Shaping the Ecommerce, Digital Marketing, Social Media Landscape
On October 5, my good friend and host of the wonderful Delivering Ecommerce podcast, Chris Parsons, asked me to co-host our second live Ecommerce Q&A. We added another member this time in Joseph McConelloque. We had a great time and took questions from people all over North America.
Can’t wait to do part 3. But in the meantime, it’s below if you’d like to have a look.
Customer Contact Week gathers leaders that span the customer journey, from Marketing to Operations to Customer Care. CCW talked with me and two other leaders speaking at CCW NoLa to discuss some of the keys to delivering great customer experience, challenges on the journey, and the personal meaning of world-class service with speed and efficiency.
Download the entire Customer Contact Week Speaker Series Q&A or you can also find it on the Customer Contact Week Digital site.
Here is my interview in its entirety:
Question: Our CCW New Orleans theme this year is focused on delivering world-class service with speed and efficiency. In the context of your work, what does speed and efficiency for the customer mean to you?
Answer: For me, it’s about speed and agility in servicing the customer’s needs. That could come in the form of how quickly we respond to an issue; how efficient we are at solving it at first touch – while remaining consistent with our brand tone, yet still with a personal human touch, independent of channel (stores, online, social, call center, etc); it’s also the speed of shipping out an order as quickly as possible.
On the Digital Marketing side, we like to try new things. We don’t love mass communication (who does?) we like relevant communication. From the digital media we buy, to the preference center we launched (enabling newsletter subscribers to opt down in frequency of email received), we don’t want to inundate our customers with our shopping messages. We’re also trying to be better at communicating non-sale messages, and focusing more on pairing up looks, new site features that make the browsing experience better, or our Click & Collect solutions.
Q: Tell us a little more about your speaking role at CCW New Orleans and how it relates back to your current focus areas. What makes you passionate about this topic?
A: This session might be a bit different, since my title or position is not necessarily Customer Service or Customer Experience. However, leading the Digital Marketing and Ecommerce team for one of the largest apparel retailers in Canada, we obsess about customer needs. So I believe my session will touch not only how to do things for the buying customer, but also your internal team members (think about it, they are your customers as well), not to mention our external vendors or agencies; they are an extension of our team, and so we refer to them as our partners (again, they are customers as well in the broader sense).
I usually attend and speak at Marketing, Digital Marketing, and Ecommerce Conferences, at Retail events, or at general leadership sessions. So a few months back when I was asked to speak at SOCAP, my first reaction was ‘what’s that?’ Well, I quickly learned that SOCAP International (The Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals in Business) is the organization for Customer Care professionals. SOCAP was established in 1973 to help shape the business community’s response to changing consumer needs and expectations.
So why did a Customer Care organization want to hear from a marketer like me? Well, I’ll get to that in a moment. But Lisa Oswald, Senior Vice President, Global Customer Care at TravelZoo, who also happens to sit on the Board of Director at SOCAP, heard me speak at the ForeSee Summit in April 2016. Soon after, she connected me with Marjorie Bynum, who is SOCAP’s Vice President if Strategic Learning, Leadership, and Communications.
When Marjorie and I spoke for the first time, we instantly hit it off, as we shared a passion to help our respective industries learn and improve. She then asked if I would be interested in keynoting the afternoon session on Day 1 of the SOCAP Conference. I was thrilled to do so.
In the last 7 months, my wife and I have stayed at a Fairmont property 3 times.
The Fairmont is one of the most popular luxury hotel chains, and takes service to a whole new level, including calling the instant you enter your room to make sure everything is ok. We have stayed at the Fairmont in Montebello, Quebec and the Fairmont in Lake Louise, Alberta. Both of those properties are stunning and tranquil, extraordinary, yet with a boutique feel.
So when a Google event was being hosted at the Fairmont in San Francisco last May, I was looking forward to the stay. It’s also at the top of San Francisco on Mason Street, which presents beautiful views, yet is also hard to navigate with steeps sidewalks that make your calves burn.
Anyhow, we got there at 10:00 a.m. after a weekend in Napa, which, granted, is way earlier than normal check-in. The lady at the front desk politely told us that our room was ready, but there was a $75 charge if we wanted to take early possession of the room. Since it was a company expense, we wanted to be fair and passed on the pricey early check-in, leaving our luggage with the concierge, and taking in the sights and sounds of one of the greatest cities in the U.S.
When our room was ready, we got a text saying we could now check-in (loving the Fairmont’s digital mindset. Their lobby bar also uses tablets as their menus).
We checked in a little while after receiving the text.
The next morning, I received a text asking how everything was, and asking me to rate the experience thus far, on a scale of 1-5, in which 5 was excellent. I shot back a text minutes later with a score of 3.5. I was not trying to be difficult or harsh, but I thought that was more than fair.
They immediately apologized and asked why it was a poor experience. (You get the picture of their high standards). I assured them it was not poor, but that the room had a terrible view and the toilet made noise for a few minutes after each flush. Also added the fact about the early check-in fee for a room that was already ready.
And here was where they could have been customer service heroes.
They could have asked to upgrade me to a room with a nice view (I did mention it was our third time staying at the Fairmont in the last few months). Maybe there were no rooms left? I believe they did have availability, but say they didn’t. They could have done something special, perhaps a voucher for a restaurant, or a voucher for a potential next stay. But they simply apologized, missing the chance for me to become an evangelist, like I am for the Fairmont Montebello and the Fairmont Lake Louise, where the staff went over and above our expectations.
As Damon Richards once said: “Your customer doesn’t care how much you know them until they know how much you care.”
There’s a lesson here for brands. We all say we take customer service very seriously. But brands that action that statement better, win more.
The Fairmont San Francisco is very, very nice. They just missed a chance to hit a homerun when the situation presented itself.
This year, Etail Canada was held on May 11-14. Etail Canada brings together the greatest Canadian Ecommerce and Digital Marketing minds, as well as some of the strongest brands in Canada, for some solid sessions, panels, roundtable discussions, and some great networking.
I sit on the Advisory Board for Etail Canada, and always leave the event inspired and relieved. Inspired because there are many people like me who love this industry, and are passionate about it; relieved because I feel with the leaders that were at that conference, we are in good hands while Ecommerce in Canada tries to play a mega game of catch-up to our friends to the South.
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