John Goodman, Vice Chairman of Customer Care Measurement and Consulting (CCMC), has published scores of articles including “Using Service to Grow the Top Line” in the AMA Journal, 8 articles in Quality Progress as well as BrandWeek, the American Banker and Marketing News. Business Week credits John’s research for creation of the GE Answer Center, the original customer satisfaction contact center, as well as instigation of service initiatives at American Express, Coors and Toyota. The American Management Association published his book, Strategic Customer Service, in May, 2009. John is my guest next week on the podcast and to discuss his new book, Customer Experience 3.0: High-Profit Strategies in the Age of Techno Service.
An excerpt from the podcast:
Joe: What’s DIRF? Did you mention that in your book and could you explain that a little bit? 
John: It’s called Do It Right the First Time which means delivering your product in a way that there are no unpleasant surprises. A key part of that and this is the part that I think, you know, both marketing and sales people find the hardest to deliver on is setting proper expectations. It is not in the DNA of marketing and sales people to talk about the limitations of a product and in fact I had a CEO in the session yesterday who said that they do military goods for the most part but they had come up with this bag that was very tough but it had sort of a rough outside that could scrape your skin. But, again, for combat soldiers it worked perfectly. They then started selling a consumer version of it. The staff was saying, “We need to warn the soccer moms that this is a really rough surface that could, you know, scrape your skin.” And, some of the marketing people said, “Oh, we really, you know, we don’t want to point out the limitation.” and the CEO was a woman who said, “No. We’re going to be upfront about it and we’re going to tell them we’re making an outer cover that will go over it to protect your skin.” And, it all of a sudden became a very positive thing in the blogosphere and social media, people were saying, “Oh, yes, this is an issue but they’ve recognized it. This originally was done for combat soldiers and now it’s being done for soccer moms and so they’re making it much snazzier, smoother and everything like that.” And, she said that they had been very, very reticent to talk about this limitation, but it was embraced and welcomed by the marketplace. It’s sort of “Hey, you’re telling me the truth.”
Joe: So, transparency is still alive and well?
John: Although, again, marketing and sales people cringe, another good example of this was an insurance company. They had a standard homeowner’s policy had a limitation of $3,000 on guns and jewelry. And, in this particular state, the average customer had $6,000 worth of guns. People were having claims denied and then they would say, “Well, why didn’t you tell me there was a limitation?” And, “Well, didn’t you read your policy?” “No one reads their policy.” So, a welcome letter said, “Welcome to the family. We have a $3,000 limit on guns and jewelry.” And, the sales guys hated it. It was, “Oh, this is going to create a problem.” Well, the customer reads it and says, “Oh, well I have more than that. I guess I need to buy a rider. Can I give you some more money?” So, in fact, by raising the issue, you generated more revenue. No one was unhappy about it but you also avoided the later potential occurrence of ‘We denied the claim” and “You guys slid it by me because you didn’t tell me you’re a bunch of crooks.”