Different & Better Enough to Make People Care?

This article titled Are you different (& better) enough to make people care? appeared in the May 17-31, 2010 issue of Floor Covering Weekly.

Figuring out how you are different from competitors is critical to being successful in business. It comes up in every presentation I take part in. It's the basis for a strong marketing strategy, for creating memorable content and for making strong use of social media tools.

Do you know what value you contribute to your community? Do you know what makes your retail experience different and memorable for your customers?

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Are You Different (& Better) Enough To Make People Care?

By Christine B. Whittemore

Have you noticed how important it is when you first introduce yourself to succinctly deliver an ‘elevator pitch’ that captures what makes you unique? When you do it well, your new acquaintance leaves with a distinct image in his/her mind about you and the relevance you offer.

The same goes for your customers. You want them to associate you and your retail experience with a positive and unique value proposition which distinguishes you from others in your marketplace. It must be specific enough to communicate what’s in it for them and relevant enough that they don’t think twice about engaging you in conversation. Once you start the conversation, you have the basis for building a relationship which may then lead to sales, satisfaction, word-of-mouth, and a retail community.

Imagine driving by a strip mall occupied completely by fellow flooring retailers. All look the same with carpet and wood samples parked in the windowsills and displays crammed within. The first store is called Al’s Flooring, the second Bill’s Floors, the third Charlie’s Carpets and so on. All have loud signs promoting Cheap! Sale! No Money Down! What’s to differentiate one from the other to a potential customer? These stores are only about price, bargains, and the deal of the day which will be meaningless tomorrow.

Then imagine in that competitive strip mall one store with a sunshiny yellow awning, flower boxes in windows which offer a clear view into an elegantly organized showroom. The name: Sunshine Floors & More – guaranteed to make you & your home shine!

That aura of sunshine permeates every element of the retail experience! Store events, sales, communications and interactions are themed around sunshine and ample information shared about making a home shine. Making the home shine is the passion of everyone in the store. It is the basis for the supporting community projects such as Habitat For Humanity to bring sunshine to other homes and homeowners regardless of their means. Sure to capture attention, don’t you think?

That sense of passion and commitment to the mission of making you and your home shine is so strong that it becomes the basis for a community of like-minded people who help tell your story about shine, value your perspectives and contribute back theirs. They gather based not on the price of floors, but rather because of shared affinity, a much more powerful and long-lasting basis for a community.

Now, in the current scenario, your community is primarily geography based. Those in your immediate geographic community have become aware of you and associate your flooring store with sunshine and making both customer and home shine. Fantastic!

There’s more, though.

Your community does not need to be limited by geography. Simply extend and integrate all of your in-store and offline effort onto your online presence. Have your website reflect your unique value as does your retail presence. Offer valuable information based on the questions that customers ask in-store. Echo the look, feel, passion and commitment you share with your offline community. Make use of the tools of social media and offer educational advice on how to care for floors on your blog, post photos of your in-store Habitat For Humanity event on Facebook and share links to articles about eradicating homelessness in your town on Twitter.

The result is significant. Your unique value becomes permanently and digitally visible 24/7; it can’t be easily overshadowed by the latest price-based promotion. Furthermore, it reinforces the value you contribute to the community.

Before you purchase that yellow store awning and change your name, though, ask yourself these questions. How serious are you about delighting customers? Are you committed to listening to them and learning from them? How determined are you to be more than a commodity player? Do you feel passion for what you offer the marketplace and can contribute to those in your community? Are you not just willing but determined to share your knowledge and interests with others?

If your answer is no, then go back to the way you’ve been doing things.

If your answer is a resounding Yes!, then get ready for a rich journey building and nurturing a retail community that will give back as much as you offer.

Retail Experience in the News - 3/25/11

Here is the 3/25/11 issue of Retail Experience in the News...  recapping the latest articles and links shared on Twitter with the #retailexp hashtag this past week.

Retail Experience and Customer Service

• Have u considered complaints fr customer perspective? +H2 make meaning fr complaints? Interview w @GuyWinch http://ow.ly/4iCJB #retailexp
• Marvelous customer service & experience wisdom fr these 3 experts, incl Jack Mitchell fr Hug Yr Customers! http://ow.ly/4jgHh #retailexp
• It's critical to create emotional connections with customers! http://ow.ly/4dI8D #retailexp
• The smarter consumer has arrived. IBM Consumer Research. Need 2 listen as never B4! http://ow.ly/4dHYB #retailexp via @retexperience
• I love notion of empathy as starting point 4 innovation: Zipcar, Burton, Apple. Solve user's problems, right? http://ow.ly/4lYWb #retailexp

Retail Experience Ideas

• Eileen Fisher: moving fashion forward & bldng brand experience. Interview w @columbia_Biz Karen Gray '81 http://ow.ly/4iplM #retailexp
• Are you ready for the retail store of the future? It's about seeing/tasting/touching products! http://ow.ly/4dI5H #retailexp
• I love this content marketing purchase process fr @heidicohen. So relevant for #retailexp http://ow.ly/4lYIR

Integrating Online with Offline

• Interesting use of Foursquare w/ Amex to generate business http://ow.ly/4hhoW #retailexp
• Social Shopping Revolution: http://ow.ly/4ipoV Reminds me of #BRITEconf GoTryItOn preso #retailexp

For previous issues of Retail Experience In The News, see Retail Experience News.

Enjoy and thanks for reading!

Simple Marketing Now, a marketing communications consultancy, helps organizations integrate social media and content marketing with traditional marketing to better connect with customers and improve business profitability. Simple Marketing Now issues the Social Flooring Index which monitors the social state of the Flooring Industry, Flooring The Consumer, about marketing to women and the retail experience. For more information, and the Simple Marketing Blog, about social media and content marketing to better connect with customers.

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Guy Winch: How To Complain & Get Results - The Squeaky Wheel

Meet Guy Winch, author of The Squeaky Wheel: Complaining the Right Way to Get Results, Improve Your Relationships, and Enhance Self-Esteem.

Given my recent MarketingProfs online seminar - Managing Your Reputation in a Social World - you can imagine how intrigued I was to receive an email from Guy in which he described how his book examines our "complaining psychology, its impact on how we complain as consumers (as well as in our relationships) and our interactions with the customer service industry."  By the way, he's also a pyschologist who writes The Squeaky Wheel Blog for Psychology Today.

What struck me as I thought about complaints from the customer perspective is how most businesses focus on themselves when complaints happen.  We readily forget how much effort - and angst - goes into making a complaint.  Someone has to care intensely to invest the energy to complain and be heard. Imagine funneling all of that energy into creating productive outcomes...

Consider this interview with Guy, then, an opportunity to walk in our customers' shoes and figure out how to make the complaint process more constructive.

C.B.: Guy, what made you so passionate about the topic of customer complaints and making complaints more productive?

GW: As a psychologist who also has a private practice, I was always struck by how often patients would discuss consumer complaints, how frustrating they found them and how helpless they felt about tackling them. I would often coach them through it (when the issue/complaint was meaningful enough--I give several examples of this in my book) and was always amazed at the impact getting the matter resolved had on their self-esteem, mood and mental health. Of course, it is a similar issue with personal complaints (marital, familial, etc...)--people feel just as hopeless about being able to complain to a loved one and get a result.

At the same time, my twin brother is an organizational psychologist (yes, identical twins with Ph.D.s in psychology--a book unto itself) and he also owns a call-center. Over the years we've had a running dialog about complaints from the company side of things as well.

So some years ago, I decided to look into the research about complaining and it was then I began to understand that what I was seeing in my practice and what my brother was seeing in his business was part of a much larger phenomenon that affected our complaining psychology as a whole--a general mindset of helplessness and hopelessness that impedes our quality of life in many ways. I decided to write a book about it to bring awareness, help people and companies take a look at these issues that affect them deeply, even if they don't realize it, and hopefully, to create change.

I hope that gives you a glimpse into my background and passion for the topic.

C.B.: How can consumers complain effectively?

GW: The most salient aspect of our complaining psychology today, especially as consumers, is the extent to which it is characterized by a defeatist attitude. When consumers are frustrated with a purchase, a store or a business and feel the urge to complain, they invest substantial time and effort in doing so—however they typically relate these complaints solely to friends and acquaintances and avoid directing them to the store or business in question. This prevents customers from getting the matter resolved and it denies companies the opportunity to take action and salvage their relationship with the customer.

Ironically, consumers avoid addressing their complaints to companies directly because they believe doing so will require too much effort. This despite the effort they invest in relaying their complaint to practically everyone else around them.

Therefore, to complain effectively, consumers must first learn to voice their dissatisfaction to the right people and second, they must overcome their fear and apprehension about the ‘complaining process’. Customers’ fear of unhelpful sales or service representatives creates a self-fulfilling prophecy because it makes them come across as suspicious and hostile to the representatives who are then put on the defensive and feel less motivated to help the customer resolve their problem.

C.B.: How should customers use digital and social tools to complain effectively?

GW: These days more and more companies monitor Twitter, Facebook and other social media for consumer complaints and those who do tend to respond to them extremely quickly. However, customers should use social media to get the company’s attention and request their help, not simply to flame them, or slam them. Tweeting “Help @Company! The shoes u sent are the wrong size. Wedding is in two days!” is far more productive than “@Company sucks! I’m never ordering from you again!”

C.B.: How can business turn customer complaints into valuable sources of insight?

GW: Businesses should educate employees down the ranks (especially frontline employees) about the value customer complaints provide to companies. First, complaints are a crucial source of information about potential problems with products, services or procedures that might be causing customer attrition in addition to customer dissatisfaction. Second, they provide companies an opportunity to perform service recoveries and engage customers in a dialogue while doing so. Companies that truly listen to their customers will find that customer complaints often provide valuable insights about customer needs and wishes that companies can them apply toward improving the customer experience.

C.B.: How should businesses proactively handle complaints?

GW: The most important things companies should do with complaining customers is allow them to voice their complaints fully and then provide them with authentic apologies, timely solutions to their problems and follow-ups to confirm they are indeed satisfied with the outcome. Customers whose complaints are well handled become even more loyal to the company than they were before they encountered a problem.

Further, the entire sequence of interaction around complaints and the dialogue it sets up, provides the company with numerous opportunities to educate and inform customers about products and programs as well as to upsell. Companies who do not provide successful complaint handling not only risk losing customers but having them provide negative word of mouth about the company as well.

The tricky part of our complaining psychology is that the results of most companies’ efforts often fall into a dichotomy. Customers are either extremely pleased with how their complaints were handled or they remain disappointed and frustrated. As consumers, we don’t have a huge middle ground when it comes to how we feel about a business once we voiced our complaint to them. Therefore, companies that want the best ROI should always strive to achieve excellent complaint handling practices rather than merely satisfactory ones.

C.B.: Thank you, Guy. You've certainly given me plenty to think about!

What's your perspective on customer complaints? Do you have success stories to share about customers who were particularly effective in voicing complaints and whose perspectives helped you come up with significant customer service improvements?

Guy Winch Ph.D. can be reached through is website at http://www.guywinch.com/ or on Twitter @GuyWinch. Also check out the Guy Winch blog and a recent article on Customer Service Manager titled, The 3 Things Complaining Customers Fear Most.

Retail Experience in the News - 3/18/11

Here is the March 18 issue of Retail Experience in the News...  recapping the latest articles and links shared on Twitter with the #retailexp hashtag this past week.

Note the discussion below about the IKEA retail experience. Jeremy Meyers draws a fascinating parallel between gaming and IKEA's in-store path of discovery.

Retail Experience and Customer Service

• Interesting perspective on how search behavior varies depending on mobile, tablet or desktop http://ow.ly/4ek9a #retailexp
• RT @CinWilliams: Consumers listen to online reviews/strangers b4 they believe your ads. #retailexp Me: Better make sure cust exp is great!

The Economy/Consumers

• Men embrace mobile shopping vs. women & social shopping? Shoppercentric survey http://ow.ly/48Wqj #retailexp
• Are you seeing signs of this in your marketplace: small luxuries are back http://ow.ly/4awhS #retailexp

Retail Experience Ideas

• Have you considered 'core product neglect syndrome'? Read http://ow.ly/4awbZ and learn more #retailexp
• What's your take on the IKEA store layout? http://ow.ly/4dIbI #retailexp via @retexperience
• + @CBWhittemore its 'gamification' before that word existed. makes the experience an adventure rather than work #retailexp
• + RT @EHise: RT @CBWhittemore: What's yr take on IKEA store layout? http://ow.ly/4dIbI via @retexperience >> Love it. Always a shopping event!
• + @jeremymeyers I also love yr digital analogy to the physical retail experience. I'll B thinking very differently when I next go thru IKEA
• + @CBWhittemore they encourage you to experience it all, not just grab what you already know you need and go.
• + @CBWhittemore there are shortcuts in between departments and stuff...you're not FORCED through the maze.

Integrating Online with Offline

• Examples H2 use Facebook to capture customers fr HBR http://ow.ly/48Wo5 #retailexp
• 2 concepts for virtual dressing room experiences http://ow.ly/48Wjc #retailexp

Enjoy and thanks for reading!


For previous issues of Retail Experience In The News, see Retail Experience News.

Simple Marketing Now, a marketing communications consultancy, helps organizations integrate social media and content marketing with traditional marketing to better connect with customers and improve business profitability. Simple Marketing Now issues the Social Flooring Index which monitors the social state of the Flooring Industry, Flooring The Consumer, about marketing to women and the retail experience. For more information, and the Simple Marketing Blog, about social media and content marketing to better connect with customers.


Graphic Created Via Wordle.

Hiring Customer Focused Employees To Be Service Champions

How passionate are you about customer service? How passionate are your employees? Are they customer service champions?

Two of my Zappos related posts - Customer Experience "Powered By Service" and Zappos: Where Happy Employees Deliver - have generated discussion about hiring and nurturing the right people in an organization including the following article titled "Seeking Customer Service Champions: How and Why to Hire Customer Focused Employees" from Brendan Cruickshank, vice president - client relations of Job Search Engine [aka JuJu].

Brendan has worked in the online job search industry for 8 years in senior client services roles with well-known sites such as Juju.com and JobsInTheMoney.com. Perhaps you've noticed his expert insight on employment and jobs trends in business publications [e.g., the Wall Street Journal, Forbes and US News & World Report [check out Today's Secure Job' Is a Stable Career on Forbes.com] and many blogs [see Four Pivotal Insights on Hiring Leaders from the Ground Up].

About Juju.com, Brendan says:  "In regards to Juju.com, since we give access to job seekers across many other sites, we allow employers to search a wide range of talent giving them transparency to everyone out there looking.  This enables them to compare more candidates and make a more informed decision.  Depending on the industry, different talents are also required for customer service (i.e., customer service at a hotel is much different than at a home improvement store), so our advanced searching techniques also facilitate this."

About his guest article, Brendan writes: "I feel strongly that we need to reestablish the critical bond between consumers and companies, which means having employees who value this themselves - employees who are eager to engage. I see this as the only solution because without true and honest communication and a willingness to go out of one’s way to understand each customer, we cannot expect our corporations to adequately adapt, thrive and expand. In my opinion, this begins with the hiring process which is why I’ve written “Seeking Customer Service Champions - How and Why to Hire Customer Focused Employees” which I think your audience will find intriguing as well as beneficial. I have also delved into several corporations who are doing an exemplary job in this charge and stand out amidst the rest, as well as touching on why these companies are typically better employers as well!"

Seeking Customer Service Champions: How and Why to Hire Customer Focused Employees

"The customer is always right."

This is a phrase we hear all the time. And if you ask the folks who run just about any business, they will invariably nod their heads and acknowledge the saying as a time-tested and obvious truth. But how many companies simply mouth the words and how many actually adopt customer service as an endemic part of their corporate culture? Fortunately, an increasing number of companies are beginning to recognize the need to more firmly establish their critical bonds with consumers and are taking proactive measures to make customer service more than just an empty phrase.

A commitment to customer satisfaction is a lot more than a series of policy statements and office memos. It begins deep in the company's culture and manifests itself in the way employees go about their jobs every moment of every day. It also shows in the metrics that firms consider important and decide to measure. Take for example the average time that an employee spends on the phone with a customer. Some firms think a low number is a good thing because they view it as evidence that employees are thinking about bottom-line profits and are not "wasting" their time. But other companies look at this metric in a different way. They prefer to see high numbers, not low ones. These companies realize that employees who spend a longer time on the phone with each customer are not just talking the talk about customer service, but actually walking the walk.

There are many other ways in which a company can infuse customer satisfaction into its corporate culture. Most people instinctively like to see others treated right. Similarly, most employees of a company, if allowed to act on their natural instincts, are inclined to make decisions that do the right thing by their customers. Firms that are committed to customer service will allow their employees to act on these instincts. For example, they will empower their workers to authorize the issuance of recovery tools (e.g., money back, tangible gestures of remorse, etc.) to rectify a situation where a customer feels he or she was wronged. Another thing they will do is let their employees be themselves and allow their personalities to shine through instead of making them corporate robots who are forced to follow a preordained script every time they deal with a customer.

But probably the most important way in which a corporation can cement service to customers into its cultural fiber is in its hiring practices. In fact, the creation of a true customer culture starts with hiring! But what specific hiring strategies can a company implement to give itself the best chance of recruiting customer-focused workers? Well, for one thing, it can put as much emphasis on cultural fit as on more traditional attributes such as skill and background. Of course, there is no denying the importance of good technical skills and experience in a job candidate. But just as important is a true understanding of customer service. To a customer-focused firm, finding people who are able to demonstrate this understanding is half the battle. The other half is finding people who can successfully implement it...in other words, recruiting people who are friendly!

College basketball coaches have a favorite phrase that they use when describing how they go about recruiting players: "You can't teach size!" What they mean is that a player's height is so important in basketball that big players are always at a premium and that even those who are unpolished are very often recruited with the expectation that their skills will develop in time. After all, skills to at least a certain extent can be taught and practiced. But size can never be. A very successful and customer-focused company has learned to employ a similar philosophy when recruiting new employees. Nordstrom, a famous upscale department store, has long been committed to excellence in customer service. And the commitment starts with Nordstrom's hiring philosophy: "Hire the smile, train the skill!" What does this mean? Simply put, it means that the company's recruiters look for people who are friendly, caring, and who smile a lot. They value these traits even more highly than aptitude and experience because they know that it is much easier to train someone to be a good salesperson, floor manager, or cashier than it is to train them to be nice. Business skills can be developed much more easily than "skills" like a warm personality or a caring nature. Nordstrom's hiring practices are a reflection of its overriding culture of customer satisfaction, a culture which has served it well in terms of business prosperity.

True customer focus is the pathway to a company's growth, evolution, and success. It is much more than a slogan; it is a way of doing business that permeates an entire organization and defines its fabric. And the smart companies are those that are able to recruit people who are able to become not only hard working employees but also customer service champions.

Thank you, Brendan!


What's your experience with seeking customer service champions? Do you hire the smile and train the skill? Or do you focus primarily on skills? What has worked best for you?

Retail Experience in the News - 3/11/11

Did you miss last week's issue? I hope so! Here is the March 11, 2011 issue of Retail Experience in the News...  recapping the latest articles and links shared on Twitter with the #retailexp hashtag this past week. Lots of good resources here!

Retail Experience and Customer Service

• You should definitely be thinking about how to SIMPLIFY your customers lives http://ow.ly/42lp9 #retailexp
• Perspective on how the retail landscape is changing: smaller stores, better service http://ow.ly/48SNZ #retailexp
• So relevant! RT @YourCustomers: Can We Increase Customer Loyalty? http://goo.gl/fb/NAlqd #custserv #retailexp
• RT @DennisSnow: When is the right time to improve customer service? http://bit.ly/i2ANeD #retailexp

The Economy/Consumers

• Women represent more active social media communicators than men USAToday: http://ow.ly/48U8I #retailexp
• Did U know that women = fastest growing segment of early iPad adopters. Major implications for #retailexp http://ow.ly/48V9w
• CBS News: Boomers are still a highly coveted #retail target; how retailers/brands will react: http://bit.ly/gNGNd0 #retailexp
• Big deal data: search + social create interlinked purchase path http://ow.ly/44plJ #retailexp

Retail Experience Ideas

• Gr8 article ab Ann Gottlieb, beauty industry's knowing nose. Imagine having that kind of memory & expertise! http://ow.ly/48TNC #retailexp
• Breath of fresh air: Urban Outfitters' Revamp draws chic humans, happy dogs http://ow.ly/48VTg #retailexp
• Really enjoyed this article about what women want and Home Depot http://ow.ly/47EeO #retailexp
• Shoppers combine search, social media for purchase decisions http://ow.ly/48V3l #retailexp

Integrating Online with Offline

• Macy's uses QR codes to engage customers & expose them to designer footage http://ow.ly/44uf5 #retailexp
• New apps can read shopper facial expressions http://ow.ly/47DZS How do you think this will affect #retailexp?
• Imagine include facial recognition technology into your #retailexp! Different, no? http://ow.ly/48U47
• Imagine the future of retailing: browse, buy, wave hand w/smartphone http://ow.ly/4651W Wild #retailexp
• Old Navy launches mobile effort with Shazam. Id songs, get coupons, info http://ow.ly/48TBU Do U think this will improve #retailexp?
• Loopt and AT&T offer location based advertisements http://ow.ly/48VMZ Interesting way to improve #retailexp
• 4 marketing lessons from FYE social media campaign http://ow.ly/48VXW #retailexp
• IPads integrated into the shopper experience: my post http://ow.ly/49fju FYI @Polinchock #retailexp
• QR codes to enhance info & deliver it anywhere http://ow.ly/48Hsm #retailexp
• Social local matters; are you thinking how to reinvent your #retailexp for Facebook, geolocation and other social tools? http://ow.ly/44uhf

Enjoy and thanks for reading!


For previous issues of Retail Experience In The News, see Retail Experience News.

Simple Marketing Now, a marketing communications consultancy, helps organizations integrate social media and content marketing with traditional marketing to better connect with customers and improve business profitability. Simple Marketing Now issues the Social Flooring Index which monitors the social state of the Flooring Industry, Flooring The Consumer, about marketing to women and the retail experience. For more information, and the Simple Marketing Blog, about social media and content marketing to better connect with customers.


Graphic Created Via Wordle.

Retailers Integrate iPad Into Shopping Experience

In June 2010, David Polinchock and I visited several retail stores in SoHo to experience the shopping and observe how retailers were integrating technology into their customer interactions. Guess what we encountered? iPads!

One store we visited was All Saints Spitalfields, a very recent retail addition from the UK, open barely one month yet which included the then just-introduced iPad. The All Saints SoHo store representative graciously agreed to our taking  pictures of the store [unlike the experience that David had later with a group of students].

Fast Company Magazine in Marching In described All Saints Spitalfield as sitting "at the high end of affordable, with lower prices than major fashion houses but more exclusivity than Zara and H&M... in a narrow aesthetic - you'd better like black and gray."  Furthermore, the inside of the store "-- brick, iron, weathered wood -- complements the garments."

However, All Saints stands out by offering "an abundance of pleats, gatherings, and figure-forgiving loose fabrics that are somehow 'still sexy'."

What impressed us is that the sales associate who greeted us as we entered was wearing All Saints garments and readily talked about them and the new store.

Interestingly, the store included a computer kiosk which didn't work [often an issue in stores].

Just a few steps away was an iPad device displayed vertically which did work and created an engaging tool for browsing and purchasing product online - and one that looked less prone to technical malfunctions.

According to ChicagoTribune.com, we'll be seeing a great deal more integration of the iPad into the retail shopping experience. As stated in Retailers tap into iPad hoping device with help you buy, "merchants from Gucci to J.C. Penney are experimenting."

Furthermore, "this is not going to be a novelty. It's going to be a sea change in how retailers transact and interact with customers."

Strong words!

The article details possibilities such as mobile catalog, gathering customer data, a portable cash register, a tool to allow customers to update social networks while experiencing the store/product, a means for 'bending time' when customers are waiting and creating a connection between them and the brand, a way to improve the customer experience, a product comparison tool, the means to customizing product and experiencing the final iteration before purchase, and even viewing runway shows.

Chair by changing rooms

Shoe display

Cash wrap desk

As you hear more about the iPad - and other tablets - and start to see them in action, how might you envision them being integrated into your customer shopping experience?

I'd love to hear!

P.S.:  Be sure to check out AdAge Digital's How the iPad iIs Resharping E-commerce. Note that women represent the fastest growing segment of early iPad adopters! Makes the retail experience implications a lot more interesting, don't you think?