Atkinson talked about developing “strategic speed” because of the impact it has on sustaining our businesses. The 1980’s and 1990’s were about first-generation speed. It’s now time for second-generation speed which is about mindset and mobilizing people.

Strategic speed means delivering value to customers faster. The key to strategic speed is how your organization’s leaders think and act. They don’t aim for speed per se, but rather for increases in three people factors:

1) Clarity – shared understanding of the situation and the direction you are heading. Employees should be able to answer the question “where are we going and why?”

2) Unity – collaboration across departments, geographic boundaries, etc, is the main driver of unity in business. A culture of collaboration helps projects and strategies hold together.

3) Agility – Encouraging people to find ways to meet strategic objectives in a constantly changing environment rather than sticking to a rigid plan. Companies which can quickly resolve customer issues win.

Atkinson stressed that strategic speed requires leadership and that leaders need 4 key abilities to succeed:

1) Affirming strategies
2) Driving initiatives
3) Managing climate
4) Cultivating experience (learning and sharing by all)

He challenged the audience to think about these concepts as they return home to develop new strategies. Visit Forum’s website at Forum.com to read more about this concept.

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What does Oprah, ABC Nightline and 60 Minutes have in common? They all have featured the online retailer Zappos.com because of their customer service excellence. Maura Sullivan, Customer Loyalty Team Manager shared how Zappos.com leadership, under the direction of CEO Tony Hsieh, has built a solid foundation on customer and employee centricity.

Founded in 1999, Zappos.com has grown to a total of 1,400 employees, located in the Las Vegas headquarters and the Kentucky fulfillment center. They have over 10 million customers and on any given day, about 75% of purchases are from returning customers. Sales have grown from $1.6 million in 2001 to $1,014 million in 2008.

Zappos.com has focused their efforts on what the customer sees, what the customer experiences, and what the company does internally to help employees meet customer needs. The customer sees several value propositions on the Zappos.com website which include 24/7 customer service, 800 number on every page, free shipping, free return shipping, and a 365-day return policy. Returns average 35%, high for industry norms, but they factored that into their business model says Sullivan.

What the customer experiences is fast and accurate fulfillment, friendly above-and-beyond service, and occasional referrals to competitors for out-of-stock product. They see the value in these competitor referrals because of the “wow” factor it produces. Also, they don’t limit handle times for customer calls or have sales-based performance goals for reps. The telephone is one of their best branding devices available, says Sullivan.

Their internal policies include hiring the best front liners. Interviews are 50% based on core values and culture fit. New employees receive 5 weeks of training on corporate culture, 10 core values, customer service, and warehouse training. They even offer to pay $2,000 to trainees in their second week to quit if they don’t want to work for Zappos.com after all. 98% of them stay. They even have their own Culture Book where employees can post their feelings and thoughts about working for Zappos.com. No surprise that they were rated #23 on Fortune Magazine’s <em>100 Best Companies to Work For.</em>

Sullivan shared these 7 steps for building a brand that matters:

1) Decide.  Decide sooner rather than later

2) Figure out values & culture.  Originally there was not a core value list. A list of 37 values was created but they chose to pare it down to a list of 10.

3) Commit to transparency.  Be real and you have nothing to fear. Twitter has opened up getting to know other employees. An “Ask Anything” company newsletter allows employees to ask questions and get answers. Extranet allows vendors to check inventory levels and create purchase orders as needed. Tours and reporter visits are encouraged.

4) Vision. Chase the vision, not the money.

5) Build relationships.  Be interested rather than trying to be interesting.

6) Build your team.  They hire slowly and fire quickly, says Sullivan.

7) Think long-term.

Put a little Zappos in your day. You can email msullivan@zappos.com to get a copy of the presentation or a copy of their Culture Book (include your mailing address). To receive a tour of their Las Vegas headquarters, you can contact them at tours@zappos.com. They will even pick you up at the airport!

One final quote: “People may not remember exactly what you did or what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel.”

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“So appreciative of the work everyone is doing on my behalf”
“I am so very grateful to you”
“You guys are wonderful”
“You are awesome”
“I’ve never had an insurance company like this before”

Joanne Gholtston Vice President, Customer Service and Bonnie Hass, Director, Customer Service at Regence BlueCross BlueShield shared one way they analyze customer feedback – by randomly reviewing customer service calls.

How easy do you make it for customers to do business with you? asked Gholston. Complicated phone trees, impersonal messages, and legal disclaimers can drive your customers away.  In fact, Gholston and Hass have done away with the recorded-message disclaimer. This doesn’t work for all companies in all states they commented.  Know your market and do what you can to keep it personal.

“Hard to hear”, “doesn’t sound happy”, “monotone voice”, and “no sympathy” were some of the comments made by the audience in reviewing a recorded employee conversation. Gholston and Hass regularly share these calls with several departments within the organization. When listening to calls, Hass believes that 95% of multiple service calls for an individual customer occur as a result of poor follow-up.

Looking at the pros and cons of customer service calls was insightful.  In listening to the last call, audience members commented that the employee was “personable”, “had energy, “gave information” and “was engaged”.  Isn’t this what we want from all of our customer reps?  Gholston and Hass challenged the audience to go back and listen to customer service calls and find ways to add more value for their customers.  Simple advice, BIG results.

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Yellin is a Journalist who has traveled the globe covering 4 continents to talk to CEOs and customer service experts.  What drew her into the customer service conversation was that she sat on hold for what seemed forever on a customer service call with a home warranty company.  Not happy with the experience, she decided to investigate why customer service folks keep missing the mark. 

Yellin reports that Americans make 43 million customer service calls a year.  About 70% of businesses use call centers today as the main way to interact with customers. In studying the call center industry, she uncovered several things they are doing right and several things that can be improved. Yellin states that “this is a time in customer service that is really exciting”.

She talked about an experience she had with a call center employee by the name of “Pablo”.  After several frustrating attempts to get a product delivered, she was ultimately able to speak to Pablo who was able to take care of the problem. Pablo worked as a supervisor for a call center in South America. She contacted the company and arranged a visit where she met with management.  And there sitting at the end of the table was Pablo. He told Yellin he had never met a customer before.

Her research led her to discover three themes that companies who have “got it right” have been following.  These are:

1)     Design for it
2)     Follow through
3)     Provide value

Design of a customer service system is important. Getting feedback from front liners can be critical to creating good customer service systems. Putting yourself in your customers “shoes” or observing your customers as they experience your service are some of the best ways to evaluate your design.

Follow-through will make or break the perception of your service experience.  In her research, she discovered that what call center employees say and what customers interpret are often two different things.  For example, when a call center employee says “I’m not authorized to do that”, it really means “I’m not going to help you” to the customer.

Yellin suggests we watch the words we use to describe our roles.  For her, Customer Relationship Management has a negative connotation.  She doesn’t want to be managed.  Words are an agreement between us, she says.  Be sure you are speaking your customers’ language.

One thing the customer wants to hear from you is “Yes”.  Anything you do to get in the way of “yes” is a problem.  She identified typical call center mistakes:

1) No information
2) They don’t have authority
3) They don’t care

The final theme is that successful companies provide value.  We cannot lose our humanity, says Yellin.  It starts from the top down.  When you’ve had your very worst experience, what emotions did you feel? asks Yellin.  Feelings include frustration, disappointment, and anger which spread easily.  According to a Customer Rage study, 70% of angry customers felt rage, 28% raised their voices to an employee, 8% cursed, and 57% of customers took their business elsewhere.

The opposite feeling is when the experience is good.  “Shouldn’t that be our goal?” asks Yellin.  Let’s spread the good and create those good feelings.  Minor indignities are the seeds to horrible things says Yellin.  When we talk about the carbon footprint, we refer to the little things we can do to make our earth better.  Yellin suggests that those of us in customer service should be encouraged to make a “karma” footprint.  What does your service footprint say about you?

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Oncure Medical Corp. is a nationwide network of free-standing radiation oncology centers. The CEO of Oncure was himself a cancer survivor and had first-hand knowledge of the challenges facing cancer patients. Oncure wanted to improve their services and began conducting research at their clinics. They included focus groups, staff interviews, and patient input. They knew they had to look at their cancer patients’ experiences and needs from both inside and outside the walls of their treatment centers.

Where do businesses start in creating a new value-laden service? Armbruster states that businesses typically follow one of the following approaches:

1) Use personal business experience
2) Borrow solutions from other companies in industries
3) Borrow solutions from companies in other industries
4) Use personal experience as a customer
5) Ask customers what they want
6) Understand unmet needs of your customers

There is a definite challenge with the fifth approach, says Armbruster, as it doesn’t always lead to innovation. He quoted Henry Ford to illustrate the concept of customer wants. “If I asked my customers what they wanted, I would have built faster horses” said Ford. If your job is to change context, you can’t have your customers tell you how says Armbruster.

Oncure designed a method to help them develop their services. The first step is to identify the spectrum of customers needs. The second step is to design and optimize services around HIGH VALUE needs. He identified three methods used to identify unmet customer needs:

1) Explicit – asking the customers what they need
2) Tacit – observing and gathering information by getting out and spending time with customers
3) Latent – uncovering needs that customers have that they don’t even know they have

The secret to competitive differentiation says Armbruster is the ability to
“connect with your customers at a deeper level than the competition”.

He discussed five ways to make these deeper connections. They included:

1) Going beyond asking customers
2) Discovering service prototyping with your customers – get them involved
3) Engaging employees in the process and have them part of the design
4) Encouraging business analysis early in the process
5) Committing to it even if you have only a dime to invest

Keeping your focus on improving your services is an important goal. It all begins with knowing the deep needs of your customers from their perspective. Ryan Armbruster can be contacted at Ryan.Armbruster@gmail.com.

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Southwest began in 1971 with 3 aircrafts serving 3 cities. Today, under the leadership of CEO Gary Kelly, it is one of the nation’s largest domestic airlines in terms of daily departures and customers carried. They have the safest record, best on-time performance, consistently low fares and the best flight schedules, reports Laraba.

The secret of their success is in the fact that they hire the best front liners. They hire based on attitude and look for people who “live the Southwest way” says Laraba. It takes a servant’s heart willing to follow the Golden Rule, a warrior spirit to do what it takes, and a fun loving attitude that encourages employees to take the work seriously, but not themselves. Needless to say, Southwest experiences high employee retention. Laraba herself has been with Southwest for 25 years.

Empowering employees to do the right thing is key says Laraba. They do this by having employees follow these principles:

Guidelines rather than rules
Golden Rule overrides what few rules we have
Lean toward the Customer and you’ll never get in trouble
Our employees take pride in finding solutions

Southwest has an entire department, Internal Customer Care, responsible for recognizing employee birthdays and anniversaries and giving gifts and care packages. They believe in treating each other like family and being there for their employees in good times and tough times.

What do they get by investing in their employees? Their customers see the difference. This is brought home in a quote from President Emeritus Colleen Barrett, “We are in the Customer Service Business. We just happen to fly airplanes.”

Southwest understands the power of saying “we’re sorry”. A Customer Communication department focuses on contacting customers within 72 hours of an issue and apologizes when Southwest does something wrong. They create customer evangelists by going above and beyond, doing whatever it takes, with proactive communication. They choose to make regular deposits in the “Goodwill Bank” says Laraba.

Southwest’s influence goes beyond the airport and into the community. Employees are encouraged to embrace causes and they do. For example, Southwest has raised approximately $11 million dollars for Ronald McDonald House.

The company is always looking for ways to improve the customer experience. Some of these improvements have included self-service kiosks, online and mobile check-in, power stations, redesigned gate areas, wireless access, and cashless cabins.

Southwest Airlines is a true example of leadership in action with an unwavering commitment to employees. This commitment has fueled their success and will continue to put them on the map as a company to model.

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Four years ago, Cigna’s CEO took the company in a new direction to make the health care business more user-friendly and to build trust. Cigna found that when people were asked to rate things that they trusted, they would rarely answer “my health plan”. They determined that when the customer experience is confusing and there is a lack of trust, they miss opportunities to improve health.

In asking for feedback about the health care experience, Lindberg received the following customer information:

77% were unsure what terminology in their health plan policy really means
50% didn’t know how much they pay each month
85% did not understand key health care terms
85% don’t participate in available wellness programs
82% don’t compare hospital qualifications before choosing
45% don’t receive timely, appropriate care

Cigna took this information and arrived at two driving principles for their health care experience: 1) that every interaction must be helpful, and 2) every interaction must be easy. With these principles in mind, they got into action with the following in mind:

1) Analyze every individual touch point
2) Change terminology to get rid of insurance-ease
3) Ban “alphabet-soup” talk – EOB, PCP, EPO
4) Eliminate nuisance mail – get what you need when you need it
5) Eliminate what frustrates – if you want a person, you get a person
6) Explore possibilities, not limitations to improve health

As a result, they created new terminology. They asked university students to look at a list of confusing terminology and redesign new words that worked. For example, instead of using the word “subscriber”, they changed to “the person who has the benefits from the employer”, and the words “member liability” was changed to “the amount you need to pay”.

They made changes to their Enrollment Guide by making them more user friendly and allowing the customer to choose the right plan. When they found that 52% of customers are visual learners, they added a checklist for people to follow.

Changes were also made for their new quotes for treatment that included an estimator that allows you to see what you will pay, comparison of treatment costs, all in plain language.

Redesigning their explanation of benefits also paid off. They were able to provide a summary of care charges, put key financial data on the front page, and shared with customers how much they saved based on the plan they chose.

They also made an improvement in their employee engagement as a result of some of these changes. In looking at the needs of the customer, they found that they wanted phone support 24/7. When they presented this concept to employees on a volunteer basis, they welcomed the change. It has allowed Cigna to better serve their customers, reduced workload for their employees, and increased employee retention by double.

Achieving success was a result of analyzing each customer touch point – words, forms, processes, etc., says Lindberg. Cigna is now setting the industry standard for the customer experience.

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Deutschman shares the example of Starbucks and its CEO, Howard Schultz.  Schultz was responsible for Starbucks incredible growth over the years, building from 400 stores in 1994 to 14,000 stores today, reaching a 75% market share.  He came to realize that in their pursuit of market domination and growth, Starbucks had lost their vision.  Schultz believe that they had strayed away from what made them popular over the years – café-like experience, aroma of fresh ground coffee beans, and personal interaction with the barista, to name a few.  Schultz realized that he had to lead his company back to the basics and “walk the walk”.

A company that built a truly customer-centric focus is Amazon.  CEO Jeff Bezos made leadership decisions that were unheard of in the industry.  For example, he allowed customers to post negative reviews about books, allowed third-party merchants to come in and offer lower prices, and gave away free shipping.  Wall Street analysts asked Amazon’s board to remove Bezos because of his radical marketing tactics.  Bezos understood that these strategies would ultimately create long-term customer loyalty and it did.  Amazon succeeded at putting customers first says Deutschman.

Some companies have chosen to put customers first by putting other things first.  An example of this is Southwest Airlines which has chosen to put employees first.  During bad times, Southwest took a different approach than other airlines.  In over 35 years, they have never laid off a single employee during a downturn reports Deutschman.  Their high retention allows them to train employees in more creative way.  By putting employees first, they have put customers first.

You can also serve customers first by putting a group of employees first.  For example, Sony’s mission was to create a company for brilliant engineers.  When color televisions came on the market, Sony held back from entering the market because they wanted to create a superior product driven by their engineers. Because of their investment in technology, they came out with the best color television in 1968 that had a superior picture quality called the Sony Triniton. Their CEO “walked the walk” because he chose to put their engineers first.

In another example, Deutschman points out that putting “cleanliness” first allowed McDonalds to grow exponentially.  Ray Kroc was a clean freak and made cleanliness their #1 virtue.  Fast food restaurants at the time were originally a hangout for teenage boys.  Families stayed away.  Kroc wanted to create a family restaurant that was clean and could offer value.  Cleanliness, transparency, uniformed staffed, etc., helped to create this value. To date, cleanliness continues to be the #1 concern people have in choosing a fast food restaurant.

Charles Schwab wanted to create a stock broker business that put ethics first. They chose not to do investment banking, removed conflicts of interest, worked with individual investors and did not give purchase advice.  Brokers were on straight salary so that they could provide service with no hidden agenda.  One day, Schwab fired his own son for giving purchase advice to clients.  Sometimes “walking the walk” requires us to make difficult choices.

To walk the walk and be a leader, you don’t need a mission statement or post your value proposition for all to see says Deutschman. Your customers should know you by your actions.  It is rare in corporate America.  In all of his research, he has found few leaders who truly “walk the walk”.

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Customer-driven innovation needs to be measured says Hero. It takes special talent…find them in your organization and “let them loose”. Age doesn’t matter, skill set does. When asked what skill sets are most important, Hero said that people with excitement, those that display strong writing skills, and those who are passionate about customer engagement make the best choices for managing customer conversations.

LexisNexis actively listens to its customers and users through their website at http://lexisnexis.com/community/ideas. Hero sees the value in these community sites as customers tend to go back to the main website. When at the main site, customers typically end up buying something. This cross promotion has significant value to an organization says Hero. He cautions us, however, in that if you aren’t giving good content, your community will die. Invest the resources to keep the customer conversations alive.

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Killian says that Dell has three objectives:

1) Build the brand

 2) Listen, learn and engage

 3) Rapid innovation.

Dell knew that social media was having a huge impact and expanded social engagement over time. According to Killian, they started with customer forums in 1995, blogosphere and social networking platforms in 2006, IdeaStorm website in 2007, and sponsored offsite properties in 2008.

Dell developed its website IdeaStorm as a result of a need for a customer-driven, central location for new ideas. IdeaStorm.com allowed them to encourage ideas, feedback, innovation and dialogue with and between their customers. What were the results, you ask? The IdeaStorm website has received 12,000 ideas to date (2,000 in the 1st week alone), and has resulted in approximately 400 ideas implemented.

Killian shared key lessons that Dell has learned over the years about social media engagement.

1. Engagement–there is pent-up demand and customers want to talk to you.
2. Open source idea generation transformed the way they operate. They not only have the IdeaStorm website but have added a Facebook Application that allows customers to post ideas directly to Facebook.
3. Customers want to engage both on and off your site. Community Forums exist on Ondell.com and Offdell.com.
4. Transparency and authenticity are key. Killian says that social media is “forgiving” if you respond quickly to the negativity.
5. Social media responsibility no longer is just the job of the social media team. In the early days, Dell had a central team. Now they have distributed ownership to different company departments including sales, service &amp; support, product group, and marketing.
6. Define measurement objectives. Keys include Technorati ranking, Net Promoter Scores, website traffic, etc.
7. Meet specific customer needs through social media. For example, when they needed to move inventory from DellOulet, they used Twitter to send coupons to their customers. Now, @delloutlet is in the top 50 Twitter accounts and has over 1million followers. They currently have over 35 official Dell accounts on Twitter and many more personal accounts.
8. Customers want to connect globally. It is a challenge because of language and cultural barriers. Growth potential is huge to connect with customers all over the globe.

Dell’s original goal was to simply build the Dell brand. What they’ve found is that Dell doesn’t own the brand, customers do. When you engage with them, you are building the brand together which is more powerful than doing it alone says Killian.

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