Could their Experience Have Been Better?

There are a couple of incidents that have been recently reported  to me that made me ask  the question “What could have been done better”

A group of foreign visiting golfers were playing at The Molle Golf Club in Sweden, the weather had been wet but on the day it could not have been better with a cool bright start turning into a lovely sunny day.

The visitors all hired trolleys which were the new three wheeled push type. The course is spectacular but a little hilly and after a few holes one of the golfers was feeling warm and removed his sweater, which happened to be pale blue cashmere, and placed it in a small basket situated below the push handle.

A couple of holes later in order to get to the next tee it was necessary to push the trolley up a very steep slope, as the golfer did this a large quantity of filthy black liquid came out of the joint in the handle and poured over the sweater leaving it badly marked and stained.

On getting back to the pro shop, the golfer complained and showed them the sweater. The assistant said that

a.     They were aware that the trolley frame was liable to fill with water when it rained and create an unpleasant residue which could spill out

b.     They told the golfer that he should not have put his sweater in the basket

The golfer asked what they proposed to do about the situation.

They advised him they would attempt to wash the sweater. He pointed out that they had to leave after the game to get to their next destination 3 hours away.  The answer was a shrug.

What could they have done better?  If you were in charge of the pro-shop what would you have done?  Is a visitor customer any less important? What were the lost opportunities? Will their action prevent a recurrence?

In another incident a group of eight friends were staying at a country hotel on the East Coast of Suffolk in the UK.  After returning to the hotel from a local visit they were asked if they would like to book a table for dinner. As the restaurant had a good reputation they confirmed they would and were asked what time they would like and they selected 8pm. They arrived at the restaurant to find it almost full with a large group of over 20 behaving in a fairly loud manner with the one waiter and waitress clearly struggling to keep up with their needs.

 It took half an hour before the orders for starters were taken from the group of eight and their whole meal took over three hours to serve as the large group clearly was taking precedence. A couple of very measured complaints to the waiting staff during that period produced no results.

 The following morning on check out the manageress enquired if everything had been satisfactory, she was given the bad news by one of the guests in the form of some carefully structured feedback about the service at dinner. Her response was that she had no idea it had happened, apologised and added she hoped it would not influence their decision about staying with them again. . Nothing more.

There seem to be some process management  and communication opportunities lost here

What could they have done better?  If you were in the hotel owner would you be confident that you would get to know about such incidents?  What were the missed process management and communication opportunities. What could be done to prevent a recurrence?

To conclude another thought.  I have just been reading another book on managing the customer experience and observed that this book, like many of its kind, make a number of references of the kind that say “When you next have to persuade your boss that it is worth investing in customer ……………..then show him this or tell him that”

This seems to imply two things. Firstly that the book is not written for business leaders but is aimed at middle management in order to arm them in their relentless struggle for customer experience improvement in an environment that is hostile to the concept. Secondly that all bosses are unable to read such books themselves and are too stupid and over focused on other priorities to be able to recognise the importance of the role of customers in their organisational success equation.

Could it be that all bosses are that stupid or is that the authors have an unrealistic picture of the world?

Philip Forrest

Loyalty as a Sales Growth Tool

Why is growth necessary for business survival.?

 It is one of the great business truths that it is very difficult, probably impossible, to maintain a business revenues and costs at a constant level. There is always erosion of revenues that is rarely mirrored by a reduction in costs. So standing still is not an option unless oblivion is part of the plan.

The erosion of revenues is caused by a variety of reasons, one of them being the loss of customers or low customer loyalty. I recently came across again a piece of old research about why customers defect from an organisation which, whether absolutely correct or not, brings into focus the hard edged commercial value of loyalty.

- 1%   Die
- 4%   Move Away
- 5%   Friendship Links
- 10%   Competitor Activities
- 12% Product  Dissatisfaction
- 68% Indifferent Service Performance

These can be subdivided generally into two groups .

Uncontrollable Customer Loss and Controllable Customer Loss.

The first 4 factors (20% ) are more or less uncontrollable. Those that die definitely will not buy much in the future and the others are difficult to manage on a strategic basis. This indicates that an organisation with a customer churn of 20% is likely to have to replace 4% of its revenue simply to maintain the status quo. However. if it does not pay attention to the Controllable Factors (80%) then another 16% of its revenue is at risk and at that rate it is not difficult to see how rapidly oblivion could arrive. Yet it is very rare to find an organisation whose sales or growth plan includes an element that addresses the controllable loss issue. The sales focus usually is very heavily on new business, new sales to new customers. Whereas repeat/additional sales to existing customers (loyalty) figures less prominently.  So if the major strategic growth plan abandons the controllable 16%  of revenue that is at risk by not addressing its root cause, poor product and service performance, and sets sales off to replace the whole 20% necessary to get the revenue level required to stand still is this the most sensible approach? 

If the controllable losses could be entirely eliminated the same sales effort and energy would produce 16% revenue growth, or alternatively the sales costs required to maintain the status quo could be reduced. There is of course a cost to resolving the controllable loss issue but that is usually more of an investment in improved product, premises, process and people performance which when done remains a permanent on-going performance improvement and competitive benefit to the organisation likely to yield protection from controllable losses in the future

Depending on the sector in question It is possible to produce simple or very complicated mathematical models to justify an investment  in loyalty as a sensible business strategy to substantially reduce the sales effort required to achieve a given growth objective.

Many markets are still in uncertain economic times so would it be better to resolve the loss of revenue caused by poor service performance and thereby enable the organisation to focus its sales effort on getting the number and kind of customers it needs to achieve it growth objectives  rather than having to chase the need to get as many customers as it can simply to replace lost revenue?

Many organisations manage sales and loyalty within different functions which  raises the question that if growth optimisation is dependent on maximising the combined effect of loyalty and sales are organisations structured in a way that gives them the best opportunity to grow revenue?

Philip Forrest