CX & Customer Success resources

“No one can grow the business the way customers can.”  Here at the CXPA Member’s Exchange in San Diego Simon Lowe, Director Field Operations, 1-800-Got-Junk?, shared their real-world results that back up this statement.  1-800-Got-Junk? realized that satisfied customers will not grow the business – growth comes from loyal “promoters.”

While the company was growing at such a phenomenal rate (from $1M to $119 million in 7 years), customers had become jobs.  Customer complaints hit the web, and remember that Google never forgets.  So they’ve made it very easy for customers to tell them where there are issues, so that those issues don’t go to Google.

1. They make sure that one person facilitates all complaints through their complaint resolution program, and they make it right within 48 hours.  Having one person facilitate the process helps 1-800-Got-Junk? maintain consistency, which is critical to their business.
2. This team also builds process improvements to make sure they don’t repeat the same complaints.  As a result complaints are down 15% from 2010 to 2011, which is 2.7% of total jobs.  And they are striving to reduce it to zero.

Before their focus on customer experience, repeat business was declining.  With this new focus, they found

• 4% of Detractors (score a 0 to 6 on the feedback survey) repeated from 2010 to 2011
• 8% of Passives (score a 7 or 8 on the survey) repeated
• 18% Promoters (9 or 10 response) repeated

Their Net Promoter Score has grown from 68 to 85.  This has translated from 31.6% repeat customers in 2009 to 35.01% in 2011.  And from 7.8% referrals in 2009 to 8.7% in 2011.This is $1.5 Million in incremental revenue.
Some practices Simon noted:

• They teach their truck teams to actively listen to customers to determine what value means to them.  What is the customer really looking for?  Loyalty is impossible without value.
• Removed all bonuses based on revenue, and instead bonus based on NPS.  No one can grow the business the way customers can.  Surveys come from the head office, and they encourage truck teams to make sure customers will give a high score so they can correct any issues on the spot.  They track every touch on the customer corridor, and scores impact everyone that touched a given customer, not just front-line.
• They recognize repeat customers – this is more than just technology; it’s education for the front line to listen and watch for ways to remind the customer that they know them.  For example, “Can we get you the same coffee as lat time?”
• At the end of their customer feedback surveys, if the customer is a Promoter (scores a 9 or 10) then they ask for referrals right away, both with localized links to social networking sites and also by asking for contact information.  We can see from the numbers above that this is working.
• They shine the light on customer experience.  For example, they post a stack ranking of complaints per franchisee on their intranet.  And they keep it top of mind with cut-outs placed on executives desks showing the competition stealing away their customers.

Loyalty doesn’t allow complacency.  It doesn’t take much to turn a Promoter into a Detractor.