Blind Spot. Nathan Shedroff

Chapter 10. Designing

      With a declaration of intent finalized, shows how companies can apply a streamlined approach to design offerings in order to build valued relationships.

       Chapter 11. Delivering

      Details how to get new offerings to people in order to complete the process.

       Chapter 12. A World of Premium Value

      Explores the implications of valued relationships in the corporate world compared to the broader sets of relationships we all have.

       Index

       Acknowledgments

       About the Authors

Foreword

      I normally hate books like this. I don’t want to have a customer experience, much less a brand experience. I can’t bring myself to support any effort to give corporations a human face to match their ill-begotten rights of citizenship and personhood. Companies are enough like people already, and people are becoming far too much like brands themselves.

      But Nathan Shedroff (whom I’ve discussed these issues with) and his co-authors, Steve Diller and Sean Sauber, are more forgiving people than I am, and they see a way for companies to humanize their operations without resorting to yet more manipulation. In fact, the guiding principle here is not that corporations should ape human behaviors in order to manipulate consumers into behaving more predictably. That’s the conventional wisdom in the customer experience universe, and it’s what has led to increasing alienation of human beings from the companies that mean to reduce their customers’ autonomy and individuality in the name of short-term profit.

      Rather, the authors suggest that companies accept their essentially non-human status and embrace the humanity of the people buying from and working for them. The corporation is not the ends but the means.

      That may be the greatest blind spot of all in today’s business landscape and, ironically, the one that our digital technologies have made most apparent to everyone else. In such an environment, transparency seems to alert everyone else to our own shortcomings, while hiding them from us.

      Thinking long and hard about one’s customers’ experiences—from first point of contact through sale and word-of-mouth to social responsibility, labor relations, and environmental impact—may be the best way for a company to justify actually benefiting people in the long run. Yes, it’s good for business.

      —Douglas Rushkoff

      Author, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus

CHAPTER

      1

      A World of Hidden Value

      On July 14, 2014, an Engadget editor named Ryan Block and his wife called to cancel their Comcast cable and Internet service. During an 18-minute phone call (only 8 of which were recorded), a Comcast customer service representative badgered them with questions and refused to do the simple task they asked. The entire conversation consisted of exchanges like the following:

      Block: “I’d like to disconnect.”

      Service rep: “Help me understand why you don’t want faster Internet.”

      Block: “Help me understand why you just can’t disconnect us.”

      Service rep: “Because my job is to have a conversation with you…about keeping your service.”

      This went on until the bemused Block wondered aloud, “Am I being punked?”

      For those of you outside of North America, Comcast is a cable TV and Internet company that frequently tops the lists of the worst companies on the continent. Its most obvious problem is the terrible relationships it has with its customers. Many people simply hate dealing with the company.

      Part of the blame falls on the industry: almost all cable and Internet companies in the United States fare poorly in customer surveys. Still, part of the blame has to fall on the company itself. Comcast offers an array of conflicting and confusing promotions. The deals routinely end 12 months after they begin, triggering huge increases in prices that surprise customers. Then, if you try to disconnect, the company makes you cancel over the phone, where you’ll find a customer service rep trained to do nearly anything to keep you as a customer. And after you cancel their services, the company often doesn’t stop billing your account until you physically return equipment to the nearest store, which may not be nearby.

      Worse still, customer service reps often act like Block’s did. He may as well have been a robot—he had a script, and he stuck to it. His compensation was likely based on how many customers he could prevent from discontinuing service. In an ordinary interaction, people respond to one another. If a person seems upset, you don’t start telling jokes. If they’re happy, you’re happy for them. You build relationships using empathy, not by stubbornly saying the same thing over and over, regardless of what the other person says.

      Over time, emotional experiences add up. If you have one interaction after another that leaves you feeling worse, it will result in a bad relationship. When that happens, you talk about the company in the same way that you talk about a person you can’t stand: obtuse, frustrating, and annoying. You can actually come to hate a business. And when you get a chance to get rid of its services, you dump it, just as you might dump a friend or romantic partner. (The same is true in the positive, too: you might love and admire a company based on the kinds of interactions you have with them.)

      That said, you might ask why Comcast is still in business. Because it’s lucky. It has a virtual monopoly in some regions and competes with only one or two rivals in the rest of the regions. Its competitors all engage in the same unpleasant practices, so consumers have to pick their poison. But most companies have no such luxury. If Comcast were a neighborhood restaurant, it wouldn’t last more than a few months. Within days of opening, anyone who went there would tell everyone else to stay away.

      In fact, most small businesses understand that their customers have a series of experiences that turn into a relationship. They know that developing positive relationships is critical to their success. They have to learn their customers’ names, understand their preferences, and know what their customers want before they say so. Their business has to be positive, upbeat, and sensitive. Being good at what they do simply isn’t enough. They have to know how to give and take in a two-way conversation. They have to care.

      Blind Spots and Opportunities

      You’ll find that this is just one of many blind spots that businesses have. In Comcast’s case, short-term profit is much more important than long-term relationships, and holding customers prisoner is the only acceptable corporate strategy. Comcast prefers to incentivize management and front-line employee alike to make it nearly impossible for customers to leave (although, ultimately, it’s no more difficult than a call to their credit card company to cancel the account) than to give its customers a reason to want to be customers for the long term.

      This is just one way in which traditional business thinking has blinded its practitioners to reality. Relationships are the source of long-term value, not merely because it’s easier to keep an existing customer than to acquire a new one, but because satisfied customers help a business acquire new ones.

      It’s really no different than personal relationships. While the healthy relationships you forge with friends and family are built more on emotional and meaningful value, the same is still true of relationships built on financial and functional value.