Service Untitled

Something I try to encourage companies (and their customer service representatives) to do is to offer a small service credit to customers who have had issues and have had to call or email the company several times. Even if the problem wasn’t necessarily the company’s fault, the service experience wasn’t unpleasant, etc., it is an act of good will (and good business) to proactively offer the customer a small discount on their next bill. When I suggest this, I’m usually asked why in the world a company would offer a credit to any customer who was not:

• Demanding a credit
• Threatening to cancel
• Threatening to sue, call the BBB, etc.
• Violent

The act of proactively offering a service credit is almost unheard of. The idea, however, is a good one(I think). It shows that your company is dedicated to great service and to a great customer experience. Volunteering (as opposed to the customer asking or demanding) makes a big difference. Even if it is just a tiny service credit, the act of offering it proactively is always helpful. Customers will likely be impressed and appreciate the gesture. They’ll be impressed and appreciate the gesture because companies offering a service credit proactively is so out of the norm that it is a big deal.

One of the best parts about this is the service credit doesn’t have to be a large amount. What determines a “large amount” obviously depends on your business and the particular customer, but I’ve seen companies that bill $15 a month offer a $5 service credit to a somewhat flustered customer. The customers usually appreciate the gesture, especially every dollar given as a service credit is a dollar the customer doesn’t have to pay. Companies that charge $50 a month sometimes give a $10 service credit, which is perfectly reasonable. I would say you should make it roughly between 5% and 35% of the monthly bill, with the percentage getting smaller as the monthly bill increases.

What customers like most is that you are considering the inconveniences and problems they’ve had. And then you’re doing something about it. It just makes the customer feel good.

Technorati Tags: Credits, Customer Service, Customer Service Experience, Customer Service Representative, Pro-active, Little Things

I was having a conversation with an executive from HP today and he mentioned one of the things that HP has recently invested in: an integrated CRM system for all of their consumer customers. The idea is, that instead of being HP Printer 343433 Owner, you are Customer 123456, who happens to own Printer 343433 as well as two other HP desktops. The company wants to get a better idea of who you are as a customer instead of just having an idea about what products you have problems with.

As soon as you identity yourself as printer 343433 owner, HP will know what other HP products have been registered to you. This way, they only have to go through the process of collecting personal information, information about your computer, etc. once per customer, instead of once per phone call. It also helps the company keep track of all of the issues (with all of the products) that particular customers are having and allows agents to quickly get an idea about the customer’s particular situation.

HP is able to use that information and the diagnostic tools in general to provide more information about drivers, hardware and software configurations, etc. It saves agents and customers time because the computer is able to tell answer most of the basic questions that the agent would have to ask the customer. The idea of an integrated system (or at least one that is not solely for one group or one product) is that the service provided can be more proactive. If HP knows that some of the drivers are out of date, they can make a suggestion to the customer to upgrade those drivers (that way, future problems can be prevented).

The single system also integrates with HP’s knowledge base and other agent tools. That way, as soon as the customer says they are having a problem with their printer (which we will know is printer 343433 after the first call or when the customer registers the printer after purchasing it), the agent will be able to pull up all the related tools and troubleshooting information very quickly.

The integrated system, coupled with the set of diagnostic tools that is available to HP agents, allows for faster and more uniform service. Saving time without sacrificing quality saves money. All of those things eventually lead to higher levels of customer satisfaction. If a unified CRM-like system can lead to higher customer satisfaction and reduced costs, it is definitely something that your company should be looking into.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the conversation (in a broader context) was when the HP executive mentioned that part of the new system was already present in their enterprise group and all HP had to do was adapt it to the consumer group. It is just one of the many reminders of looking elsewhere in your company for good ideas and feasible solutions. Different groups in companies as big as HP, as big as Microsoft, as big as Dell, etc. have already dealt with a lot of tough problems in innovative ways. The key is to find those ideas and then to figure out how they work for different groups.

Technorati Tags: Customer Service Experience, Customer Service, Data, HP, CRM

This is a terrific guest writer post by Jean MacDonald from SmileOnMyMac. I wrote about the company’s awesome newsletters back in October.

Offering a free trial to download is a standard technique in the software business. The trial may be limited in timeframe or features, but the idea is the same: get potential customers to try out the product. When they see how useful it is for them, they’ll happily purchase it.

But downloading and installing software is not the same as trying it. Many people, myself included, might download something that looks interesting one day, but never make time to actually try it out. This is a gaping pothole on the road to a sale. To fill it in, we decided to try out a technique known as the “autoresponder”.

With the help of our email marketing service company eROI, we set up a series of email tips that customers would receive on a regular basis after they installed the software. The first time they launched the software, an alert appears, asking for a name and email address. The tip emails were designed to say, “Hey, remember me? I’m that useful application you installed. By the way, here’s something cool you can do with it.”

I admit that I was a little skeptical about what kind of response we’d get. People are already suffering from inbox overload — would they really voluntarily sign up for more email?

They did sign up. Not only that, we started getting fan mail for the tips. Nice notes like these:

“Thank you so much for your helpful emails re: DiscLabel.  I like the program and your
support makes buying the program even more appealing.  I’m on my way to download the paid version right now.”

“Just wanted to let you know that I find the mailing list tips for PDFpen and TextExpander enormously useful. What a great idea!”

“The e-mailed tips are welcome, they are interesting and useful, and they do give the impression that you care - even to a cynic like me!”

And some even blogged about [including here at Service Untitled] how helpful the emails were and how they demonstrated our commitment to a great customer experience.

What had started out as a strategy for encouraging more purchases became recognized as a great resource for people who had already purchased. Customers love to find more uses for something they already own. The reason these emails appeal to potential buyers and current customers alike is that they are truly useful. They are not just a sales pitch. Here are some guidelines to help you write tip emails that your customers will find valuable.

Find out what questions your customers are really asking.
Before deciding on the topics for tip emails, it’s important to make sure that your content will be relevant. In my case, the company co-founders are also our lead developers and customer support representatives. We looked at what questions kept coming up again and again.

Find out what questions they don’t know to ask.
When we start planning a new version of one of our software programs, I will survey our current users. I always ask them about how often they use the various features of the software, and one of the options is “I didn’t know I could do that.” If a significant percentage of customers say they didn’t know about a certain feature, that makes it a good candidate for a tip email.

Make it brief.
Focus in on a specific topic and try to keep the length to 150-200 words. It needs to be brief enough for the user to read in less than a minute. A longer email might prompt some folks to say “I’ll read that later when I have time,” significantly reducing the chance they’ll read it at all. If a couple emails pile up without being read, not only will your customers not get the benefit of your tips, they might even unsubscribe from all your emails.

Use an illustration or two, but don’t overdo it on graphics.
Include a screenshot or other graphic that helps explain your tip. It is important to remember, though, that many people don’t load images into their email by default. Your tip need make sense without any illustration.

We just use a small company logo in the signature of our tips. Much more than that, and your tip might be mistaken for a sales pitch. This is not what your customer signed up for, making it more likely they’ll unsubscribe or, even worse, click the “Spam” button.

Encourage sharing.
In a P.S., we ask users to send us their own tips, which we post on our blog. And we get ideas that help shape future tip emails!

Writer Bio:
Jean MacDonald is the Marketing Director at SmileOnMyMac, a software company that develops productivity tools for Mac OS X. Before joining the company, she was the principal of Well-Tempered Web, a web design and internet marketing firm in Portland, Oregon.

I hope everyone had a nice July 4th. As promised, Service Untitled is back in business.

I would say that one of the best big picture ways to becoming a great customer service organization is to provide customer service that is proactive (as opposed to reactive). It is something I’ve talked about before and believe will get more and more important as time goes on.

Like I described in the previously linked to post, wouldn’t it be neat (albeit somewhat creepy) if a Dell or HP tech called you and said your hard drive was about to die and that you should backup your files, or if you couldn’t figure out how to use a certain feature and you got a call or an email offering help or pointing you in the right direction. That is what proactive customer service is all about.

Some possible scenarios in addition to the ones described above:

1. Lexus notices that your car is taking much longer to accelerate than usual. They call you or send something in the mail (or email) asking if you want to schedule a service visit.
2. Your web hosting company notices that the software you are using has been using a lot more resources than average for an installation of your size. Or they notice that resource usage has gone way up while your traffic hasn’t. They email you and ask if you are aware of it.
3. Your email hosting (or wireless type provider like BlackBerry) company notices you haven’t gotten email in the last 3 days whereas you usually get 100 messages a day. They contact you and ask if there are any problems.
4. The software you use or are evaluating notices you are getting a lot of error messages and experimenting a lot with a certain feature. The company’s tech support sends you a link to a knowledge base article.
5. A hosted software company can tell that a customer hasn’t really utilized any of the more powerful features of their software that make it really useful.

These do have a bit of a Big Brother element to them. It goes along with super proactive customer service. However, I think more customers than not will appreciate it. Plus, if they are freaked out, your company can offer a way to opt out of proactive monitoring.

Alarm companies are proactive. They call you if they notice a problem. They don’t wait for you to call them if something is wrong. That is the way that more and more companies should operate.

There are hundreds of other ways to be proactive besides the 5 listed above. As you can see, being proactive isn’t just limited to the alarm or software industries. I will say (with a fair amount of confidence) that any company in any industry can be proactive in one way or another when it comes to helping their customers.

So how does being proactive boost the bottomline? It sounds really costly and time consuming. Not quite. And that is the subject of tomorrow’s post. Stay tuned (er, subscribed).

I’m going to stop talking about car dealer customer service for a little while and talk about two recent Verizon experiences.

Backstory
The bottom part of my phone’s screen starting getting awfully temperamental on Saturday or so. It wasn’t working right at all and it just stopped working all of the sudden. No idea what caused it. I tried some troubleshooting steps myself and had no luck. I figured I had to call Verizon.

Phone Call #1
I called Verizon on Sunday (April 1st), went through a few quick menus and was transferred to a friendly guy named Jason. I explained my problem to Jason and he did what he needed to and got the account verified. I told him the troubleshooting steps I had done and he made it very clear that I wouldn’t have to do them again. It’s a nice change to have a company think you are actually competent. It also made me think a bit higher of Verizon.

He led me through an additional troubleshooting step or two (neither were too complicated or time consuming) and we came to the conclusion that there was definitely something the matter with the phone that we couldn’t fix. He told me that Verizon would be overnighting me a new phone (phone and shipping was free) and that I could send my old phone back once I got all setup with the new one. At this point, I was quite happy. I even offered to (and did) send a note to Jason’s supervisor about how well he did.

Besides the core elements of the troubleshooting, the product exchange, etc., which he did very well at, Jason excelled in a few other ways:

• He was good at small talk. I liked the fact that Jason obviously wasn’t reading from a script. I asked if they had gotten many April Fool’s calls and he explained that they sometimes have them at the office, but they hadn’t gotten any. I mentioned that I doubt many people make a joke of their PDA phones not working. From that, he then told me about a customer who had lost something like 10,000 contacts the other day, had everything that could go wrong happen, and how it took two hours on the phone with him to get some of them back.
• He was good at small talk #2. After hearing the story about the other customer, I mentioned that I was just a customer service consultant and didn’t even know that many people. He asked some questions about that and about my blog and so on. It’s rare (unfortunately) to see a customer service representative that actually can get off script smoothly and maintain a pleasant conversation.
• He was friendly. Throughout the entire experience, Jason wasn’t rude, short, etc. From previous experiences with Verizon, that is what I expected and was pleasant surprised to see otherwise.
• I got an extension! I thought extension numbers were a telecom company myth, but Jason actually give me an extension that I could reach him at if I had any other questions.

All in all, I’d rate the experience as a great one. It was far above acceptable and I was pleasant surprised. Jason wasn’t quite as happy and enthusiastic as the T-Mobile people, but that was fine - he was friendly, able to resolve my issues, and get the job done in a pleasant manner.

Phone Call #2
I got the box from FedEx today. They tried to deliver it on Tuesday, but I wasn’t home to sign for the package. I opened the box and was happy to see they had sent the right phone and all the information I needed. I was confused about one of the forms I had to fill out and called Verizon again.

I was connected to a friendly lady within a few seconds. She offered to help and seemed to be generally happy. It took a bit of explanation (which I expected), but she was able to get the answer. The answer wasn’t too complicated, but I wanted to be sure. She confirmed and I was happy.

What set this call apart from just being acceptable was the representative was actually pro-active. She asked if I wanted to activate my new phone (instead of me having to call back later). I declined since I wanted to set the new one up first, but I was impressed by her offer. I also asked if I could type out the form instead of writing it on this stupid plastic insert and got an “of course” which is always nice to hear.

Verizon has been impressing me the last few days. I wonder what they’ve been doing, but whatever it is, it’s working. Now we just need to see some other companies that are also working to improve customer service do the same thing and the consumer/business world could be a better place.

The next generation of customer service is going to be proactive. Currently, customer service is reactive. This means that when you have a problem, you tell the company. Then, they work to fix it. Customer service will/should eventually be proactive. This means that the organization will fix problems as they occur and stop even stop problems from occurring.

Proactive customer service is what I believe is Customer Service 2.0. It’ll make a huge difference in how customer service works and an even bigger difference in the customer experience.

For example, can you imagine your computer notices that your hard drive is having a problem and lets Dell know about it. Then, Dell would call you or email you and suggest replacing the hard drive. A bit Big Brother, yes, but also very helpful.

Some companies are already proactive about their customer service. For example, many hosting companies monitor the uptime of their various services (web, databases, email, etc.). When they get a report that a problem is occurring, the company works to fix it. If the company is quick about it, they can fix the issue before customers even notice.

Other things that can be done would be simply paying more attention. For example, if a customer usually sends in a few customer support inquires a week and the company notices a lapse in the inquires, it may be worth sending them an email. That way, the company can find out if something is wrong with the person, if they have switched to a new provider, etc.

Companies can also notice when usage goes way up or way down for a certain service. Following up and trying to be proactive about solutions and customer service in general will greatly improve the customer service experience.

A lot of companies and individual support representatives like to ignore problems. Oftentimes, they won’t fix it because they think it’s more work. However, when the customers complain, it’s even more work.

What can companies do to be proactive? It’s almost a state of mind. It requires a mix of hard work and technology to become a proactive customer service organization. I think, though, that the ones that can pull it off will be the true winners.