The simplicity of a smile – it’s great for you and your customers!

Smiling – we all do it. Some of us do it more than others, but it is very likely that we will all smile at some point today. There are actually some very interesting facts about the facial expression we take for granted:

1. Forcing yourself to smile can improve your mood
2. Smiling boosts your immune system
3. Smiling is contagious
4. Smiling relieves stress
5. It is easier to smile than to frown
6. Smiling is a universal sign of happiness
7. Smiling uses between 5 and 53 facial muscles
8. Babies are born with the ability to smile
9. Smiling makes you look prettier
10. Smiles are the most easily recognisable facial expression

It is difficult to find anything ‘not to like’ about a smile. It is difficult to disagree with these well known facts. Whenever we are greeted by a warm, genuine smile, we feel good. Smiling is so simple – it is also the easiest and cheapest ingredient to put into your customer experience strategy.

Last week I was fortunate enough to enjoy a summer break in Menorca. Just thinking about going on holiday makes us smile and I am no different. The thought of sun, fun, food and relaxation instantly leads us all to start sensing the upward curling of the corners of our mouths. However, thinking about going on holiday also leads many to think about the more stressful and complicated elements of the experience. From getting to the airport; to parking; to checking in; to getting through security; to boarding the plane – holidays are filled with ‘touchpoints’ that can cause blood pressure to rise.

The Golding summer holiday to Menorca featured all the usual ‘travelling’ touchpoints as described. Some of them were not particularly pleasurable (the travelling touchpoints that is). Our first negative experience was at the bag drop. Flying with Thomson Airways, the first sight greeting us at Manchester Airport’s terminal 2 was a queue snaking around half of the terminal building. After forty minutes of walking backwards and forwards, we were greeted with indifference – no apology for the wait and definitely no smile. I refer you to points 1, 3 and 4 of my interesting smiling facts – a simple smile would have made the experience feel significantly less stressful. It would have been so easy for the lady at check in to give us a big smile to improve our mood. Sadly none was forthcoming.

The airport queue – a sight destined to help you lose your sense of humour

Smiles at airport security are also sadly lacking. We were fortunate to be able to use the ‘fast track’ security. If we had not been, we might still be in the queue now (a week later!). Once again though, there was a significant lack of smiling going on by any of the staff manning the security gates. Is it not possible to do a serious job and smile at the same time?

We finally got to the point of boarding the aeroplane – excitement was building. The kids had big smiles adorning their lovely faces. The first face that greeted them at the door to our plane did not share their mood. No smile was present as we were told where to find our seats. Other cabin crew made up for the lack of smiling, but I could not forgive the downbeat mood of the lady on the door. In fact as soon as a different cabin crew member started to engage in conversation (with a beaming smile on her face), we felt so much better.

On arrival in Menorca, we gave each of our three children their own passports to show to the man at passport control. Having been to this beautiful Spanish island many times before, we knew they would not let us down – they ALWAYS smile at children! Not this time. The grumpy old man simply grunted and shoved the passports back in their hands. What was wrong with everyone?!!

I do not want this post to sound all doom and gloom. We had a wonderful holiday with amazing weather and plenty of very nice and smiling people along the way. The point I am trying to make is that a simple smile can make such a big difference in the experiences we have in life – let alone as customers. No-one likes seeing an unsmiling face. However the lack of a smile is becoming more and more common in the experiences we have – far too common in fact.

On our return from Menorca, I had convinced myself that I would not see any friendly smiling faces during any part of the journey. I am delighted to confirm that I am/was wrong. The staff in the airport in Menorca were lovely. From the minute we entered the terminal building, everyone we met smiled at us – the bag drop lady; the staff at security (yes, even them!); the staff in the shops and cafes; and the lady at the boarding gate. The crew on our Thompson flight were all very smiley as well. What a difference it made to the return trip. Coming home is always a slightly sad experience – the people we interacted with made it feel much more pleasant. The difference between the airports in Manchester and Menorca was immense – same touchpoints, same processes, completely different experience – made all the better by smiling staff.

The piece-de-resistance though came at Border Control in the UK. My recent experiences of UK Border Control have not been good. Ridiculously long queues, unfriendly staff and definitely no smiles. The man who checked our passports on Saturday afternoon could not have been more different. Not only did he greet us with a warm smile, he was lovely with the children and happy to engage in conversation. I was shocked – I should not have been. What this lovely chap did is what every customer facing employee should do. It is unfortunate that I should be surprised by something that should be the norm. This man made an experience you expect to be unpleasant a pleasure. Why so many of his colleagues find it hard to do is beyond me. It did not cost him anything to do. My main regret is that I did not notice his name – he deserves recognition for the way he goes about doing his job.

The natural human action of smiling is so simple yet so effective (and it costs nothing). Sometimes you just need to look at your colleagues and observe whether or not they do it or not. If you have ever watched the BBC programme ‘The Call Centre’, you will know that Neville Wilshire’s catchphrase is ‘happy people sell’ – the man is bang on. Smiling is such a simple and cost effective customer experience ingredient, you have to wonder why people do not do it more often.

 

‘The lost suitcase and a grumpy old man’ – a story about employee engagment

Customer centric organisations tend to have a number of things in common. They typically have management teams who collectively believe in the importance of doing things with customers interests firmly in mind. They usually design their customer journey(s) to meet and exceed customer expectation. They often recognise that getting things wrong may happen, but that correcting them is a vitally important skill. One thing you can guarantee, is that customer centric organisations do not just put customers first – they also put their employees first as well.

I have always been of the belief that you should treat your employees in exactly the same way you would expect them to treat your customers. If you care for your people, they in turn will care for your customers. Like many things in the world of customer experience – it is not complicated!! Sadly though, we all too often interact with employees of organisations who are obviously and blatantly unhappy. It is not always obvious to understand why they clearly feel so disengaged – yet as a customer interacting with someone like this, their disengagement is often all we remember from our experience.

It is with this in mind that I am going to share another of my own experiences. At the beginning of January I stupidly left my suitcase on a train. In all my years of travelling, it is the first time that I have had the misfortune of doing something like this. It was incredibly annoying. Having scolded myself for being so careless, I started to wonder how I might stand a chance of getting the suitcase back. I never for one moment thought that I would. It is sad that I believed the most likely outcome would be that someone would take it – but in all honesty, that was my considered opinion.

I left the suitcase on a Southern train. The train was en route from Brighton to Portsmouth in the south of England. I contacted Southern by telephone to register the suitcase as lost. The lady I spoke to was lovely. She clearly explained what would happen, and was extremely empathetic to my situation. I still did not think I would get the suitcase back, but I had done all I could to give myself a fighting chance.

Three weeks passed before I listened to a message on my phone. I had been in a meeting and missed a call from a telephone number in London.

‘Is that Mr Golding?’ said the caller. ‘If it is, we have your suitcase’. ‘Call us back to get it’.

That was it. No telephone number. No reference number. I was delighted though. It is a wonderful feeling to discover that something you have lost has been found, and I was over the moon. For a variety of reasons, I did not manage to call lost property for a couple of days. When I did, I remembered that I was not given a telephone number. As I lost the suitcase on a Southern train, I found the number for the Southern lost property office at Victoria station, and called them. A lovely lady answered the phone.

‘Can I have a reference number please?’

The man in the message did not leave me a reference number – ‘that could be a problem’ said the lady on the other end of the phone. Why? I asked.

‘No men work in this office sir!’

Now I was a little bemused. The lovely lady did not dismiss me though. Despite the fact she was certain that it was not Southern who had my suitcase, she did everything she could to try to find it. At the end of the call, she took my number and promised to call me if the suitcase was discovered. I decided to go back through my phone records to try to find the number of the man who called me. Eventually I found it. I called the number:

‘Hello’

Just a one word response barked back at me from the other end of the line. It took quite a lot of probing and encouragement to discover that the man who had called me worked in the lost property office at Waterloo station – home of South West Trains. The experience was rather different to the lovely lady from Southern trains. There was no emotion. There was no empathy. I did not care though – I was still overjoyed to have it confirmed that they did indeed have my suitcase, and it was in the lost property office at Waterloo station.

A few days later, on a business trip to London, it was time for me to be reunited with my luggage. I was actually quite excited. I got to Waterloo at 7am – I knew that the lost property office did not open until 7.30am, but I thought I would find where it was before grabbing a coffee while I waited for it to open.

As you can see from this image, the lost property office is down a rather unpleasant and smelly alley way beside the station. As I approached the entrance, a man in uniform standing outside it barked at me:

‘We’re not open!’

I had not asked if he was! I was only trying to find out where the office was located. The man made me feel guilty for even being there. The very positive emotion of being reunited with my personal possessions was being very quickly eroded by the grumpiness of a member of staff. As I started to walk away, he gruffly called me back:

‘You may as well come in then’

Don’t do me any favours I thought. I wanted to ask him if he was ok. He sounded so miserable. The man actually sounded if someone had really upset him. I was sure it could not have been me. The five minutes it took to get my suitcase back were very uncomfortable. If the man had smiled I was sure his face would have cracked into a thousand pieces. The contrast between his unhappiness and my joy at getting my suitcase back could not have been more stark. I should only be telling you about the happiness of getting my suitcase back. I should only be telling you about the lovely positive interactions with the Southern trains staff. Regrettably, the only lasting memory I have of the whole experience is the sad, grumpy old man from South West Trains.

All organisations need to have a sense of how engaged their people are. This image, brilliantly sums up the three types of employees you will have in your business:

The most customer centric organisations will have more of ‘type 1’ than any other. Type 1 employees will enable you to deliver fantastic customer experiences. A lot of organisations will have too many ‘type 2’ employees – these employees are by no means a lost cause – but having a significant population that behave this way will not help your cause in wanting to be customer centric. The ‘grumpy old man’ from South West Trains lost property office was a classic ‘type 3’ – his active dis-engagement served to taint what should have been a very happy experience.

I do not blame the man who reunited me with my suitcase for the way he behaved. I do blame the company he works for though. What have they done (or not) to make him feel this way? Why do not they not know how unhappy he is? When was the last time a ‘manager’ observed his behaviour? This brings me full circle to what I said at the beginning of this post. The way we treat our people will reflect how they in turn treat our customers. I honestly hope that if you have read this blog post, you will go back and ensure you understand how engaged (or not) your people are.

What irritates customers most? The top five irritations revealed!

A few weeks ago, I decided to conduct some independent research. I wanted to know what was really important to us as customers of organisations, and was very excited to produce a blog post revealing the ‘top five’ things we want earlier this month – http://ijgolding.com/2013/11/06/what-do-customers-really-want-the-top-five-most-important-things-revealed/.

The research asked 4 further questions:

1. What irritates you most as a customer (based on recent experiences)?
2. Which organisations do you, or have you transacted with who deliver excellent customer experiences (in your opinion)?
3. Do you ever recommend organisations you have transacted with to friends, family or acquaintances?
4. Have you ever used social media (Twitter or Facebook) to interact with an organisation (when requiring customer service or help)?

In this second blog post, I am delighted to reveal the findings to the question ‘what irritates us most’. A question that potentially leads to the ‘opening of floodgates’, I experienced mixed emotions reading the 240 responses. I found myself switching from laughter, to sadness, to anger, to empathy as I immersed myself into the pain and frustration of others – pain that I myself have experienced all too often. So in order to avoid running the risk of irritating you, the reader, by rambling on, let me reveal the results:

You will notice that I have used a scale of ‘irritation’ to depict the most irritating things. The most irritating thing gets 5 irritant symbols, the fifth one gets 1 irritant symbol. They all have one thing in common – they are very irritating to us as customers!!

So what is your initial reaction? The consensus feedback from the first blog post was that the top five were not a surprise. I am guessing that this list will receive a similar reaction. Whether they are a surprise or not, once again it is fantastic to get independent fact based validation of the things that we like least as customers. So let us look into a little more depth at each of the top five.

It is no surprise to me to see ‘poor’ customer service top of the pile. 46% of respondents cited customer service not meeting their expectation as irritating. Comments to bring this to life range from ‘being passed from pillar to post’; to ineffective issue resolution; to ‘unanswered correspondence’; to just plain lack of service altogether. It is clear that if we do not feel that the organisation we are interacting with looks after us from a service perspective, it is significant enough for us to be irritated. Irritated customers are not happy customers. Unhappy customers are not likely to remain customers for long.

What is important about this ‘finding’ is that it confirms and validates why organisations MUST continually invest in improving and evolving customer service – NOT just see service as a cost centre that can continually be squeezed – does that sound like a rant? Maybe it is!!

Pedants may argue that number two in the list of most irritating things is really just another element of customer service. Employee attitude and knowledge – or poor attitude and lack of knowledge is a fundamental part of the service experience, but I have separated it out as so many respondents clearly cited employee behaviour as their major irritation (often as well as the overall service offered). 37% of respondents in fact used words such as rude, ignorant, unprofessional, apathetic, un-knowledgeable, flippant, surly – I could go on. This category of feedback received the most vociferous comments of all.

The way employees behave and act has an enormous effect on our perception of the organisation we interact with. This research clearly shows that the wrong behaviours are evident far too often. I can sum up the responses to employee attitude in a single image:

Third on the list of ‘things we want’ was for organisation to ‘keep their promises’ – so perhaps it is no surprise at all to find ‘not keeping promises’ third in the list of most irritating things according to 30% of respondents. We just want companies to do what they say they will – if you do, you will not irritate us – it is that simple. I often wonder why organisations focus on glitz and glamour – trying to wow us, when they fail to do the most basic things right. How often has a business promised to call you back and then not. How often have you had a commitment for something to be done within a certain timeframe only for that timeframe to be missed. It is not good enough and it irritates us!!!

Making fourth spot is a general lack of customer focus. 18% of respondents are irritated by companies who care more about themselves than the customer. Not valuing customers or relationships; too internally focused; not knowing or caring who I am; were among words used to describe this. What interests me is that companies think we, the customer, do not know that they are only interested in the numbers on their spread sheets rather than the smile on our faces. Profitable organisations are those who focus on meeting and exceeding customer expectation – and consistently do so. I am always reminded by the amazingly appropriate ‘quality vision’ used by GE Capital at the end of the nineties and early noughties:

continuously satisfying customer needs profitably

Never has a mission made more sense to me – I hope they still use it. It is possible to focus on the customer and make money – and lots of it. In fact it is the best and most sustainable way to grow  a business. I wish more would try it.

13% of respondents cited poor design as an irritation – concluding our top five. Correlating with number five in the list of things we want, ease of doing business, we are annoyed when the systems, processes and journeys are too complicated, clunky, or just do not work. Poorly designed websites were raised most, especially those with links that do not go anywhere. Additionally, contact processes with unclear direction and hand offs raise many an eyebrow. Basically we crave ease and simplicity. If your systems and processes are neither, you will irritate us – most likely to the point where we will not use them or you again.

Dis-honourable Mentions!

Although not making the top five, I thought I would highlight one or two other irritations that I know you will be interested in (although all were cited by less than 10% of respondents):

• Waiting – we do not like it – delays; queuing – very irritating
• Miss selling – up selling, cross selling = no selling!
• Automated phone systems – I can hear the groans from here – despite radical improvements over the years, we still seem to not like them very much!!

So we now know the top five things we want, and the top five things to irritate us. In theory if you are good at doing the things we want, and good at not doing the things that irritate us, you should have an incredibly successful company!! If anyone is willing to do an open and honest self assessment, I would be delighted to share the results with readers of this blog.

Once again, let me thank the lovely people who shared their thoughts to make this research possible. Without them, I would not be able to share this with you. This is also not the end! One more post is to come – sharing the results of the ‘best’ companies to deal with, and answers to the questions regarding use of social media and recommendation.

I hope you are finding this research useful – I certainly am!!