The MBA of Customer Love

Personally, I mostly tend to respect MBAs when they enter a business. There are dangerous elements to what we teach MBAs, yes — it’s possible to create a culture where everyone is trying to “make the quarter,” and that’s not necessarily the best recipe for long-term growth — but in general, MBAs are smart, capable people.

Here’s the issue, however: MBAs are still taught via older business models, for the most part. We have documented research everywhere that customer experience is more valuable than the perceived financial number attached to your brand, but many schools are still teaching power branding and old-school sales funnels. Those are good concepts to root yourself in, but … it’s not the reality of modern business, in all honesty.

Now, there are graduate-level business programs in CX, such as this one. That is true, and in coming years, we’ll start to see even more. But more can be done.

Years ago, I was kicking around the idea of writing a book called The MBA of Customer Love. That book eventually evolved into I Love You More Than My Dog.

I went back and dug out my proposal for The MBA of Customer Love. Some parts were very interesting (if I do say so myself), so I wanted to turn it into a blog post.

The Basic Idea Behind The MBA of Customer Love

The MBA of Customer Love cuts through the muck of the stacks of reports and materials and lays it out simply for readers.  It says “Start with these 10 actions, and then we’ll talk about your commitment to customers.”  If you can’t do these, you’re not really serious.  You’re just talking up a storm.

Getting these actions right is the cornerstone of building sustainable corporate growth. This is not the kind of growth harvested through acquisition and marketing campaigns.  Beloved companies nurture organic customer growth through developing zealot customers who come back for more and who recommend their organization to everyone they know.  

Think this is about “soft” skills that pale with reaching sales goals? There is nothing “soft” about the results these actions deliver.  Rapid growth, emotionally captive brand zealots, outrageous customer advocacy and referrals, and sustainability even during market down turns are the common denominators of beloved companies.  

The core message of The MBA of Customer Love – what specific actions comprise the hard work to become a beloved company with devoted customers- will be indispensable reading for the entire business community and will appeal to anyone with interest in the customer experience.  This includes top management all the way to those who regularly interact with customers.  This book, unlike others of this genre, provides both the inspiration and the realistic formula and tactical, real-world actions to achieve beloved status inside businesses of all sizes and in all industries.  

So, what are the ten ideas?

The MBA of Customer Love Central Tenets

1. Eliminate the customer obstacle course.  If you asked customers they’d say that the obstacle course for figuring out who to talk to and how and when to get service is over-complicated, conflicting and just plain out of whack.  We have forced customers to try to figure out our organization charts in order to do business with us.  Instead of seamlessly executing a customer interaction of, let’s say placing their first order from start to finish, we deliver discontinuity in the experience where the organizational breaks exist.  Sales sells the product, but Operations is not given the specifics of what the customer needs so what is delivered is a little off.  Who does the customer call?   Sales? Operations?  Customer service?   It is in these hand-offs that customer failures occur, in this customer Bermuda triangle that we’ve created.  Simplify the roadmap for customers.  Make it clear for them how they can do business with you in a way that’s actually beneficial to them.  
2. Stop customer hot potato.  He who speaks to the customer first should “own” the customer.  There’s nothing worse that sends a signal of disrespect faster than an impatient person on the other end of the line trying to pass a customer off to “someone who can better help you with your problem.”  Yeah, right.   
3. Give customers a choice.  Do not bind your customer into the fake choice of letting them “opt out” of something.  Let them know up front that they can decide to get emails, offers or whatever from you and give them the choice.  You may initially build a bigger mailing list by binding customers in with the opt-out policy, but I don’t think it’s something your mom would teach you about respect.  
4. De-silo your website.  Our websites are often the cobbled together parts created separately by each company division.   The terminology is different from area to area, as are the menu structures and logic for getting around the site.  What’s accessible online is frequently inconsistent, as is the contact information provided.  Even appearance may vary as strong silos create their own “look” which extends into their section of the website.  Depending on what link is clicked, customers feel like they’re entering entirely different companies.  Figure out collectively what the message is, what the vitals are that you need from customers and how you will serve them via your website and work to deliver an on-purpose brand experience.  Otherwise you’ll continue to deliver the defaulted brand experience that’s the amalgamation of the site your customers are traversing right now.
5. Consolidate phone numbers.  Even in this advanced age of telephony companies still have a labyrinth of numbers customers need to navigate to talk to someone.  All of these grew out of the separate operations deciding on their own that they needed a number to “serve” their customers.  Get people together to skinny-down this list and then let customers know about it.  There’s no big red button to push to make this happen.  It requires the gnarly hard work of collaborating and collective decision making – but get it done already! Customers are fed up.
6. FIX (really) the top ten issues bugging customers.  We have created a kind of hysterical customer feedback muscle in the marketplace by over-surveying our customers and asking (ever so thoughtfully) “how can we improve?”  Customers have told us what to do and we haven’t moved on the information.  You can probably recite the biggest issues right now.  Do something about it.  Customers read the lack of action as lack of caring and certainly lack of respect.  We all over-brain what the customer effort should be.  Start by striking these top ten things from your corporate wide to-do list.  
7. Help the front line to listen.  The frontline has been programmed to get a certain output.  Sometimes this means closing the call within a time frame, often it includes some kind of up-sell or cross-sell goal.  It may be to meet with a quota of customers in a certain time period.  Because we’ve programmed the frontline, there’s a predetermined flow of the conversation that makes it one-sided to the company’s advantage.  Yet, this is what we’ve done.  We’ve robotized our frontline to the customer all over the world.  Let them be human, give them the skills for listening and understanding and help the frontline deliver to the customer based on their needs.  Talk about respect.  It is not a myth that if you can solve a customer problem successfully you have built a more profitable customer.  Crunch those numbers – maybe it will help you to make your case for the resources, investment and commitment required.
8. Deliver what you promise.   There is a growing case of corporate memory loss that annoys and aggravates customers every day.  A customer calls in a product return and is promised a mailing label that never arrives.  An appointment is made for home repair and the workman shows up without the right parts.  A promise is made for exceptional extended warranty service, yet the process is sloppy and unwieldy.  The customer has to strong-arm his/her way through the corporate maize just to get basic things accomplished.  They’re exhausted from the wrestling match, they’re annoyed and they’re telling everyone they know.  And, oh, by the way, when they get the chance they’re walking.
9. When you make a mistake – right the wrong.  If you’ve got egg on your face, for whatever the reason, admit it.  Then right the wrong.  There’s nothing more grossly frustrating to customers than a company who does something wrong then is either clueless about what they did or won’t admit that they faltered.
10. Work to believe.  Very little shreds of respect remain, if any, after we’ve put customers through the third degree that many experience when they encounter a glitch in our products and services and actually need to return a product, put in a claim or use the warranty service.  As tempting as it is to debate customers to uphold a policy to the letter of the law, suspend the cynicism and work to believe your customers.   Most are going to honestly relay what is happening to them with your product and service.  And because of all the ‘ifs, ands, and buts’ in our policies we’ve conditioned customers to come in with their dukes up when they have a problem.  With good reason.  We’ve programmed our frontline to be cynical of customers through the creation of policies that protect the corporation from the lack of judgment of the minority.  Work to eliminate the question of doubt about your customers’ integrity.   It will do wonders for the attitude and actions that your frontline brings to their interactions with customers.  

Why do these ideas from The MBA of Customer Love matter today?

The outcome of our inability to work together is the gift we give our customers.  We force our customers into navigating our organization charts just to get what they need from us.  The end result of their experience is usually not planned.  It’s the defaulted experience that comes from the customer receiving the individually planned and executed tactics and actions of each separate area of our companies.  These come together in a seemingly dim-witted chain of events that has the customer thinking; “Do they talk to each other,”: “What are they thinking,” and “Why do I have to take this anymore?”  Customers vote with their feet and decide if they will stay or leave based on their perception of how much we value them and how we treat them.  And more are leaving every day just because of our inability to do the basic blocking and tackling of delivering our products and services to them.  

Any additional thoughts on customer love?