Welcome to the October 2010 edition of Strategic Innovation newsletter, a free monthly newsletter on leadership, strategy and innovation. Delivered on the first Tuesday of each month.

Back issues are archived for free downloading at www.DanielLockConsulting.com.

Tips for improving

•Compounding applies to customer service and marketing just as it does to cash in the bank. Consistently investing in these areas – and it doesn’t have to be lots of cash, most often its time, energy and an attitude adjustment – will accumulate over time to an impenetrable advantage.

•It’s an old aphorism, but its true: put yourself in your customers shoes. Do this by visiting the front lines and observing how your frontline staff interact with clients.

•What’s your culture? Do you delay meetings because you’re with a customer? Or do you make your customers wait while you’re discussing your weekend with co-workers?

Crazy customer service

What’s your vision for your customer service interactions?

Mark Cuban, prolific blogger and owner of the Mavericks basketball team in the states, wrote in a recent blog post what he wants people to feel like when they come to game day, "We in the sports business don’t sell the game, we sell unique, emotional experiences."

Mark goes on to liken his vision for game day to be like the wedding we all want to attend:

He wrote this because the NFL is looking down the barrel of declining crowd attendance for the second year in a row, due to HDTV live against the gate, and while he owns a basketball team, he can see the where things are heading. 

The same has been happening in Australia where AFL clubs have been complaining about this for a while now.

The key lesson here is, the competition isn’t always clear. We face direct competitors, as well competition from substitutes, as in the case of professional sport: It's not other sports, but TV for the sport itself.

We need to transform our efforts at customer service beyond just delivery of what we said we would and consider it part of the marketing plan,and that of the product itself: how it makes us feel.

No one likes to ring a call center at a large company. Why? It makes us feel unimportant – just another number – banks and telco’s have forgotten that people actually buy service from them.

Improvement

Analyse your customer service, and offering you make to your clients. Interview customer and observe the actual delivery of the services. What are the gaps? Identify quick wins and strategic initiatives.
 

But most of all, identify a vision for what it is you want to deliver your customers and clients. Is it a boring secondhand grand final, or a nail biter?

While you can’t control what happens in the game (or the economy at large),you can control the kind of experience you give your clients.

I want to do business with the ones who make me feel like the wedding that Mark talks about, where I come away talking about it to my work colleagues on Monday morning, or better still - blogging about it.
 

Technique of the month: Customer Service project

There are three areas to focus on and look for customer service innovations:

Basic requirements: These must be met no matter what. Don’t do these and you’re under water before you even begin.

Core requirements:These are the areas that all consumers will expect, and where if you do them well you’ll earn extra points in the customers mind.

De-lighters: These are the breakthrough areas where you put yourself in another stratosphere and competitors have no idea how to compete.

Most managers, immediately attempt to but everything in the third de-lighter bucket. You can’t. You must have elements in each, and only one –usually a combination of product, service and marketing – in the third.

Involve your front line team, make the front line manager responsible for implementation, and given them freedom to innovate on the delivery.