Module 5 Customer´s Experience Rooms – Identify a situation of interaction between customer and servicescape, week 3

In this blog post I´ll write about the customer experience room when visiting hotel Leela Palace in Bengaluru, India earlier this year. This was the hotel we used to facilitate a Sales Force Event.

Leela Palace is counted as among the best 5* hotel in Bengaluru. This hotel offer courier services, in-room safe, access to international newspapers, Car and Limousine service, babysitting services, florist, foreign currency exchange, international satellite television channels, outdoor swimming pool, shopping arcade, three restaurants, lounge and bar, Spa, Salon and state-of-the-art-gym, Hi-speed broadband and Wi-fi internet.

The exterior gives a really exclusive feeling, as well as the interior.

 

 

 

 

 

Basically we can say that these pictures really helps setting the expectations and definitely influences the perception of the part of the customer. Before coming to the hotel, I had high expectations.

We arrived to the hotel late at night and was then greeted by a welcome committee serving refreshments. After this, we got assigned one person each from this welcome committee that helped us with the check in and that personally showed the way to the room, That was, at least for me, really unexpected and added a very exclusive feeling.

The room was of no disappointment either.

 

 

The restaurants were of really high quality. Neat, clean, big and spacious, a big selection of food, chefs working and preparing food in connection to the buffet.

 

 

Everybody in the staff were really friendly, spoke English very well and was also nicely dressed in uniforms. There were also always fresh flowers in big arrangements standing in the lobby.

According to Brian Wilson, all physical evidence of a business sends a message to the customer and you as a company need to make sure that the message is what you intended.

To summarize, I think that Leela Palace really have succeded in creating a genuine 5* feeling. This is also confirmed by customer rating – if you look at Hotels.com you can find “outstanding” as the summarized review of this hotel.

 

Module 5 Customer´s Experience Rooms - Reflection of video, week 2

I have chosen to reflect upon Brian Wilsons video "Physical evidence of the servicescape".  

According to Brian Wilson, physical evidence are of big importance of the company and all  physical evidence of a business sends a message to the customer. It´s therefore really important make sure that the message is what you as a company has intended.
Brian says that Physical evidence comes in two types – servicescapes or other tangibles. Examples servicescapes is facilities: exterior/interior design, signage, parking, landscape, surrounding environment, equipment, signage, layout, air quality/temperature, sound/music/scent/lighting etc. Other tangibles could be Business cards, stationary, the way employees dress, company brochures.

According to Brian Wilson service escapes can package everything for the benefit of the firm and the customer experience. It can help sets expectations and definitely influence the perception of the part of the customer. It also acts as a facilitator. In the role of service it´s really important to simplify for the customer and make it easy to understand – make it easy to make business. It also acts as a socializer. It can facilitate interactions not only between the customers and employers in the firm, but also between customers and fellow customers. Servicescapes can also act as a differenciator  - it can set the provider apart from competition in the mind of the customer.

Within our company we are working a lot with physical evidences. For example we have a  so called “Dealer Operating Standard“ that our dealers/workshops needs to follow. This standard is a kind of “quality-stamp” for the customers – when you visit one of our dealers or workshops you shall be able to expect a certain standard of the workshop when it comes to the physical workshop as such - the workshop facilities shall be situated so they are easy to find, the signs shall be well exposed (and significant) and the workshops are neat and clean. The standard also tells the customers what they can expect when it comes to how they shall be met as customers and also what level of service they can expect. The standard also works a quality assurance/quality assurance tool for us as a mother company.

To be able to keep track of how the customers view us, we have a so called “CSI” (Customer Satisfaction Index) studies. The aim with this study is to find improvement areas for the distributors in each country. Continuous improvements are one of the mantras within the company. According to Brian Wilson it´s important to be prepared to update and modernize the physical evidences. Among other things, this “CSI follow up” help us to keep track of needed updates.



 

Module 5 Customer´s Experience rooms – Expectations, week 1

This module focuses on the physical environment which impacts customers as well as the staff .
I think this will be interesting to get to learn more about.

Within our company we have for example a so called “Dealer Operating Standard “ which is a kind of “quality-stamp” – when you visit one of our dealerships or workshop you shall be able to expect a certain standard of the workshop both when it comes to the physical workshop as such but also when it comes to how will be met as a customer and also what level of service you can expect.

I think that physical environments are of really big importance for the complete customer experience and it will be interesting to learn more about the subject.

//Anki

Module 4 Customer Interactions – Week 3 & 4

Hello!

During these weeks I have been working on my assignment about customer interaction.

From the beginning I had a challenge to find a suiting limitation and angle, but after some guidance from Per I think I found a good set up.

I actually chose to analyze a specific project I have been personally involved in and I found it very giving to really analyze how we could improve even further to next time.

Module 4 Customer Interactions –Reflection of video & reflection of how the concepts relate to my organization, week 2

This week´s assignment:
Blog:  Reflect upon one or two videos presented above and reflect on how the presented concepts relate to your organization.

Since I´m in the heavy commercial vehicle industry, I watched the two last videos with great interest! Me and some colleagues actually met Robert Sahlberg in Karlstad a couple of years ago and it´s amazing how they with good, with clever ideas and quite small resources, have succeeded in making the public transport in Karlstad attractive!

Because if you go to yourself - what makes you take the bus? It probably needs to be easy (tickets, finding route) and convenient. The bus should take you where you want to go, from point A to B), it should be on time, the buses should be neat and clean and it should be affordable.

KarlstadBuss have made very clever things in regards to these aspects. Take for example the color coded route map that looks like a metro map which make it easy to see which bus to take – genius! And putting the same color on the actual buses running on that line to make it  easier finding the right bus – perfect! And it doesn’t cost any extra.

They also put some effort into the interior, how to chose colors to keep the interior stylish? This doesn´t cost any extra, it just cost some extra thinking!

By putting a lot of new technology into the buses, such as WiFi and “Bus-TV” it gives a modern feeling of the bus. In his video Robert sais that they want to make the passengers feel like it´s their channel, and the passengers can send in pictures that get published. Think that is a very good idea personifying and making people feel like they are involved.
I also think that the film with the well known comedians treating the subject how to behave on a bus, was good! I think that by showing this funny movie treating the subject “no feet on the seats” instead of a regular boring sign, actually will keep peoples feet off the seats. J

To summarize, I think that KarlstadsBuss is really a precursor and inspiration for many cities of how to work with small, clever things to improve customer experience and with this, making public transport attractive!

 

 

 

Module 4 Customer Interactions – Expectations, week 1

This week´s assignment:
Blog: Expectations of the module and in what way it will be of benefit to you (and/or to your organization/business)

In the introduction to this module it says that issues such as for example “the customer perspective as a fruitful perspective for service development”, “interaction with misbehaving customers” and “multimodal communication (including gestures, mimic and body language)” will be addressed – that I think that sounds particularly interesting.

My expectations on this module is to learn more about customer interaction – what is important to keep in mind? And how can you improve actions and behavior to get better customer experiences? Hopefully we will also get some good advises what to think about when dealing with misbehaving customers.


//Anki

Module 3 Influencing strategies – How to improve work of my business/organization with help of the Principles of persuasion, week 4

 

This week´s assignment:

Blog: Reflect upon how you could improve the work of your business/organization regarding customer satisfaction/experience with the help of the principles of persuasion.


Connected to Reciprocity and Liking
Our distributors sometimes bring customer and potential customers on customer trips to visit our factory. We present our company philosophy and show them the company facilities and the industrial set up behind the vehicle manufacturing. The basic thought with these customer trips are of course to  trigger more sales, build up the confidence for the company as such but also with a hope to create loyalty to our brand and influence future purchase behaviour. (building relationships)

This is something I think we shall continue with. These customer visits are very appreciated by our customers and it seems like the basic thought with the customer trips - trigger more sales, build up the confidence for the company as such, create loyalty to our brand and influence future purchase behaviour – is really working. And of course – it´s really a good way building relationships, both between:

- the salesman (working at the distributor, he/she are usually the travelling with the customers to Sweden) and the customer
-  the salesman and the Product- and Area Managers at factory
- the customers and the Product- and Area Managers at factory

Relationships are really important! In some regions (for example in Middle East, Asia) it´s everything.




Connected to Consistency, Liking and Consensus  

Knowing the customer is a key for successful business. We need to understand the customers business and daily work even more. By building customer and market knowledge we´ll get better outputs in line with customer expectations and demands, which will lead to more satisfied customers and better customer experience. A good reputation will spread.

We actually have a good segmentation tool for that already which we should use even more!