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 staying at a pretty nice hotel in Chicago not that long ago and I called the front desk to ask for a late checkout. I wasn’t a frequent traveler at that particular hotel, but I figured a two hour checkout extension wouldn’t be a big deal for a fairly large hotel.

Apparently, it was. Even though I had called the night before to check that a two hour extension wouldn’t be a big deal, I called the front desk in the morning to confirm it again and was told there would be a $90 fee for the extra two hours.  I told the person at the front desk that I was told an extra two hours wouldn’t be a problem the night before, but that didn’t help — if I wanted to stay an extra two hours, it’d be an extra $90.

The “lesson” of this story is that as a company, you should try to accomodate special requests whenever possible.

Most hotels make it a pretty standard practice to let guests stay an extra hour or two without charging them. The hotel I stayed at would allow a late checkout for people with frequent traveler status at the hotel, but not as a courtesy to regular guests who asked. In reality, though, the real costs of letting a guest stay an extra hour or two without penalty are probably small when compared to the increased positive feelings the hotel would gain by letting a few customers stay that extra time if they make a special request for it.

Other companies do this as a fairly standard practice. Some online retailers will upgrade customers to overnight or two day shipping as a courtesy. Airlines usually let customers with slightly overweight bags check their bags without charging them the fee. Rental car companies usually won’t charge customers if they are a half gallon short of a full tank when they return their car. There are countless examples of thinking about (and favoring) the customer loyalty value over the real financial gain associated from the fee or the addon.

I was talking to someone about customer service over the weekend and he said a great quote that can really summarize the variability among customer service representatives — if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

His point was that, in customer service, you can’t afford to get monkeys and have them interact with your customers. Customer service is very much dependent on the people providing the service, so a really good or a really bad customer service representative can also polarize a customer service experience.

Some companies have seen a lot of success from paying their customer service representatives better than average. I’ve worked with companies that pay their customer service people very well and in turn, get a lot better than average employees. They get people with more experience, initiative, talent, etc. and things tend to get done better and faster. I’ve also seen companies that do the opposite and pay barely anything and get employees who are essentially incompetent. 

It takes more than money to get good customer service people, though. Companies that do well at customer service tend to have strong cultures and tend to hire people who genuinely like their jobs and what they do on a day-to-day basis. Those who are just in their job for the (augmented) paycheck aren’t going to contribute that much to the customer service culture at any company. 

How well does your company pay and what have you noticed as a result?

Here is a simple customer service tip that will make you look (and especially sound) more professional: mute your microphone when sounds are being made that the customer shouldn’t / likely doesn’t want to hear. Some examples of situations where you’d want to mute your microphone include:

• Talking to a co-worker / asking a question
• Loud noises in the office (alarms, notifications, etc.)
• Dead air (be sure to come back every now and then so the customer knows you haven’t hung up on them)
• Similar situations where a noise is being made that the customer shouldn’t hear

Most headsets and phones have an easy to access mute button, but so few representatives use it. The mute button is a great way to avoid placing the customer on hold just to ask someone a question or look something up. If you don’t use the mute feature on your headset or phone already, try it out and see how it works for you.

If you’re lucky, you have customers who will take the time to write to or otherwise contact your company with feedback. (Unlucky companies have customers that just cancel / stop choosing your company and tell their friends how little they like your company.)

What does your company do after it receives feedback, though?  You can share the information with engineers, pass on praise accordingly, and so on. However, those options and the procedures that most companies seem to follow leave out the most important aspect of the feedback process – the customer.

It’s really great to see companies taking time and investing effort into taking action based on customer feedback, but all too often, these same companies completely miss the ball when it comes to responding to customers and letting them know that their feedback is being taken seriously. 

When a customer takes the time to provide feedback to your company, take the time to reach out to them and let them know what you’re doing as a result of their feedback. As you make progress on changing whatever based on whatever their feedback was, keep the customer in the loop. If you don’t plan to make any of the changes that a particular customer suggests, at least say that you read their letter or email over, explain why or why not you’re going to do what they suggest, and that you encourage them to write in with further feedback.

Reaching out to customers who write to your company with ideas and suggestions is critical. Even if you’re making changes based on the feedback you receive, you need to tell customers that so they’re aware of what’s happening. Otherwise, customers think their feedback is being ignored  or dismissed.

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 don’t think enough companies color code any of their customer service processes.  Color coding any sort of customer service processes is helpful and easy. Think about some of the simple possibilities:

• Emails from new customers or priority customers are marked green so the staff knows to pay extra attentino to them.
• New employees are given a different color name tag so existing employees know to help them out more.
• Regulars or other VIPs (birthdays, anniversaries, etc.) at a restaurant are given a different color placeholder or menu so the waiter can instantly recognize what makes them unique or special.
• Certain papers customers need for certain things are color coded so staff members can instantly tell what the customer is there to be helped with and can direct them to the appropriate person.

There are only a couple examples out of an unlimited number of possible ways you can use color coding in your business. All of these examples help the respective business recognize and appreciate a particular customer or group of customers and customize the experience around their needs.

Any business can use color coding in customer service in one way or another. Just think about something special that needs to be easily emphasized or made known. Also think about certain elements that can be used to identify that group or need and then come up with a simple system to make the color coding practical.

Color coding is usually simple and inexpensive to implement. It is typically a small process change and then a matter of letting employees know what a certain color indicates and them acting accordingly.

From my experience, color coding is almost always worth trying. There is a lot to gain and little to lose. Do you use it all in your business?

I found myself citing one of my favorite customer service quotes at least once a week. The quote is “the road to success is paved with well handled mistakes” and I think it summarizes and important aspect of customer service.

I recently sent a complaint letter to a Fortune 500 company I had a problem with not that long ago. I just sent the letter yesterday so I’m not expecting to hear back anytime soon, but their response will show a lot about how they think of their customers and their customer service. If a company gets a complaint letter and dismisses it, that doesn’t reflect well upon the company. If they respond to it and make an effort to make a bad situation right, it tends to show they are committed to customer satisfaction.

When you get a complaint letter, how do you handle it? The companies that handle complaints really well seem to have some sort of formal process. They have someone empowered to handle and respond to complaints. The person has good customer service skills and gets in touch with customers and helps them with what they need. This helps add some accountability to the process and lets customers know that someone at the company cares about them.

There is data out there that says that a well handled mistake actually results in a happier customer than if nothing went wrong in the first place. Essentially, the act of the company making a bad situation right improves that customer’s overall satisfaction. That’s the power of making a bad situation right.