1. Read in the news about Clearwire going to Clear on its new 4G network, clicked through to see how it might impact me, a current customer; learned that I have to upgrade to the new modem/network and that it wouldn’t cost me more to have faster speeds–great, I thought, sort of nervously….
2. Clicked the Upgrade button on the Clearwire site, clicked a few more buttons, zippity doo dah, done! They’ll send me a new modem in a matter of days.  Me: still feeling slightly nervous, imagining the mess of having to network a new IP or who knows what….
3. Received email status and info: what to expect and when to expect it, return of old modem with instructions and prepaid label, shipping status of new modem.  My interest/curiosity is piqued, still a wee bit nervous….
4. This morning the box is delivered.  From the time I open the box to the time I’m truly zipping along on the world wide web and have returned the old modem to the shipping box: 27 minutes.

(The only muss or fuss was when I didn’t follow instructions! Instead of an ethernet to my mac, I just plugged the existing ethernet from my airport wifi to the Clear modem.  Fail. The first step allows your new 4G connection to interface with Clear directly, thus establishing a link Doh. Once I figured that out, things went fast.)

Clear deserves a big hand for thinking this change through, hooking up all the little pieces that can make the headache of big change fall to the customer rather than the company initiating it.  Good job, very well done–and when I click to post this, the publishing process will go faster than I’m accustomed to…gotta love that.

That’s why a recent experience really stayed in my mind: Wavehounds, a local Seattle surfshop. Wavehounds is run by veteran surfer Todd whose approach to his biz exemplifies everything you really want in a customer experience:

1. Focus on the customer in the moment: I’m not a kid. I’m not a guy. I’m the improbable customer: an older woman who has fallen in love with surfing. Love aside, it takes a lot to go into a surf shop where I might be treated badly, as a novice, as a know-nothing. But Todd was fantastic–he welcomed me and made me feel absolutely at ease in an environment where expert and novice are often…ahem..at odds. (Most surf shops could take a page out of Harley Davidson’s reinvention of itself–HD being part of another arena that tends to dismiss newbies, their future customer base). In the corporate setting, this would be the equivalent to welcoming the customer over the phone or email, making that all important connection by introducing yourself, asking their name, maybe how they’re doing–you give them the sense you’re paying attention, that you’re welcome.
2. Listen and learn: Todd asked about my experience, where I’ve surfed, what boards I’d tried, where I was in the learning curve and what my budget was. But here’s the kicker: he listened to my answers. And that was key when he finally suggested a board for me–I had confidence that this would be the right board for my spot in the learning curve. I asked some questions, asked about other boards, learned a bunch from him, but that initial five minutes or so were the deal makers for me. It gave me the confidence I needed to commit to a board.
3. Guide but don’t push: that’s the listening-to-my-questions part. If Todd had pushed too hard, I wouldn’t have felt like I made a long term connection to a resource I would continue to use and buy from, I would have felt like a piece of meat. I want to be surfing for a while, and even though I was looking for a board, I was really looking for something much more. Todd offered that. Todd is smart.
4. Do something a little extra: Listen, it’s just not that hard, and it doesn’t have to be huge–it just has to be meaningful to the exchange. For agents on the phone, it could be something as simple as recognizing the weather where the customer is–I saw an outstanding sales agent once who closed more transactions simply because he had a google map and weather forecast open on his desktop. In the case of Wavehounds, Todd taught me how to apply wax–both undercoat and over–correctly. It’s not a big thing, I could have learned it from YouTube, but he had time and he made use of it in a way that meant a lot to me, his long term customer.
5. Be proactive: in the big company arena, this would mean knowing what was going to happen to the customer (order shipment process, repair process, etc) and setting expectations, or letting the customer know what to do next. It’s hugely important. In this instance, it meant Todd asking me where I was going to take the board out for the first time. When I mentioned the coast, he just said, “No, you’re not. Not this weekend you’re not.” And he was right–we were going to be experiencing phenomenally high surf, 30 foot waves, and it was not safe for surfing. Instead he clued me into some lesser known spots I’d never tried and didn’t even know about. I loved him for that!

See you out there, bud!

She makes a number of great points, but what is crucially important in making any social media strategy work is the people and cultural awareness in an organization. Here are some highlights:

• Deputizing people throughout the organization
• Understanding how each social media channel provides a different dimension of engagement
• Centralizing coordination
• Finding champions who can explain and mitigate risk

You can download the whole report at the link above. Happy, helpful reading!

OPEN DIVISION

This report will be a powerful collection of good information and real stories of how these companies “did it.” The best thing about this report is it will help you avoid costly mistakes and make use of lessons learned:

Moreover, these sites truly define “best practices” in Web support. They’ve been chosen by a rigorous review process that looks at 25 different performance metrics, including usability, design, knowledgebase implementation, interactive features, use of technology, customer experience, overall strategy, and much more.

This approach can be used for any group, any age–9th grade to the exec level at a corp. In order for execs to buy into the idea of using wikis–which for many have a slightly scary, techie reputation and the name, wiki, what’s up with that? –they need to access the concept of a wiki first and Natalie’s approach is so simple to set up and get working, anyone can access it.

Very helpful, thanks! Anyone else have approaches to teaching a concept such as use of a wiki?

Jeff Bezos said at the investor’s meeting recently:

“If you identify the key drivers of customer experience - those key needs - they are unlikely to change over a 10-year period. So if you base strategy on things that are permanent in time, very durable things, all the energy you put into those things continues to pay you dividends years into the future.” He identified those key drivers as low prices; vast selection; and extreme convenience - especially fast, reliable delivery.”

Those things sound pretty straight-forward, pretty much the farthest thing from Rocket Science, yet they’re very difficult to do.  Just think of the million moving parts from the website product listing, to the online ordering process, to the internal order processing, to the communications, the picking/packing/shipping, the online order status….on and on.  Getting that box to your door when it is supposed to be there ends up seeming like magic, once you take all those things into consideration.

But the Amazon focus on customer experience doesn’t want it to seem as much like magic as like steady-as-she-goes normal, repeatable, expected, predictable, brandable.  And that’s brilliant.

Nice job, Novell! Anybody got other suggestions of companies that are getting it right?

Ah, iTunes, I loved you so!

But, iTunes, iTunes, iTunes.  What a pain you are.  I’ve put off writing this post for a while because I just hate to face the fact that I’m so unhappy with iTunes.

The youngest member of my family, my sweet 12 year old god-daughter got an iTunes gift card for Christmas for her new iPod.  She’s a little teensy bit tentative around technology so she waited till after the holidays to give iTunes on her PC a whirl–she selected the songs she wanted early in January.

After Apple began offering DRM free music.  Which is marked with a + sign next to the purchase info.  You may not have noticed that.  It’s pretty innocuous, I certainly never noticed it.

Anyway, she clicked buy, and the song began to download, completed and then went into a phase called “Processing.”  It stayed in processing mode for several days, and would have stayed in processing mode for years I suspect had she not had the good sense to give it up.

When she first told me about this, I expected the issue was the PC vs. Mac thing or a virus or some such.  When I was visiting in March I sat down for an extended investigation of the situation.  After reading lots of comments in the forums, lots of forums all over including Apple, I figured out that this problem began after January 1, and involves this new + designation, the DRM free or added content songs.  It’s very very messed up. And as the forums indicate, there’s no answer forthcoming.

I contacted Apple and told them they took $25 from my 12 year old god-daughter and she got not one song in return–please explain. We got back a form letter saying in essence that they’d looked into the case and discerned that it’s too late to refund the money.  Nothing about the missing songs or anything else. Nothing.  Not one word.

I was really non-plussed. So I said, That’s it. No more buying songs from iTunes, I’m setting up an account for you at Amazon–all the songs you could want, cheaper, faster, better.  I mean, that’s a no-brainer if I ever heard one–there’s no barrier at all to switching.

So my god-daughter will happily head into her teen years with a much, much better buying experience with Amazon than Apple; as a share holder I couldn’t be happier about this.  But I was really bummed by Apple’s response, and their unwillingness to take responsibility for an issue that is clearly theirs.

I know Apple doesn’t make much off those tunes they sell, pennies, I’m sure.  But it’s a brand thing, right?  And iTunes is the bruised part of the Apple in my opinion.