Management, Human Resources, and Life in a Customer Focused World

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.

One thing that I’ve noticed some companies doing is having annual meetings to discuss what the best and worst were for the year prior.  Once those have been determined, the team begins to brainstorm and figure out what to do this year to prevent failures again and what needs to be done to sustain the successes.  These are usually handled at the middle management level, though sometimes top level and bottom level employees are also included.

The biggest pitfall that companies doing this need to be aware of is something that I’ve also noticed in the last three places that I’ve been where this type of brainstorming session has been put to use.

Identifying 10 priorities to improve and then only hitting 10% of them.

It’s great to have some major goals.  That’s the point. But if your list of goals is unattainable because you’re trying to do to much with the resources available, you’ll simply be compiling the exact same list next year … and the year after … and so forth.  Pick the top three priorities that need to be done.

If you get them done before the end of the year, have a second meeting — there’s no rule that says you can’t optimize your priority list more than once a year.

If you don’t get them done, you need to look at whether the priorities are actually priorities or whether you’re simply putting them up because they “might look good” if they were accomplished.

Having a list of priorities and things that really need to get done because they are the “worst” of last year means that they really should be focused on.  Get them done.  If you don’t, not getting them done will end up on the “worst” of the current year — morale will suffer, your priority list will simply cease to have importance, and you’re just wasting everyone’s time.

MSN’s Careerbuilder.com wrote an article called 13 Things Not to Share with Your Co-Workers. Most of them make sense.

Medical history? Gossip? Religion? Politics?  You are at work, so keep it to a minimum or, preferably, not at all.  The fact is that people spend 40+ hours a week in the office together, nearly as much as they do with their family at home.  Most of that time is spent interacting, whether by email, instant message, phone, or face-to-face with people in the office.  This tends to lead to conversations and loose-lips.  You have to be careful with it, obviously.

#1 on the list, however, is “Salary information”.  I’m going to keep my neck out on that limb and say that this is an antiquated way of seeing things.  There’s really no reason to hide what people make, to keep it hidden that person A makes $2 per hour more than person B.

It’d fix gender and racial inequality faster than any legal or morale requirements — those haven’t had the impact that many people would like.  Whether you agree that there is or isn’t a disparity (I’ve seen arguments both ways), the fact of the matter is that if there isn’t this would bring that situation to light and if there is, then the solution would become clearer.

It’d ensure that there is a fairer distribution of money for work — people who work more, better, harder, effectively would generally be able to justify a better salary than those that simply “do the minimum”.

Human resources and managers tend to the be the people who are afraid of this salary discussion.  HR because they fear the possibility of lawsuits or more easily proven discrimination. Managers because .. well many of them are overpaid for the efforts that they take to help the company and because they can keep their budgets down by shaving half a dollar here, twenty cents there.

I’m sure all of us have either asked or been asked this question — or both. It is a default question, a very boring question in an interview that tends to be responded to in a very cookie cutter fashion. How to answer them in a standard way can be found here, here, and here. What it boils down to is this:

If you’re asked the question, answer it with fault that can also be perceived as a strength (perfectionism, focus, control, etc) and explain how you’re working on controlling / bettering it.

I’ve got a membership to theladders.com and they write articles every so often. One of their latest articles has to do with the weakness question and how to improve it. I thought it was quite insightful. Due to it requiring a membership, I won’t copy the entire thing here but if you’ve got one, you can read it in their Ops ladder career advice section.

The writer, Rob Sullivan, suggests that interviewers ask the following question instead.

“Someone who doesn’t know you well doesn’t like you. What are five adjectives he or she might use to describe you?”

Once the interviewer has the answer, then ask…

“Now, let’s imagine you are on a team with a new person at the company. You notice there’s some tension between the two of you. You also realize that this person would probably describe you as …[insert their list of 5 adjectives]. How would you handle the situation?”

From an interviewer’s perspective, I think that this would be quite interesting and more insightful than a regurgitated Q&A. The advantage to the pair of questions is also that you’ll also be more likely to surprise the interviewee which tends to get a more direct and truthful response.

If you’re the interviewee, he suggests that you answer the question of “What are your weaknesses” with your answer to the above question. For example, in his case, he’d say:

Sometimes people who don’t know me particularly well get the wrong impression and see me as intense, angry and sometimes even aloof. Even though people who know me well would never use those words to describe me, I know I can come across that way at times. For this reason, I am taking steps to be seen as more kind and approachable – like being the person who smiles and says hello to strangers.”

What would you do or say?

A little customer service goes a long way « Palmetto PR Divas

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.

“I believe that an over reliance on metrics plague the call center industry at the expense of the customer experience.” (Metrics-Schmetrics « rich mclafferty’s customer experience weblog)

Rich has an interesting point. Although I only partially agree, the fact is that metrics alone is not the way to measure your call center. Measure your center by understanding what it is your customers are looking for and then focusing on those aspects. As he said, a customer that doesn’t get a resolution when the phone is picked up because the agent is rushing through is a customer that will be extremely dissatisfied. The point of the call isn’t to get the customer’s question rushed through … it is to get the customer’s question answered. If it’s not, then reconsider why you’ve got a call center.

Customer satisfaction. Isn’t that why you’re answering the call? Look at the reasons — the REAL reasons.

Possible Reasons

1. My product doesn’t work. I need help. — What is this really? It is an unsatisfied customer who, if resolved, will be satisfied.
2. My bills wrong and I want it fixed. — Again, what’s the customer looking for? They’re currently not happy. They want to figure out what it should be and hope to walk away satisfied.
3. I can’t find X. Where do I buy Y? — Again! Satisfying the customer is the goal behind the reason for the call. The customer can’t find something. Help them find it. They wan to buy something. Help them buy it by telling them where that can be done.

I’m sure there’s reasons that customer’s call up because they’re not looking for satisfaction, but I can’t think of any off the top of my head. Because of this, think about why your call center is currently running and focus on the necessary aspects of managing it.

From the blog –Service Untitled » Make a quick attempt. – customer service and customer service experience blog

“If you have the customer’s phone number (from a voicemail or a callback request), put it into your system and see if anything comes up. If you have their email address, look it up. If you have their name, see what you can find.”

Phenominal.

“Once you’ve found the customer’s account, see if there is anything obviously wrong with it that could be causing a problem. Check to see who they are. When did they last call? The goal is just to glance at the screen and get a basic idea of who this customer is and what their story is about.”

Perfect.

If you’re going to call the customer back anyway, take the time to know who they are. This is very important and really quite simple.

As a story of a situation where this has not happened, I have a company that delivers water to my house. The only reason I am still with them is because their water is some of the only water that I can actually drink (I hate water… but it’s good for you!).

They are supposed to deliver to our house every 2 weeks, take the empty 5-gallon jugs of water and replace them with new ones. It doesn’t sound too hard to me. The problem is that since the beginning of the year, they haven’t hit one delivery date. I call up the next day and ask for a new delivery. About 1/2 the time, I get water the next day. The other 1/2, I have to call up a SECOND time. And so forth — sometimes it takes over a week to get the water that should have been there on a pre-scheduled, every 2 week basis.

So! Lately, I’ve gotten completely irritated with it and have been escalating to their route representative. I did that 3 months ago. I talked to him twice, but it didn’t get resolved. So I escalated to their Central Texas area manager a month ago. The way this works is that the contact center sends my information over to him by email and then he calls. When he called me, he didn’t know what I was calling about.

He should have asked for information if the call center didn’t provide it. He should have known exactly how many times I’d called up before, exactly what it was I was calling about, and what he was going to do about it.

To make things worse, they missed my delivery three weeks ago again. So I called up once more and escalated to him a second time. He called back — and left a single message saying “I guarantee you’ll have water tomorrow, thank you.” Come on!? That’s the best you can do after you’ve already talked to me? Ridiculous. But fine. I’ll accept that your service sucks, your water’s good.

Well, that was the case until this Monday. When, for yet another time, they missed my delivery. 2 delivers, 2 escalations.. don’t you think they’d get it right? Now, I’ve escalating to the Vice President level and am waiting for a call back. I wonder if he’ll call and have no idea who I am, why I’m calling. Granted, he was supposed to call yesterday — and didn’t. I called their call center again and they’ve said I’ll get a call today. If not, I guess I’ll go talk to their area President.

Well, I rambled some, but the idea is still the same. If you have a customer with a problem and you’re calling him back, at least know why they called and why you’re calling them back — if not more than that. More than that, as Service Untitled said, would be a great experience.

Customer service is a term that many companies use.  “Please call our customer service line at xxx.” The problem that I see is that a customer service department doesn’t always equate to customer service.

A few days ago, I was on hold with a company for fourty minutes on their 877 phone line.  The conversation lasted about 45 seconds to tell me that the servers that I needed were unavailable and that they didn’t have an ETA in order to fix the problem.

Here’s some ways that they could have improved on service:

• Change the IVR to reflect known problems — this is a really simply solution.  It increases abandon rates, but also increases customer satisfaction. The customer doesn’t wait 45 minutes to find out “Oh, our servers are down in that area”.
• Hire an additional agent — Unless the company usually has under a 15 minute hold time, hiring an additional agent may easily make fiscal sense.  I was thinking about this more last night.  Assume that an agent costs a company $20 per hour after full markup (salary, benefits, time off, administrative, etc).  Assume that the 800 number costs $0.20 per minute.  Assume that an agent can handle 30 calls per hour (1 call / 2 minutes).   One customer that waits on hold for an hour would cost your organization $12.  Two costs you $24. Three costs you $36.  For $36, one additional agent can easily help drop this wait time!    Take 30 calls per hour out of your system and you’ll be bound to save more than the $20 per hour that you’re paying the agent.
• Posted on their website — The main login section of the website was still up and running.  Going to the server resulted in a “We are having technical issues, please call our tech support line” message. Of course, the technical support line’s phone number wasn’t listed.  An ETA wasn’t listed.

The one thing that they did right, albeit the fact that the conversation with the agent only lasted a minute, was not place me on hold and transfer me to someone else.  This was not the case with the writer of the Big Picture Spectatular.  From his latest escapade with customer service:

• At StubHub I dealt with Nick, Arthur, Christopher,  John Whelan (Vice President, Customer Service) and  a friendly female voice who put me on hold 3 times while she checked with her manager and the ticket seller about various things.

• At CIBC Visa Aventura I dealt with Kulbir.

Simply having one contact do the work, regardless of how long it takes, helps significantly.  I’ve recently seen a paper (I can’t find it or remember which it was, sorry) that showed anything over two touches quickly causes a lowered level of customer satisfaction.

So.. things to think about — customer service is meant to be customer service. Keep it simple.

Brad Worthley is a well known speaker, consultant and behavior change specialist. He publishes a monthly newsletter called “Exceed Customer Expectations!”. I find his insight and thoughts to be quite interesting sometimes. In April 2008 newsletter, he wrote:

When you get busy and the adrenaline is running, you may find yourself speaking to customers faster than normal. I am going to ask you to take a deep breath before you speak, so that you can relax just enough to slow your speech down.

Even though you don’t mean to, when you speak fast, the customer could develop the perception that you are trying to rush them. This may even be true, but it is not the impression you want to leave your valuable customers. Slowing your speech also leaves the customer with the perception that you are more sincere and have time for them.

This is also extremely true in call centers — maybe even more so. The entire perception that people have of your service is verbal. There are no body signals. There is no eye contact. Your tone is everything. Keep this in mind the next time that a customer has contacted you and you start speaking quickly — whether because you’re busy or because they’re pushing your nerves. Even in a call center that focuses solely on your AHT, you’ll find that customers are more satisfied and they’ll actually understand you quicker if you talk slightly slower. Their response won’t, nearly as often, be “Can you repeat that?”

Slow down. We’re not in a hurry.

There is a topic that is always a challenge at a so called “customer service center”.  These call centers or service centers perceive themselves as answering customer questions and giving the customer information about their account.  They perceive themselves as separate from the revenue, separate from the sales, and separate from the success or failure of the company in many cases.  Their focal point is whether the customer is happy and whether the customer safisfaction scores that they are rated on are high. Although there is nothing theoretically wrong with this, this viewpoint fails in today’s market and opportunity.  To me, it even fails in today’s perception of customer service.  The topic that is a great challenge is that of “sales” (cover mouth, gasp slightly).  Oh no. The word sales!  I’m not an expert in sales, but I know how to convert service people into basic sales people. Going past that, you’ll need to talk to people like Rick (I haven’t used his services, but some day hope to be in a position that I’ll need to).

Reactions that I’ve had in organizations where I’ve helped implement sales environments into a customer service center range the entire length of the spectrum from “Cool! I can now work towards commissions or helping the company” to “I was hired on to do customer service and will never ever sell something.  You can’t make me.”  Really?

Imagine the following summarized conversation between Service Center (SC) and Customer X (X):

X: Hey, I’m calling in because my product isn’t working. It’s serial number 1234.

SC: Great! Let me find you a local repair center. That serial number is definitely under warranty and will be for a while longer.

X: Thanks for your help.

3 months later

X: Hey, about 3 months ago, my product failed and I had to have it repaired. It looks like it is doing it again. My serial number is 1234.

SC: I’m sorry, sir. Your product is no longer under warranty.

X: What?! That sucks. I wish you had an extended warranty.

SC: We do, sir, but you would have had to purchase this before your product was out of warranty.

X: ….

The Service Center has now failed in their charter to offer the customer the best service that they can.  Most self-coined “customer service agents”, however, don’t realize that.  They perceive talking to the customer about anything that could be a sale to be a negative because it is “sales” related.

The same conversation should have gone more along the lines of:

X: Hey, I’m calling in because my product isn’t working. It’s serial number 1234.

SC: Great! Let me find you a local repair center. That serial number is definitely under warranty, but it appears that it won’t be much longer. Did you know about our extended warranty coverage?  We would then be able to ensure that you didn’t have a lapse in your product support.

X: Thanks for your help.  I’m glad you mentioned that! Can you give me more information?

The fact of the matter is that all too often, customer service organizations completely ignore the major opportunities that they have to be able to generate revenue for their overall company.  Service centers shouldn’t need to be a 100% cost center.   Some, such as the one I am currently consulting for, would have a very hard time breaking even through revenue due to corporate or divisional policies, but there’s no reason that there can’t be some sales or some revenue being generated!

Some examples of service-oriented-sales opportunities include:

• Extended or UltraValue Warranties
• Accessories to physical products
• Product upgrades (with, or without, a trade in policy)
• Software updates
• Software or hardware enhancements
• Webinar training

Every business has their own opportunity, their own area that they could offer extra service to the customer and make the customer really happy by mentioning (selling) something.  It’s just a question of figuring out what that something is.

Is your group a customer service center refusing to sell? Remember, there are a lot of situations where NOT selling is more damaging to your customer service (even though the customer may not realize it).