That’s the premise that the writer of Purpose Built has in one of his blog posts.

There’s a line in the post that strikes completely true. It has held true at the majority of the companies that I have worked for, interviewed at, consulted with, and talked to over the phone.

“I don’t engage with customers that is the (insert department name here) problem.”

On the face of things, this isn’t a huge issue. You support the networks. You fix bugs. You manufacture the products. You . That’s what the Customer Service department is for! That’s what the Call Center is for! That’s what … the “chosen ones” are for.

The problem with this attitude and perception is that organizations who view things this way take a very narrow focus on things. Everything thing that you do “directly impacts their opinion and experience with the company.” (taken from the same blog). I love it. It’s simple, yet truthful. Your network keeps the customer’s up and running; your bugs prevent the customers from having a perfect experience; your product is what the customers buy; etc etc and … etc.

You.

Did you know that?

As an example, I was at a drive thru fast food place a few days ago. We weren’t sure what we wanted, so we asked the agent to hold on. She seemed pleasant and friendly. Once we began ordering, we paused and she asked “Is that all?” Within five seconds, my response was “No, we need to add a bottle of water.” At that point, the transaction went down hill. She had apparently already hit total with the preconceived notion that we were done. She began trying to solve her issue and was sighing and frustrated with the machine. The problem, however, was that it SOUNDED as though she was frustrated with us, as the customer. She likely didn’t realize how the sighs, the “ughs”, and general sounds of irritation came across the speakers.

When you’re talking to a customer, think about how the extra stuff sounds to them. Sighs, uh-ohs, noise in the background, peers laughing and talking, etc…these are all things to mentally file and try to make sure that the transaction and interaction are positive, rather than turning negative for no real reason.

Customers such as people currently trapped away from home in foreign countries are much more difficult to handle. With the ash spewing forth from the Icelandic volcano, there is not much that anyone can do to go above and beyond … is there?

British Minister Gordon Brown disagrees. Rather than standby, he has gone above and beyond. “The UK sent three Royal Navy ships yesterday on missions to rescue thousands of Britons stranded by the European flights ban.” (FT.com, 2010)

Yesterday, I was walking through a local grocery store. Walking may be a stretch — I was hopping on one foot, pushing a grocery cart and hobbling along with a crutch to support my leg. For me, there was no real other way to get around. Employees of the store and customers alike watched me with amusement (well, it IS funny to see honestly), but there weren’t any offers of assistance. After about ten minutes of this, I paused and was looking around for a product. A seemingly random stranger stopped and asked me, “Do you need some help?” My response was no, but thank you .. Even though it’s agony for me, I’m one of those people that would rather not impose on others if at all avoidable. Her response was, “Alright. Please let me know, though. I work here and would be glad to help you out.” This was a woman who, on her off time, thought enough of her customer service to offer to help someone who appeared to be struggling in her store.

Even if you’re not in the position to seemingly do anything, think about it. What can do you do to help bring something to the table that may be outside of the norm, yet could make a true impact on your business’ customers. It’s important to realize that your action, or inaction, directly reflects on the organization in which you work. Maybe you can use your Twitter account to respond to a customer complaint that you saw. Perhaps your Facebook network has a complaint that you can try to address. Perhaps you overhear some one complaining about your company at Starbucks.

Whatever the case may be, think about how an unexpected action may reflect on your organization …

The vast majority of customers we spoke with made the task pleasant and enjoyable.

This is a quote from Tom Vanderwell while he was doing surveys with people at a store’s checkout line.  It applies to every thing you do, honestly.  The majority of your interactions with people are pleasant and enjoyable, but a single bad apple tends to make your day gloomy and dark — forcing you to consider that the rest of the day might suck! This, however, isn’t the case.

In his post, Tom gives a great suggestion:

Each time you have a pleasant, friendly customer – jot down a hash mark or write the customer’s name on your sheet. When one of those negative customers comes along, look down at your sheet and refresh your memory of all the pleasant customers you’ve talked with.

Unless you’re in a truly horrid job and dealing with truly horrid people, I guarantee that you will begin to realize that your day isn’t really that bad.

How can HR be more Customer Focused?

The answer to this is that it, again, depends on your definition of HR.
If it is the first, then there isn’t a huge impact that HR can have on being “customer focused” in my opinion. The biggest area where they can make a difference to the customers is by being responsive and quickly addressing the internal problems.  This, indirectly, helps fix problems that could otherwise negatively impact a customer.
If it is the second, however, a HR professional can be leveraged.  Their skills in training and development as well as performance management can be put to use developing both on- and off-line training for customers.  They can also focus on trying to understand where the current customer offerings are missing opportunities and help identify the best areas of ROI.
Human Resources is, admittedly, a challenging area that is a strong support role for the company with a difficult transition to becoming a leading customer focus role.  Anyone else have thoughts on great ways to turn HR into a customer focused organization?

SU feels

that business customers in Argentina either don’t care about customer service and do not let it influence their business choices and/or we can say that business in Argentina provide great customer service and the business customers don’t find it necessary to switch vendors because the service is so good. Both factors are probably at play here.

I’m not so sure that I agree. I believe that, sure, those are partially correct in some areas, however I think that culture and monopolies also have a great deal to do with it.  I started this posting referencing a friend — well, she lives in Belgium.  The entire country has had a single electricity provider for as long as … well .. electricity has been around.  If you wanted electricity, you simply had to purchase it from them.  Somewhat recently, a new company has come into being and is now trying to take away the business.   The monopoly that existed is now starting to crumble, however they still hold significant sway over things.  And their customer service proves it.

Two weeks ago, my friend notified her current electric company that she’d be switching to this new upstart at the end of the contract.  The contract ended.  The new electric company, however, wasn’t quite in place yet to give her electricity.  Belgium’s law states that electricity is a basic right, so the electric company couldn’t completely turn their electricity off but they were able to put a 1500 Kw limiter on the line.  This prevents the simultaneous use of any electricity that totals more than 1500 Kw. I don’t know about yours, but my fridge alone draws somewhere around 800.  This doesn’t count lights, stove, microwave, TV, or anything else.  Basically, this electric limiter prevented her from doing any cooking or laundry until the other electric company could get the service up and running.

Now here comes the crux of things. The new electric company couldn’t, by law, touch the limiter because it wasn’t theirs, so when they were ready to turn the electricity on 24 hours after the limiter went on… they couldn’t.  The monopoly electric company simply kept saying “Sorry, sorry,  sorry”… three days went by, two scheduled technicians didn’t show up… more time without electricity.

To cut an even longer story short(ish), it boils down to the fact that the company didn’t have to do anything. They had no perceived incentive to offer good customer service.  They were losing the customer anyway.  They could simply cause the end user some trouble for their efforts.

Customer service shouldn’t be painful.  It should be good.  Maybe if this company gave their customers good service all the time, even in the face of adversity, my friend wouldn’t have switched.  Maybe.

Basically, his point is that a company with a physical dress code expects that their employees adhere to it. Coming to work in shorts and a T-shirt when the dress code is slacks and a button down isn’t acceptable.  In the same vein, a company can expect a certain voice “dress code”.  An example of this might be using slang when the company wishes to portray themselves as professional or not including certain phrases that are required by the organization.  The first would equate to the earlier short vs slacks example while the second would be more like wearing a uniform or certain color to work.

I’ll have to use this in the future .. it’s a good way to explain something to an agent that simply doesn’t want to follow the defined guidelines.

Contact centers tend to be at the core of this arguement. Quality vs Quantity. What is truly the most important? Does a person’s Average Speed of Answer (ASA) mean more than their customer feedback score? Is the abandon rate the key or does customer satisfaction play a role? In truth, the answer is not a simple one. One thing does hold true regardless of your company’s size, situation, or industry.

Contact Centers are the primary point of contact for your company and have an immense impact on customer loyalty, satisfaction, and retention.

A contact center for a small company may be the only employee, programmer and owner — it is still the place where customers come. Larger companies, more obviously, have call centers that have an impact on the customer. Ranging anywhere from 5 to 500+, these customer support organizations (including billing, customer service, technical support, returns, etc) are crucial.

There is a simple reason that the QvQ quandry is not easily resolved. Both are important; Neither can be sacrificed. If your customer satisfaction rating, of those customers spoken to, is through the roof but 20% of your customers abandon before speaking to them, you’ve alienated 20% of your customers. More than likely, these 20% would also rate your customer satisfaction extremely low — you just can’t easily survey them as they’ve hung up before speaking to someone. At the same time, if you’re able to reach a 1% abandon rate and your customer satisfaction is on the floor, the center is not doing your organization any favors.

It takes a strong team who understands client support and call center management to put together metrics that are appropriate for your organization. This team can be a consultant company or an in house team — its irrelevant, but it is important to make sure that you have someone measuring the right data.

Some crucial scores to look at:

• Average Speed of Answer
• Abandon Rate
• Service Level
• Overall Customer Satisfaction
• Professionalism
• How well was the issue resolved

One pitfall to avoid while looking at these numbers — it ignores the outliers. An average abandon rate of 5% per day (fairly industry standard) when measured over the course of a month may show that 4 days a week has a rate of 2% and one day a week has 20%. This is an extreme example, but all too often, contact center agencies and management tries to expand over a month — days do matter. ]]> http://www.mesritz.us/blog/2009/02/quality-v-quantity/feed/ 0 http://www.mesritz.us/blog/2009/02/customer-service-impact/ http://www.mesritz.us/blog/2009/02/customer-service-impact/#comments Mon, 02 Mar 2009 04:19:19 +0000 pmesritz http://www.mesritz.us/blog/?p=85 For those few people that still don’t believe that customer service has an impact on the success or failure of a company, here’s some quotes and surveys published by CNN Money:

A new study from Accenture (NYSE:ACN) ACN found that 59% of people had actually stopped doing business with companies in the past year due to poor service. That’s based on a survey of 3,500 consumers on five continents. Just under half of those polled said their service expectations were met only sometimes, rarely or never.

59%! That’s an amazing number.

Even more surprising, 6% of retailers don’t have any set schedule at all in tracking customer satisfaction. That’s according to an annual survey of 137 retail firms by the National Retail Federation and IBM (NYSE:IBM)

Can you imagine not tracking your customer satisfaction at all? At least come up with an unscientific polling method …

ForeSee Results is a firm that measures online customer loyalty for retail Web sites. In 2007, its aggregate customer satisfaction rating fell by 1.3% to 74%. The rating declined for nearly half of 40 online retailers last year due to higher consumer expectations, ForeSee Results’ CEO, Larry Freed, said on a recent conference call.

That’s not too surprising. We, as a society, are beginning to realize that just because we’re doing business online doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have the same level of expectations of service and quality as we would when going into a store.

In a recent survey of 2,000 mobile phone users in the U.S., 96% said they wouldn’t hesitate to switch carriers to get a better experience. In fact, 72% had already made a switch due to a negative experience.

Another call center technology firm, Amdocs (NYSE:DOX) DOX, found similar results in its survey of more than 2,000 consumers in the U.S. and Britain. About four in five consumers were satisfied with their service levels. Yet one in three said they would switch to another carrier to get better services for mobile games, entertainment and ads.

Cell phone companies are very hard hit by this.  There’s a lot of competition and being satisfied with your carrier is crucial.

What does all this mean? It means focus on your best agents and get them to realize that they are TRULY a crucial part of the business, rather than just an after thought as is all too often the case.  Make sure that they have the training, support, technology and budget needed to do the job right.  It will pay off in spades.

To the technician in the blog post above, it meant nothing. The person was simply an object to be worked on, as though he were in a factory and the child was nothing but a generic “widget”. There’s a difference — if you’re in a factory, then you don’t deal with customers on your constant stream of objects. If you CHOSE to work with customers, then come on… DEAL with it. YOU made that decision. YOU should have the courtesy to actually do what it is that you’re supposed to — help the customer.