Today’s post comes from Bridgz’s director of production services Denise Maher-Gall.
Car dealerships and car salesmen get a bad rap for being crooked, uncaring and even slimy. However, this last spring my husband and I had a wonderful customer experience with the purchase of our 2011 Jeep Liberty.
Today’s post comes from Bridgz’s director of data services Bob Gorans.
My wife and I have been looking for a new TV over the past few months and have spent considerable time researching online. After much scouring, we finally found the product we wanted on sale at a large electronics retailer. We were ready to buy.
Today’s post comes from Bridgz creative director Michelle Van Santen.
I took my pet to the groomer last week. It was my first time visiting this particular location.
Several days later I received a card in the mail from the groomer’s office. I opened it, expecting to find some sort of upsell or promotion, but there was none of that. This was a true, traditional ‘Thank You’ card, expressing earnest gratitude for my business. How refreshing!
These days, many companies are so focused on turning new customers into money-generating tools that they skip the middle step of solidifying a relationship. Too often, I’ve soured on a brand experience because the employees had been trained to start cramming membership upgrades and offers down my throat right off the bat.
Sending ‘Thank You’ cards after doing business is a small, inexpensive step that can go a long way toward leaving a good impression and encouraging future transactions.
As with any relationship, moving a customer from first-time buyer to loyal brand advocate requires time and effort. The fact that this company held off on trying to upsell me in our initial interaction increases the chances that I’ll become a devoted customer of theirs over the long run.
Today’s post comes from Bridgz Director of Insight and Analytics Tim Altier.
I took my family on a Disney vacation over the summer. If you’ve never been before, you’ve probably heard that it is a ridiculously expensive family getaway, but the value that we experienced was well worth it. I’d spend the money again without hesitation.
Why? What made the experience so great?
Filed under: Customer Rules | Tags: anecdotes, customer experience, social media
The other day one of our newer employees asked me what we meant by “the customer rules,” a phrase often used in our marketing efforts here at Bridgz.
I thought for a moment and said, “Let me tell you something that happened to me personally early this summer.”
I explained this employee how I wanted to buy a new gas grill for my deck. My old one had run its course so I was on the hunt for a replacement. It was a Saturday morning in June when I went to the mailbox and pulled out a colorful mailer from one of the big-box retailers touting their summer savings.
Front and center on the cover was a great-looking gas grill, which carried a great price to boot. I promptly decided that this was the one for me. I grabbed my car keys and headed for the door when my wife asked, “Where are you off to this morning?” I showed her the mailer with the grill on the cover and said to her, “I’ve found my new grill and I’ll be back soon.”
Note: Today’s entry is a guest post from Bridgz employee Nick Nelson.
A recent post from Elizabeth Glagowski on The 1to1 Blog noted that Sprint is banking its future on enhanced customer engagement. As a longtime Sprint customer, the entry resonated with me.
Glagowski wrote:
From 2008 to 2010, the company was in crisis mode. It focused on customer satisfaction as the key to getting back on track. [VP of Customer Experience Jerry] Adriano says the company dug in to stabilize the customer care organization by meeting expectations, addressing discrete pain points, improving first call resolution and satisfaction within channels, and encouraging employees to consider the importance of the customer experience.
The company wants to go even further for 2011-2013. “For us it’s about a shift,” Adriano told the audience. “It was about satisfaction and now we want to drive loyalty and advocacy. We want interactions to be one of the reasons you stay with us and recommend us. We want to exceed expectations.”
In the world of wireless telecommunications, competition is stiff. More than most, this is an industry where customers are in control, with Sprint vying for business alongside such hulking entities as AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Virgin. If you anger your subscribers, they won’t hesitate drop you and head elsewhere (at least once their current plan is up).
Note: Today’s entry is a guest post from Bridgz employee Nick Nelson.
When I was in high school and college, I tried my hand at a variety of different summer jobs. Two notable, and very different, experiences I had during these years were short-term gigs at Kohl’s Department Store and Blockbuster Video.
Aside from the fact that these businesses offered very different types of products, I was struck even back then by the stark philosophical differences between the two, specifically in the ways they trained their employees to deal with customers.
As an analyst with Forrester for 12 years, Bruce Temkin authored several of its more popular research reports, including “The Customer Experience Journey,” which was featured in the Harvard Business Review.
Temkin has since left Forrester to form his own company, the Temkin Group, where he continues his research, examining how Corporate America is responding to changes in the marketplace — most notably the shift from product push to demand pull in a customer-driven economy.
In his most recent report, “The Current State of Customer Experience,” Temkin summarizes his findings from surveys conducted over the past six months with 140 large North American companies. Though he sets the bar fairly high in defining what constitutes a customer-centric organization, the results are rather sobering. Based on his evaluation criteria, only 3% of companies in the US are customer-centric.
Note: Today’s entry is a guest post from Kim Perila, Director of Strategy at Bridgz Marketing Group.
As customers, we wait for things every day. We stand in that longer-than-usual line to make a purchase. We search the store for an available expert to assist with a question. We hold on the phone for customer service to take our call. But when that waiting time is up, the action that we encounter can make all the difference in the long run.
Note: Today’s entry is a guest post from Bridgz Marketing Group employee Nick Nelson, detailing a recent customer experience.
My last guest post in this space came last summer, when I expressed frustration with a headphone brand called Skullcandy’s failure to respond to a customer complaint. They had a website with a contact form as well as a Twitter account, but my attempts to reach them through both channels fell upon deaf ears.
Since then, I’ve opted for alternative brands of headphones and recommended that others do the same.
If companies want to maintain a presence online and in social media – giving the appearance of an interactive and customer-friendly operation – it is imperative that they not let complaints and inquiries slip through the cracks.
Jimmy John’s, a popular sandwich shop nationwide, does it right.
