5 Ways To Create An Inspiring Customer Experience – With Jim Champy
on Aug 14, 2009 - 7:00 AM PSTWhenever I hear someone rave about a company, in the back of my head I think, hey, I’d like people to talk that way about my work. How can I do it?
I figured you’d want to know how to build that kind of inspiring business too. To learn how to do that, I recorded this program with Jim Champy, author of Inspire!
The FULL program
About Jim Champy
Jim Champy is the author of Inspire! and Chairman of Consulting, Perot Systems. He is recognized throughout the world for his work on leadership and management issues and on organizational change and business reengineering.
5 ways to inspire
1. Have a bigger mission
Stonyfield Farms, the spunky organic yogurt manufacturer, knows how passionately their customers care about the environment, so many of its campaigns promote the environment more than their yogurt.
In one, the Stonyfield crew held a big “We Support Inflation” sign at an intersection and offered to inflate drivers’ tires. They explained that, if every car’s tires were properly inflated, our national fuel efficiency would increase by 2 miles per gallon.
2. Simplify your offer
Zipcar, which rents cars by the hour, used to charge $4 per hour plus 45 cents per mile. People would use their car for 3 hours, expecting a $12 bill and would end up with sticker shock when they were charged $35.
They won over their customers by creating dead-simple hourly pricing and telling customers that they’d only be charged per mile if they exceeded 180 miles per day.
3. Be accessible to customers
When Bob Parsons looked at domain name registration companies, he wasn’t impressed. “Service was horrific,” he says. So he made the customer service at his company, Go Daddy, accessible and helpful. He put his customer service center’s phone number on his homepage and, to keep customers from bouncing from department to department, he trained his people to handle any problem or customer inquiry – whether it’s related to billing, design, repair, or anything in between.
[Andrew's note: I called Go Daddy's customer service number and made sure this claim is true before publishing it. But I didn't record it the way I did in my interview with Tony of Zappos.]
4. Be authentic (even when it hurts)
Honest Tea created a drink called “Zero,” a name meant to dramatize that it contained 0 calories. But before launching, when their labels were literally in the printer’s shop, the company discovered that their drink actually had 3.5 calories per bottle.
US government regulations say anything under 5 calories can be rounded down to 0 in the labeling, but that wasn’t good enough for Honest Tea. To be true to the relationship they had with their customers, they pulled the drink.
5. Alienate some people
When asked about his company’s edgy commercials, Bob Parsons says, “I’m very ready to alienate 10 to 15 percent of viewers to really get the attention of 85 to 90 percent.” Taking a stand and inspiring some customers can mean alienating others.
Similarly, Stonyfield risks alienating potential customers who disagree with its politics. And Honest Tea’s refusal to sweeten its teas the way Snapple does means some customers won’t even consider buying it. But to the right customers, the stands these companies take are inspiring.
Full program includes
- The difference between missionary and mercenary businesspeople.
- More examples of how great companies inspire.
- What you can do to inspire your customers.
Suggested comments
- Are you a missionary or mercenary? Which do YOU think does better in business?
- What do you think it takes to be inspiring?
- What do you think of the ideas in this post and in the interview?
[Thank you Rosie Bernardo proof-reading this.]
View Comments to “5 Ways To Create An Inspiring Customer Experience – With Jim Champy”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
August 15th, 2009 at 10:29 pm
I enjoyed this article as I work toward constantly refining the customer experience at our company.
Thank youj
Dave Rosedale
President
http://www.PainterStaffing.com
August 17th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Thanks. It's one of the hardest parts of building a business.
August 18th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
Excellent, excellent interview. I'll be off to Borders to buy myself a copy of Inspire! Champy seems to be like a really helpful guy, too.
August 21st, 2009 at 8:06 am
Once again, another wonderful interview! Thanks Andrew.
August 22nd, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Let me know what you think of it.
August 22nd, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Thanks. That means a lot to me.
August 23rd, 2009 at 4:37 pm
More great information! Thank you Andrew, and thanks to Jim Champy. The discussion concerning missionaries vs mercenaries really hit home. Up until now, I've spent most of my adult life being a mercenary. Unfortunately, I aspire to be a missionary. It looks like I have some work to do. Thanks for the food for thought and for all that you do here on Mixergy.com.
September 27th, 2009 at 10:43 pm
A good sign that your interviews are really interesting is that I read the summary, but I don't just take the summary and run – I feel intrigued to watch the interview and learn from your conversation. I've watched about 10 of your interviews and I think you're doing a great job. The questions you ask are great and sometimes you ask very pointed and important questions. The people who you interview must be quite humble and open because they allow you to “dig deep” and get valuable lessons out of them to really benefit your audience. That is great. One thing you need to work on (humble constructive criticism) is work on the balance of creating a good back-and-forth discussion but not speaking over the interviewee or stopping their thought. Sometimes they are about to say something great but you might shift the discussion to your next question too soon. That's not the case with this interview but I've seen it in some of the more recent ones. I would really appreciate if you could interview two more types of people: 1) people who made money in open source, 2) people who built a successful non-profit. Thank you and best regards.
September 28th, 2009 at 5:43 am
A good sign that your interviews are really interesting is that I read the summary, but I don't just take the summary and run – I feel intrigued to watch the interview and learn from your conversation. I've watched about 10 of your interviews and I think you're doing a great job. The questions you ask are great and sometimes you ask very pointed and important questions. The people who you interview must be quite humble and open because they allow you to “dig deep” and get valuable lessons out of them to really benefit your audience. That is great. One thing you need to work on (humble constructive criticism) is work on the balance of creating a good back-and-forth discussion but not speaking over the interviewee or stopping their thought. Sometimes they are about to say something great but you might shift the discussion to your next question too soon. That's not the case with this interview but I've seen it in some of the more recent ones. I would really appreciate if you could interview two more types of people: 1) people who made money in open source, 2) people who built a successful non-profit. Thank you and best regards.