Service Untitled

Given the economy, this is an oddly timed post for a lot of companies, but believe it or not, there are still many companies that are growing quickly and that still need to hire people. These companies need to know how to hire the right people and to do so quickly. Rapid growth is not an easy thing to deal with, so the more prepared companies are, the better. Here are some quick tips on how to prepare for a big hiring push:

Train other employees on how to interview.
During periods of normal growth in most companies, human resources handles a majority of the interviewing and of the hiring. When they need to hire more people, more people need to be trained on how to do the interviews. Human resources should work with supervisors, senior employees, and other managers on how to interview potential employees and then begin using them to do the actual interviews.

Hire an administrative assistant to take care of the busywork.
Scheduling interviews, responding to applications, following up on paperwork, etc. is an annoying, but essential part of the hiring process. The HR department should hire an assistant or someone similar to take care of this. That way, the actual interviewer can focus on the real work of reviewing applications and hiring.

Have checklists for the entire hiring process.
The entire hiring process should be completely laid out before any hiring push. Everything from application submission to the candidate’s first day of work should be outlined on some sort of chart or document or checklist. With a system in place, there is less guesswork, which makes it much easier for a busy HR department to get its job done correctly and efficiently. Each candidate should have a paper and/or digital file and each part of the process should be kept together, so it can be easily referenced and addressed.

Formalize processes.
Again, with the goal of making it easy for additional people to help, formalize existing processes to make sure people will be able to step in and help.  No more ad hoc interviews, no more informal scheduling, etc. Write the processes down so other people can help out. 

Continue to refine.
As the hiring push continues, the person in charge of HR should be focusing on how to refine the existing processes and to make them more efficient.  If they can come up with something that saves 10 people 20 minutes a day in one hour, it is a lot more efficient than them spending an hour interviewing a candidate. Think about the long term and the scale of the operation and keep that in mind. Doing so will make the hiring push a lot easier in the long run.

dalas verdugo [sic] is the Community Director at the video-sharing web site Vimeo.

Earlier this week, I wrote a post praising the great design and implementation of the company’s help page and dalas was nice enough to take some of his time to answer a few questions I had about the process behind the page and about the company in general.

Question: Did any help sites or web sites inspire the design and look/feel of the help page?
Answer: Our main designer for the Help page was Sockyung Hong, and I know he follows web design very closely, so I’m sure he had influences for the look and functionality of the page, but he’s also very innovative in his own right.

Question: Were designers or customer service people the driving force behind the site?
Answer: The Vimeo team works together unlike any company I have ever been a part of. We’re very collaborative and since we usually have the same goals in mind, it seems like we’re always on the same page. We have frequent meetings to discuss the projects we’re working on and we usually put a document up that all of us can edit so we can refine the copy to be clear and helpful.

Question: How have users reacted to having profiles of two Community Directors on the left hand side?
Answer: I think the members of Vimeo feel very personally connected to Blake and myself, and so it makes sense for us to introduce ourselves right off the bat. From the start, I wanted Help to be very approachable, which is why we offer several ways to get in touch with us, including Instant Message. I wish more companies would offer direct contact with people who can answer questions.

Question: When designing the page, what did designers try to keep in mind?
Answer: We always want the information to be clear, with easy instructions. We try to answer many of the frequently asked questions up front.

Question: What has been added / removed from the page since it first went up?
Answer: Oh man, I can’t remember at this point. Our design philosophy at Vimeo is one of constant refinement, so we are always updating parts of the site when we see an opportunity to make it better. It’s usually pretty obvious at any given time what is causing friction for users, so we try to address those points of friction as soon as possible and keep Vimeo easy to use and understand.

Question: What are thought processes behind those refinements?
Answer: Generally, you just have to listen to your community, because they will tell you what the major problems they’re having are. When I approach writing Help documents, I figure out what to say first, and then I try to simplify my points more and more until they’re totally clear. It’s really about anticipating questions that people might have. If I write something out and then imagine a user asking a question about what I wrote, I go back and answer that question ahead of time. If that makes sense.

If we post something to the Help page and start getting questions about it, we go back and edit the Help page to clarify as soon as possible. If you remove points of friction for users, you have less help requests and less questions.

There have been several times when the amount of help requests about a certain feature have helped us to refine that feature to a point where its operation was so clear that the questions stopped coming in. So it’s a two front war. You have to answer people’s questions clearly, but when it becomes apparent that the reason they are asking questions is because your product needs refinement, you need to step in and fix your product.

Question: How can other companies get similar results?
Answer: Companies can get similar results if they hire competent, passionate employees who are tuned in to the website’s user base. A lot of the success of Vimeo relies on the personalities of the people involved, so step 1 is hire good people.

Technorati Tags: Customer Service, Customer Service Experience, Good Design, Help, Help Page, Help Pages, dalas verdugo, Vimeo

This is the fourth and final part of my interview with Christoph Guttentag, Dean of Undergraduate Admissions at Duke University.

In this part of the interview, Christoph explains how different applicants communicate with Duke, when the best time to contact an admissions officer is, addresses the hotly debated topic of admissions officers looking at MySpace and Facebook profiles, and how Duke gathers feedback regarding its admissions processes. He also provides his opinion about sending thank you notes and courtesy in general, and then finally, provides some tips to those thinking about applying to Duke University.

I want to thank Christoph for taking the time to speak with me and to answer my questions. Hopefully you as readers have enjoyed reading the interview as much as I did conducting it.

To view the rest of this portion of the interview, click “more.” Other parts of the interview include part 1, part 2, and part 3.

Technorati Tags: Admissions, Christoph Guttentag, College Admissions, Duke, Duke University, Facebook, MySpace, Thank You Notes

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This is the third portion of a four part interview with Christoph Guttentag, Dean of Undergraduate Admissions at Duke University.

In this part of the interview, Christoph explains the aspects of the admissions process that he thinks Duke excels at, discusses some of his office’s customer service policies and strengths, and talks about alumni interviews and how that ties into the admissions process.

Click the link to read on. Part one of the interview is available here. Part two is available here. Part four is available here.

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This is the second part of a four part interview with Christoph Guttentag, Dean of Undergraduate Admissions at Duke University.

In this part of the interview, we discuss the expectations that come along with the $75 application fee and how the early decision program plays into the application process at Duke.

Click the link to read on. Part one of the interview is available here, part three is available here, and part four is available here.
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You read the title correctly. My most recent interview is not with an executive at a technology company nor with a leader at an organization particularly know for its customer service. It’s with a leader from academia.

Christoph Guttentag, the Dean of Undergraduate Admissions at Duke University runs the admissions department at one of the nation’s leading universities. The challenges that Duke has encountered and overcome are almost identical to the type of challenges that any sort of technology, retail, or consumer company has experienced and tried to work through.

The point of this interview in particular is to not only inform you about the fascinating process behind college admissions, but also to show that all types of organizations, large and small, for profit and not for profit, experience and hopefully, overcome, the same type of challenges.

In the first part of this four part interview, Christoph and I discuss his professional background and how Duke manages the more than 20,000 applications it receives on a yearly basis.

This interview is one worth reading. Christoph is an extremely interesting guy with an equally interesting job. Click the link to read on.

Other Parts of this Interview: Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4

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This is the final part of the interview with Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos. In this part of the interview, we talk about what it’s like to work at Zappos, how the company finds its employees, what they’re doing to improve their customer service, and why the company decided to differentiate itself with customer service.

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This is part two of three of the interview with Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos. In this part of the interview, Tony talks more about the company’s very generous policies, how they’ve dealt with their growth to date, and more about the company’s incredibly strong customer service culture.

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