4 Customer Experience Insights from Blue Goldfish
Who doesn’t love free books? I’d like to give a huge shout out to Voiance Language Services for giving out the best SWAG ever at this year’s ICMI Contact Center Expo. One of the books happened to be Blue Goldfish by Stan Phelps and Evan Carroll. Phelps’ Goldfish series has long been on my must read list. With the obstacle of actually purchasing the book removed, I dove right in.Big data has long been a topic of interest to me and in the same breath, one that’s difficult to wrap my mind around. In Blue Goldfish, Phelps and Carroll highlight example after example of companies that are bringing big data and little data together to personalize the customer experience. They break the book up into three R’s, talking about how organizations build relationships, responsiveness, and readiness with customers.
Again, I’m a little slow on this big data little data discussion. Let me pause and give a practical definition. Think of big data as everything organizations know about their customers and users as a collective whole. Within that set of data, you can find fascinating trends. Now think about little data as the data unique to each individual customer. Over the next few moments, I’d like to highlight some of my favorite examples of companies bringing big and little data together.
Fitbit’s Amazing Replacement Policy
If you aren’t familiar with Fitbit, it’s a band that users wear around their wrist that allows them to track their personal fitness data. The ability to have this information has catalyzed significant lifestyle change for many Fitbit users. Phelps and Carroll share a couple cases where loyal customers inexplicably lost their Fitbit and as more of a desperation move than anything else, they contacted customer service to see if anything could be done. To their surprise, Fitbit sent them a replacement with no questions asked.
The lesson this teaches us is that, “once you empower customers with devices and data that are integrated into their lives, don’t fumble the ball. Rise to the occasion with phenomenal customer support.” They go on to talk about the incredible value of the word of mouth that results from these experiences.
Warby Parker Proactively Delivers
Phelps and Carroll share an amazing example of how eyeglass company, Warby Parker proactively amazed a customer. The story started with a man leaving his custom reading glasses on the subway in New York. He went online and ordered a new pair of glasses the next day.
Shortly after that, he received a package from Warby Parker with two brand new pairs of reading glasses. Apparently his lost glasses were found by a Warby Parker employee who was able to track down the customer based on the style and prescription along with the fact that he was likely from New York. The fact that he had gone on their website the next day to order new glasses confirmed his identity. This is some impressive detective work that would not have been possible if not for Warby Parker keeping track of each of their customers in their CRM system.
Customer Service Matchmaking with Mattersight
Mattersight has created a Predictive Behavioral Routing solution that through a series of algorithms analyzes customer speech patterns to determine their personality type. They then pair up the caller with contact center agents who have a similar personality. Mattersight has found that customers are much more likely to buy from and enjoy interacting with people they are able to relate to and connect with. Phelps and Carroll note that this really takes call recording in contact centers to a whole new level.
How Disney Does Responsiveness
My final aha moment comes from an example Phelps and Carroll shared about Disney, a legendary company when it comes to customer experience. They portray a command center in the theme parks where wait time at the attractions is constantly being monitored. When wait times hit a certain level, they actually dispatch characters to entertain the guests as they wait. What an innovative strategy for wait times rather than simply leaving customers to stew in line.
These are merely a handful of examples from the wealth shared in Blue Goldfish. In each of these, however you can see how companies are leveraging technology and big data to connect with customers on a very personal level. It’s these connections that drive things like loyalty and word of mouth that businesses so desire. I encourage you to read Blue Goldfish and begin to dream about how you can take your customer experience to a whole new level.
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