The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.
—Bill Gates
The word “wireless” is defined as the transfer of information without the use of electrical conductors. In many ways, this definition captures the blessing and the bother of Internet service. The mobility, speed, and ease of the Internet as a tool for “interlogue” are clearly worthwhile assets. However, robbed of the capacity to read nonverbal information, there is great potential for misinformation and misinterpretation. Without accurate dialogue, understanding can suffer.
One study at the University of California, Los Angeles indicated that up to 93 percent of communication effectiveness is determined by nonverbal cues.23 Another study found that the impact of a performance was determined in 7 percent of cases by the words used, 38 percent by voice quality, and 55 percent by the nonverbal communication.24 Stripping the lion’s share of the effectiveness features from communications with customers puts enormous burden on those factors that are left.
The Internet is a lot like a rattlesnake. Rattlesnakes are not aggressive snakes until threatened. Then they provide a warning to their opponent in the form of an unmistakable rattle. But if the rattle is ignored, they strike quickly and with a bite laced with venom that has a lasting impact on the strikee. Successful organizations serving the online customer must be great “listeners for the rattle,” intently monitoring all channels simultaneously. Once a rattle is heard from customers, the service provider must be prepared to react quickly, succinctly, and effectively.
In today’s cyber world, the diversity of service is loudly amplified. Brick-and-mortar service largely restricts access to those customers geographically nearby. Rarely do customers drive many miles to patronize a particular store or service. Consequently, customers of brick-and-mortar commerce hail from similar neighborhoods with similar values and mores. With Internet service accessible to all, no matter their demography, geography, or ethnology, organizations with too many rules and restrictions and frontline employees with too little decision-making authority can box service providers into responding with what customers perceive as stubbornness.
Flexibility is not just an attitude at the opposite end of rigidity; it emanates from a keen understanding of the customer and a desire to adapt the offering to fit the customer. We were working with the call center of a major utility that had elected to eliminate a segment of twenty-four/seven access to the call center for customers, forcing Sunday afternoon callers to wait until Monday morning. Their rationale was as follows: Only a handful of customers ever called then, so why worry? It seemed not to occur to them that they could have easily and inexpensively outsourced that service to a retired call center rep willing to cover the segment from home on Sunday afternoon. The cost of adding to the Monday morning handle time could have easily funded the part-time call center rep.
Customer segments are different in terms of their Internet preference. Convergys research revealed that millennials showed less preference for live phone support, whereas baby boomers showed increased preference. Their preference was driven in part by their growing frustration with automated phone systems. Generation X customers indicated they were not using live Web chat, e-mail, or automated phone systems as much as they would like. They relied more heavily on live phone support because the channels they really preferred either did not exist or were not being supported in the right way.25
The Convergys research also found a huge disconnect among millennials between what they were using and what they really wanted. Fifty-four percent of millennials said they have used or are likely to use texting for customer service; 47 percent have used or want to use social media for service; and 44 percent have used or want to use smart phone applications.26
Customers do expect a live Web chat to take longer than a live phone call, but if they knew it would take twice as long, 90 percent would opt to speak with a customer service rep.27 There is no gain in providing live Web chats if the customer spends twenty minutes chatting with an agent and then decides to pick up the phone and spend ten minutes talking to another agent.
Buy a book from Amazon.com once or rent a movie on Netflix once and on your next visit to their site, the computer will suggest other books or movies you might like. “Customers assume that when they make a purchase, the record of that purchase will be readily available regardless of the channel it came from. All systems have to be synchronized,” notes best-selling author Robert Spector.28 Take a look at how many online companies have gone to “My” as the prefix for their personalization—MyFedEx, MyOfficeDepot, and the like.
All of us take that customerization dimension to be table stakes today. We have been taught by Internet providers to expect that they will remember us from previous encounters, know our history, recognize our IP address, and populate screens quickly when we transit from online to Web chat to live chat. We assume there will always be a trap door giving us easy access to a real person. Log on to landsend.com and the bottom left side of the home page offers an 800 number, a chat online, or a button to click for “call me.” The “all about me” customer expects to be included in ways beyond, “Would you like to complete a survey at the end of this transaction?”
Service providers are answering that expectation with enormous creativity. For example, according to a blog on www.1to1media.com:
High-tech networking giant Cisco recently tested the power of social media outlets with the launch of myPlanNet, a downloadable video game that allows players to assume the role of a CEO and solve business challenges using Cisco products. Although introduced using traditional live events, myPlanNet quickly gained widespread appeal among IT professionals who turned the simulation game into a B2B social media juggernaut spanning various channels worldwide. According to Cisco, the award-winning social media campaign for myPlanNet has been downloaded more than 35,000 times and has attracted more than 55,000 fans on its Facebook page.29
As Cisco and other innovative service providers know, collaboration is the core of partnership. Threadless.com invites their website community to vote on the coolest t-shirts designed by fellow amateurs. The winning entries become their product offerings, providing great exposure for budding designers and a sense of ownership by the community. Jackdaniels.com has a fan club called the Tennessee Squire Association. They asked squires in Texas to vote online for their favorite color (red, white, or blue) for the Jack Daniel’s–sponsored race car to be run in the annual Texas 500 race. Mountain Dew created a user-generated movement to launch a new product. The process (called Dewmocracy) involved more than three million customers in various phases of the design, development, and marketing of a new drink ultimately called White Out.30 Kodak has a digital media team including a chief blogger; a chief listener; more than a dozen full-time staffers who cover the Web, search engine optimization, and social media; and a network of part-time bloggers and tweeters around the world who represent different departments of the company.31
eBay is another great example of an organization that views customers as partners. Every sixty days, they invite twelve eBay users to journey to San Jose, California, to participate in the company’s “Voice of the Customer” program. These select people visit almost every department to talk about ways to improve service. This focus group methodology goes one step further. Every month thereafter for six months, these same users are reassembled to explore emerging issues. As users evolve from being interviewees to feeling like members of the organization, they get bolder in their input. They may come in as a “customer with a concern,” but they leave as a “partner with a plan.” The byproduct of these customer conversations has been important new offerings (like iPhone apps) and unique service enhancements for eBay.
eBay CEO John Donahoe put it this way: “. . . we were not as outside-in as we needed to be. Consumers are driving a lot of change and we’ve found ourselves better off if we learn how to take advantage of them. . . . The passion our sellers feel is a blessing. The minute they stop caring and screaming is the minute we should be concerned. We’ve tried to be much more genuine and authentic about listening to their feedback.”32
The Internet world, being devoid of many of the usual signals we rely on to sense deception, demands absolute and complete honesty. It requires the pinnacle of transparency. Log on to Bill Marriott’s blog “Marriott on the Move,” and you will learn about the new Marriott extended-stay ExecuStay corporate apartment brand. You get a detailed, up close and personal tour of a typical apartment.33 Marriott is a “people first” culture that places honesty as a centerpiece of the “home-like work atmosphere” they nurture. Walmart.com puts customer reviews right beside all the products they feature on their home page.
The truth-seeking component of effective partnership is that which values candor and openness. It is the dimension that honors authenticity and realness. The path to honesty in relationships is paved with risk taking. It involves the courage to ask for feedback as well as the commitment to value it in a way that is affirming to the sender. Honesty may sometimes leave relationships temporarily uncomfortable and bruised, but truth always leaves the partnership hearty and healthy. It exterminates guilt and deceit and ennobles wholesomeness and trustworthiness.
At its core, partnering is a commitment to a conversation with customers rather than unilateral action. If decision making is made without customer input, it corrupts the service covenant. Partnering starts with asking for input. It continues with enlisting others in problem resolution rather than positioning yourself as the sole “answer person.” Partnering is operating with the faith that wisdom lies within us all and that by tapping the collective brainpower of customers and associates, the organization is stronger, more responsive, and more adaptive to the ever-changing requirements of customers and employees.
Honesty is the byproduct of great conversations. Effective Internet servers nurture a vibrant community and foster listening posts. The more the Internet feels like a cyber watering hole, friendly to all as well as protector of all, the more it becomes a crucible of trust and an assembly of importance. It starts to resemble the old-fashioned marketplace where farmers brought produce to sell to merchants and consumers relied on the confidence derived from dependability. As on the Internet marketplace at its best, rotten apples were banned, and devious bargain hunters were disdained. Someone just passing through town might get away with a shady deal, but returning vendors were required to be trustworthy.
One feature the Internet world lacks that face-to-face commerce typically contains is a tactile connection. Walk into a store to buy a new pair of shoes and you can feel the leather and the fit. Buy the same item online and, unless you are repurchasing an article that worked before, there is a risk that what you see will not match what you need. This makes fairness a much more crucial feature of the service covenant.
One of our clients happens to be the largest wholesale auto auction company in the country. Buyers and sellers come together at the auto version of the “farmer’s market.” Major rental car companies are there to unload last year’s models, auto manufacturers are there to deplete glutted inventory of a model that undersold projections, and banks are there to sell leased or repossessed vehicles. Used-car dealers are there as buyers of fresh inventory for their lots. If there is a dispute over a purchased vehicle that was not as promised (“There was frame damage your inspector totally missed!”), arbitration is on site to resolve buyer–seller disputes.
When the company elected to provide a portal that would enable buyers to watch auctions online and bid along with buyers on site, the importance of full disclosure and fair dealings ratcheted up dramatically. All vehicles sold had a “condition report” (CR) that provided buyers with details about the vehicle before the auction. Online buyers began asking for more close-up photos of the scratch mentioned in the CR, or a notation in the CR indicated that the inside of the vehicle revealed the previous owner smoked cigars—all elements the person on site could see, touch, feel, or smell.
However, the greatest change between online and in-lane buyers was the standards for arbitration. The old rules failed to take into account that the online buyer was making a purchase with only “at-a-distance” sight as their primary tool for gauging worth. To level the playing field, the company instituted a “we’ll buy it back” policy if the buyer registered any displeasure with the fairness of the deal within the first thirty days after purchase.
The future of online commerce is beacon bright. Forrester Research projects that e-commerce sales in the United States will grow at a 10 percent compound annual growth rate through the next four years.34
The warp speed and surprise power of the Internet means that the best antidote to the bite of a wired customer intent on striking is to be a fast fixer and a sincere healer, not a sounding board. That means asking customers for their definition of fair and then adding to it. It means drawing the customer in as a source for learning, not reaching for the checkbook in hopes they will go away. The bottom line is that the Internet customer should be thought of as a partner who, because of his or her access to many cyber villages, can be a valued scout, interpreter, and peacemaker.
Social media, such as blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Digg, and Yelp, provide concrete evidence that customers are changing the way they define marketplace. In some ways the Internet is a return to the old-fashioned village. While the new village is a global community, it nevertheless has many of the features of the village of yesteryear. In a small town, merchants knew you and catered to your specific needs. They acted on history and patterns of previous purchases. They’d even open the store after hours if you needed something. Over the last fifty years, commerce has become distant, impersonal, and one size fits all as the service covenant has altered. The Internet in general and social media in particular have helped connect customers with businesses in ways that are more personalized, open, around the clock, and valued.
Another feature of the old-fashioned village was generosity. The village is where the concept of “the baker’s dozen” originated. Kids got a free taste at the candy shop; merchants gave away “secret recipes,” and adults got a “take it home and try it” assurance behind products. There was no need for a written “money-back guarantee”—the merchant was the guarantee. The closeness of shared space required varied means to maintain relationship balance. Customers and merchants relied on neighborly practices. A spirit of abundance was a way to start and maintain valuable relationships.
Like the old-fashioned village, the Internet is a world under a microscope. Value must be real and look real. The eye candy of websites must be interesting, easy, fast, and imaginative, or the cyber traveler will only be a drive-by window shopper or a targeted bargain hunter with little intent of sticking around (called being sticky) or coming back. It makes generosity—providing extra to value, not thinking of value as tit for tat—an important means to ensure a genuine partnership.
Log on to Gerbers.com, and their homepage is organized by the stages of a baby’s life, from pregnancy to preschool. Not only are site visitors given product information relevant to a specific stage, but Gerber also provides information on growth and development, nutrition, and feeding and offers parental advice. Intuit gives visitors smart advice by product and links them to a community of Intuit product users.
Internet is a word we repeat without thinking much about its real meaning. When we shorten the word to Net, we remove the most important part. Inter means “between,” as in interchange, interconnect, interface, interact, interdependence, and interpersonal. It implies mutuality and reciprocity, a give and take that respects both ends of a promise waiting to be kept. It can be the shining manifestation of partnership at its finest. And, it can transform a customer ready to take a nastygram viral into one eager to spread “likes” to all friends and family.
In the physical world an unhappy customers tells six friends; in the cyber world an unhappy customer tells six thousand.
—Jeff Bezos
CEO and Founder of Amazon