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Contact Vox to learn about how we can help you create a comprehensive Customer Experience that drives bottom-line results dramatically higher.

“Do you want fries with that?”

How do you feel when you hear that phrase? Are you grateful for the delicious, oily suggestion? Or are you thinking, irritably, “if I wanted fries, I would have ordered fries”? Or perhaps: “How stupid of them to suggest fries with my super-healthy organic fat-free salad”?

It probably depends on the context. And so it is with all cross-selling.

Sometimes, cross-selling is an expected part of the dialogue. Take the aforementioned fries for example. I don’t even bother mentioning that I want fries until I’m asked. I would almost find it to be rude to rattle it off as an initial part of my order. What if I overwhelmed the order-taker with my lengthy list of demands?

Conversely, there are the times that I have to call customer service about one of my credit cards. This process now fills me with dread. Why? Because I’ve decided I like a credit card company enough to earn them many dollars in transaction fees…yet when I call them, I know that I’m going to have to fend off their advertising spiels for their other services.

The company that is the worst in my life for this is Capital One. The phrase “selfish and opportunistic” springs to my mind immediately when I think of them. Their customer service reps are trained to shoehorn as many service offers as possible into the conversation. I suspect that if I were amicable, they’d go on for hours, perhaps even days, describing the many wonderful ways I can give them more of my money. But I’m not—I’m insulted and irritated. I’m even more irritated because I’m trying so hard to be polite. Making things worse, while I am on hold, I have to hear automated cross-selling messages.

So guess which of my credit card accounts I’ve recently closed?

The key to cross-selling is not thinking of every possible way to grab more of your customer’s wallet—it is looking from the customer’s perspective, to identify which of your services might genuinely benefit them. Does your company view cross-selling from the customer’s perspective, or its own?

The passion for travel and travel deals is growing strong and is driving the popularity of various online travel sites making the Online Travel Industry one of the most competitive industries online today. Users are beckoned and lured onto various sites by the latest low fares of the month, great packages, and exclusive deals.

Consumers are quick to resort to the "big 3 Online Travel Agents" - Orbitz, Expedia and Travelocity to find these great deals.

And the major airlines out there today are taking notice - and will not be left behind. Recognizing that online consumers may be task oriented and are still highly price conscious, they too are taking advantage of the online travel industry and the effect it has to their bottom line.

A perfect example is Qantas - the largest airline in Australia - They have taken steps to measure online visitor behavior in order to ensure a positive customer experience and increase online profitability.

We will be on the look-out to see the impact and direct correlation between this effort and Qantas’ market share and revenue growth. Stay tuned…

Happy Thanksgiving All!

C’mon everybody get on board!

Customer Experience is the latest marketing buzz that’s sweeping the nation and changing the way marketers market…well, everything. I’ve seen it used every where from CRM tools and call center technology to fast food chains.

Unfortunately it often amounts to nothing more than a bunch of hot air. Too many organizations to mention have started carelessly throwing the phrase around while still providing the same mediocre or poor customer experience they always have.

For a customer experience initiative to be successful it needs to offer more than a few clever statistics. It should look at the experience from the customer’s perspective, hear their feedback, and implement real improvements.

Otherwise, it’s just marketing.

Will someone please tell me when I’m supposed to tip and not tip? I was going through a Dunkin Doughnuts drive through one morning and was shocked when I saw a Tip Jar in the window! I immediately asked myself, “Am I supposed to tip this person for doing their job?” And if I am, maybe I should put a tip jar on my desk at the office!

I understand that certain jobs have their pay rates adjusted in anticipation for gratuity and as such I am more than happy to give the 15-20 percent tip for “Good” service. So let’s say that I agree with the tip jar as a way to supplement the disgruntled employees pay, how am I supposed to gauge what’s considered “Good Service”.

Can you imagine if everyone expected to be tipped for doing their job? Where would it end? Do we tip the Toll way attendant? The Bus Driver? How about your local policeman? I know that the argument for those in traditional service industries is that their pay rate is adjusted to take into account gratuity. But should this be the case? Is the hope for a big tip the only way to motivate someone to provide good service? Or for that matter, is mediocre service the standard and the only way to get exceptional service is to dangle money in front of a person or company for that matter?

How about doing your job to the best of your ability! What ever happened to pride in one’s work or providing good service because….It’s the right thing to do…There’s a novel concept!

Ah, the holiday shopping season is upon us! What will the retail outcome tell about our economy? That’s still TBD, but The Wise Marketer posted a study by Ketchum about women’s purchase decision drivers. The new catch phrase is "CROPing", as women go looking for CRedible OPtions before they shop. Despite the idea that women are impulse shoppers, 72% of the the women in the study said they do research before making major purchases.They use word-of-mouth from family and friends as well as trusted sources to reduce their purchase research time.

The study revealed that women had little time for advertising as a form of buying influence. Just another clue that increased customer loyalty comes from influencers you already have.

Note: you will need to be logged in (free) to The Wise Marketer to read the whole document.

My friend had a customer experience with his bank a few weeks ago. He sent an email though their online banking system requesting copies of cancelled checks. Their website says they will respond within one business day. However, after 3 business days went by, my friend hadn’t heard anything. He called the bank and they told him the request had been received and the checks were in the mail. Although they responded quickly to the request, they never responded to him (the customer) thus making what could have been a good customer experience, an okay one.

It is ALWAYS important to respond to customers, whether it is to a request, a complaint, or even feedback. Customers want to feel valuable. If they do, the company will reap the benefits.

Anyone who’s raised a child is probably familiar with the "see it again" syndrome. My son Robbie knows what he likes, and asks for it again and again. One of his favorites is going to Abt Electronics, our local electronics and appliances store.

There’s a reason that Abt is on his "see it again" list. The Abt family spent a lot of thought and effort on making their retail outlet a family-friendly destination. They’ve added quite a bit of "wow" experiences to bring people back - not to shop, but to visit. Some of these include:

• A home theater room, with a fantastic animated music video (Animusic 2) on continuous play
• A "Virtual Butterfly" room within their Apple store
• A salt-water aquarium stocked with a wide variety of tropical fish
• A huge atrium with fountain displays every half-hour, animated sculptures, a human-sized soap bubble machine, and computer learning/play stations
• Free fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies and espresso or iced coffee (Saturdays & Sundays)

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. These sorts of extras, together with their knowledgable and friendly staff and their superior service combine to turn customers into raving fans.

Abt is a company that really "gets it." Make the service, the experience, the products something people will actively recommend, and you’ll make customers for life. Robbie can’t wait for our next visit - and our extended family wouldn’t shop anywhere else when it comes to refrigerators, stoves, dishwashers, TVs or any of the little stuff that they carry.

My doctor called in a prescription for me today and it was only later that I realized I had asked him to call the wrong pharmacy location. No problem, I thought. I can call and have the prescription transferred to the location closest to me.

I called the pharmacy phone number and it turns out that this company doesn’t have separate lines for the store and the pharmacy.

"Push 3 for the pharmacy."

I push 3.

"Push 1 if you are a doctor, push 2 if you need flu shot information…"

It took three button pushes and some bad hold music to reach a person, who promptly asked me to hold.

When she came back, I told her my situation and she sighed and said that if the other store called her, she would transfer the prescription and even more promptly than before, hung up the phone.

How is the customer to know which way the transfer needs to go? Push or pull? And now that they know the problem, why is it still my problem to fix? Why can’t a pharmacy tech go into the system and push my prescription to the correct store?

I call the other store, wade through the exact same voice mail maze and reach a pharmacy tech who then, without telling me, transfers me to the pharmacist herself. I explain my problem, including the fact that the other store is making me call her, and she sighs a bit. She pulls me up in the system, sees the prescription and agrees to transfer it, and we hang up the phone.

Clearly, I am in the computer system, so why is it that I needed to spend fifteen minutes to make two obnoxious phone calls and irritate four pharmacy workers to move one tiny plastic bottle across town?

I guess they only offer bitter pills at this pharmacy!

Rite Aid, one of the nation’s leading drugstore chains, was recently charged with selling expired merchandise and overcharging for products by the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office and the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs.

Rite Aid says that the errors were caused by stores not adhering to standard policies and practices. Rite Aid seems to be a classic example of a company where the brand promise "With us, it’s personal" is viewed as just a marketing slogan, rather than as a statement to be lived by every employee.

It’s a reasonable assumption that Rite Aid doesn’t have a corporate strategy to intentionally overcharge or sell expired products. However, for consumers, intent doesn’t need to be an issue. The fact is that the company doesn’t care enough to:

• Either see to it that responsible business practices are adhered to,
• Or (in a more proactive and extensive effort) expend resources to actively engage every employee in living up to its brand promise.

This problem is made worse by the fact that Rite Aid had previously entered into consent orders against precisely these sorts of practices. While Rite Aid was spending money on marketing to bring people into the stores, they weren’t spending on the basic training and processes to ensure a reasonable (not even exceptional) in-store experience.

Is Rite Aid going to feel some pain over this? I’ve got to believe so. If I were a consumer, I wouldn’t be shopping there. Would you?

Is allowing your banking customers to overdraw their accounts via ATM withdrawals - and then charging them overdraft fees akin to loan shark interest rates a value-added service or just a sleazy way to boost the Bank’s service fee revenue?

As I read the following article in Crain’s Chicago Business, I have to say I think it’s primarily the latter…

ATM Withdrawl: Banks silently charging for overdrafts

While we should all be financially responsible, and not overdraw our accounts via ATMs or otherwise, in today’s hectic world of direct deposit this and direct pay that, once in a while you can get caught with a low balance unknowingly - wouldn’t you prefer to be made aware of that before Paulie starts charging you the heat?