Service Untitled

I am a big advocate of giving credits to help “ease the pain” that customers feel when they’re inconvenienced by one thing or another. What a lot of companies often neglect offering to customers is something that is usually just as (If not more) important: expedited shipping.

Just how much sense expedited shipping makes for any particular company will vary greatly. Large companies that ship a lot of products (and thus have a lot more leverage with their preferred shipping company) will find expedited shipping to be a lot more cost effective than small companies that don’t usually ship products. The cost of expedited shipping depends on the product, the shipping company, and perhaps most of all, what your company means by “expedited.” Some companies consider expedited faster than two weeks, others consider it faster than 24 hours. These are all things you’d want to look into and make decisions about before offering expedited shipping to customers.

Expedited shipping makes perfect sense for any sort of issue relating to an order delay. If the order is delayed a day or two from the factory, make that time up by upgrading the shipping from ground to next day air. If there was a problem with a product that is supposed to be deliver in a week, fix the problem and upgrade the shipping. Including expedited shipping as an option of possible incentive to customers certainly broadens the possibilities.

You can also use expedited shipping as a credit-like offer. Apologize for the inconvenience and say the customer’s next order will be shipped via next day air. That may make a bigger difference and a bigger impact than a $10 credit. When that one customer calls to ask if there are any discounts, instead of offering him or her a 15% off coupon, upgrade the shipping instead. You don’t necessarily have to upgrade it to the highest level, so that builds in quite a bit of flexibility.

The most important thing to remember is that there are more creative ways of “easing the pain” than just throwing money at customers.

The other day I sent in a testimonial to Jean MacDonald at SmileOnMyMac (they wrote a guest post about their terrific email newsletters here) about my experience using a program they make called PDFpen.

I’ve had a very positive experience using the software over the last month or so and wanted to send in a testimonial reflecting my experience. The next day, Jean replied back thanking me for my testimonial, telling me it was published on their web site, and also telling about something she tries to do.

What Jean tries to do (and what I try to do as well) is let companies know when they do an exceptionally good job (either by providing great customer service or by offering a great product), usually by sending in a testimonial or positive comment. She labeled it as “giving back.” As a marketing person, Jean appreciates getting testimonials and wants to help other companies as well. I look it at basically the same way; it’s great for your “customer service karma” per say. The testimonial I sent in, while obviously quite positive, was pretty simple - it didn’t take me more than two or three minutes to write and was easy to send in. When I enjoy using a product or service, it’s my pleasure to send in a testimonial and say positive things about the company.

The best thing that a company that wants more testimonials can do is to make the process easy. (That assumes you already have a great product or service worth writing a testimonial about.) Have a simple way to submit testimonials (either using a form or by listing a particular person to send the testimonials to), acknowledge the person sending the testimonials, and publish the testimonials. If the customers are being thanked and the testimonials are being published, they are a lot more likely to take time to write testimonials and send them in.

Of course, another great way to get testimonials (at least if you believe in “customer service karma”) is to send testimonials in to the companies you have great experiences with. Even if sending in the testimonials don’t help you immediately (like making the process easier does), it certainly can’t hurt.

Technorati Tags: Customer Service, Customer Service Experience, Positive, Testimonial

Companies, especially those with complicated products or services, often run into the issue of the difference in roles. Companies aren’t sure about the lines between support, account management, and consulting. The first step is defining what the exact roles are within your company. Here is how I define them:
Support.
I typically look at support as reactive. The customer calls a general phone number or emails a general email address with their question, a case or ticket number is assigned, and then a pool of representatives responds. There usually isn’t a personal relationship with customers and the company. There are of course cases where individual representatives get to know individual customers, but that is simply because the customer and the representative have been there for however many months or years happens to be the case.

Account management.
Most companies define account management as a service role where the customer is assigned a personal account manager. Account managers develop a more personal relationship with the customer and work with the customer to resolve a majority of their needs. Essentially, the customer has an individual, as opposed to a group or a company, to turn to when they have an issue. Account management usually involves working with the customer to develop solutions that are best for them and doing so on an individualized and often proactive basis. It is a mix of sales and support with some consulting mixed in.

Consulting.
Consulting is the most involved of the three roles. Customers (usually referred to as clients by consultants) work with experts in a particular field (i. e. customer service or sales management). The consulting is usually hands on, it is customized, and while it helps to sell products and services, it does more than that. Consultants often work with products or services that aren’t made by the company and make recommendations that are beyond just the scope of the products and services offered by the company. An example is if a company is a client of a company like Oracle (which makes some CRM applications). They hire a consultant through Oracle not only to implement their new CRM from a technical perspective, but also to get the most out of the CRM throughout the rest of their company. It is part product training, part procedure and process design, etc.

Support is the least involved and consulting is the most involved, with account management in the middle. A future post (probably tomorrow) will be about deciding what your company should offer and perhaps most importantly, what should be standard.

Technorati Tags: Customer Service, Customer Service Experience, Consulting, Support

One of the most unique challenges that was my mentioned at my workshop was this one: technical people don’t like interacting with customers. I think I laughed out loud when I read the suggestion (the person who suggested it was someone I knew from before the conference), but I then remembered just how true it is (in some situations).

We’ve all seen the funny videos on YouTube and similar sites making fun of socially awkward customer service (especially technical support) representatives. They don’t know what to say or how to say it, but they do know their stuff technically. The question is: how do you get them to work with customers effectively?

My usual suggestion for companies dealing socially unadjusted technical support representatives is to work with them in the same way that they would work with foreign customer service representatives. Because the foreign reps don’t usually speak English as a first language, it is often difficult for them to communicate and interact with American customers naturally. The basic premise is the same; neither group is good at interacting with customers for one reason or another.

To reiterate the basic ideas and procedures:

Work with employees before placing them on the phone.
The key to getting employees adjusted is practice. Do lots of mock calls, mock emails, and the like. Provide constructive criticism and work with the employees to improve their skills. Some companies work with voice coaches, others work with specialized trainers; there are plenty of options. Effective training will usually help employees feel more comfortable working with customers.

Consider having them work behind the scenes.
If training and other types of practice aren’t proving to be effective, then it might be appropriate to look into placing that employee in another department. Having these types of employees work behind the scenes and work with other employees (instead of customers directly) is most likely a better use of their skills and talent. It depends almost entirely on the individual employee, but in general, those that don’t work well with customers may be better suited to work behind the scenes.

Hire with personality in mind.
If you aren’t doing it already, it might be useful to include personality tests or at the very least, personality focused questions, in the interviewing process. In the perfect world, you don’t need to and won’t hire people that don’t like working with customers. Ideally, everyone should enjoy working with, talking to, and serving customers.

Warning: consider how they work with others.
It is important to consider how the employees work with others. If they are totally social awkward or have trouble tolerating others, they probably won’t work well within your company. Everyone has to be able to work with others to some degree and if they can’t, it will be tough for them to fit into any sort of company. Even people who work behind the scenes need to be able to work with others on their team and within the company. Teamwork is a huge part of every successful company.

For more reading on this topic, check out my interview with Robert Stephens from the Geek Squad. He has some unique solutions for the problem.

Technorati Tags: Customer Service, Customer Service Experience, Hiring, Training

A reader suggested I write a post targeted at small businesses that aren’t quite at the point of being able to offer phone support. It also applies to companies that may not have it in their business model or just aren’t setup to offer phone support. His fundamental question is what sort of message does a lack of phone support give. It is definitely a good question and most certainly a question that a lot of companies that are deciding whether or not to offer phone support end up asking themselves.

The biggest factor any company that is on the fence about phone support should consider is: does the business model call for it? If you pride yourself on quality service at an affordable price, then you most likely get away with providing support over mediums like email and live chat exclusively. However, if you are a premium provider and you are in a business where the low end companies offer phone support, it should be something you do as well. I hate to say it is a case of “keeping up with the Joneses,” but when you’re dealing with competition in business, it really is. If your competition offers phone support, then it would probably serve you well (from a competitive standpoint) to offer it. Some companies simply can’t afford to offer phone support based on what they’re charging — if you are one of those companies, then you should look elsewhere for ways to support your customers (such as considering more self-service options).

An extension of the above question is just how much phone support can help. Are you having trouble resolving complicated issues using email or live chat? Are customers asking for a way to call your company so they can talk to a person live and get clarification? If you’re seeing these sorts of trends, then it may be necessary to offer phone support. If, however, a vast majority (think: 95%) of your issues are getting resolved with absolutely no problem over email and live chat, you probably don’t need to start offering phone support tomorrow.

Another important question to ask is what are your customers’ expectations? Again, if you are in a business where phone support is norm, your customers probably have higher expectations than if you are in a business where phone support is unheard of. There are some industries where customers just expect phone support, and they may be unlikely to go with a company that doesn’t offer it.

The last question is the question of whether or not your company can actually handle phone support. If you don’t have the staffing, the money, or the time to do it, then the issue is moot. Remember, you want to have the resources in place to be able to provide a customer service experience that is as good, if not better, than the service you provide over any other medium. If the phone support you’re offering is inferior to your email support, you are wasting your time, your customers’ time, your employees’ time, and your company’s money. Before you make the commitment, ensure you’re able to do so.

So, before asking yourself whether or not phone support is for you, ask yourself these questions:

• Does the business model call for it?
• Are you having trouble resolving issues over email or live chat?
• What are your customers’ expectations?
• Can your company offer it?

For more reading on this subject, you might want to check out these two posts:

• Cutting Back on Phone Support
• Cut back on phone service? No way. Enhance it!

(Please pardon any technical issues — I am trying out a new desktop blog editor.)

I had a positive experience at the DVD rental store Blockbuster yesterday. I’m not a frequent movie goer and not a frequent movie renter, but I had some time over the weekend and it was expected to rain yesterday (it did), so I decided I would rent a couple of movies.

The problem was I had no idea what happened to my membership card and the last time I rented a movie at this particular store was probably a year ago. I walked into the store half expecting I would have to drive down to that other store (where I used to live). I found someone to help me - an assistant manager named Wayne and he was willing to offer assistance.

The first thing he did was to look my account up with my driver’s license number and date of birth, which produced no result. We tried my name, but because I hadn’t rented at that store in 90 days, there were no results. He asked me what store I usually rented from and I told him where it was. He looked it up on the computer and gave them a call. They were able to search based on my name and address and give him the national membership number for me. He was then able to find it in his computer system and print me out a new card.

Needless to say, Wayne went through a lot of trouble to make it so I could rent my $10 worth of movies. However, that’s what made the customer service experience positive and it’s why I will go back there. Wayne’s customer service delivery was great - he was able to help me and still pretty seamlessly help other customers in the store. He was polite and knew some of the regular customers by their first names.

However, there are some things we can learn from this experience:

• National systems. National systems, searchable by many fields, are extremely useful. Blockbuster’s policy of keeping customer data at a particular store for only 90 days seems a bit antiquated in the times of national systems and databases for large companies (it could be a privacy issue). I’m not sure how often a customer with my particular issue walks in, but if it is at all frequently, Blockbuster might want to consider overhauling their systems. (Wayne told me that franchise stores, as opposed to company owned stores, don’t use the national system.)
• Privacy concerns. Giving out your date of birth and driver’s license number to someone you don’t know could cause some privacy concerns to arise. The company might want to base their national system off of something less sensitive (like a phone number first) and keep the driver’s license number as a backup.

I think it is interesting that the biggest problems of the experience are related to Blockbuster’s databases. I think that could say something about the IT setup of the company and how that relates to customer service.

What are your thoughts about this experience? What about your previous experiences with Blockbuster?

At the Customer Service is the New Marketing Summit a little under two weeks ago, Matt Mullenweg (founder of WordPress project and the company Automattic) used a great metaphor to explain how good communities function - he described them as a party.

I’m really surprised more people didn’t latch on to this metaphor when they wrote about the summit. It seemed to be very well received at the time and I still think it is a fantastic metaphor. It is almost certainly a metaphor I will use when I find myself having describe the function of communities to my clients.

Before you dismiss this as some buzzword loaded rubbish (which is what I sometimes do when I hear comparisons like that), listen to my interpretation and summary of Matt’s right on metaphor.

Parties that are successful bring the right number of people together. Those people end up having a good time and having fun. They will hopefully come for whatever their purpose is and achieve that sort of goal (having fun, learning, meeting people, etc.). When people achieve their particular goals and have fun, they leave feeling happy.

Good parties almost always have good hosts. It is their job to keep the size of the space appropriate for the number of guests, plan the party, get people involved, and keep things rolling. The host not only needs to be the organizer of many things, but sometimes the life of the party and cheerleader. Sometimes this is is necessary, but not always.

One or two bad guests can ruin a party and make it miserable for almost everyone. A space that is too large or too small for the number of guests can make for a bad party. A party with a terrible host will likely be bad. Sometimes parties are really great or really bad for no apparent reason.

Now replace every use of the word party with community, every use of the word guest with member, and host with community leader. Matt didn’t take his metaphor quite as far as I did above, but as I thought more about parties and as I thought more about communities, I couldn’t help but see the striking similarities.

Think about some of the points listed above and how they tie into communities:

• If communities are too big or too small, they may lose their desired effect.
• Great communities have members that have fun and achieve their appropriate goals and purposes.
• Great communities seem to have great community leaders / facilitators behind them. There are ones that don’t, but a majority of the time, they do.
• If you take part in a community with 50 forums or 150 community features for 10 members, it is the wrong sized space. 3 forums for 5 million members is the wrong sized space as well.
• Community leaders have to keep communities engaged and entertained. They also have to deal with the administrative side of running a community - keeping the community clean, dealing with troublesome members, organizing things, etc. Again, this isn’t always necessary, but it is needed most of the time.
• Bad members can sour a community very easily. Dealing with them is a big challenge, but they’re necessary.
• A community with a bad community leader will have a hard time being successful.
• Communities are sometimes ridiculously successful or unexplainably terrible for absolutely no reason.

If you don’t understand or appreciate this metaphor, then I’m not sure if you really get communities and what they’re all about. This is one of my favorite non-technical metaphors for sometime relatively technical like an online community. Big thanks to Matt Mullenweg for thinking of it! (Apparently, Lee Lefever also/originally came up with this idea.)

The Customer Service is the New Marketing Summit held last week in San Francisco was a big success. Attendance was great and so were the presentations and panels throughout the day. It seems that a vast majority of the attendees (and speakers) had a great time and agreed it was well worth the trip.

Several people have asked me for information and insight I took away from the conference. Until I get a chance to write some things up (which I think I will do soon), here are some insights and tips that other people got:

Overall information and round ups from Customers Are Always, Web Strategist, Demand Satisfaction, Wordyard, Damn I Wish I Had Thought of That, VentureBeat, CS: The New Competitive Edge, and Second Verse.

Posts about the lunchtime workshops from PixelBlog, Customers Rock, and Brian Solis.

Posts, summaries, and related insights from Tony Hsieh’s (CEO, Zappos) presentation can be found at Rolf Skyberg, Christine.net, Blog Bites Man, Darien Library, and even here at Service Untitled.

A detailed post about Alex Frankel’s talk can be found at Christine.net.

Takeaways from the Customer Service as Community panel can be found at Christine.net, Darien Library, and Damn I Wish I Had Thought of That.

A detailed post about Michael Murphy’s (Group Brand Manager for Customer Service, Virgin) talk can be found at Christine.net.

Posts about the Scaling Customer Service panel can be found at Damn I Wish I Had Thought of That, The M Word, and Christine.net.

And last, but certainly not least, posts about Robert Stephens’ (Founder and Chief Inspector, The Geek Squad) presentation can be found at Ross Mayfield, Blog Bites Man, and Christine.net.

The plan is to have video of the presentations and panels available within the near future. I’m not 100% sure of the timeline with that, but I’m told it should be coming. In the mean time, though, the speakers’ slides are available on SlideShare.

If I didn’t use the preferred name of your blog, misspelt anything, have any broken links, missed your post, etc., just post in the comments and I will fix it.

The goal of a customer service interaction (except at some companies) is to get the customer’s issue resolved in a timely manner and to the customer’s satisfaction. When I called GoDaddy this morning, they did exactly that.

This morning, GoDaddy emailed me saying some of my domains had just expired. I had meant to renew them, but have forgotten to. They included their phone number right in the email, so I gave them a call.

The phone menu was pretty simple. I wanted sales / customer service (the first option) and I needed help with domain names (again, the first option). I had my customer handy, but most have forgotten a digit or something. The phone system said it couldn’t find my customer number and was transferring me to a representative. A few seconds later, I was talking to a human.

The guy (I think his name was Scott) asked me for my customer number again, verified my name and call PIN, and asked how he could help. I told him that my domains had expired and I wanted to renew them. He assured me this wouldn’t be a problem and quickly looked which domains were expiring and when.

We quickly identified which domains had expired and he confirmed that I wanted to renew them. I asked if there were any discounts and he managed to get a few dollars taken off the price. I told him I was ready with a credit card when he was. He asked if I had a card on file and I said I didn’t think so, but apparently the card I was ready to give him was on file. He confirmed the order, charged my card, and I was done.

He didn’t try to upsell me that much during the call, which is something that GoDaddy, a relentless marketing company, usually tries to do. Another thing that surprised me was how quick the call was; from the time I dialed to the time I hung up was about 5 minutes.  This is really great and certainly makes the experience a lot more enjoyable.

There are some things companies can learn from GoDaddy in this situation:

• They clearly included their phone number in the email (thus making is easy).
• They made billing flexible and easy (thus making it both fast and easy).
• Their systems are designed for fast and easy transactions, especially for common things like domain renewals (thus making it fast).
• They remind and notify their customers about what’s happening with their individual accounts frequently (there are different schools of thought on this).

Headsets.com is an incredibly interesting customer service-centric company (see my interview with CEO Mike Faith here). They do a lot of things that make them a very down to Earth, customer friendly organization: they have flexible return policies, great employees, a big selection, competitive pricing, etc. I have a huge amount of respect for the company. I was exploring their web site a few nights ago and came across this page: Customer Love Rewards at Headsets.

The concept is pretty simple and not totally original, but it works. The company has a points/reward systems for purchases. You get 10 points for every dollar you spent (a $100 headsets gets you 1000 points) and 10,000 points for your first order.

The idea is a nice one. It provides customers with a simple way to get rewarded for purchases. It’s a great customer loyalty program. Great customer service (Headsets.com calls it “customer love”) makes customers loyal anyway, but an actual customer loyalty program with some nice prizes never hurts.

Their program is nice because it’s incredibly straight forward. It isn’t loaded with legal terms and conditions and people are able to keep their points once they claim one prize. The prizes aren’t bad, either. If you spend $20,000 with Headsets.com (about 80 fairly high end headsets), you can get a nice Aeron Chair or a high end digital camera (might make a nice prize for a high performing customer service representative).

They also had some humor built into the program. If you spend $10 million with them (which I think is more than 10% of their annual sales), they will literally buy you a house. Who knows if any customer will actually get to that point (something they point out), but it’s amusing to see if anyone does.

I like how a straight forward company took a straight forward approach to something that is usually loaded with terms and conditions.

By the way, Customer Service is the New Marketing is on Monday, February 4. If you are interested in attending this great conference on customer service, it isn’t too late to register. Use the code SUBL and you’ll get 15% off the registration price.

Featured speakers at the event include Tony Hsieh (CEO, Zappos), Alex Frankel (Author of “Punching In”), Michael Murphy (Head of Customer Service at Virgin), and Robert Stephens (founder of the Geek Squad). There are also two panels (one on scaling customer service, another on community and customer service) and a lot of great lunchtime workshops (including one that I am running).