Service Untitled

In light of my recent post about my interesting experience at Blockbuster, I started thinking about situations in which employees of various companies might have an opportunity to either up or downsell you based on their own opinions and tastes.

The situation I kept coming back to and thinking of was the classic example of a customer asking a waiter or waitress what they would recommend on a menu, what they think of a particular item on a menu, or something similar. This is probably the most common situation in which an employee of a company is asked to provide their feedback about something offered by the company.

I usually hear pretty good things coming back from the staff in response to these types of questions. If they don’t like the dish, the reason is usually something general like “I don’t like seafood” or “I don’t really eat meat.” I’ve never heard a waiter answer the question with “it’s terrible”, “I wouldn’t feed it to my dog”, or “it makes a great door stop.”

My general rule is to be as honest as possible. If you don’t like something personally, you can say that, but word it carefully. For example:

Customer: Do you like the XYZ salad?
Waiter: It’s not really the type of salad I’d order, but it is a popular item and I’ve never heard a customer complain about it.

That’s a common and effective response. Chances are, customers don’t complain about any particular dish too consistently (one would hope such dishes would be removed from the menu or fixed), so recommendations like that are typically pretty “safe.”

Another generally safe and effective approach is to suggest something else at the same time. For example:

Customer: What do you think of the XYZ salad?
Waiter: It’s quite good, but to be honest, the ABC salad is our popular salad and customers are always saying how great it is.

The point is to be honest while being careful. Customers want your opinion, but they also don’t want to get too discouraged or begin thinking they made a wrong choice. When providing your recommendations, advice, and opinions, let them know what you think and if what they’re thinking isn’t exactly what you think is best, gently tell them why and provide appropriate suggestions.

I was at Blockbuster the other day and handed my movie to the person behind the counter. She took the security tag off of the case, glanced at the movie, and then said, “This was terrible by the way.” and proceeded to finish checking me out.

I just stared. I couldn’t believe an employee of a major company that depended on a large amount of small value transactions to make any money was telling me the movie I was about to rent was terrible. She hadn’t sugarcoated her critique at all, either. She just told me quite plainly that the movie was terrible.

The woman obviously noticed my stare and then recovered slightly and said, “Is there anything else you want to rent?” I continued to stare, mainly because she had already taken the security tag off and scanned the movie. The checkout experience was essentially over and all I could think about was how terrible this woman’s customer service skills were and how bad the movie I was about to rent was going to be.

Needless to say, this isn’t the best way to upsell your customers or to encourage them to continue using your company. If the employee really thought the movie I was going to rent was that bad, she could have said a few other things:

• “To be honest with you, I saw this movie and didn’t really like it. I did see [Random Movie], though, and really liked it. Do you want me to grab that one for you?”
• “I’ve heard customers say they didn’t really enjoy this movie. [Random Movie] has been popular this week. I’m happy to get that for you instead if you’d prefer.”
• “Have you seen this before?” (customer says no) “Okay. Because I saw it and it wasn’t exactly my favorite. Some of our more popular releases are along that wall if you want to maybe consider those instead.”

The alternative is to of course say nothing and let the customer rent his or her movie. However, if you are going to say something (or encourage your employees to provide their honest feedback without being asked), then have alternatives in mind. And if and when you’re going to suggest an alternative, do so quickly. The 10 or 15 second pause could easily result in a lost sale at worst and an awkward service experience at best.

Here is something you can do to make your company more competitive in about 10 minutes. Call your competitors and test their service.

An entrepreneur I met with recently  told me that his company regularly calls and emails its competitors to see how good they are. They measure objective things like how long it takes to get a human on the phone, how long it takes to get a product, how long it takes to get an email response, etc. These are all metrics the company tracks internally and can easily compare to how they’re doing.

They will also order products from the competitor to see what the experience is like — packaging, updates during the shipping process, product quality, etc. The company does this so they can see how they’re doing relative to the rest of their industry. If someone else is doing something better or cooler, the company can adapt accordingly and make changes. 

A lot of companies are in fiercely competitive industries. Some will buy a competitor’s product or service to try it out and see how it relates, but very few actually do that on a somewhat regular basis. They’ll do it once and forget about it. This results in a short term benefit, but no real long term benefit.

If your company isn’t doing this already, you should start. In the long run, it’ll save a lot of time and aggravation. Guessing how your competitors are doing is not nearly as valuable as having the actual data.

More and more companies are encouraging conversations in company forums, on blogs, through Twitter, and on similar sites. The idea is that the companies can power some of their service with their  customer communities. Assuming you have such a community in place at your company, how do you reward the volunteers who donate their time and expertise to help your customers and provide feedback to your company?

Chances are, most of these volunteers aren’t interested in being paid for their work. (You should offer some of your best volunteers jobs, though. They might take you up on it.) Otherwise, they wouldn’t volunteer. As a result, you have to find other ways to thank them and show that you appreciate their hard work and dedication.

• Schwag. If your company has schwag you can send to your volunteers (t-shirts, stickers, pens, notepads, flash drives, whatever), offer to send it their way. If you already have their address, it might be interesting to just send it along with a handwritten thank you note.
• Gift cards. Your volunteers might appreciate gift cards either for your services or for other services/products (i. e. a nice gift card to a national restaurant chain). It shows that you care about what they’re doing and you’d like to show your gratitude. 
• Offer tours. A lot of customers like seeing the people they work with and checking out the company’s offices or facilities. Offer your volunteers tours of your offices. Make it a day and take the volunteer(s) out for lunch, introduce them to some of the people they’ve worked with, and so on. If you wanted to get really involved, you could offer to fly the volunteers to wherever your office is and put them up in a local hotel for a night or two as well. If you think that sounds like a total waste of money, just think about how much it would cost to pay them for all the time they invest. (If a volunteer has invested 100 hours total (a low estimate I’m sure) and you pay your average customer service employee $10 an hour, you’re probably coming out ahead if you buy a plane ticket and a night or two in a hotel for that volunteer.)
• Write them thank you letters. Even though it may not seem like a big deal, sending some of your volunteers handwritten thank you letters can make a difference. Alternatively, a quick (personal) phone call from someone high up at the company can make a lasting impression as well.

What do you do to reward your volunteers? What seems to go over really well? (And not so well?)

I was going to write a post today about the importance of admitting your mistakes, but a quick search revealed I had already written about the topic back in August 2007 (this is what happens when you write a lot of blog posts). There is a different, though – the post I wrote in August focused on the procedural aspects of admitting a mistake. Today’s post is going to focus on the reasons why you’d want to admit a mistake.

Customers are sometimes surprised by your honesty. Customers are used to hearing crazy responses, justifications, and denials when something happens that appears to be a mistake. When a company comes out and says, “Yes, we made a mistake. I apologize about the error.” and then fixes it, it can be surprising.

Honesty is disarming. When customers get the ridiculous answers and justifications, they tend to get more riled up and go into their own defensive mode. A customer service interaction suddenly turns into a debate/war/other hostile conflict. When a company or a person within the company responds honestly, it is totally different and the customer isn’t quite sure what to say most of the time. 

Honesty implies accountability. People like accountability in customer service. And accountability tends to be reassuring, especially to customers who were just witness to a mistake / screw up by a particular company. When people admit they made a mistake, it shows they are willing to own up to an issue and say what went wrong.

Of course, once you’re convinced that admitting your mistakes it the right way to go, check out my previous post on how to go about doing it.

How carefully do you track contact volume? The answer is hopefully “very carefully” because it is a key metric to track and something you should adjust staffing and processes for. 

A lot of companies don’t really track contact volume objectively. They track it based on their perceptions of how busy certain days and times are and go from there. If Mondays at noon are usually busy, then the company increases staffing accordingly. However, what people think isn’t always what’s true.

 The data, however, doesn’t make mistakes. It can certainly be misused or misunderstood, but assuming it’s collected properly, it won’t make mistakes. Some useful contact volume metrics to track are:

• The number of phone calls, live chats, emails, etc. coming in.
• The time each interaction takes to complete.
• How many people are working at a given time.
• How many contacts per hour each person working is able to do.

These metrics can be used to determine how many people should be working at a given time. Some companies need to staff more in the beginning of the week, others seem to be busier at the end of the week. The point of having (and using) the data is that you can adjust staffing accordingly and ensure that your company is doing all it can to make use of its resources.

What contact volume metrics do you track?

Every now and then your company will experience something that every rapidly growing company hopes and prays for: a slow day. A day when the phones aren’t ringing off the hook, the servers aren’t crashing, and things are relatively calm and relaxing.

Even though these days are rare, when they do occur, should be cherished. And with that in mind, there are certainly productive things that can be done during a slow day.

Coach employees. As long as things aren’t completely dead, coaching employees before, during, and after their phone calls or emails is a perfect way to pass the time. Supervisors can listen in on calls and provide constructive feedback to the employee immediately afterwards. Even if isn’t time for the employee’s formal quarterly review, informal coaching can be helpful and valuable.

Improve documentation. You know all those FAQs, tutorials, explanations, and things of that nature? Chances are, at least a few of them need updating. Use your down time to go through the documentation you provide (both internal and external) and make sure it is up to date.

Get ahead. This varies by company, but most companies have some sort of tasks that can be done to help get the support department ahead in some way. Slow days are a great time to get started on audits, monthly invoices, etc.

Try other tasks. Some companies will use their slow days to have phone people do email support or have programmers work with customer service representatives on day-to-day support (or vice versa). Slow days are a great time to expose people to things they may not have an opportunity to do everyday. (See some of my other posts on cross training.)

What do you do on slow days?

Last week I blogged about how I would be going to Disney for a day. I did go to Disney on Saturday and here is my blog post about my experience.

Disney has perfected crowd control. Very few companies do a better job at managing crowds than Disney and whenever I was in line, I was impressed with how well Disney manages the waiting process. The waiting areas for the rides and attractions are well designed and well laid out. They’re visually appealing, usually feature some sort of thing to look at or do, and were mostly indoors (which means mostly in the air conditioning). Once people are done waiting in line, Disney fills seats with ease and makes sure that it guests know exactly where to go. Any company that deals with long lines and large crowds can learn a lot from Disney and how they manage lines and crowds.

Employees are everywhere. I visited Disney’s Hollywood Studios on a Saturday and the park was busy with guests and employees. Employees (called “Cast Members” at Disney) were all over the place. If you had a question for them, they were almost always very nice and almost always very knowledgeable. The Cast Members probably get asked the same questions over and over again, but from my experience, they answered the questions with a smile. It is a lot less stressful for customers when there are lots of employees around who are happy to answer questions.

Disney does a lot of research. I saw multiple people with “Disney Research” logos on their shirts and was asked to participate in two simple surveys during the day I spent at Disney. One focused on my demographic data and another focused more on the overall park experience. Collecting data and using it to improve the customer service experience is essential.

They try to go the extra mile. A friend I was traveling with had a special request and Cast Members did whatever they could to accommodate his request. The general demeanor of employees and of the way the parked seemed to function was consistent with what I saw; Cast Members were dedicated to helping however they could and would gladly go out of their way to help.

They keep the experience simple. Disney could make the customer experience a lot more complicated if they wanted. They could charge more for certain rides or certain sections and so on. Instead, they break it down by park and keep it simple. You don’t have to buy anything besides the park admission ticket if you don’t want to. The result is a speedier and more convenient park-going experience. Companies should never underestimate the power of simplicity. Whenever possible, make the experience simple. It’ll make customers happier and save a lot of time and effort.

If you’ve been to Disney before, what made your experience notable?