MINNEAPOLIS, Jan. 5, 2012 — "The frustration level among Banking, Retail and Telecommunications customers appears to have reached a crescendo," according to Pete Bosse, a PhD consultant also known as DrTeamwork, who specializes in improving the customer experience. Perhaps you noticed the recent media backlash? Bank of America proposed a new $5 debit card fee that started a negative press landslide. Then in late October WSJ.com reported, "Big Banks Blink on New Card Fees." A few days later, BofA "blinked" and cancelled its proposed debit card fee. In mid-December, "Best Buy Plays Grinch, Cancels Black Friday Orders Ahead of Holidays," according to PCMAG.com … only to be followed by "An Uproar on the Web Over $2 Fee by Verizon," on NYTimes.com. Bosse declares, "The recent trend is toward people fleeing to escape as big business bites customers and alienates followers."
When confronted by customer defections, Pete's challenge is to identify the root cause of poor decisions that lead to bad customer experiences. According to Bosse, "The decisions can often be traced to a failure of leadership, some sort of process breakdown or attributed to poor training or policies gone awry. The root causes generally fall into the categories of leadership, culture, people or process."
Bosse notes one additional source of the current wave of displeasure could be the fact that only a few hundred Chief Customer Officers (CCOs) are in place worldwide, according to the website CCOcouncil.Org. The CCO role is developing rapidly and more CCOs are being appointed every month. Chief Customer Officers are responsible for driving customer strategy and owning the customer experience. CCOs are typically accountable directly to the CEO and their goal is to grow customer advocates while improving profitability.
Customer advocates are those customers who feel so positive about an organization that they are willing to recommend the organization to their friends and family. Companies such as Apple, USAA, Costco and Amazon enjoy extraordinarily high levels of customer advocates who are more likely to be promoters rather than detractors of the company. Bosse admires Fred Reichheld, Bain consultant and noted Customer Loyalty expert and author, who coined the term Net Promoters to identify the pool of customer advocates that exceeds detractors. Apple and others have seemingly cracked the code on delivering a superior experience because they take explicit ownership of the customer experience.
"If more organizations developed unique and engaging customer experiences, negative press and customer detractors would be reduced significantly," according to Bosse. "Big businesses must stop alienating their most loyal customers, own their respective customer experience and consider hiring a CCO to focus their organization on increasing Net Promoters and improving customer profitability." By example, Bosse helped one company improve their customer experience, reduce customer defections by 40% and increase profits by $10 million.
To learn more about how your organization can stop customer defections and improve the customer experience, contact Pete Bosse, President & CEO, 3PE Global LLC, 612-810-2524, Email, http://about.me/DrTeamwork, Twitter @DrTeamwork.
Photo of Pete Bosse: http://www.ereleases.com/pic/Pete-Bosse.jpg
# # #