Guy: Three. Make it easy for customers to come back.
Guy: Welcome to Service Design Principles, I'm Guy Martin, Joined by the author of the Service
Design Principles series of books. Founder of the Swiss Innovation Academy and Service Design
Practitioner, the energetic Daniele Catalanotto.
Daniele: Hi Guy, it's such a pleasure to hear your voice again.
Guy: Thank you very much. Now, each episode, if you're new to this podcast, we look at one of
the principles from from your book. Daniel The Service Design Principles 1 to 100. And today
it's principle number three. Make it easy for customers to come back. Now, if you want to turn
a first time customer into a repeat customer, you have to make it easy. So instead of starting
with the ideal situation where we're making it easy for customers to come back, can you give an
example of where this doesn't happen? What's the negative example? Where are people or businesses
making it hard for customers to come
Guy: back?
Daniele: Okay. So a good example is in Swiss in Switzerland, we have this thing where every year
you have to decide where you put your health insurance again,
Guy: Okay.
Daniele: because every year the prices change. And a lot of us,you know, just move to the
cheapest one every year and as the cheapest one is very different every year, we just have to
change every year.
Guy: Mm hmm.
Daniele: But what happens and this happened to me this year is that sometimes you come back to
one that you already have been to.
Guy: Right
Daniele: And so what happens is that I have to refill all the same stuff then I had to fill two
years ago, you know, and it's like, but you already have that kind of information. So and I
have been already a customer, and so why can't I just say, Hey, I'm back, it's okay. Or the same
happens, you know, with phone companies. We have the same thing with phone companies in
Switzerland where from mobile mobile plans, you know, they some one year is the cheapest one is
in that one and the next year it's another one. And
Guy: Mm hmm.
Daniele: so basically you've been almost any of us have been the customer of all of them at one
time in our life. But every time you go back, they will just say, okay, I have to make a
completely new
Daniele: profile for
Guy: Right.
Daniele: you.
Guy: Oh, I get this with hotels.
Daniele: Yeah.
Guy: Like, I go in, I visit our hotel. I've made the booking. They have all the information. I'm
a loyalty customer, even at some of these places. Right. So they have more than the normal
business would have about me. And I come up to the desk and they give me the registration card,
and it's completely empty. So you already have this information. Why do I have to fill out my
name again and my address and, you know, my phone number and my passport number and. But you
already have this. Why couldn't you just print this out and I'll sign it for you, or even let
me sign it digitally or something like this? It's so frustrating. So it makes me less likely,
even though my loyalty customer, to say, well, what's what's the benefit of my my loyalty here?
Why did I set up his profile if it's no use and I have to spend all this time refilling out all
of this information, it's so frustrating.
Daniele: And then and obviously, you know, people will tell us. Yeah, but it's, it's
because of the privacy goes, you know and, and then I'm not a I'm not a legal expert, but I
would assume that there is a way to say when you close that contract, please keep the basic data
about me in your register because I might come back and or say please remove everything you
know, because obviously, you know, there is data that they don't need because it might change and
stuff. But say, Hey, my name, my birth date, you know, everybody has that doesn't I don't feel
that there's a problem that every company in Switzerland knows that I'm 34 years old. It's
okay. And I think there we always we often hide behind the legal stuff where we say, yeah, but
it's a big legal problem. And often if you speak with a good lawyer, you know, they will tell you,
Oh, it's not so complicated after all. You just have to be clear in the contract.
Guy: Yeah. We just have to ask them. Get their consent.
Daniele: Yeah.
Guy: But. But then that. That that takes effort as well. Because then you need a mechanism to
manage that consent and to hold the information, even if they're not a customer. So maybe it's
the more difficult path, but it's. It's better for the customer. Right? It makes it easier.
Daniele: yeah, definitely. And that's where small businesses have a, have a big, big chance.
I think today you know of often service design is practiced by the big companies but it's hard
for them because if you want to do that at scale, you know it's super hard. But when you are, you
know, a cafe or boulangerie a bakery, you know, and, and you're you're just one or two, you know,
if you do some exercises, you know, to improve your memory, you don't even have to write
anything and have legal problems of storage. You know, you just remember that this is Guy and Guy
loves his croissant,
Guy: Right.
Daniele: you know, and it's okay. You know, And as you are a small company, you can do that
easily in your mind, which there is no legal framework for what you can store in your minds,
you know, And so you have an unfair advantage here.
Guy: Yeah
Guy: , reminds me actually, of I have a local coffee shop, and they came in several years ago,
and I thought, okay, I like my coffee. I come from, from Melbourne, which is the coffee
capital of Australia. And I moved to Denmark to a town called Vejle. And the coffee culture is
not quite the same as it is in Melbourne. So I'm looking for good coffee. This guy just opened up.
So I visited his store and and got a coffee. It was a good coffee so I thought, alright, I'll
come back here. And the next time I came back here he said hello. He didn't know my name at
that point but said, Oh you want a tall cafe latte, right. You want a big cafe latte and yeah.
Okay, thanks. So already I'm saying okay, this guy knows what he's talking about and we
established this relationship. He got to know me by name and it was just a really pleasant
experience every time I went in there. So it was very easy for me to return. Right. I didn't even
like other coffee shops started opening up and I was like, I don't even feel I need to try that
because I have what I want here, right? There's no friction coming back here. And, you know,
brand loyalty. I mean, it only goes so far, right? So if there's as much friction to remain
a customer as there is to churn to a competitor, then You already have the customer make it easy
for them to stay. If you make it hard for them to stay or harder than it is for them to go
somewhere else, they'll go somewhere else. I guess there's look, there's lots of research or
lots of people trying to understand how do I make my customers more loyal. And this is
probably one of the easiest ways, right? Is you just make it easy for them to return.
Daniele: Yeah. And I'm just return you know it can be the return of having a relationship a
coffee is a good example. You know, it's something that starts ends every day, you know.
But also there are relationships where you are with a company with a subscription, and then you
end it because maybe you don't need it anymore for that time, but you still might like it. And
you say, Hey, I don't use it anymore now, but I know maybe in a year I'm going to use it again.
And so I think there it there are these two moments which are little endings. You know,
there are the big endings and there are the small endings. Small endings happen lots, you
know. And if we can go become better at those small endings and understanding that, oh, even
if it ended now and we will restart tomorrow, maybe I can remember something of this
interaction to give it back to like later look like the coffee guy that you know. So yeah you
took a I grant the it. Oh that's, oh that's really cool. Obviously you need to train your
memory, you need to do a bit of work. And here again, small businesses. Oh my God they have
this unfair advantage
Guy: for sure. I mean, you mentioned subscriptions and the video streaming services.
There's so many of them. So now people are starting to cancel, like when their favorite
show ends, they'll cancel and they'll go to another service. They won't have five services
running at once because that's really expensive. So they'll pick and choose and it will be
seasonal. Right. When when my show ends after ten episodes or 20 episodes, I'll cancel. I'll
go to another service and watch another show. But then next year, whe the new season is on, I
want to come back. And if I'm coming back and you've already got my favorites, they're on my
preferences and all of that sort of thing, that makes it really easy.
Daniele: I'm one of the guys doing that with Disney. So sometimes I just just because, you
know, the Star Wars series are very good, but I do not need all the rest. And so basically I'm
taking again, the subscription. And what's lovely to me is that when I take it again,
basically I have all the things already saved and it knows that the last time it came, I came
for this series. So it shows me is it this one that you want to look because we know you're
back, which is super cool.
Guy: Fantastic. Great conversation. Thanks very much,Daniele , again. And we'll see you on
principle number four.
Daniele: Thanks so much. Right.