Would you pay for better service?

It has been a weird summer for me and my checking accounts.  Both my primary and secondary accounts were breached over the past few weeks.   Nothing serious happened.  I didn’t lose any money, but each bank handled the ATM card replacement very differently.

I have a free checking account with Ally, and a regular account with Citibank where there is a minimum balance to avoid service charges.

Citibank Experience (primary account):

I received a call on a Friday evening, around 5:30 or 6pm.

• Agent: Hi, I am calling from Citibank. Unfortunately your credit card number has been breached.  We will need to get you a new ATM card and immediately deactivate your current one.
• Me: Do you know how it happened?
• Agent: No, I do not know the circumstances of the breach.  You should let us know if you see any strange charges.  Do I have your OK to cancel your card and send you a new one.  We’ll send out the replacement card immediately.
• Me:  When should it arrive, I am going on a trip on the following Tuesday and I will be gone for a week.
• Agent: I’ll process this request immediately. I think we are before the deadline to get this delivered on Monday.  Let me confirm with my colleagues that this is the case. …
• Agent:  I have confirmed this will be sent via priority mail for a Monday AM delivery.
• Me: What happens if it doesn’t arrive on time.
• Agent: You can always go into a branch and get a temporary card to use for a trip.  It won’t have a Visa logo, but you can use it to get cash.
• Me: Great thanks for your help.

** The card delivery was attempted on Monday, but that’s another story.  I ended up getting the card on Tuesday after the delivery issues.

Ally Experience (secondary account):

I got a call on a Saturday afternoon from Ally’s fraud service.

• Agent: Hi, I am calling on behalf of Ally on a potential fraud issue.  We have some suspected charges.
• Me: OK, what are the details?
• Agent: Charge A in PEnsylvania, Charge B in Deleware, Charge C in California.
• Me: Charges A and B are not mine, C is valid.
• Agent: Do you have the card in your possession?
• Me: Yes, it has never been out of my possession.
• Agent: We can put a block on your card, but you will need to call Ally in order to get a new card issued.
• Me: OK
• Me: Hi, I am calling because it looks like my ATM card number has been stolen.  I have also noticed suspicious activity on my account.
• Agent: We can issue a provisional credit for the suscpicious activity while we will conduct an investigation.
• Me: I thought my card had been blocked, so I am puzzled this new charge appeared.
• Agent: Yes, your card has been blocked.  No more charges will go through.
• Me: Can I get a replacement card?
• Agent: Yes.  It will take 7-10 business days in order to receive the card.  The PIN will arrive a few days after that.
• Me: Is there a way to get the card sooner, that seems like a really long time.
• Agent: Yes, the rush fee is $15, and the card will be delivered in 2-3 business days.
• Me: Even though the reason to replace the card is fraud?
• Agent: Yes, unfortunately the fee to rush is $15.  Do you want to do the rush?
• Me: No thanks.  Can you process the replacement request?
• Agent: You should receive your card in 7-10 days.  Thank you for banking with Ally.

A few days later I received a letter from Ally to dispute the charges with the typical dispute reasons. IT asked me to attach an affidavit on why the charges were invalid etc.

Customer Service Comparison:

Citibank: The entire process happened in one phone call and a replacement card was received one business day after the initial contact (even though things started on a weekend).

• Incoming Phone Calls: 1
• Outgoing Phone Calls: 0
• Total Days: 4 (including the weekend, and delivery delay)

Ally: After the issue was reported, I needed to make a phone call in order to get a new card.  At this point, I am not sure if my claim has been approved, although the money has been credited to my account.

• Incoming Phone Calls: 1
• Outgoing Phone Calls: 1
• Total Days: 2 weeks and counting

I have banked with Ally for about a year, and it has been a good experience.  The phone lines are open 24/7 and the agents are friendly.  I love the live chat.  The online banking UI is pretty good.  I have been testing them out to see if I’d want to ditch my mainstream bank for an online only bank.  After this experience, I am not sure I am ready to ditch the branch.  If Ally was my only account, I’d have no way to access my accounts or money while waiting the 7 or 3 business days for a new card to arrive.  I also needed to be proactive to get the replacement.  Since the bank had outsourced the fraud monitoring, the phone agents didn’t have access to the systems to generate new ATM cards.  I needed to make an additional call to get a new card issued.  This is a lot of work for something that wasn’t my fault.

With my Citi account the entire process was completed within one phone call.  I also had the opportunity to go to the branch for cash or a temporary card.

A couple of years ago, my Washington Mutual account was impacted by a similar breach where ATM card numbers were stolen.  Wamu was much less proactive than Citibank.  I received a letter in the mail to the affect of: your card number was possibly stolen, we are sending you a new card in the next couple of days.  Please activate it immediately, your existing card will be cancelled on XXX (a few days after the new card was due to arrive).

Honestly, if I hadn’t had the Ally experience, I wouldn’t have bothered to write about this experience.  But Citi is offers superior service and proactive customer support here.  Washington Mutual did not handle a similar situation with the same sense or urgency.

For the average consumer, all banks are the same.  You only differentiate the banks on convenience, price, and services. When everyone looks pretty equivalent on paper, how do you choose?

You tell me, how much is better service worth for you?  Are you willing to pay a premium for premium service?  Do you appreciate premium service when you get it?

The Farmer’s Market meets Social Media

I typically visit the farmer’s market weekly.  Last summer, or maybe the summer before I discovered Blue Chair Fruit, a local jam/spread/marmalade maker.   They make the best jam I’ve ever tasted, I am sure I am know to the Blue Chair team as the girl who stops by every week to try all of the samples.  (I like the stone fruit and berries the best so far.)

I’ve chatted with the owner/creator, Rachel, regularly about her upcoming book, all of the flavors and the typical banter.  It’s great to be able to meet the purveyors, and that is one of the main reasons I go to the market (and of course the fact that is fresher and tastier).

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed Blue Chair was on twitter and facebook.  I “liked-ed” them on Facebook and the next week when I was at the farmer’s market,  Rachael commented “Hey, you are our newest facebook fan!”

Facebook moved from online to reality!

A few weeks later, I gave Blue Chair a shout on twitter.

And sure enough, at the market I met Jamie, and she was holding 2 jars for me. 

We all know twitter is a great way to connect with people online, but it great to take that connection offline too. If you have a business where you meet your customers in person, encourage them to follow you online and off.  And reward them for participating in the conversation.  Your customers (and your revenues) will thank you.

Marketing Automation Roundup

Check out the Reachforce blog for marketing automation vendor profiles.  Each profile, provided by the vendors, gives a great overview on what they do, and how their system works.  Check it out!

Here are links to a few of the posts:

• What is Eloqua?
• What is Genius.com?
• What is Marketbright?
• What is Marketo?
• What is Manticore?
• What is Loopfuse?
• What is Pardot?
• What is Market2Lead?
• What is Silverpop Engage B2B?

Source:  Reachforce’s marketing automation posts

How to lose a customer (or a few) in 3 easy steps

OK, I have been neglecting my blog a bit.  It has been a busy summer.  Transitioning into a new position and a lot of fun over the summer.  Look for more regular posts from me, and I hope to return to 1X/week posts.

I wanted to recount my coworkers experience, over the past week, with Dell.  This was so egregious, I felt is was appropriate to name names.

My coworker has a Dell notebook that is a couple years old.  It has been super slow and flaky lately.  We aren’t really sure why it is misbehaving, but the battery is completely dead right now, and it could be causing a few of the issues.

He decided to contact Dell to order a replacement battery.  He calls Dell support, sits on hold (typical) and eventually places an order for a replacement battery.  His computer was no longer under warranty, so he had to pay for the battery with his credit card.  The customer service representative said “we’ll ship this overnight, so you should have it tomorrow.”  My coworker was happy, because it looked like the resolution was on the way.  This was last Thursday.

On Monday he comes into the office, no battery arrived on Friday or over the weekend.  He calls the Dell team to check on his battery. This time around customer service wasn’t so friendly:

• My coworker: Hi, I called last week and ordered a battery, the service rep told me to expect it in 24 hours.  It has been three days and it is not here.
• Dell customer “care”:  Please check with UPS, here is the tracking number.  [End Call]

My coworker calls UPS to find out where his package is:

• UPS customer service:  Dell did not use overnight shipping.  The package is currently in IL, and there is nothing we can do to expedite this, it will arrive on Thursday.

Organization design: functional or phase based departments?

So I was pondering the other day about how organizations are sectioned off.  Most organizations are  grouped by department: sales, marketing, finance, engineering, and operations.  This is convenient for the organizations, less so for the customer.   As social media emerges as a primary vehicle for communications: for marketing, sales and customer service, organizations are struggling to build a communications group, for all stages of the customer lifecycle.

Some companies assign a team to a customer.  So they’ll interface with one account manager, one service person and so on throughout their relationship with the organization.  This is a great customer friendly model, but for smaller organizations, it is pretty impossible to implement while you have limited resources.

For most organizations, the primary goal is to find customers, engage them and keep them as long as possible.  Why aren’t our organizations structured around these phases of the customer relationship?  What if instead we organized our business around stages in the customer lifecycle.  Some roles would have more representation in one stage or another, but the metrics for the organization would be based on performance in the stage?

Here’s a basic lifecycle:

lifecycle

Identification:  finding new prospects, potential customers. Nurturing them until they are ready to progress the relationship with a purchasing cycle.  In this “department” staff would be weighted around communicators.  In a tech company this would include conventional marketing and communications people.  Perhaps pre-sales technical resources.  A market researcher. And a lead qualification team.  The market researcher would pass feedback to the product development team on what prospective customers are looking for.  This team would be graded on the number of prospects they find, and perhaps brand awareness.  This team would be focused on though leadership and making the brand feel “warm and fuzzy.” A key metric would be related to conversion rates between this stage to Acquisition. They’d also focus on understanding the market and the target customer.

List-building tactics to avoid and one way to look less shady

Here are a few good tips on list building from BtoB Magazine, and an example how to add without looking like a spammer.

The bad ideas:

1. Pre-check the opt-in box
2. Add old prospects, customers to your mailing list
3. Down play co-marketing (wow this happens to me all of the time).  I.E. list rentals
4. Harvesting email addresses to add to your list (customer support, contact us forms)

Source: 4 shady list-building tactics to avoid :: BtoB Magazine.

Here’s a better way:

I got this email last week.  No clue how they acquired my email address.  But for unsolicited mail, this is a pretty good way to handle it.  Did it work?  Only the marketing team knows.

Your information has been provided by one or more partners for participation in our network. We ask that you take one minute to learn about our services and notify us if you do not want to be included.

We provides services to help businesses solve problems.

If you would like to learn more about us or remove your information from our list, please select the appropriate link below:
> Learn More
> Privacy Policy
> Unsubscribe

Thank you!

So ask before adding.   If you think your  customers are interested in receiving your mailings, send then a note with a link to subscribe.  Instead of subscribing without permission.  Now only if everyone else agreed that asking permission is the way to go…..

Tweet to Policy

Between yesterday and this afternoon, I received 10 tweets from Pandora. I just started subscribing to Pandora on twitter earlier this week, and have been amused with posts on stations, events and music.

So Twitter, is one of those microblogging tools. I have been using it haphazardly for the past couple months. My usage has accelerated since one of my good friends started using it. I subscribe to a few interesting feeds, but only a few have crossed over to my phone. Pandora is one of the phone ones.

Back to the 10 tweets. Anyway, as some of you know, there has been of fights to save online radio stations. The royalty fees could possibly become far to expensive for stations to operate. Call it the internet radio surcharge — bill HR 7084 aims to create a friendlier agreement for online stations. On Friday I received a tweet to call my comgress-person since they were voting on this issue on Saturday.

I don’t have a chance to visit my blog reader daily, so I would have missed the posts on this topic. I received the text and there was a hyperlink to the number and instructions. I called on my way home from work, and forwarded the message to a few friends. Through the rest of the evening I saw reminders and updates. I was happy to see this update later that evening:

Believe it, the phone calls make a difference! You can read more on our blog: http://is.gd/3ceF You guys rule. Enjoy your weekend! Lucia 07:12 PM September 26, 2008 from web

This afternoon, after a few reminders this message arrived on my phone:

THE BILL JUST PASSED the House! You guys rule — thanks for your help! Up next: going to the Senate. We’ll keep you informed. Rock on. about 8 hours ago from web

Awesome! Live politics in action. And proof that microblogging can work. I was skeptical, but now I am a believer. I would love to have a local politics twitter feed live from meetings. And of course keep in mind that many *fans* chose to subscribe to the updates. Pandora spoke at the Apple store last week to record clouds, no doubt many were twitter fans.

Microblogging: another way to engage your audience, as long as it is relevant. I’d love to hear about any b2b marketers who made it work for them!

The quest for excellence….

My high schools motto: “Here at Socastee we strive for Excellence!”

Did it work. I am not sure, but talking to other people it looks like in many ways my school did pretty well.

I cam across an article in the May issue of CRM (I know I am way behind) about reaching for excellent customer experieinces. There was a great quiz from a book called Excellence Every Day.

Here is the quiz, rate each of these statements on a 1-5 scale:

1.	My workplace strategy is competitive and successful
2.	My boss is a caring leader
3.	Reading Dilbert is a waste of time
4.	I live up to my potential
5.	I get many compliments for the quality of my work
6.	I can see the results of my work
7.	My work impact others in a significant way
8.	I am fully responsible for the results of my work
9.	My work is personal and not just business
10.	I have the tools and authority to do my job
11.	In my organization, technology is secondary to people
12.	I always strive to do more for customers
13.	Decisions are not controlled by senior management
14.	I always do what is right for the customers
15.	My values and the organization’s values are fully aligned
16.	I am excited by the results of my work
17.	Everyone can be as great as the top achievers of our century
18.	I can recognize excellence in my daily work
19.	Excellence is not a once in a lifetime achievement
20.	I will take risks to do the right thing

Total up your score and continue after the break…

Loyal Employees = Loyal Customers?

I saw this interesting sidebar in a recent CRM Magazine article on loyalty programs.

SIDEBAR: Loyalty from the Inside Out

If your employees aren’t loyal, it’s hard to imagine your customers will be. Dianne Durkin, president and founder of consultancy The Loyalty Factor, says younger employees are notorious for job-swapping — and, as with customers, it’s far more costly to acquire and train a new employee than it is to retain an existing one. It’s imperative that a company hire people who fit its culture, and invest in the “little things” that will entice them to stay.

“The two most underutilized words in the English language are ‘thank you,’” Durkin says. Forget high salaries and bonuses; employees really want appreciation and recognition. Whether it’s a simple “Good job!” or a handwritten note placed on a desk — no emails! — the personal touch makes employees feel not only relevant but important.

Given today’s high turnover rate, employers need to understand what does contribute to employee loyalty. Durkin ranks the top factors, in order of descending importance:

• Vision and purpose: Make sure employees have a solid grasp of company direction and what they contribute to the corporation.
• A learning environment: Provide an opportunity for growth and responsibility. People have a short attention span; they’ll be more likely to stay if they’re challenged with new and interesting projects.
• A fun environment: The workplace has to be an enjoyable space to interact with others. Staffers will treat each other (and customers!) better.
• Modern technology: Employees using advanced technology outside of work expect the same at work.
• A good salary: People need adequate compensation for the work they’re doing, but it’s not foremost among their concerns.

Southwest Airlines is one of the few airlines to make it to the top of the consumer-loyalty list, in part because its employees are extremely happy as well. When Durkin asked why they choose to stay, employees responded, “Because this is a company that loves us back.” Passengers, in turn, say humorous crews and in-flight games make Southwest a joy to fly. “If you’re a businessperson on one of these flights,” she says, “don’t plan on doing any business.” (She means that in a good way.)

Some firms have even embarked on rewards programs for employees. Points can be awarded to recognize achievement or as a display of gratitude, and can be redeemed for rewards at the company store. Before launching any programs, Durkin suggests asking these essential questions: What is the level of pride and commitment in the firm? What are the firm’s top three strengths? What are its top three areas of development? What do you personally need to increase your productivity and efficiency? What is the one message you’d give to your firm’s leader? Those answers will help develop the appropriate programs that will drive employee — and then customer — loyalty.

Really great observations. I think for growing and emerging companies, since customer (and revenue) acquisition is so critical, there is less time for planning for employee growth and retention. Let’s look at these accounts below on the interview processes at Google and Microsoft. As we hear, Google is the best place to work ever, with free food, laundry, commuter buses from all over the Bay Area, and a comprehensive set of other benefits.