because every business is a service business. What I mean is that every organization is in business to make and fulfill promises.

If you want to get better at service, one way is to take a long look at how your organization deals with promises. How you make them to customers, how you make it possible for them to be fulfilled, and ultimately how - or how well - you keep them.

A performance diner misses a note.

Traveling through Ontario last week, I unexpectedly came across a new restaurant location of a burger joint that served as a hangout in college. While it wasn't the original location from my youth, my wife (who frequented the same place in her collegiate days) and I stoppped in for some nostalgia.

The original was a great old diner with a vintage feel. Great food. The experience was made more unique by their tendency to sing out the orders in unison as they were taken from the customer. It wasn’t a necessary component of the experience, but it was a unique touch and a differentiator for those who appreciated the kitsch of the physical environment.

Fast forward ten years, and my college hangout has been somewhat successful. They’ve expanded goegraphically, including the location we patronized.

The experience is designed to be the same, but in a small single location remote from the original business, it didn’t come off as consistent with the original. The retro restaurant layout was similar, and the food was still exceptional. But the performance component of the experience that involved singing was half-hearted at best, and sometimes abandoned entirely. My guess is that remote location employees, who had never seen the experience effect of the original but been coached to execute it, failed to see what that aspect of the experience added.

Consistency of the experience is tough to maintain as a business grows and control over how the service is executed gets more & more remote.

As the business grows, revisit the service experience from time to time to see what components still fit with the overall service vision, which don’t and which, while they may fit, have become too difficult to execute.

If this business had done so, rather than just stamping out copies of the original model and expecting them to work in alternate locations with different management and employees, it would have noted that the singing component of the experience wasn’t core, that it was increasingly difficult to execute consistently as the business grows.

Its true that every service encounter is a performance. But if your performance contains elements that are tough to execute and are not critical to the experience, consider editing the routine to place more emphasis on elements that will create an impact.

Changing customer behavior? Choose carrot or stick carefully.

I got an email from my insurance agent, informing me that I hadn’t signed up for electronic delivery of my bill. It turned out that I was still receiving paper bills and, sensibly, they wanted me to shift to paperless transactions.

But they didn’t just rely on an appeal to my sense of morality to get me to make the transition.

To motivate me to change my behavior, they told me that if I weren’t to change my billing to the paperless option, I would lose my 10% ebilling discount (that frankly, I was unaware I had.)

There are a lot of ways to get customers to change their behavior. In many cases, change is as easy as letting customers know what behavior you expect of them. In others, the only way to effect the change in customer behavior is align the customers benefit with it. Some companies gently make it worth the customer’s effort to change. Southwest Airlines is a master at this, for example, getting customers to the gate early through their unique boarding process and keeping them close by with comfortable chairs and electrical outlets.

Another way to align customer interests with the desired behavior is to punish the alternative.

In this case, my insurance company suggested that a benefit I already receive would be lost if I failed to act the way they wanted.

Whether the discount was real or not is almost immaterial. I was going to have to pay an additional 10% if I didn’t make the small change in behavior they were asking for - enough for me to go online and make the shift.

Both methods of changing customer behavior can be effective. Of course, Southwest’s behavior changes are subtle enough that most don’t even perceive them until they’re ingrained, and their efforts often win them fans along the way. My insurance company on the other hand? Well, the threat was definitely perceived. And while it didn’t upset me any (it might others) it certainly won’t endear them to me either.

Great Servicescapes: Shear Madness

I get bored during haircuts. Maybe it’s the boy in me, but I still see my regular trip to the barber as a necessary evil, something to be put off for any good reason.

I can’t imagine being 5, or worse, 2, and having to endure twenty minutes in a barber’s chair.

Luckily, my boys have a great service environment to have their haircut encounters.

Shear Madness takes what could be an almost interminable half hour in a young man’s life and turns it into enough fun to ask for by name.

The experience was created as seen through the lens of its customers. Chairs are various forms of transportation, from a Blue Angels fighter or NASCAR replica to a Malibu Barbie Corvette. Every station has a dedicated TV that plays a variety of children’s programming all day, every day. Kids don’t like Dora & Spongebob? TV’s are Playstation-equipped so that young customers can play video games while their hair is cut. Because we don’t have video games in the home, my eldest son thought until recently that the barber was the only place they existed. “I wish I could get my hair cut every day” is not a phrase I have ever said, much less when I was five.

It’s not revolutionary.

But if you can remember the excruciating experience of going to the dentist when you were young, having all manner of pokes, prods and poor tastes and then being “rewarded” with a sucker upon leaving, you’ll admit that it is innovative.

They’ve picked their customer - I can’t overstate how important that is - and oriented the experience to them, making the experience consistent from the front door to the chair and back. Their focus is resolute enough that they get their testimonials from their child customers and the parents who share the experiences - and pay the bill.



They’re not catering to everyone. I suspect by the time my guys are ten, they won’t care for it any more. Maybe they’ll think it’s too childish. (Though I wish I had entertaining distractions while tending to my regular grooming even now)

But there’ll be a lot of haircuts between now and then, and they’ll get most of them.

"Dinner & a movie" gets a completely new meaning.

Dinner & a movie.

You’ve heard the phrase. Likely been on a date that fits the description.

How did it play out? What were the steps?

For most of my adolescent / adult life, dinner & a movie has involved me accompanying someone to dinner. We go through the full service encounter of a meal. Maybe it includes drinks. At the end of that service experience, we then we leave the restaurant and go to a movie to engage in another, completely separate, service experience.

So why has it taken so long to put these experiences together in a single service experience?

AMC Theatres’ Fork & Screen is the type of in-theatre dining experience that is quickly becoming more common. It combines a small capacity theatre with a full-service restaurant & bar for in-viewing table service.

It’s service genius, but I don’t feel that it should have been. To moviegoers, it is a unique experience, but it simply combines two pre-existing experiences in a new way. Two experiences that have been linked since both have been in existence. So why is Dinner AT a movie only becoming more common now?

Because as business owners and service managers tend to be narrow in our definitions of their business model. On one hand, restaurants are busy trying to be the most successful restaurant on their block, in their category, whatever. On the other, theatres are trying to take share from the other local theatres - so much so that it takes a special brand of myopia to operate a movie theatre, knowing that many patrons are coming directly from a meal, have in your theatre a foodservice operation, yet never link that perhaps you could be stealing share from another industry entirely by viewing your business model a little more expansively.

Somebody looks a little more expansively at what customers do before and after their experience, and bring forward a new experience that either existing model are at a disadvantage competing against.

So what’s your industry’s “dinner & a movie”?

When customer service help is unwanted.

On Saturday mornings, before the rest of the house wakes up, I do my weekly bills. Just me, a semi-dark house, ample quiet, the first coffee of the day, no interruptions.

So I was surprised and annoyed when my bank popped a proactive customer service chat into my bill paying session with an offer of help to find the financial services solutions I need.

I don’t know what I found more bothersome – the intrusion of someone popping in on me while in the secure section of my financial management site, or that because I was in online bill pay section of the site, it would have been unlikely that they could have assisted me in my self-service. (Unless they were offering to take the gas bill off my hands for this month.)

My reaction was so viscerally negative that the options to accept the chat or close the window didn’t seem enough – I wanted a button that said, “No, and don’t ever ask again.”

I know that customer service groups engage in proactive chat to route people away from customer service lines and to drive revenue from additional service purchases. And I'm aware that my bank knows what I have in my checking account. But I view this encounter like I would my doctor asking me when I'm going to schedule a prostate exam while we're in the health club steam room – I may need the advice, but the time & place is inappropriate. I’ll ask on my own terms, thank you.

Am I overreacting here?

In a successful service encounter, the provider knows when to play their role and when to step back let the customer play theirs. In this case, I feel the provider entered into a part of the encounter where they weren’t welcome. But is this where service encounters enabled by technology are headed? Is this the new service model, and in two years I’m going to be laughing at myself for stodgily refusing someone’s help?

Related, has self-service become pervasive and have we been so well trained as customers that we now get offended when someone offers help? I can’t help but think that if someone offered to pump my gas, I might have a similar reaction.

Be dramatic, but be real.

On a date to a local French restaurant we’d been meaning to try for some time, my wife and I encountered a well-intentioned service touch that didn’t fit the experience.

Upon entering the restaurant, we were greeted by the host with a well spoken “Bon soir, Monsieur et Madame.” I thought it was a nice touch. My wife, a fluent French speaker, wondered aloud after we were seated whether she & the rest of the staff could really speak French.

When it came time to order, she followed the host’s lead, speaking only in French. The experiment didn’t last long, our server stopping her to repeat the order in English. The service miscue didn’t let either of us down - in suburban Kansas City, our expectation wasn’t of a fully authentic French dining experience - but it was an unnecessarily poor opening, given that the food was outstanding and the service was otherwise terrific.

As you craft the service experience, at some point you must decide whether that experience will be an exact representation of your vision, or the best possible experience you can consistently create.

In this example, the exact representation of the vision means that the owner would commit to finding French-speaking staff. But that decision has other implications. The market for French servers in Kansas City is relatively small. Finding and keeping an authentic French-speaking staff would likely cost more than for a comparable restaurant. They might have to increase prices to compensate for the authenticity of the experience, which then changes other strategic aspects, such as whether the location is appropriate. It is definitely more work, but if the vision is to be 100% authentic, you have to commit to it.

More frequently, service businesses take the alternate route. This one did, compromising on some elements, making the experience as close as possible to French dining as they could without taking on the additional work and cost of finding French-speaking service staff. This choice is perfectly acceptable, and strategically may be the better of the two. It’s true that people have an expectation of the experience even before they try it, but you have the opportunity to set appropriate expectations through each service encounter.

The one choice you should not make is to fake the experience you want people to perceive you will give them. Whether your vision is to be consistent in every little detail of the experience or to provide an experience that sacrifices on some touchpoints, but has a more broad appeal, always go with the reality of who you are over the falsity of who you think people may wish you were.

If the experience is good, people will forgive the little stuff that is out of place.

Alex Trebek's Service Innovation Contribution.

The IBM Jeopardy challenge is captivating technophiles and game show fans alike this week as Watson – IBM’s artificial intelligence designed to answer natural language questions – competes against two all-time Jeopardy champions. Reactions to the highly televised demo have ranged from outright wonder to outright fear – the latter based on an idea that Watson may somehow show up tomorrow to compete for a job you’re applying to. (If that is the case, I’d suggest working on your trivia skills for the interview.)

The demonstration also has drawn me in. Not because of trivia or tech inclinations - both of which I may have - but because I’m a service geek.

In the last six months, I’ve had the pleasure of seeing two Senior IBMers talk about the Jeopardy Challenge, which we now know as Watson: first Nicholas Donofrio at the Kansas City Chamber of Commerce Innovation Conference and then Robert Morris, keynoting at the WP Carey Compete Through Service Symposium.

Both speakers shared a vision of the Jeopardy Challenge algorithm intelligence initiating a service quality revolution similar to what we saw in product quality in the latter half of the last century.

It makes for good strategy that the world’s largest service business positions itself to lead in a global service economy that for some countries already approaches 75% of GDP.

In the IBM view, service quality refers mostly to the ability for service encounters to produce a successful outcome. It's these service consistency & reliability problems – the type for which understanding of solving problems expressed in human language is critical – that are the future for Watson.

It makes sense. Variability among front line service employees, customers and in the service environment make for results that are more difficult to replicate than in product businesses. Putting Watsn-like technology on the front line of service would help reduce variance in the experience customer interaction-to-customer interaction.

But service quality isn’t just about reliability. Successful service experiences may be based as much on the less concrete experience dimensions of responsiveness, empathy and assurance as they are on outcome reliability. Because of this, prudence needs to be used in applying the technology. It carries the risk of improving reliability of outcomes, while at the same time reducing the ability to provide the less tangible responsiveness, empathy and assurance aspects of service quality that many service encounters are ultimately judged by.

While Watson is gaining praise for its second day dismantling of a pair of Jeopardy Hall-of-Famers, I’m still more interested in what it's going to do next.

Homeaway.com wants to save me from hotel stays.

In preparation for #BZBowl, I’m experiencing as many of the SuperBowl advertisers’ products & services as possible, comparing whether my service encounter lives up to the promises they make through marketing. Today’s #BZBowl Week post involves CareerBuilder.com.

Homeaway.com is back for the SuperBowl in 2011, after last year’s ad featuring Beverly D’Angelo and Chevy Chase reprising their roles as the vacationing Griswolds. They pre-released the 2011 ad, featuring a representative of The Ministry of Detourism, a government agency committed to saving vacations.



Interesting about this ad is that Homeaway that isn’t trying to compare favorably to their category, rather trying to convert vacation travelers from a different accommodations services category to a better option.

To pull it off, the ad empathizes with the traveler, both showing and explaining how hotel stays can cramp and otherwise ruin a family’s holiday and paid off with the line, “Space! Privacy! Freedom! Why hotel when you can home away?”

The ad promises that Homeaway will provide a superior experience to what you would find in a hotel at comparable cost., explaining that the Ministry of Detourism is committed to saving vacations by preventing families from “getting swindled because hotels hate your guts.” The reliability message is continued as the family moves down a moving walkway, surrounded by flat screens showcasing the multitude of accommodations options available.

Interactive marketing users find homeaway.com consistent with the service promises made in the ad. Reliability and empathy are reinforce through claims of “The world’s most trusted vacation rental site”, “The world's largest selection of vacation homes, condos, cabins & villas” and reinforcement of the favorable comparison to the hotel experience.

The user experience reflects the same themes and carries them a step further. Browsing for a European rental property for a future vacation with my wife, HomeAway offered more than 17,000 options in Spain alone, sortable by property type, location type, and travel style.

The experience provides further assurance to the quality of the properties they represent through detailed reviews of past travelers, tons of images of the properties and videos showcasing the accommodations and their surroundings.

Homeaway isn’t competing to be the best in their category, they’re trying to redefine their category and compete against what they position as an inferior experience. For me, at least, it was effective. For vacations, I’ve always consumed hotel experience. Homeaway has me considering the vacation rental alternative for the first time. As the company that made the alternative viable, they’ve got the inside track for my business.

"Why yes, Ms. Fossey, we do have a job for you"

In preparation for #BZBowl, I’m experiencing as many of the SuperBowl advertisers’ products & services as possible, comparing whether my service encounter lives up to the promises they make through marketing. Today’s #BZBowl Week post involves CareerBuilder.com.

CareerBuilder is bringing the monkeys back to the Super Bowl. It carries on the line of prior Super Bowl ads, and since simians are comedic gold, I’m sure this one will win rave reviews on Monday. But what is CareerBuilder promising with the monkey ads?

A line from a previous version exclaimed, “It’s tough working with monkeys, and we’ve had enough.” A pretty clear play on empathy with the jobseeker - that CareerBuilder understands what it is like to work in an environment where coworkers are non-supportive, disengaged, and even dumb - and that they can help match a jobseeker with a company where all ones coworkers aren't monkeys. Personally, I’ve never worked with monkeys. (Something Matthew Broderick can’t say.) Sure, there is the infrequent gorilla in my midst, but in my experience, anyone convinced that they work in an all monkey environment is usually the person displaying the ape-like behavior.

Their other tag lines promise a little more, but not much:

From the candidate side, “Want a new job? We’ve got the most.” and from the employer side, “Need better candidates? We’ve got the most”. Abundance is a clear promise, but it conflicts with the monkey theme. If you have both the most candidates and the most jobs, it seems that CareerBuilder would be the most likely congregating place for monkey candidates looking for monkey jobs.

They also add “A better job awaits” onto the line. If you buy the “I work with monkeys” theme, this is a much more meaningful promise, that using CareerBuilder services will improve the quality of your work life by reliably finding a better job fit, or at least one with less flying feces.



The interactive marketing on CareerBuilder.com continues the volume promise, claiming 1.6 million jobs on the site. After I registered, I immediately started receiving updates of positions – both on the site and emailed to me. The quality of fit for almost all would have been suspect, but the activity reinforced the promise that, “hey, there’s lots of stuff here for you to be interested in.” If I were looking for sheer volume of postings, I might be very happy with CareerBuilder. It’s possible I’d still be working with monkeys – just in a different barrel.

Empathy and assurance are key service aspects to a job seeker. So is reliability. Through advertising and interactive marketing, CareerBuilder offered little of any. What they promise, and deliver on, is volume. It’s a flexibility promise that implies because we have the most, we MUST have something for you.

You may just have to get used to monkeys.

GoDaddy makes ads people love to hate, but how’s the service?

In preparation for #BZBowl, I’m experiencing as many of the SuperBowl advertisers’ products & services as possible, comparing whether my service encounter lives up to the promises they make through marketing. Today’s #BZBowl Week post involves GoDaddy.com.

GoDaddy.com is a Super Bowl mainstay. Every year, they prominently feature a tacky ad featuring one of the GoDaddy girls that everyone claims to dislike, yet everyone will be talking about the next day.

But are the ads effective? Before you answer, quickly name 2 other web hosting sites.

I don’t question their efficacy. When I began consuming domain registry and web hosting services, I went straight to GoDaddy without considering anyone else. They were the only provider I was aware of, and so they got my business.

Purchasing top-of-mind awareness can be an effective strategy for gaining customers, but if it isn’t accompanied by quality service, it can be an ineffective one for keeping them.

The first in the Jillian Michaels series of commercials gives some insight into the promises GoDaddy makes through advertising, placing emphasis around the purchase process, describing it as fast, easy and low priced. Only after these purchase benefit promises are made do they mention quality of their hosting services.



If the ads are a tacky way to gain eyeballs, the website is a tacky way to convert them.

Yet the promises made in the ads are consistently reinforced through the interactive marketing. The site is a mess of deals, claims, exclamation marks and asterisks, mostly messaged around the purchase process being fast, easy and inexpensive. The only departure in their interactive marketing is the promotion of a variety of GoDaddy services, which may be more by accident of trying to sell every service on the home page.

Godaddy makes few promises through their ads, and those they make are consistent with their interactive marketing and paid off in the experience. But while they make purchasing easy, my own post-purchase service experience has been less than ideal due to a confusing interface, made more confusing by near-constant up-selling of additional services. Godaddy never made any promises in that regard, so I can’t criticize the advertising for making promises the experience didn’t fulfill.

But due to the ongoing service experience I’ve, chosen an alternative provider for domain registry & hosting. Improvements in the Go Daddy service experience might increase customer retention to the point where all of that expensive customer acquisition isn’t necessary.

But then again, they may be too having fun acquiring customers to care.

Telefora experience delivers more effectively than their Super Bowl ad.

In preparation for #BZBowl, I’m experiencing as many of the SuperBowl advertisers’ products & services as possible, comparing whether my service encounter lives up to the promises they make through marketing. Today’s #BZBowl Week post involves Teleflora.


I had completely forgotten that 2011 that Teleflora advertised in the Super Bowl in 2009 and 2010, which is to say that it hadn’t been effective, at least on me.



Both ads were intended as humorous jabs at boxed flowers as inferior products that get inferior results with recipients. The main promise was around experience reliability, that hand-arranged, hand delivered Teleflora arrangements would result in a successful reaction from the recipient. There’s only so much you can do in 30 seconds, but Teleflora tried to go long on humor and missed much of the opportunity to make a complete and meaningful brand promise to potential customers.

But when I used the Teleflora site to purchase flowers for my wife, I noted that the promises made through the interactive experience were different and much more extensive.

They started with the same “fresh flowers, personally arranged and delivered daily” message that reinforces reliability of the experience. However, they placed a heavy emphasis on responsiveness, making a promise of same day delivery on all orders and offering floral suggestions flowers for all occasions. (“Just Because” & “Thinking of You” categories overlapped about 90%, so they may have tried to force the “every occasion” angle a bit. Much)

Teleflora shows empathy with the sender, offering help to those who may find it difficult using their own words to elicit the right emotion. (I decided to rely on my own masterful prose, leaving my spouse with, “Just because I’m thinking of you.”)

The post-order process was full of assurance that my service experience would be executed as I had requested it. A confirmation page & email reiterated the order and set specific expectations about the service to be performed. When the flowers were delivered, I received delivery confirmation from Teleflora even before my wife called to thank me.

At the end of the experience, Teleflora reinforced the commitment to reliability by soliciting my feedback for a product review.

I’ll be interested to see what Super Bowl ad for “The Collection” by Faith Hill brings, but for the 2009 and 2010 versions, the Teleflora interactive marketing and service experience vastly performed the promises made by Super Bowl advertising.

Welcome to #BZBowl Week!

While the nation (world?) readies for this weekend’s Superbowl festivities, I’m readying myself for #BZBowl, the multichannel evaluation of SuperBowl advertisements that plays on Twitter while the game plays in Dallas. The Brainzooming Group acts as host to a terrific set of marketing & advertising experts-fans-geeks who watch the ads with more zeal than the play on the field.

Given that the single day SuperBowl has creeped its way into a full week of activities, I’m doing the same thing in advance of #BZBowl, with a series of Service Encounters posts based on recent experiences with SuperBowl 2011 advertisers.

As a service experience guy, my angle on #BZBowl is to evaluate the gap between the promises advertisers make through external communications & interactive marketing and the service delivery that customers actually receive.

I invite all to follow #BZBowl during the game, participating in the formatted evaluations or just giving feedback on which of this years’ ads you like or dislike.

Will the Rewards be 'Rapid' for customers or Southwest?

In a past post, I complimented Southwest for the simplicity of the Rapid Rewards purchase frequency program. As far as programs that create fiscal bonds with customers go, theirs is one of the most tangible, credible ones I've seen, and one of the few that delights with unexpected surprises. In the airline industry in particular, it stands out as differentiated and unique in value.

So when Southwest announced program changes, including a move from the simple 8 round trips = 1 free flight formula to one that grants points for flights based on the price of the fare, I wasn't initially enthused. I tend towards clarity & simplicity. One of my long standing criticisms of other airlines' programs (several of which I am a member) was that 15,000 miles was as vague to me as 25,000. I never have a sense of how close or far I am from attaining the next reward. With Southwest, however, I always knew whether I was 2 flights or 4 flights away. While I would look for a reason to get that last Southwest round trip, I've never looked for an opportunity to travel an extra 1,500 miles to gain another carrier's reward. A flight is more easily characterized as an experience (transaction, if you must) than an aggregated distance.

Gary Kelly's comments in announcing the changes were one of the few instances I've seen corporatespeak supersede customerspeak for Southwest. He discussed how much time & money Southwest spent on developing the new program ($100M over 5 years) and how the new program should expand revenue and put it on par with American and Delta programs. It was also the first time I've ever noted Southwest outwardly aspiring to a status of the legacy carriers. It draws a stark contrast to ads where Southwest portrays the protector of travelers' pocketbooks, while the legacy carriers are the personification of greed.


The idea that the new rewards program will open rewards purchases up to Hawaiian, Alaskan and international travel are intriguing. One of Southwest's operational and marketing strengths has been how they have maintained resolute focus on the domestic US traveler. To serve them, Southwest created a terrific rewards program that kept customers flying the airline. If Southwest customers aren't interested in international travel, it could be a an additiona benefit without much value.

Still, Southwest has a history of delighting me. When they've made changes, they've often been ones that put more burden on the customer in terms of helping their operation, but that also bring additional customer value, even beyond planes that take off and land on time.

Because of a terrific track record, I'll stay open to these changes as they become more evident. But if the program deteriorates value for customers, Southwest will find itself judged, maybe not in competitor ads, but in the very real court of customer opinion.

Word-of-mouth? I practice word-of-wallet.

Cleaning out my wallet over the weekend, I noticed something unintentional about how I organize information.

My wallet is my tool for my most premium word-of-mouth marketing.

It’s filled with some of the best people I've done business with in my personal and professional life - people who have taken care of me, provided exceptional service, and worked hard with me to create successful outcomes.

I keep their information in my wallet because they're people that make me look better when I link them to others. They're responsive, reliable, and they will take care of anyone I send them as well as they did to me.

Some happen to work for companies whose business reputation is benefited by these outstanding employees. Some work for themselves, in which case their reputation is their business. All of them are front line service providers in whatever their field happens to be.

I carry their information in a distributable format - usually their business cards - so that when I meet someone needing the type of service they provide, I can hook them up with the best I know. In service encounters, a recommendation can establish a high expectation of an experience even for someone who has never had it before. I know that each of my "wallet contacts" embrace the high expectations I have of them (and that they've set with me) and that they are comfortable taking on the equally high expectations of the referred customers I send them.

I'm reasonable at keeping track of all the partners, peers, & clients I’ve worked with over the years. They’re in my address books, my phone, my social networks. While they may enter and re-enter my conscious at various points, they're never gone from my electronic subconscious.

But if you’ve provided exceptional service, to me or to others while I’ve been present, there’s a good chance I keep you close at hand, so that I can make myself look good by introducing people I care about to the best servicepeople I know.

I'm guessing that while others may not use the method I do, most people use a form of reference shorthand that accomplishes the same thing, and I'd be interested in hearing how others spread word-of-mouth about the exceptional service encounters they've experienced.

Core & opportunity customers: never the twain shall meet?

I came across this sign in a Panera Bread yesterday afternoon. It’s a great example of a business attempting to manage the variations in service demand.

In my area, Panera is a highly patronized workplace / hangout for corporate escapists and the self-employed, likely more so than the local Starbucks. Wi-fi access is free and unlimited, excepting the period between 11:00 AM and 1:30 PM, when it isn’t available at all.

Why?

11:00 AM to 1:30 PM is the lunch rush. Its prime time for the core service experience of preparing & serving sandwiches and soups to diners - who likely don’t want to compete with businesspeople nursing a coffee for an hour and a half.

Panera knows that their business runs on the mealtime rushes, particularly lunch. But it also knows it can improve profit by increasing demand in the “off-peak” times, and to attract them, it offers a business-friendly environment to people looking for a place to have a coffee and do some online work (or non-work).

Yet it is interesting that while they accommodate the coffee & wi-fi crowd when they have capacity to spare, they make it clear that this business is not preferable to the full meal purchasers that come for lunch. The steps they take – making the restaurant uninviting by turning off free wi-fi – sends a clear message to the as to their relative value as customers.

My questions are these: As a strategy for filling off-peak hours with incremental demand, Panera’s use of free wi-fi seems a good fit. But by clearly rejecting this group in favor of diners during the meal times, do they damage their experience to the spurned segment, and by extension, do they do their brand and long term damage? On the other hand, is this segment preference forgivable by the people who use the coffee and wi-fi experience? If it isn’t, should Panera care?

Domino's shows me my pizza.

Domino's may not yet be considered complete, but I’ve been a fan of the move to quality they've made in full view of their customers and the public.

Quality improvements are often made by companies that have had these issues, but Domino’s has addressed their public perception with a humility and sincerity that we can identify with and cheer for.

Whether through its public apologies for “the video”, public solicitation of feedback via showusyourpizza.com, or the dramatization of their willingness to win back customers one at a time through their advertising, Domino's has demonstrated transparency, personality and a connectedness with its customers trhat few service brands are (sadly) willing to risk.

Yet while I had admired Dominos' recent track record in addressing service quality, I still hadn’t used them in a couple of years, until my wife called me at work with an emergency, “we-left-the-baby-sitter-hanging” situation.

The selection & ordering process at dominos.com was simple. The menu was completely customizable and - even better - I didn't need to register as a frequent customer just to order a pizza.

But what happened after I ordered made me a fan and, more importantly, a returning customer.
After the order submitted, a timeline popped into the order confirmation screen, showing the order preparation & delivery process and the status of my order as it moved. The tracker might be dismissed as gimmicky, but it personalized the service in a unique way, particularly when stage 2 informed me that "Stephen began custom-making my order at 5:12 PM."

Adding a tangible personalization of the experience in the form of greater visibility to the service process, (including using the names of the people involved), are elements of the domino's experience that gave me more assurance over the quality of the outcome. It demonstrated in a for me that their responsiveness to their customers over the quality concerns is not just a marketing or social media response, but a strategy consistently carried out across service touchpoints.

Iconic Brand, Generic Experience

Starbucks got a lot of press this week after announcing changes to their logo.

But it’s the changes to their experience that tell more about their future aspirations.

Last week, I pulled into a Starbucks drive thru to keep myself caffeinated for the last hour of a long drive.

“Thank you for choosing Starbucks. Please order when you’re ready.”

As soon as the words came through the speakerbox, I felt a letdown.

I’ve seen a lot of changes in the Starbucks experience over the years, but the scripted generic greeting broke a part of the service experience for me.

Starbucks’ brand was built in the tradition of the Grateful Dead – not by being the best, but by being “the only ones who do what they do.” Not long ago, I went to Starbucks' (at least partly) because I didn’t believe there was a viable alternative.

By saying that they’re happy we’ve chosen them, they acknowledged (before I was ready for them to) that there are alternatives. That over the years, they moved to the mainstream as the mainstream has moved toward them. That now, they really are just a fast food chain (albeit still one with good service) that happens to sell coffee, rather than “The American 3rd Place” of Howard Schultz’ original vision.

Branding expert Mike Brown (amongst others) pondered over whether the rebranding represents a push toward the iconic, needs-no-words, brand imagery of McDonald's, Nike, and Apple.

Perhaps, but Starbucks was already iconic. For what its worth, so was The Grateful Dead.

The Dead chose to serve a smaller customer base than “the largest market imagineable.” The evolution of the experience, on the other hand, shows Starbucks’ rejection of its large & profitable niche in favor of a much larger customer base made available through the strategy of moving to the mainstream in food retail.

It has had many signposts: The automated espresso machines were the largest change for me, but the gradual extinction of the baristas’ personal expression, the move into grocery stores, the evolution of the food menu, the adoption of drive thru locations were all indicators of a gradual move toward the food retail mean.

Rebranding may be the notice for some that they intend to move, but the experience had begun packing long ago.

It might be a tremendous success - who knows how many records The Dead might have sold if they made a truly commercial pop album - but abandoning a hard-earned base for an attempt at a larger mainstream audience doesn’t always work out.