Making Your Customers Care (And Caring For Your Customers) With Joseph Jaffe

Episode #190 of Six Pixels of Separation – The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

Joseph Jaffe is a Marketer though and through (some have even called him the "Marketer’s Marketer" – and, if no one has called him that, then I am!). Along with being the Chief Interrupter for a Social Media Marketing agency called, Powered, Jaffe is also the author of three amazing and best-selling business books titled, Life After The 30-Second Spot, Join The Conversation and the just-released, Flip The Funnel. He also has a very popular Marketing Blog, Jaffe Juice, and his own audio and video Podcast, Jaffe Juice TV. He is not shy to speak his mind, and in this episode of Six Pixels of Separation we discuss his latest book, Flip The Funnel, and why the customer is not always right (even though they are, and should be celebrated a whole lot more). Enjoy the conversation…

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation – The Twist Image Podcast #190.

I haven’t got to listen to the full podcast but I wanted to mention something about Customer Experience.
Not totally sure if you’re aware but TD Canada Trust runs on a “Customer Experience” model and has for a while. It’s all about the customer experience – in branch, phone and internet channels.
There is a huge huge problem in my eyes. I recently (start of January) handed in my resignation from my position as a Resource Officer in Easyline Telephone banking. I helped the front lines with questions or troubles when assisting a customer and I would also take escalated calls – you know the super upset customers.
Employees can only take so much. What I’m saying is going to be inline with Linchpin.
Over a year ago I started to send e-mail communications that were well designed, well thought out, and informative. I was taking a different angle and a lot of front line specialists were positively impacted. I was also a step ahead of the types of calls we were going to receive. I sent out information about mortgage statements just before they were mailed to the customers, fully knowing the calls were coming and we didn’t have to ‘react.’
There is also a huge e-mail inbox issue with the staff – the amount sent and the amount unread. I wrote up proposal that included an internal blog that could be written by Resource Officers – and it would start to include all kinds of tips, tricks, coaching, sales tips, compliance help. This was the kind of current information in their terms. Most of the employees are in their 20s and I saw them on blogs during their calls, breaks, before work. They gravitate towards blogs and I would as well.
I never heard a whisper from my manager on the idea. After a few “I’ll look into it” responses, I gave up. I stopped everything and became a cog after that (about 8 months before quitting). The “i’ll look into it” and the promotion of other cogs is what made me stop trying.
It takes a lot of energy to do the things I was doing. While I was getting a bit of positive feedback it wasn’t being recognized or understood by my manager or management. A co-worker following the same old repetitive process was the next in line for a reward, promotion, whatever.
Office politics of people stuck in a corporate bubble. I found that people didn’t care. From the top down in my area of the company, no one cared. Joseph mentioned at one point, the improperly trained employee, and it resonated with me. Training at our call center went from 11 weeks to 6 weeks and the new hires were given no training related to business banking and mortgages. I was brainstorming issues around the job and came to a conclusion that this new training was in full swing for 1 year and everyone in the centre was trained on the program. This increased calls to the resource dest 10 fold…. it was out of control (another reason for a resource blog internally).
Customer Experience is going to suffer is Employee Experience is ignored. I quit because I was on bipolar depression and anxiety meds (I felt mainly due to the environment). Employees are left feeling horrible and if they hate their life, they are going to pass it on to the customer. This is why I’ve loved Linchpin so much – it’s saying that companies need to hold on people that care or they are going to leave.
Even companies that are trying hard to improve the customer experience are still confused. Atleast that’s how I saw it while inside the walls of the corporation. If the people don’t care about their job, what they do, or giving gifts than the customer experience will continue to suffer. Corporations and cubicle farms need to rewards behaviour that promotes looking at the box differently. I have become to see the “think outside the box” has become for the status quo.

2 comments

Scott Webb says:

February 16, 2010 at 7:32 pm

I haven’t got to listen to the full podcast but I wanted to mention something about Customer Experience.
Not totally sure if you’re aware but TD Canada Trust runs on a “Customer Experience” model and has for a while. It’s all about the customer experience – in branch, phone and internet channels.
There is a huge huge problem in my eyes. I recently (start of January) handed in my resignation from my position as a Resource Officer in Easyline Telephone banking. I helped the front lines with questions or troubles when assisting a customer and I would also take escalated calls – you know the super upset customers.
Employees can only take so much. What I’m saying is going to be inline with Linchpin.
Over a year ago I started to send e-mail communications that were well designed, well thought out, and informative. I was taking a different angle and a lot of front line specialists were positively impacted. I was also a step ahead of the types of calls we were going to receive. I sent out information about mortgage statements just before they were mailed to the customers, fully knowing the calls were coming and we didn’t have to ‘react.’
There is also a huge e-mail inbox issue with the staff – the amount sent and the amount unread. I wrote up proposal that included an internal blog that could be written by Resource Officers – and it would start to include all kinds of tips, tricks, coaching, sales tips, compliance help. This was the kind of current information in their terms. Most of the employees are in their 20s and I saw them on blogs during their calls, breaks, before work. They gravitate towards blogs and I would as well.
I never heard a whisper from my manager on the idea. After a few “I’ll look into it” responses, I gave up. I stopped everything and became a cog after that (about 8 months before quitting). The “i’ll look into it” and the promotion of other cogs is what made me stop trying.
It takes a lot of energy to do the things I was doing. While I was getting a bit of positive feedback it wasn’t being recognized or understood by my manager or management. A co-worker following the same old repetitive process was the next in line for a reward, promotion, whatever.
Office politics of people stuck in a corporate bubble. I found that people didn’t care. From the top down in my area of the company, no one cared. Joseph mentioned at one point, the improperly trained employee, and it resonated with me. Training at our call center went from 11 weeks to 6 weeks and the new hires were given no training related to business banking and mortgages. I was brainstorming issues around the job and came to a conclusion that this new training was in full swing for 1 year and everyone in the centre was trained on the program. This increased calls to the resource dest 10 fold…. it was out of control (another reason for a resource blog internally).
Customer Experience is going to suffer is Employee Experience is ignored. I quit because I was on bipolar depression and anxiety meds (I felt mainly due to the environment). Employees are left feeling horrible and if they hate their life, they are going to pass it on to the customer. This is why I’ve loved Linchpin so much – it’s saying that companies need to hold on people that care or they are going to leave.
Even companies that are trying hard to improve the customer experience are still confused. Atleast that’s how I saw it while inside the walls of the corporation. If the people don’t care about their job, what they do, or giving gifts than the customer experience will continue to suffer. Corporations and cubicle farms need to rewards behaviour that promotes looking at the box differently. I have become to see the “think outside the box” has become for the status quo.
Andrew Sirotnik says:

February 20, 2010 at 2:19 pm

I got a *ton* out of this discussion and thought the ideas shared and issues raised were spot on. My favorite quote (paraphrased):
“…the digital shopping experience is so hyper efficient that it is sterile…there is something socially gratifying about standing in line with other people that e-commerce lacks.”
I agree completely. More importantly, I think consumers do too. Not sure if it is bad form to post one’s own blog links on another’s site but the content is relevant so I hope it’s appropriate for those who are interested: “Creating The Emotional Moment: online learnings from the evolution of the in-store retail experience” at http://bit.ly/8DcWcJ
Thanks for the meaningful discussion!

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