Do you want your customers to feel good about your brand? Try telling a great story. Research shows that storytelling has immense power to make us feel emotions as if we are a part of the story.
The Nike marketing department sure figured this one out. Get your Kleenex ready.
It gets you right in the feels, doesn’t it? But, why?
Simply put: hormones. Storytelling is one of many triggers that causes the release of hormones like cortisol and dopamine in our bodies that make us feel stressed and make us feel good.
In fact, there are six of these triggers that you can use in your service cycle to avoid stressing your customers out and to make them feel good. Check out my presentation at last year’s Digital Wrap Conference to learn about all six.
P.S. Registration for the 2019 Digital Wrap Conference opened early this year with a great deal that only lasts through March. Check out the details at digitalwrapconference.com.
How much information is too much?
Check out this image from an Amazon notification that I received during the holiday season. It included imagery of the product (some black pajamas), a map of my neighborhood that indicates the location of my house, the current location of the delivery driver (the Santa sleigh), and a caption telling me Santa (aka Amazon) was just seven stops away and would deliver my package before 2:15pm. It is interesting to see how much information Amazon provides as part of their customer experience, especially when compared to the data we observe in ServiceTrade. Amazon knows that it is almost impossible to give the customer too much information, and yet most commercial service contractors completely ignore this lesson.
Currently, fewer than 2% of ServiceTrade work orders include a notification to the customer that the technician is en route. The feature is an easy one for technicians to access, but they just don’t do it. It’s a shame, because Amazon is not a fool. They know that customer loyalty stems from winning the information arms race. Customers LOVE to know what is happening, especially if it involves zero effort on their part to dig the information out of the supplier. If it is simply offered as part of the service experience, it creates positive feelings about the service brand. The notification creates a dopamine response from the anticipation that something good is about to happen. That little jolt of feel good neurotransmitter goes a long way in justifying higher prices during the next contract negotiation.
How easy is it for you to measure the number of digital records you transmit to your customers as part of your service experience (marketing impressions per service or MIPS)? Do you hold technicians accountable for generating en route notifications, before and after videos and pictures, deficiency records documenting equipment failure risks, review requests to boost search engine optimization? If not, why not? ServiceTrade measures all of these MIPS so that it is easy for you to monitor your success in sharing rich service records that keep the customer engaged and delighted in your work. Amazon knows there is no such thing as too much information. Isn’t it time that your service business took that lesson to heart?
5 Reasons Why Hiring Millennials No Different Than Hiring Previous Generations
For the last decade, my career has been centered around recruiting and managing millennials. Plus, I am one.
When we talk about recruiting and retaining millennials, I know what a lot of people are thinking: I don’t want to.
Millennials have been labeled as entitled, unfocused, and job jumpers. Some even call us narcissistic. When you think about the stereotypical millennial, this may resonate:
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants.”
Said every generation about the next. Don’t believe me? This quote is from Socrates.
Love them or hate them, millennials should be embraced into your organization. That is, unless you’re ok not employing anyone between the ages of 23-37. This makes millennials the largest generation represented in the workforce today. We’re extremely underrepresented among skilled trade workers in the U.S.. There are a higher number of skilled workers over the age of 45 and a higher number of them between 55-64 getting ready to retire. So during the skilled labor shortage, the largest generation available to you is being underutilized. That’s the bad news. You need millennials in the business and in your industry, and right now, they’re not there.
The good news is that once you start attracting millennials, they can help you attract more. If you create an environment to retain them and help them to thrive, they’ll not only be the future leaders of your company, but they’ll help drive you forward.
So, what do they want? Millennials prioritize these five attributes when looking for a job opportunity:
Money
Job security
Benefits
Time off
Great people
It doesn’t sound too different from what previous generations valued. What is different is how we define each of these. Remember, I’m an older millennial, and in 1998, I was 14 and a freshman in high school. This was the same year that Amazon started selling more than books and Netflix made it possible for me to rent movies without leaving the house.
About a decade later, I’d graduated college and moved to Montana with the dream of being on ESPN someday. It was also the time we went from
to
Suddenly, information was in the palm of our hand and we were connected with people across the country and around the world. We had an inside look into people’s lives. This was also the time of the great recession with home foreclosures, the stock market crash, and bank bailouts. And in 2008 we went from 630,000 Americans who were unemployed to 11,400,000.
Millennials grew up in a world of constant innovation throughout our adolescence. We became used to instant gratification, information at our fingertips, and glorified easy-money lifestyles. While many of us were impacted by the recession in our adult lives, we’ve really only seen a growing economy and we’re trying to optimize our own growth through it.
So let’s look at those five priorities again.
Money. As always, money is important. But what I hear is that millennials don’t want to pay their dues. They want it now. They don’t want to work for it. Well, you could blame Mark Zuckerberg. He became a millionaire at age 22 and a billionaire at age 23. So in one year, he want from a millionaire to a billionaire. It took Warren Buffett 26 years to do the same.
Social media has opened the door for us to see those glorified lifestyles. We get to see the best part of people’s lives. Lifestyles and experience let us show off the best part of our own. We want to be able to afford it. The skilled trade industries are increasing wages at a slower rate than others. Be competitive. Know what industries you’re competing against for employees.
Job Security. While most millennials don’t remember details around the last recession, we weren’t blind to the millions of people who were suddenly employed. For older millennials, we entered the job market and were suddenly competing with people with 10, 20, 30 years’ experience for entry-level jobs. Meanwhile, Zuckerberg went from a millionaire to a billionaire. So job security meant having the experience, the skills, the ability to self-improve, grow, and have the opportunity for growth.
It’s not just the second-highest priority that millennials look for while job searching, it’s also the second-highest reason why people leave their existing jobs.
Most millennials would prefer staying with the same company for the long haul but only if the growth opportunity exists. Ask yourself, when you have millennials who were in the business for a short period of time, how valued did they feel? Did they make an impact? Did they have an opportunity to grow, and did they know that?
Benefits. Traditional benefits like healthcare and retirement still apply – but those have become basic requirements. Lifestyle and experience have really expanded the concept of benefits.
This picture of me was part of a recruiting campaign for a company I worked for. There isn’t a software company that doesn’t advertise benefits like free snacks and things that some people call silly or distractions like Nerf guns, video games, or beanbags. They all play into the concept of lifestyle and experience that aren’t restricted to after 5pm. Ask yourself, what kind of lifestyle are your benefits supporting? Fun and fitness? Fun and creativity? Furry friends?
Time off. Growing up in a world when you’re constantly connected means that work doesn’t happen between 9-5. You aren’t restricted to an office or a desk. Because we’re constantly connected, the flexibility to step away is more important. We want the ability to take care of our personal lives, even if that’s during the week. Things like taking extended vacation is highly valued. I know these things are easier to do with office staff than with technicians, but I’ve talked to several companies who have worked with technicians on creating some level of flexibility. Get creative. It takes some work, but that work pays back dividends.
When millennials talk about time off, it’s not about unplugging. We’re addicted to our phones. We don’t unplug that much. It’s more than anything about flexibility.
Great people. Back during that recruiting campaign I mentioned earlier, I did a radio ad with a tagline “I have fun at work.” I wasn’t lying. I had a lot of fun at work. When I left six years later, the people were the hardest thing to leave. Looking back, the people kept me there for an extra year.
There are studies that show that having a work best friend increases productivity, job satisfaction, and retention. Those miscellaneous reasons in the chart above why people leave are often because of a toxic workplace and bad managers. So great people make a big difference.
Know what is important to all your prospective employees. Give your managers the resources and support to create an environment that makes everyone thrive. Millennials may value things a bit differently, but you’ll find that at the end of the day, they share common personal and professional goals with your more experienced employees.
The Road to Success is Paved with Good Integrations
As VP of Customer Success at ServiceTrade, what everybody calls me at work is “that guy who can answer your questions about integrations.” The number of meetings I’ve been called into to discuss integrations with customers has gone up dramatically in 2018. I’ve noticed a theme in a lot of these conversations: customers aren’t really comfortable talking about integrations. They don’t know the terms, they don’t know where to start thinking about it. So today I want to tell you some basics about how to integrate good software with ServiceTrade.
Good software should have an easy-to-find API. If you aren’t sure whether a software application you’re considering has an API, it should be as easy searching Google for “____ API documentation.” No search results is a bad sign! Good software is often found on Zapier.com, which is an integration platform that moves information between web applications automatically. If a software application is on Zapier, you can be assured that it definitely has an API, it’s modern, and that it should play nicely with other pieces of good software. If you’re buying good software, you can avoid getting trapped by bad software decisions.
To set the stage to talk about good software integrations, it’s important to understand that everything in life – including software – has a special purpose. It has one thing it was designed to do and if you expect much more out of it, then you’re going to have a bad experience.
Let’s use an analogy. If you had to choose between those two vehicles: If I want you to hop into one, head around town, pick up groceries, drop off the kids. Which one would you choose?
The car. That’s an easy one.
I’ll ask you another easy one. What if I want you to tool around the bay, do some fishing, and some sunbathing.
Right. The boat.
Let me make it a little bit harder. What if I ask you to do both of those things? What if I ask you to run some errands, pick up the groceries, then head out and do some fishing and some sunbathing, then head on back home?
I think you’d tell me that you’d hop into the car to do the first set of things and head down to the boat to do second of things, then you’d get back into your car to head home. That seems pretty obvious.
But when it comes to software, a lot of people think, “You just asked me to do car things and boat things . . . I’ve got to have a carboat! How am I going to do car things and boat things unless I go buy one of these?”
This looks a little ridiculous, it doesn’t make any sense, and I think it’s obvious when you look at this photo why. This is not a very good car. And it’s not a very good boat.
When you’re looking to solve your business problems, that is the perfect time to be thinking about choosing the right software application for each of your specific problems. It’s also the perfect time to make sure you’re not about to make a carboat-buying decision.
So what should you look out for? If you hear:
“Well, it wasn’t designed to do that, but it could.”
They mean that 8 months and thousands of dollars later, it still won’t do what you want.
“I think there’s a workaround.”
They mean it’s going to be harder and more complicated than you want.
“It doesn’t have all those things you said you needed, but it should get the job done.”
They mean it doesn’t have the things you need and it won’t get the job done.
We do not tell people that ServiceTrade is going to solve all their business problems. We often point out all kinds of things that we aren’t the best choice for like payroll, accounting, truck tracking, payment processing, and sales CRM. We like to talk about ServiceTrade as good software that you can integrate with other good software to solve those problems.
So rather than focusing on making a carboat, focus on easing the car-to-boat transition. Or, bringing it back to software, easing the transition from one piece of software to another piece of software. At the end of the day, that is what integrating is all about – easing the data transition from one system to another system.
But if you aren’t careful, you’re going to end up with a very bad car-to-boat transition.
Let’s define 4 stops on the road to success so we don’t drive a boat into a car.
1. Know what you want. You’re going to have all kinds of questions about how things work, and that’s good. I recommend working a structure around those questions called “if this, then that.” It’s very simple: If this thing happens, then this other thing should happen. If you use this formula to think about what you want to happen in an integration, you can hand this to any software developer and you’ll be way ahead of the game. 2. Document your ideas.
Determine the source of record – where your information originates and what direction that data should sync. Here’s an example using Pipedrive (a CRM) and ServiceTrade.
Create a Flowchart. Create a visual representation of your integration. Check out this example from the online cloud-based application at app.flowmapp.com. I used this tool to document the service workflow for a ServiceTrade customer to clearly demonstrate where ServiceTrade fits into their existing business process. You get a really nice visual representation of your integration and gives you a good way to make sure you’ve covered all your requirements.
Document a scope that includes:
Description
Requirements
Desired user behavior
Deliverables
BudgetFor documentation, use online collaborative tools like Google Apps. The sharing feature and version control of shared files gives you a single source of record for your integration documentation.
Test cases This is a more detailed version of your “if this, then that” thought process. It’s clearly-defined step-by-step processes that ensure that you can test that the integration is working like you expect.
3. Manage the project. Use project management software to organize your thoughts, your plans, and your team around the integration. Take a look at Asana and Trello.
4. Do the work. Who is going to do the work? Is it you? This is the reaction you should have to that question:
There are lots of places to find qualified developers to write integrations for you. The first stop you should make is ServiceTrade. We’ve gotten pretty good at integrating various web apps with ServiceTrade. But we’re not the only game in town, you can look at hiring a freelancer from Fiverr, Upwork, and Freelancer. With everything you’ve documented, toss it to a developer and let them bid on it. You’d be surprised by what you can get done on these sites.
If someone else is doing the work for you, what are you responsible for? Testing, testing, testing, testing, and testing again. You’ll also be responsible for documentation for the business processes that you want everyone to follow. No matter how obvious steps are to you as the creator, it’s definitely worth documenting it for the rest of your team.
Here’s a list of applications that ServiceTrade customers have integrated with our app to expand the power and functionality of our application. It includes things like CRM, custom notifications to customers, after-service surveys, general data sync for additional file backup or sending notifications to Slack channels, custom forms, accepting credit card payments onsite, the possibilities really are endless.
What Contractors can Learn from the Mechanic
Megabrands like Amazon and Domino’s are outselling their competitors and changing consumer expectations by going on offense and providing better customer experiences that are convenient and transparent. As easy as it is to dismiss these examples because they are seemingly unrelated to service contracting, even the local mechanic is giving their customers a better service experience. Take a look:
Do you trust that this mechanic delivered the services they were supposed to? Of course, you do. You watched them do it! The mechanic could have hoarded this video to play defense and cover their own ass in case the truck owner decided to fight the bill. Instead, they sent this to the customer online in order to be more transparent and provide a better customer experience than their competitors.
Be more like the mechanic. Be more like Domino’s and Amazon. Stop hoarding data just in case you have to defend your invoices. Go on offense and start sharing content with your customers to give them more than your competitors ever will – a contractor they can trust.
3 More Ways to Get Customers Hooked on Your Feel-Good Brand (Part 2)
You won’t make your customer feel good if you provide convenience, transparency, and avoid bad surprises. Those are the bare minimum to meet their expectations.
From my last blog post: Dr. Feelgood, from the 1989 Mötley Crüe single, was a drug dealer who got the name because he made his customers feel good. This kept his customers coming back for more. Do you make your customers feel good? It doesn’t really matter if you do a good job for them. If you don’t make them feel good about it, they won’t come back for more.
Obviously, commercial service contractors shouldn’t give their customers illicit drugs, but they can stimulate the same brain receptors that release dopamine, the feel-good hormone that drives positive reinforcement in the human biological reward system. Unfortunately, that same reward system has negative reinforcement mechanism called cortisol, the stress hormone, that’s easily triggered by bad customer service. Understanding what triggers these hormones is fundamental to creating an amazing customer experience that reduces stress, gets customers hooked to your brand, and differentiates your company from the competition.
In my previous post, I dove into the three stressors that trigger cortisol in your customers: inconvenience, uncertainty, and bad surprises. This week, I want to shift gears and talk about the three dopamine triggers you can take advantage of to make your customers feel good. Unfortunately, it’s much more difficult to elicit a dopamine response in your customers than a cortisol response because the typical triggers like sex and drugs are not tools you get to use. Instead, you’ll have to rely on subtle psychological triggers that require finesse to provoke.
Good Surprises
Our brains are wired to be delighted by good surprises. Neuroscientists from the Baylor College of Medicine conducted a research study in which volunteers played a computer game where they were presented with a red and blue deck of cards with the objective of accumulating as many points as possible by determining which deck contained more “reward” cards. They could select to flip the top card of either deck to receive a reward card that gave them points and triggered the cha-ching sound of a cash register, or a card that would remove points from their accumulated gains. Over time, they would learn which deck gave them more reward cards so they could accumulate points faster. Researchers modeled the volunteers’ expectation of reward based on their selections to classify gains and losses as expected or unexpected. On average, an unexpected reward resulted in highest release of dopamine, the feel-good hormone.
Take advantage of this psychology and provide facility managers with the great surprise of an amazing customer experience. While all of your competitors manage their service cycle and customer service with calls, paper, and ad hoc emails, you’ll stand apart when you offer a convenient, novel experience that includes online summaries of services with rich media, automated notifications (MIPS), and the ability to leave reviews. Here’s what a facility manager told a service contractor about the online service reports (Service Link) he receives that include loads of pictures, videos, and audio notes pertaining to the services:
“I love this feature and report. Your competition has nothing like this.”
The unexpected surprise of a better experience made him feel good. Now, this novelty will wane, and that’s OK. After the novelty is gone, you’ll have set a new precedent for a great customer experience that your competitors can’t touch. Their approach will feel inconvenient and uncertain. As I discussed in the first installment of this blog post, that’s a formula for the stress hormone cortisol – and a bad customer relationship.
Storytelling
Everybody loves a good story. Entire books, like Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human, are dedicated to the science of great storytelling. Gottschall tells us about an experiment performed by Paul Zak, a neuroeconomist, found that our bodies release more oxytocin, the hormone that causes empathy, when we consume information in a story format as opposed to a simple factual summary. College students were offered $20 to take part in a study where they were presented with either a story about a father and his dying child or a factual summary about the impacts of cancer on children. After the presentation, the students were asked if they wanted to donate any or all of their $20 to a cancer research institute for children. Students that were presented with the story had significantly higher levels of oxytocin in their blood and, on average, donated more money. A good story with a classic arc makes us empathize with the main characters. We feel how they feel.
After the novelty of your shiny new customer experience wears off, you can take advantage of this empathetic trait to trigger dopamine by telling your customers the story of the challenges your team overcame. Start by introducing the hero, your technician, with an en route notification and an in-person greeting when they arrive. Next, show customers the challenges that the hero faces with pictures and videos of the equipment issues. How ever will the hero succeed? Present a solution with an online quote that shows how your tech will save the day and an explanation of the bad outcomes that will occur if they don’t act. Those unfavorable outcomes are the villain that add tension to the story. Most importantly, show your customers exactly how the hero saved the day with pictures and videos of the repaired equipment. When you properly craft this story, your customers will empathize with the main character, your technician, and receive a hit of dopamine from the happy ending that avoided the perilous bad outcomes.
Anticipation
Interestingly, our bodies often reward us with more dopamine when we anticipate a reward than when we actually receive a reward. Robert Sapolsky, a neuroscientist, performed a study on monkeys that were trained to, after given a signal, press a button 10 times to receive food. The monkeys’ dopamine levels rose immediately after the signal, but subsided when they were done pressing the button. The anticipation of the food released more dopamine than the reward of the food itself. When the food was only dispensed 50% of the time, their dopamine levels doubled in comparison to what they were when then the food was dispensed every time. Just like a slot machine, the mix of anticipation and uncertainty about the reward yielded a significant dopamine release in the monkeys.
You’ve already shown your customers that you’ll give them a hit of dopamine when you show up with a novel customer experience and a great story. That’s their reward. Now, all you have to do is train them to anticipate it. Teach them to anticipate a feel-good experience when you give the signal of an appointment reminder or en route notification. You’re not going to have an exciting story for every service. For example, routine maintenance work and inspections where your techs don’t find any issues don’t make for an enthralling story. That’s OK. As the monkeys show us, you don’t have to deliver the reward 100% of the time. Instead of a mediocre story on every job, tell them an incredible story, full of challenges and and successes on the jobs where your techs save the day. The important takeaway is that you should give your customers the signal on every job in order to elicit their anticipatory dopamine response.
Just like Dr. Feelgood, you can keep your customers coming back for more. Instead of drugs, you can use consumer psychology to hack their evolutionary reward system to prevent the release of cortisol and evoke the release of dopamine. If you succeed in making your customers feel good, your service brand will be impervious to the competition and your customers will be happy to pay you more for the premium experience you give them.
Good is Not Good Enough – How Amazon Raised Expectations to Feel Good for Commercial Service Contractors
Several dozen books (at least) have been written about the Amazon phenomenon, and I could probably go on and on myself about the lessons that can be drawn from its success. The lesson for the service contractor is that making your customers feel good about your service will likely lead to greater riches for you and your company. Jeff Bezos is the richest guy in the world, and he has been pretty clear that his success comes from innovations that make the customer feel good about doing business with Amazon. Many of these innovations are directly applicable to a commercial service contracting business, and you should take inspiration from them to deliver your own version of “feel good” customer service features.
Pictures and video. Amazon understands the psychology of human decision making. Images impress us. They help humans understand their environment and make decisions. We are more easily impressed by images and stories than we are by bullet points and descriptive prose. I challenge you to find anything for sale on Amazon that does not include at least one picture. Generally there are several, and Amazon gives you tools to zoom and pan to get a better view of the details that might interest you. It is easier to feel good about a purchase when we can see the images that reinforce our buying decision. Increasingly video is also becoming a part of the purchase review because it combines imagery with a story about the product.
Reviews. Reviews are the stories other customers choose to share about their experience with the product. Like images, stories are a powerful learning mechanism for humans. By reading stories, we get comfortable with the experience we can expect from the product. We also understand any trouble we may face through these review stories. Reviews further empower the customer as well because a poor customer service experience and a bad review is often the catalyst for a company to correct the problem. The ability to hold the company accountable to a good experience through a review process gives the customer more comfort at the time of purchase.
Convenience. One of Amazon’s first innovations was one-click purchasing. They applied for and were awarded a method patent on this invention back in 1999. Amazon famously sued Barnes and Noble when they copied the innovation. Amazon had streamlined the purchase process by eliminating the hassle of checkout, and the company was not going to stand by quietly when their fiercest competitor attempted to copy this convenience innovation. Now the company offers a mobile app (of course) so customers can easily browse and buy from their phone. Additionally Amazon provides multiple delivery and gift options, smart speakers that let you buy with Alexa commands, push button buying using a little connected clicker called a Dash button for common items like laundry detergent, and many more buying innovations. The company is even experimenting with flying drone delivery. Eliminating all of the barriers between your customer’s money and your bank account just makes sense.
No Hassle Returns. Amazon never argues with a customer regarding a request to return an item so long as there is some reason for the rejection (fit, color, quality, whatever). They make returns easy with a self-service process from their website. Customers feel better about placing an order when they know they can return the product if something is not right.
Mobile experience. Amazon enhances convenience with their mobile app because shopping is always available. Most customers are never more than three feet from their phone, and therefore I believe mobile is worthy of its own feel good category. Because my smartphone has a camera and a microphone, I can take photos (or scan barcodes) to search for products as well as giving verbal commands. I can also manage every aspect of my relationship with Amazon through my mobile device, which means I can manage it anywhere and anytime.
Feel good by doing good. The Amazon Smile program allows me to select a charity to receive a donation from Amazon equal to .5% of my qualifying purchases when I begin my shopping at smile.amazon.com. Do you imagine that a customer feels good when they begin their shopping experience by typing “smile” and then direct a contribution to a favorite charity when they buy something? It is easy to feel good when your vendor helps you do good.
Notifications and visibility. Amazon gives customers a number of ways to track their orders and their order history with the company. Any shopping activity, whether resulting in a purchase or not, generally results in some level of follow up from Amazon. If I place an order, Amazon continuously informs me of the status from a “thank you” order confirmation. They send a shipment notice plus an arrival notice. If I shop and do not order, Amazon often follows up with deals on items that I viewed hoping to push me over the edge to actually buy the product. After I receive a purchase, I am generally offered an opportunity to review the purchase, and I will typically be offered several complementary items. Beyond these notifications, Amazon tracks my purchases so that I can reference that information to make decisions regarding future purchases. All of this attention and account visibility certainly helps the customer feel good about their relationship with Amazon.
Subscription membership. Amazon offers customers a subscription program called Prime. Prime bundles all manner of Amazon services and benefits into a subscription program for which customers pay an annual membership fee. The subscription offers access to a library of books and music along with lower costs (usually free) for shipping and guaranteed two-day delivery for any purchases. Statista, the online statistics portal, estimates that Amazon had 95 million US Prime members as of June 2018. That amounts to nearly seventy-percent of US households participating in Prime. It feels good to be a member of a club with a wide range of benefits and a subscription business model with its predictable and guaranteed cash flow is a powerful foundation from which to build a dominant brand.
Commercial service contractors should take a lesson from Amazon: making customers feel good about your services will likely lead to greater riches for your company. The best part is, many of the innovations that make customers feel good about doing business with Amazon can work for you.
They spent hours on it. Brad Boggs at B&W Mechanical and Shawn Mims of ServiceTrade met several times to discuss how to integrate B&W’s accounting system with ServiceTrade. They planned it strategically, they talked with an integrator about the details, they held several follow-up calls. But as they say, the struggle of connecting ServiceTrade’s open APIs to a closed accounting system, was real.
Brad decided that since accounting was happy with their process, an accounting integration shouldn’t stand in the way of getting a new customer service and service management system in place. B&W Mechanical got started with ServiceTrade so they could meet their goals of growing their service division.
We caught up with Brad a couple of years later to see how it’s going. In this video, Brad tells us that now, B&W measures its success by things that matter to its customers – that their systems are operational and their facility needs are being met. B&W Mechanical communicates clearly and accurately with customers so they know everything they need to about their systems so there aren’t any surprises.
Their customers really like that they get clear data and visuals with a quote or an invoice. B&W no longer has to justify what their quotes or invoices are for – the customers have a clear, rich record that tells them what they’re paying for.
As Brad says at the end of this video, at B&W Mechanical the right things get done quickly. He isn’t talking about accounting.
Amazon does not settle for “good” in the realm of customer service. It is not enough for the customer to simply get what they paid to receive. Amazon wants customers to enjoy the experience in the same manner as a guest might enjoy a good party. Great brands now want to copy Amazon because Jeff Bezos has become the wealthiest guy in the world due to the crazy success of Amazon stock. Smart business owners want the same value for their shareholders, so they are behaving like Amazon and aiming well beyond the idea of simply satisfying the customer. They truly want their customers to “feel good” about the experience of buying from them. This current obsession with the customer experience is certainly a good thing for customers. Because so many companies are now focusing on innovation in customer service, the bar for “feel good” status is climbing higher every day.
The most popular approach today for measuring customer satisfaction is the Net Promoter Score, or NPS. Wikipedia reports that more than two-thirds of the Fortune 1000 are currently using NPS. Here’s how it works.
Customers are asked a single, simple question:
How likely is it that you would recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague?
Respondents are then given an option to answer that question with a number rating on a scale between 0 and 10. 0 means that the customer would never recommend the company to a friend or colleague, and 10 means that they would absolutely recommend the company to a friend or colleague.
Next, respondents are categorized into the following groups: Promoters – those who score the business with a 9 or 10, likely to promote to others Passives- scored 7-8, not likely to benefit or harm your brand Detractors- scored 6 or less, a liability for your brand
The final NPS score is calculated by subtracting the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters, with the Passives not contributing at all to the score. As an example, if you were to survey 100 customers and 35 score as Detractors (0 to 6), 25 score as Passives (7 or 8), and 40 score as Promoters (9 or 10), your NPS score would be:
Promoters – Detractors = NPS 40 – 35 = 5
Your NPS for this survey sample is a 5. Anything above 0 is considered to be positive, and a score approaching 50 is terrific.
Now I think all of this is probably a little too simplistic, and you will find lots of scientific criticism for NPS from survey theory experts if you go looking for it online. My opinion and the opinion of all of the other critics is not what really matters in this case. What is important is that two-thirds of the Fortune 1000 are relying on this information in one form or another to help them improve customer satisfaction. A lot of big brands with big budgets are focusing lots of energy on measuring customer satisfaction. The other important thing to note is that this wildly popular tool skews heavily toward “feel good” as the goal for customer service. Only scores of 9 or 10 are credited positively, and anything less than a 7 is negative. I would say anyone that scores a company with a 9 or a 10 feels really good about their experience with the company. So two-thirds of the Fortune 1000 are scheming for ways to get more scores in the range of 9 to 10 because that is the only way to improve their NPS score. That’s a lot of companies with a lot of focus on making customers feel good about their brand.
What does this emphasis on outstanding customer service mean for you? Your business is going to be compared to all of the customer service innovations of Amazon and two-thirds of the Fortune 1000 because they are all “focused like a laser” on customer experience these days. NPS is hot because customer service innovations are hot because customer loyalty is hot because growth is hot because Amazon is hot. Customers are not going to compare you to your “always go low on price” competitor down the street any longer. They are going to ask “Why can’t you be more like Amazon and give me notifications when I am due for service or when the technician is en route to my location?” The customer service bar is going to be set by the sum of all of the best experiences the customer has ever encountered across all companies in both their personal and professional life.
The good news is that most customer service innovations can be observed and imitated if they fit your idea of great customer service for your company. The case of Amazon is particularly intriguing because up until a few years ago Amazon had absolutely no influence over the products customers were buying from them. They were simply a reseller of other companies’ products. Any innovation they delivered to make a customer feel good was not a product innovation but instead was focused solely on the buying experience. In my next post, I’ll discuss the “feel good” customer service themes direct from Amazon that should probably be among the guideposts you use in establishing your “feel good” customer service strategy.
Tellin’ ain’t Sellin’ – Every Customer is From Missouri, So Show Them Something!
When your salespeople call on customers, what are they pitching? What do they present when they get that rare opportunity to show a high-profile prospect the benefit of working with your company? While I have not been in the room often when a commercial service contractor is pitching a customer, I have seen hundreds of websites for these companies, and I have been to lots of trade shows where they are exhibiting. Generally, I am not impressed by what I have reviewed. Mostly I see some version of one or more of the following themes:
We Work Harder! It sucks to work harder than the other guy.
We Care More! Not certain what sucks more – working harder or caring more.
Better Technicians Means Better Service! This is the Papa John’s pizza pitch. You’ve seen examples here, here, and here of how that’s not working.
We’re a Family Business! The mafia is a family business too.
We’ve Been in Business a Long Time! Really? Why are you still such a small company?
Sadly, the website content for most commercial service contractors is typically a long and rambling word salad that doesn’t add up to much value for the customer. Generally, Google is not impressed either as most rank pretty low for relevance in organic search results. I imagine the salespeople are equally unimpressed with the company strategy, so their pitch quickly devolves to price:
How much are you paying now? We’ll get the work done, and it will be cheaper! Let’s negotiate labor rates and a markup on parts! We will be there 24/7 when things go wrong! Call us anytime and we will fix your broken equipment by working around the clock until everything is good again!
Competing on price and some vague promises to work harder and care more and fix broken equipment 24/7 and be more family-oriented sucks. Why should the customer believe anything the sales rep is saying? How can your sales representative make an impression that moves the conversation to valuable outcomes instead of a mark-up on the cost of the labor and parts?
Of course the most important thing the salesperson can do is ask questions and understand the goals of the buyer through some discovery conversation. The other thing that should be offered is a premium program, but do not expect the customer to buy on the promises and platitudes of a sales rep. Tellin’ ain’t sellin! Your sales people should be able to show the customer the value of your brand by demonstrating how the program works. I am fond of declaring that all customers come from Missouri, which is known as the “show me” state. If you can’t show them the value, you will not sell them the program.
So what does a premium program look like? And how can you demonstrate it to the customer in a way that is meaningful to them? Let’s have a look at some examples from other industries to gain insights into components you should consider.
Amazon Prime – Amazon offers a subscription program called Prime, and nearly 70% of US households are Prime members. Prime members pay $119 per year in exchange for free two-day shipping, access to a library of movies, television shows, and music, and a free Kindle book every month, among other things. The most important thing Prime does, however, is put Amazon at the top of the heap when a subscriber considers how to buy the next bag of dog food, or supplies for their kitchen pantry, or Christmas gifts for their friends:
I’ve already paid for Prime, I might as well benefit from the free, expedited shipping!
The program helps keep the Amazon brand top of mind for future purchases, and customers pay for this marketing trick through their subscription fees! It’s brilliant marketing by Amazon. Amazon allows prospective customers to try Prime free for a month to experience its value because Amazon knows that all customers are from Missouri. The free trial “shows” the customer why Prime is valuable instead of just “telling” the customer that it will be great if they buy.
BMW Ultimate Care – BMW is a premium automotive brand that delivers what they claim is the “Ultimate Driving Machine,” and Ultimate Care is their premium maintenance program. You pay in advance, typically at time of purchase when financing is also a part of the conversation. Ultimate Care provides unlimited service consistent with the manufacturer’s recommended service plan. All parts and service required for recommended maintenance are included at a thirty-percent discount. The program is only available at BMW dealership locations, so you will be bringing the car to the dealership and wandering about reviewing all of the latest offerings of BMW as your maintenance plan is delivered.
Once again, brilliant marketing. You payin advance so that you will certainly use the service that requires you to come to the dealership on a regular basis. No doubt you will get a loaner for the latest model at the upper end of your price range for any extended service requirements. The dealership is having the customer pay fees in advance of service to help them deliver a hassle-free experience and market their latest offerings to the customer on a regular basis.
Brandt STORM – Brandt Engineering is one of the largest mechanical contractors in Texas, and STORM is their premium program. STORM stands for Service, Technology, Optimization, Retro-commissioning, and Monitoring. When the customer buys into the STORM program, Brandt does a top-to-bottom review of the equipment while installing monitoring technology to track key performance data on the critical elements where failure results in expensive disruptions. Once they and the customer agree the equipment condition is worthy of a performance promise, STORM is initiated. The customer receives regular communication and attention from Brandt engineers and technicians while simultaneously benefiting from lower rates on service requirements and ideally lower utility costs.
The customer is paying Brandt the money they are saving on utility bills and breakdowns as subscription fees in order for Brandt to continuously remind them of the value of the Brandt brand! That trade-off is certainly worth the risk to Brandt of a failure where Brandt must pay the premium (expedited parts, overtime labor, etc.) for recovery instead of the customer paying it. These risks are minimized through information, and the customer is conditioned that any retro-commissioning recommendations (quotes for new equipment) based upon the data are in their best interest to avoid performance disruptions that fall outside the STORM promise. It is brilliant.
So what are the lessons you should take from these examples?
1 – Brand the Program. What is your version of Amazon Prime? Ideally the name helps the sales rep to tell the story, to get the conversation going with the customer, and then the customer remembers your brand. A good name demonstrates your company’s thoughtfulness in how you communicate your value.
2 – Show, Don’t Tell. Your sales people need to be prepared to give a demonstration of the program. Amazon gives prospective Prime members a month of free Prime membership to try out all of the benefits. Do your sales people have a way to easily give the customer your branded program experience?
3 – Promote the Features. Can you enumerate the features of the program? In a list? Spend some time thinking about the names of the features.
4 – Get Paid for Nothing. If the only time you send a customer an invoice is when you have a labor or parts line item to bill, guess what? They are going to assume your value is in the labor and parts instead of the program. The fewer invoices you send to the customer, the better. Ideally, have them pay annually in advance. It’s better for you and cheaper for them.
5 – Offer a Good Contract. Put in place a master service agreement, a rate schedule, and a service level agreement. Good fences make good neighbors and good contracts make good customers.
None of these elements of a premium program are rocket science, but it is surprising to me how rarely they are implemented by service contractors. Do not let shoddy practices in your industry nor weak competitors that always sell on price dictate your business model. The executive management of your company should spend at least fifty percent of their time working on program and marketing innovations that set the brand apart from competitors. Innovation rarely happens by accident, and it is the key to having a differentiated value proposition.
