Customer Experience: A Tale Of Opposite Stories

In Monday’s Wall Street Journal there was an article titled “Companies Strive Harder to Please Customers”.  This was music to my eyes and I read it immediately. 

In the article they discussed how companies have come to the realization that current economic conditions call for better customer satisfaction. I can’t believe it took this long to figure that out. The companies they highlighted included Sprint Nextel, Cheesecake Factory, US Airways, and Southwest Airlines.  This was a nice mix.  I consider two of them having a good reputation for customer experience and two who don’t. 

All four of them know that customers have choices and beefing up the satisfaction can be the difference.  For Nextel it was rewarding customer service people for solving a customers issue on the first call.  Cheesecake Factory is enhancing the service they provide while waiting for a table.  US Air is fixing its missing baggage issue.  This is a great idea since they charge you for baggage.  Southwest now offers free call-back from their call center if wait times are too long. 

All of this made me happy until yesterday when I realized not everyone is on the good customer experience bandwagon.

I received a text message from Verizon Wireless letting me know that at least one of my family phones had data usage charges.  Verizon Wireless has a phone store called Get It Now.  They also place apps on your phone that are demos.  What they are not clear about is they charge you for checking them out.  My kids phones don’t have a data plan.  They don’t need one.  They are offering customers to check out their products and then charge them to enter the store.  They place demo apps on the main screen of the phone and tell customers to try it “free”.  Without a data plan you are charged for the data usage to try it “free”.  Don’t they make money from customers buying apps, games, and ringtones?  Why would they charge you for looking?    The customer service person agreed with me. However, he said that the “fine print” explains they will charge you.  When is the last time a teenager or most adults ever read the “fine print”? The customer experience is not about the “fine print”. 

Being upfront with your customers is always the best customer experience.

Good Promotions In A Bad Economy

If there was ever a time that you should have your promotional thinking caps on, it is now.  I read the daily papers, watch TV, and check the internet sites everyday. I can see that promotions are on the up-tick.

No matter what your brand or product is you need to look at your promotional plans for the next year and beef them up.  As I have mentioned several times over the past few months, you need to get creative.  We all still have to do business.  If you do the right promotion you will be able to show results in a very short time.  Showing results is important in this “ready to cut” atmosphere we live in. 

I am not talking about just doing a promotion to do a promotion.  Look at the company goals.  Look at your marketing goals.  Come up with a promotion that makes sense.  I read today that Cheesecake Factory and California Pizza Kitchen are bracing for a downturn this 4th quarter.  You see, most of their restaurants are close to or at large shopping malls.  They believe that shopping will be down this holiday season in turn hurting their customer counts. 

Cheesecake Factory gave out coupons to their customers this past October offering either a free piece of cheesecake or $10 off the meal if the customer used it in November or December.  This is a good promotion.  It offers a bounce back with a decent discount that a customer could use. 

CPK is trying to get into the holiday spirit by pushing its gift cards.  For every $100 worth of gift cards you buy, they will give you a $20 gift card.  The problem with this promotion is creating the buzz.  They need to get customers thinking “let’s give CPK gift cards this holiday season”.  They really need to create a fun and exciting campaign around this to make it work.  Here is the other issue.  What is this promotion doing to drive customers to eat in the restaurants during the holiday season?  They said they expect a drop off during the holidays, what are they doing about that?  Remember, most retailers don’t count gift cards until they are used.

Papa John’s Pizza wins my best promotion of the day.  Facebook fans can get free pizza the night before Thanksgiving which is one of the top pizza delivery nights.  If a Facebook user joins Papa John’s Fan Group and orders a pizza with their online ordering service, they get a second pizza free.  This sounds very complicated but it isn’t.  It takes 2 seconds to join any group on Facebook.  The users of these social websites are not afraid to order off the net.  Papa John’s registered 140,000 new members to their group in two days.  Now that’s what I call “spreading the word”.