I had an interview appointment with Salesboom.com CEO Troy Muise within a few days, so I was interested in the series of comments on a recent news posting about Salesboom.com, an up-and-coming entry in the SaaS wars, currently led by salesforce.com.

Not all of the comments were friendly—even though all SaaS suppliers could benefit by studying the piece they were commenting on, one that Muise wrote after an analysis of the actual behavior habits of Salesboom users.

What really ticked off the readers seems to be this closing note by Muise:

Salesboom.com is a leading vendor of on demand Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) business software services to over 30,000 subscribers and 3500 customers in over 159 countries. Customers include LexisNexis, Transcontinental and PointRoll. Salesboom SaaS business solutions help SMBs improve Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service and manage Inventory, Accounting, and Human Resources processes, on demand.

Take a free 30 day CRM Software Trial today

One commenter called the study "bluff" and seemed surprised that a software CEO would try to sneak in a “commercial message” into an Internet submission.

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Testing Moments of Truth at Delta

A potential moment of truth, according to Jan Carlzon, occurs when an employee interacts with a customer.

• If the experience is very positive, it becomes a Magic Moment.
• If the experience is very negative, it becomes a Miserable Moment.
• If the experience is neutral, it becomes a Mwa Moment (in Dutch,--my guest language-- Mwa is the equivalent of ho-hum.)

I had a wonderful opportunity to assess the moments of truth at Delta Airlines during a recent trip from Amsterdam to Bogotá Colombia via San Jose California. Because of a stroke condition, I had asked for wheelchair assistance throughout the journey. What a beautiful moment for patient bonding, I thought. Here is my report.

Amsterdam to Atlanta – Mary (Names of staff fictionalized

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A Real World Lesson in Customer Experience Management in Bogota

This past June I accompanied three other CRMGurus to Bogotá, Colombia where we were to speak to about 200 delegates at a CRM/CEM conference.

W ended up with a practical lesson and case study in Customer Experience Management in the town of Chia, a small town about 30 kilometers outside of Bogotá.
This is the home of Andres Carne de Res which means Andres meat of the cattle.

I am tempted to say that Andres Carne de Res is a restaurant, but that would be understating the case: Andres Carne de Res is an EXPEERIENCE.

The entrance is a not impressive collection of unpainted buildings (which I later learned can hold 1,800 diners) with a bunch of people milling around the entrance in the sound of Latin American music. We enter a semi-darkened room, the walls festooned with indefinable objets dart.

At that moment a troupe of musicians (or are they actors?) marches by in various costumes: a cleaning lady dancing with a mop; a ballerina in finery; a mime; two elegant black gentlemen bearing signs; and several other odd people playing guitars. The ballerina pauses to dance and flirt with one of us.

We order juice drinks from exotic local fruits and snacks. Te drinks come in coconut shells cut in half with ice. The snacks are not unlike nachos.

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This is the first in a series of blog postings on the basic concepts of Customer Experience Management.

They can be found in an e-book—The Customer Experience Management Field Manual which you can order—free—by sending an email to:

jay@customerxf.com

Thank you.

The Customer Experience Factory Field Manual:
Part I- Basic Concepts
Part II- Readiness Assessment

By Pieter van Osch and Jay Curry

Interviewed by Marie-Jose Lorty, Director of 3DMarketing.com

Interviewer: Welcome to this field manual about Customer Experience Management (CEM). Part I covers the key concepts of CEM while Part II lets you assess your internal capabilities for implementing these basic concepts.

Are you ready to go? OK, let’s begin with some Basic Concepts.

First, I understand that Customer Experience Management is relevant for all kinds of businesses. Some think it is highly tilted to a Business to Consumer model. Right?

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A pictogram may reflect more accurately feelings than words. We prefer to measure on the Basis of pictograms such as these which avoid any confusion over verbal definitions. See Figure 1.

Figure 1

At the end of 2006 I came across in my search "Net Promoter Score (NPS)" developed by customer loyalty guru Fred Reichheld, and I muttered to myself: "Eureka! This is the greatest thing since sliced bread!"

The NPS is derived from asking "The Ultimate Question": "On a scale of 0 to 10 how likely are you to recommend us to friends and colleagues."

Anyone who gives you an answer 9 or 10 is a Promoter. Those answering 7 or 8 are noted as Passively satisfied. A customer that answer 6 or less is designated a Detractor.

All you have to do is subtract the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters and you come up with a Net Promoter Score (NPS) which correlates highly with growth and profits.

Put in a formula: NPS = P-D.

That's all there is to it!

Promoters represent an active sales staff getting others to try out the company.

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For some time I have been in search of something in Customer Experience Management that would track and trace customer "superenthusiasm".

I was thinking of a kind of satisfaction survey which would capture for instance if a foods shopper would travel 3 miles out of her/his way to patronize store X just because he liked the store: their service was so terrific; the staff was super friendly; and the products priced no higher than in a giga-size supermarket..

At the same time the store owner would be super enthusiastic that the shopper was going 3 miles out of her/his way to ensure that her/his money went to the store deserving it—his!

This happy state of affairs I called "Customership".

Thus "Customership" is a state of happiness caused by doing business with a vendor you really like; coupled with like happiness on the part of the vendor who enjoys the profitable relationship with a customer.

I noodled around with the idea for several months, but abandoned the idea when a suitable model just would not appear on my Excel screen

Figure 1 was as far that I got—with customer loyalty expressed as "share of wallet" on the vertical axis and high customer satisfaction on the horizontal axis.

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Book Review: The Ultimate Question, by Fred Reichheld, the Harvard Business School Press, ISBN 1-5319-783-9

Last year I wrote an e-book on Voice of the Customer. I should have stayed in bed.

As a matter of fact I did, spending 10 months of 2006 recovering from a stroke. I should have spent 3 hours of that time absorbing Reichheld’s new book “The Ultimate Question” because Reichheld convinced me that time spent on customer satisfaction measurement was time wasted

Reichheld’s concept is devastatingly simple. You can throw away all customer satisfaction interviews and replace then with one (ultimate) question:

On a scale 0f 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our company to a friend or colleague?

Anyone who gives you an answer 9 or 10 is a Promoter. Those answering 7 or 8 are Passively satisfied. A customer that answer 6 or less is designated a Detractor.

All you have to do is subtract the percentage of Detractors from the Percentage of Promoters and you come up with a Net Promoter Score (NPS) which correlates highly with growth and profits.

Put in a formula: NPS = P-D.

That’s it. Game over.

Promoters represent an active sales staff getting others to try out the company.

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On December 27, 2005 I was a strapping 6’5” CRM Guru with a firm faith and belief in the holy grail of customer profitability. I was just coming off a world tour for Microsoft where I could preach the customer profitability bible to Microsoft Business Partners and prospective users of Microsoft CRM; plus I was wrestling with some knotty problems in the fund raising world where I was working on an interim basis.

But on December 28. 2005 I fond myself a partial cripple in a hospital, the victim of a stroke. My left arm and leg just did not respond to messages from my brain.

But my thinking capacity, speech and reading ability, thank God, were not affected. So I had lots of time to ponder over the Meaning of Life.

I recall vividly one day a few weeks thereafter wheeling along the hospital corridor in my wheelchair when I heard a commotion between a nurse and an older patient. “YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO WALK UNAIDED” shouted the nurse. “COME BACK HERE!”

The older lady patient mumbled something just before losing her balance and falling down, her head making a large SMACK on the floor. “SEE, I TOLD YOU SO,” scolded the nurse before offering to help the patient to her feet again.

This can’t be approved treatment”, I thought to myself. And indeed, I never did see a repeat of such rude behavior.

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Nobody knows who I am!

I keep getting transferred from one department to another!

Why don't they communicate with each other?

These often-heard customer complaints are usually the result of "stand-alone" departments, as shown below.
Figure 1

Some companies try to solve the complaints by problem by "putting the customer on top," as in Figure 2:

Figure 2

But it doesn't work. The "stand-alone" departments continue to deal with the customer from their own narrow perspective, leading to customer confusion and anger.

At some companies—certainly not yours—this scenario is not unusual:

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Marketing and IT people and departments are not often collaborative in their daily work—especially when it comes to the question: Who owns the technology?

This fact of life is evident to any reader of the cartoon strip Dilbert. Dilbert and his nerd cohorts believe the marketing department is peopled with ambitious yuppies who want to market any products whether or not the products work correctly—or even exist.

But Dilbert suffers from the same IT help desk person whose vocabulary is limited to two sentences:

• "Every thing is forbidden."


and

• "Nothing is allowed."

The adventures of Dilbert are recognizable to anyone working in a large company. But small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) also have problems between CRM and IT on the issue of technology ownership and development. Several cases come to mind:

• The reluctant owner. A CRMGuru member once wrote to me with this plea:
  
  

  Help! I am the only IT specialist in a small company. The boss bought a CRM system and I attended the product course. When I returned, the boss said that I should implement it. I don't know anything about CRM—what do you suggest I do?

  
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