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!

Module 3 Influencing strategies – Principles of persuasion in ads, week 3

This week´s assignment:
Blog: Identify a set (two or three) advertisement to analyze, which are NOT from your organization. Apply the principals you have encountered during the course. Which principal(s) are used, how likely is it to work, and for what target group, based on information in the advertisement.


I start with an advertisement for Liedl.

“Now 12:- MORE EXPENSIVE! Valid for 6-pack Gelatelli icecream and only  and only upon presentation of this ad”

If you read further down in the ad it says “Unique offer to you 93%* that need an enticing high price to believe in the quality”. It also says in even smaller print further down: “*Source Brandz 2012. Percentage of non-clients who think that Liedl is “to cheap” for them to shop there.”

I think that this is a quite innovative ad, it really attract the eyes because first you think that it´s a mistake, a misprint… What? More expensive?...

The add is based on the fundamental thought that people tend to think that less expensive products equals less quality. With this innovative ad they hope to attract even customers with that belief.


I think that the basic thought here is to make people try out the products at Liedl and then, due to that they have low expectations from the beginning, this will probably lead to a positive disconfirmation, according to Oliver´s Expectancy Disconfirmation Model of Satisfaction. The performance will most probably be higher than on beforehand expected.
Even if they maybe are not “clear as sausage soup” as we say in Sweden J, I can think of three of the Cialdini principles:

-          There has been done an investigation by a company that found out that there were 93% not shopping at Liedl. This can be connected to the Cialdini´s 3^rd principle “Authority”.

-          By using this 93% figure, even if it´s not in Liedl´s favour, it means that I´m not alone with this thought, there are actually many more people that are thinking like me! Therefore, I think that Cialdini´s principle no 6 “Consensus” can be applied here in some extent.

-          I also think that Cialdini´s no.4 “Consistency” in some extent that can apply on Liedl.
If they get people to try out the products and if the quality of the products are higher than expected, this will create consistency and commitment – customers will come back.

One theory I have is that there´s actually 93% of the people that doesn´t shop at Liedl due to that they think it´s too cheap. I think this can create a curiosity and a challenge – do I dare try?...


  


Next add “Loreal” is using the 6^th principle of consensus. (Sorry for the really bad quality of the picture)  It says “We asked 15.000 women to give us 8 weeks on their deep-set wrinkles – The result speak for themselves”

The target group for this ad is probably women in the forties/fifties.
Also, by using the face of Andy MacDowell, we can also connect to principle no 5 - “Liking”. Many women in the fifties would like to look like her.


After having listened to Tobias Otterbring´s studies regarding physical appearance and sex specific purchase preferences, we also learn that women tend to take quite high risks when it comes to looks and health, therefore I think that by using  “The result speak for themselves”  creates a feeling that you maybe have to try even if you don´t believe in it…. Because, what if it works?…  Do you dare to take the chance to not to try?...

Module 3 Influencing strategies – Reflection upon the principles for persuasion, week 2

This week´s assignment:
Blog: Reflect upon the principles of persuasion, and relate this to how you view and work with customer satisfaction/experience in your business/organization

I will follow Malin Egharts example and treat “the 6 universal principles of persuation” one by one. J

1. Reciprocity =  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)


2. Scarcity =  Don´t know about this one in our business… But I think “Scarcity-syndrom” can occur:

·          …if we for example plan to phase out a gearbox or engine in the middle of a customer delivery – if  the customer has ordered 100units he would like to have same specification on all 100units. This might rush a purchase decision.

·           …if the customer think that the new engine or gearbox is less good than the earlier version

·          .. if a new emission demand will happen at a certain time – then it´s usually a pre-buy effect in the markets.

Otherwise I must say that it´s the opposite – it could be hard maintaining sales of “old” vehicle model if a new one is in the pipeline. The customers are usually keen on having the latest models and technology.

3.  Authority = Our company has a long history in the commercial vehicles business and we have sold vehicles to many parts of the world. The brand is strong and well known and we also have one of the biggest research and development centers for heavy vehicles in the world. At the distributors sites, it´s important to have a well educated sales force. When needed, for example in deep technological issues/question, these guys/girls have back up from experts in different areas at the factory in Sweden. That creates credibility.
Our company also offers vehicles with engines running on alternative fuels. It´s of course helping sales and credibility  that these alternative fuels are supported by what different experts around the world are talking about – the importance of changing from fossil to renewable fuels… All certifications and- validation issues for engines, vehicles etc. are made by external companies, this also creates credibility and trust.

4.  Consistency = Every distributor and country have their own CRM-systems and are constantly working on their customer relations. Of course, a successful former business including a well functioning after sales is more probable to lead to new customer orders than a less successful case. Probably the customer feels a bit obliged to purchase vehicles in the future if the business and relations has been successful. A good customer relationship and customer support is the key!

5. Liking = People prefer to say yes to people they like! A good customer relationship are the key! Of course, the quality of the offer and the product as such,  matter. And of course – if you succeed in creating a good customer experience, the world of mouth will spread to others.


6. Consensus = People will look at the actions of others to determine their own. Very often our customers ask for reference customers or reference customer cases. We have experienced that a presentation of a real customer case in real life “hits higher” than the general product offer presentation, therefore we often share our “success stories” with our customers.
The fact that the company have been in business for many years and have sold to many customers in many different countries, also creates trust and reliability.


//Anki

 

Module 3 Influencing strategies, 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)


Influencing strategies – sounds interesting!

My expectations on this module is to learn more in the field of social influence – how does it affect people as such? How does it affect customers and customer behavior and how can companies adjust their strategies according to that?

This will be an interesting topic to learn more about and discuss during coffee breaks at work!

//Anki

Module 2 Psycological aspects - Week 4 – Reflection of short- and long term effects on customer experiences. Can we make people (un)happy?

Module 2 Psycological aspects - Week 4 – Reflection of short- and long term effects on customer experiences. Can we make people (un)happy?

 

This week´s assignment:
Blog: Reflect upon short- and long-term effects of customer experiences. Can we make people (un)happy?

Yes, of course we can make people happy or unhappy. A lot of things of course come back to the basics = performance vs. expectations.
But something else that you shouldn´t forget or neglect is ATTITUDE. According to me, 99% of how you see things are connected to attitude – your own and the people you meet.

For example, you have had some product problems. You have a close contact with the customer and are working on a solution. Even if you don’t have a ready solution you are keeping up the dialogue with the customer and you are also telling him what different solutions you are working on. Given this, you can actually turn this product problem to something positive, this since you have showed the customer attention and you are listening to him and take the problem seriously. This short-term product problem, depending how you handle it, can actually help you to build a long term relation with the customer. First of all you have built up a personal contact but also you have showed that your company is a company to trust, also in stormy weathers.

And if you ask me - a positive attitude takes you far, it can actually move mountains! This is at least something I practice, both at work and in real life. J

 

Module 2 Psycological aspects - Week 3 – Has course so far lived up to my expectations?

This week´s assignment:
Has this module so far lived up to your expectations from Blog 1? Relate to theories and present your thoughts of the role of expectations for you (and/or your customers)..

 

The expectations I wrote down in blogpost 1 was : ” I'm personally very interested in how the human mind works -  for example what trigger a certain customer/purchase behaviour? What leads to customer satisfaction? What makes a customer loyal?
My expectations on this course is to learn more about these things - the psychological aspects connected to customer satisfaction and customer experience.”

I must say yes, the course has so far lived up to my expectations and more. I´m learning a lot of new things week by week, but it´s also really interesting to hear reflections/questions from the other participants and discuss real cases “live”!

Anyway, this is the first course I´m participating in that are built up in this way. I have studied web based distance courses before but never an interactive one like this.

After I´ve learned about the different theories about customer expectation, I have now understood that I didn´t really know from the beginning what to expect. My expectations was based on reading the course content but as already said, this was the first course of this kind and I wasn´t really aware of what to expect.
This extra twist – having the opportunity to chat during webinars, was something positive and something that added value to me. Given this, I can say that the course has delivered over my original expectations and positive disconfirmation has lead to satisfaction according to the disconfirmation model.

This positive disconfirmation will also lead to that I will speak well about this course to friends and colleagues.  

Module 2 Psycological aspects - Week 2

This week´s assignment:

1) Reflection of two sides of satisfaction; perception of quality and emotional reactions, and relate this to how you view and work with customer satisfaction in our business/organization.

2) Any lessons learned from the course yet?

 

1) Change of emotions in the luxury bed linen store…

A couple of weeks ago me and my husband quite randomly went into a store selling luxury beds, pillows, bed linen etc. after we saw the “SALE” sign in the window. This is a store selling high quality brands and it´s generally a bit too expensive for us, but since there was a sign with “Sale” we thought – let´s see if we might find some nice bed linen for a reasonable price – maybe we can make a good bargain! It was nothing that we urgently had a need of, it was a more “nice to have”. Said and done , we went into the store and was immediately welcomed by a young sales woman.
“Can I help you”? she asked.
“No thanks, we´re just looking”
“Is it something particular you are looking for”?
“No thanks, we´re just looking. Maybe some new bed linen, but we know what we want when we see it”
“Ok”
Then she left us alone for approximately one minute and then started to follow us around in the store… Absolutely, customer should be in focus but this girl was a little bit too much and bit too pushy and didn´t really understood that we would like to have a look by ourselves… Anyway, we tried a bed or two and the girl said – “please let me educate you and show you the difference between the different beds”.
Since we weren´t in a hurry and there were no other customers in the store we said:
“ok, if you insist. But just so you know - we are not going to buy any bed today”

The girl started to show us the different beds, we must have tried like 5-10 different ones. During the demonstration of the beds she asked questions like: if you are going to buy a bed, how would you finance it? What is the maximum amount of money you think you can put on a bed? Etc. etc. You could notice that she had gone though a selling course and included in that was a bit of customer mapping, to prepare for a sale. The thing was that we still weren´t going to buy any bed... We told her that from the beginning and we continued to include that in our answers on the questions – “WHEN we are going to buy a bed, this bed would probably be the one we choose”, “WHEN we are going to buy a bed we would probably pay cash” etc. etc.

The salesgirl didn´t seem to listen to these comments though and when she started talking about choice of colour of the fabric and what colour the legs of the bed should have I said to my husband – she really think we are going to buy a bed today…
The girl finished the demonstration round saying – “please have a cup of tea or coffee and I´ll come back to you in a minute”.

The salesgirl came back with some papers and showed us an offer of a new continental bed with everything included and said “what do you think of this price?”
Awkward  situation….
I said, “a bit too expensive but that´s not really relevant because we are not going to buy any bed today, as we said from the beginning”
The salesgirl says “I found out something good – I can make you a better price”
“OK, but we still are not going to buy any bed today…”
The girl said – “if you look at this offer, don´t look at the price – what is preventing you to make this deal?”
As said – “we don´t need a bed as per today, and we are not buying any bed today. This is a big investment, at least in this case. It´s not like going to the store and buy a mascara… If you don´t give them away of course, then we could of course reconsider”. J

The salesgirl´s attitude is now about to change and you can see that she is really pissed: “you must have had some kind of thought to buy a bed, otherwise you shouldn’t have kept me occupied (read: wasted my time) for the last hour!”
Now I´m getting pissed to : “We said from the beginning that we are not going to buy a bed today. We might buy a new bed when we are have found and bought a new house.
We have also told you that from the beginning and numerous time during the demonstration tour! And we did find the bed that we would like to have WHEN and IF we are going to buy a bed. We came here to have a look at bed linen, that´s all. We are not in the purchase mode to buy a new bed.”

You can imagine the awkward situation that follows… The salesgirl was not happy, and neither were we…  On the way out we did buy some bed linen which was our intention from the beginning but the positive and luxury feeling we expected to have when buying these, was gone. What was added instead was a negative feeling…

As said – our mission and expectation from the beginning was to stroll around in the store and hopefully find some high quality bed linen on sale. The expectation was to get a bit of positive, luxury feeling since we were about to buy and treat ourselves with some high quality linen that we don´t normally buy… It ended up with something totally different – an awkward, strange, tense situation with the pushy salesgirl… And we left the store with a feeling – we will not go back to this store again!...

It´s a pity because it didn´t have to end this way at all! If the salesgirl had listened to us and used a little bit of feeling and business intelligence the situation could have been something totally different.
She could have said – “it was a pleasure showing you around and you are very welcome back when it´s time for your purchase”. Then we should have had a positive memory and that store would most likely be the first one that popped up in our heads, when it´s time to buy a new bed. This store would have had an advantage against others since they would have made the lobbying in a good way.
Instead they lost us as potential future customers. Only due to this inattentative salesgirl unable to understand that were not in “purchase mode”. We will probably not go there again. At least not if we don´t have to...

 

 

2) Any lessons learned from the course yet?

Absolutely! For example I didn´t know about the high/low expectation theory that Tore Pedersen talked about.
= High expectations - even if the product/service is less good than you expected you will be satisfied anyway
Low negative expectations - even if the product/service perform better than you expected you will still not be pleased

Module 1 - Presentation of myself and expectations on the course #uce152 - week 1

Hi everyone!

My first blog ever! I don't even have facebook so you can understand the level...:)
But it's always good and positive to learn new things, so here we go! :)

My name is Anki and I work as Product Manager within a vehicle manufacturing company.
I don't meet our end customers so often face to face, but a part of my responsibility in my role is to gather and map product gaps/needs that comes to me through our area managers and distributors, and then send these demands further to our Product planning/ Research & Development. All these demands are of course based on customer needs.
...and customer needs are based on regulations, trends, purchase behavior etc.

I'm personally very interested in how the human mind works -  for example what trigger a certain customer/purchase behaviour? What leads to customer satisfaction? What makes a customer loyal?

My expectations on this course is to learn more about these things - the psychological aspects connected to customer satisfaction and customer experience.

See you soon!