On our recent trip to the US we stayed with friends in Summit, a prosperous suburb of New York where the police force has taken an unusual approach to improving community relations.

Historically it has been difficult for the boys in blue to get to know their community as citizens drive everywhere in the US and so do the police. There’s no ‘bobby on the beat’ type opportunity to chat informally with people which, as anyone who’s watched  Dixon of Dock Green will know, is an essential part of community policing.

So what they’ve done is introduce the equivalent of a Panini football card game for children where they can ask, say,  Sergeant O’Mally for his card if they see him or if he doesn’t have any cards on him, he can drop them round to the house later on – thereby becoming known to the parents too. Due to the popularity of the scheme, they even have open mornings at the police station where kids can go and swap cards with others.

Looked at through the eyes of someone who does customer relationship management for a living (i.e., me) this is just a great example of how some lateral thinking can massively improve the relationship an organisation has with its customers, creating a dialogue and trust around the product so that when the time comes that you have a need (or need a policeman) you know exactly where to turn.
In a time when our relationships with organisations are dominated by call centres and automated telephone menus, the sight of Sergeant O’Mally at your door just dropping off a card for your children is heartening indeed.

If there are just two words embedded in the DNA of brand Aardvark Media, they would have to be customer service. Everything we do online, however technical, has to first tick the box saying that it makes life easier for the customer.

Being focussed on this in my work life, I’m probably quicker than most to voice dissatisfaction as a consumer but recently I’ve had such a jaw droppingly bad experience at the hands of Virgin Airlines that it demands a public airing.

 I’m flying with the family to the US soon and as I have a couple of young kids, I decided to take advantage of an offer to upgrade to premium economy so you get a bit more room on the long haul flight. To do that you have to ring the Virgin customer services line which starts with an automated menu (which disqualifies it from being a customer service line in my book) and ends, eventually, with a call centre overseas.

My first call was fairly straight forward, I made the booking and was informed that an e-ticket confirming the upgrade would be emailed to me within 48 hours. It wasn’t, so I made a second call. I was on hold for 10 minutes while they checked the booking – “no problem, the e-ticket will be with you tomorrow sir.” Tomorrow passed and still no e-ticket so I made a third call and spent 40 minutes on hold this time. As I hold longer than this for no man I hung up and called back when my patience had returned.  Twenty minutes on hold again and when I got through I was informed I had to pay an extra fuel surcharge for my booking but that the e-ticket would definitely be with me in 48 hours. It wasn’t. I called back again and held for 15 minutes.

When I got through this time - my fifth call, they asked me if I knew who I had spoken to last time – as if it were my responsibility to record this rather than there’s to keep notes on the system. I had the name but this meant they tried to put me through to that person who was, of course, engaged. When I got through I was rewarded with notice of a further fuel charge but by now desperate to conclude matters, I paid up and pleaded that they just get me the ticket. “Certainly sir, it will be with you in 48 hours”.

And of course it wasn’t. I did eventually get the ticket but all told, I reckon it took about five hours to upgrade me  – that’s upgrade, i.e., pay them more money.

What’s astonishing about this experience in 2008 is that it still exists. We have the technology and we have the skills to create happy customers who keep coming back and yet this automated, chaotic nonsense remains. And from Virgin, formerly the consumers’ champion.

By the way, if, by any chance Virgin pick this up on their blog monitor and want to call me to apologise, they’d better be prepared to hold. 

I had the good fortune this weekend to find myself in France, invited by the owner of an ancient vineyard to sample the barrels he was considering blending for the UK market. His family had never sold Beaujolais outside of France before and was keen to get some UK opinion. We were pleased to oblige and left with a few cases and the intention of telling all our friends about him.

In the marketing world this falls into the category of ‘brand influence’. Some research by OMD which came out at the end of ’07 which showed that amongst our European neighbours, Brits are the most likely (63%) to offer an unprompted opinion online and we are also the most likely to pass a negative comment (26%).

What this says about the UK psyche is a large topic, but suffice to say, we’re not backwards in coming forward when we don’t like something, but also, we’re more motivated than most to share a good customer experience.

And with 38% of UK online purchasers taking other customers’ opinions into account before purchasing, UK online retailers need to think more about strategies to recruit repeat customers as brand ambassadors – ensuring that good news about the restaurant or hotel for example, is actively promoted.

I’m not suggesting they take them out to France and ply them with wine – though that would be a nice idea – but simply asking repeat customers if they would consider telling other people about their experience (via the established review sites) on the basis that if they’ve come back, they must have had a good time.

With more brand ambassadors you recruit more new customers which in turn means even more brand ambassadors and so on. A virtuous online marketing circle.

Or, if my new French friend is reading, the more promotional Beaujolais sent to me = more customers = more brand ambassadors = more customers and so on.

If you could actually see the sales funnel for an e-commerce website, it would make a frustrating sight with anywhere between 60 to 80 percent of your income disappearing before it gets anywhere near your bank – in fact it might better be described as a sales sieve.

Some of the holes you can do nothing about – not everyone buys each time they visit but an area where some filler can be applied is right at the base where customers are making purchases.

Of these customers, the majority will be first time buyers who you’ll never see again, but a small number – maybe 5% will become repeat customers and it’s in this area that website owners can make a big difference to their bottom line by working that percentage.

This means rewarding customers for their initial purchase with loyalty incentives to come back and buy again, perhaps through vouchers or a points scheme. Supermarkets tend to be very good at this, offering personalised discounts, incentives and also asking for feedback on the purchase experience.

What they no doubt know, but not everyone is aware of is that once someone has purchased twice, there’s a much higher probability that they’ll go on to make a third and a fourth  purchase and become a loyal customer than there is of a first time customer making a second purchase.

It makes sense then to concentrate your loyalty plan efforts at that key tipping point.

Reflecting on my old Morris minor whilst looking at my new iphone, it occurred to me that actually they have a lot in common, despite being technologically worlds apart – they’re both really easy to use, add value to my life and as a result, I’ve grown attached to them emotionally .

Businesses can learn a lot from this. Take for an example the restaurants and bar sector. If I’m looking to book a table at a favourite or new restaurant, I want to speak to them or email or book online – not via a third party – but with them. How can a restaurant expect customers to begin to bond with their brand if they put bookings out to third parties? It really bugs me that I frequently have to sign-up with a restaurant website only to be told that I have to sign-up again with someone else just to make a reservation enquiry!

Savvy operators in the sector have realised that investing in direct online relationships with customers and making it easy for them to book and interact, will help them grow their business, even in difficult times. It’s a throwback to good old fashioned customer service, but with high tech underpinnings – a Morris minor with an iphone installed perhaps.

Years ago I used to own a Morris Minor van and travel all over the country in it. It was a brilliantly simple machine designed around the driver .There was the handy quarter light window you could pop open for a cigarette ( I used to smoke back then) and an engine so simple you could work on it yourself. Everything about the minor made my travelling life a pleasure –occasionally I’d even give it a pat at the end of a journey.

Fast forward to 2008 and most of the machinery around us seems to have become incredibly complicated. I’m not sure I’d want to contemplate working on my Volvo’s tyres, let alone the engine and if you look at many online web applications - ease of use seems to have gone out of the window too with clunky interfaces and customer unfriendly sites.

Take the bar and restaurant sector, most operators have websites with little or no interactive capacity for communicating with customers whereas groups like Novus Leisure are seeing a growth in online enquiries of over 20% simply by making it easy for customers to contact, book and interact with them online.

 In these tough times, a website which makes customers lives easier – like my old Morris - will inspire loyalty and as everyone in marketing knows, you’ll be more profitable if you keep your best customers coming back for more.

I had a really impressive experience using a website over the weekend. After watching other people do a hard day’s work rearranging furniture, I thought I’d get some kind of takeaway. On a whim, I decided to see if I could do it on-line. A quick google turned up hungryhouse.co.uk - a site that exists to let you place order on-line with a variety of different takeaways. Perfect!
What particularly impressed me was the fact that I wasn’t required to register in order to place my order. They did take an email address, but they put my order through before asking for any more details than it absolutely required. At no point was I faced with anything that said “Sorry, you have to be a registered user to do that.” The whole customer service experience of the site was completely geared around saying “yes, go ahead”. So naturally, as soon as I’d made my order, I went and signed up properly, while I was waiting for my pizza to arrive

The pizza was late, but that was someone else’s fault, and you can’t have everything, can you?