Service Untitled

I got an email about an interesting new book called Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic: Inside One of the Worlds Most Admired Service Organizations. The book obviously focuses on the world famous Mayo Clinc, a non-profit medical center based in Rochester, Minnesota. There is a lot one can learn from the Mayo Clinc (I’m planning on interviewing the book’s authors soon), but one of the interesting things I saw in the summary of the book is the Clinc’s decision to pay its doctors on a salary instead of by procedure.

I know very little about how hospitals work and how the medical profession in general works and that’s not what I’m going to focus on here. What I’m interested in is how the Mayo Clinc went against what might seem like a logical system and instead decided to use something that focused on overall customer satisfaction instead of profits.

This isn’t unheard of. CarMax puts their sales representatives on salaries to ensure the advice and guidance they give is more motivated by eventual customer satisfaction than it is by short-term commission gains.

Your compensation system should be based on the goals of the customer, not the goals of the employee. When the two can align, great, but when they don’t, it’s a problem. For example:

• Most car dealers are paid on percentage commissions. This encourages the car dealer to sell the customer a more expensive car (bad).
• Real estate agents are paid on percentage commissions. This encourages the agent to show the client more expensive houses (bad).
• Plaintiff attorneys get a percentage of the settlement or award. This encourages the attorney to get the most money for him/herself and the client (good).
• Some sales people are paid based on a flat commission. This encourages them to make a sale, but not a specific sale (better than bad).

And so on. The Mayo Clinic deciding to pay its doctor on a flat salary that wasn’t dependent on the number (or expense) of procedures and focused on patient well being is something they do to ensure long-term patient and satisfaction and well being. If you don’t rip your customers off and instead focus on getting them solutions that actually make sense for them, you’ll make more in the long-term.

Photo credit to Nephron via Wikimedia.

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.

I was listening to Steve Odland (the Chairman and CEO of Office Depot) present at an event today and one of the things he talked about was how sharing information across the organization could lead to decision making empowerment and aptitude. 

Odland said that if everyone at Office Depot knew as much as he did (in terms of cause and effects, how actions fit in with the rest of the company, etc.), the company would be much more cohesive and efficient. People could confidently make decisions based on the full picture and not worry about something they’re not aware of existing and influencing whatever they’re deciding.

This idea can apply to customer service as well. The more each of your customer service representatives knows about what is going on at your company and with your products, the better decisions they can make. If you trust they can make these types of good decisions, then you can empower them to actually make the decisions and take action. 

Think about some of the ways you can share more company information with your employees. Send a weekly or quarterly summary about what’s been happening at your company. Consider having meetings with a couple of employees at a time where you answer questions and address concerns. Share your short and long term strategies with your employees and let them know what the management team is working on.

Things like this not only keep employees informed, but also helps make them feel more important and engaged with what’s going on at your company and most importantly, where it’s going.

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?

I proudly use WordPress to power my blog. It is the best blogging platform I’ve used and offers exactly what I need from a blogging platform. WordPress 2.7 includes a great feature called Auto Update that automatically alleviates one of the largest pains associated with any type of self-hosted software – the need to maintain the software by keeping up with upgrades.

Essentially, the Auto Update feature provides built-in simplicity. Using it, I was able to upgrade my blog to 2.7.1 in about 30 seconds. I didn’t have to download or replace files or go through a number of steps; all I had to do was click the button and wait a few seconds and it was all done. 

This is obviously a great feature and one that I am sure many WordPress users wish had been implemented sooner. The question you should ask yourself is this: can I automate any of the “pain points” in my software or service? WordPress identified upgrading as an annoying pain point and then automated it very effectively. Can you do the same at your company?

This recent op-ed from The New York Times talked about a little bit about the need for a huge call center to help ease the transition to digital television that is expected to happen on February 17. A huge number of people are going to be affected by this switch – most likely more than 50 million. To quote the story:

Nearly 1.5 million calls are expected to come into a special Federal Communications Commission call center on each of the two days following the transition, but this center will be able to handle only about 350,000 calls a day.

Needless to say, that is a lot of calls and a lot of confused television watchers. Assuming the call center is hope 24/7, that will be more than 62,000 callers an hour (more than a lot of call centers work with in a year or at the very least, a month). How can the FCC deal with that many calls? Chances are, they can’t. They would need a small army (read: a couple of thousand) call center representatives available around the clock and flying through calls in order to handle the rush. It sounds like they need to increase the size of their staff significantly and probably invest in better hardware/software to be able to handle the volume.

The FCC needs to invest in other methods of communication. Some ideas:

• A plethora of self-service options (online videos posted on their web site and on YouTube, searchable FAQs, an extensive knowledge base, illustrated guides, and so on).
• Live chat options so representatives can work with 2-3 (or more) people at once instead of just one at a time.
• An online / forum discussion board where people can get help from others.
• Community groups to help confused television watchers (this is suggested in the article).

There are a lot of possibilities and the FCC is hopefully prepared to do many of them. There is an okay, but not great web site called DTV Answers that provides some of the information, but there is definitely a lot of room to improve. To handle all of those people and something that affects as many people as this, they need an in-depth, interactive web site with all the bells and whistles. It doesn’t look like the government invested what they should have in making the switch simple.

What would you do to make the switch

Twitter has gotten really good at responding to issues. As a rapidly growing, high profile startup, they seem to have some sort of issue they need to address publicly every few months or so.

The last major response that I blogged about was back in June when Twitter was responding to criticism surrounding their less than perfect uptime and reliability. Yesterday, Twitter responded publicly in regards to 33 high-profile Twitter accounts being “hacked”.

Admitting that some of your highest profile users (including the future president!) have had their accounts compromised is no easy task. It is something the company realized they had to approach quickly and correctly, especially given the high profile nature of the company and the accounts that were compromised. Tens of thousands of people probably saw it happen, so Twitter had to respond. Responding quickly and publicly was the first thing Twitter did right.

Twitter did another thing right by responding with a terrific blog post. They provided a concise explanation of what happened (why and how the accounts were compromised, when they noticed it, and what they did) followed by an explanation of what they did to fix the immediate problem and what they are doing in the future. Additionally, they answered a question they were sure was going to be asked about the possibility of another technology preventing the sort of problem that occurred (it wouldn’t help, but they addressed the question regardless).

In less than 400 words, Twitter provided an excellent response that probably went a long way with most of the people who read it. When something happens that you know people will notice, make it a point to respond publicly. Do so quickly and sincerely. Let people know that you have addressed the immediate problem and that you’re working on making sure it doesn’t happen again and won’t affect them (again).

If you do make it a point to admit and then respond, your customers are likely going to respect your honesty and value your company’s transparency.

Thanks to Dan from Shoeboxed for sending me the link to the article earlier today.

A lot of companies have a presence in the blogosphere, on Twitter, Facebook, or one of the other social media sites. This is a step in the right direction and any site that does have such a presence should be rewarded for it. However, when companies treat their social presence as just another marketing channel, they often miss the point and lose out on a possible opportunity to engage customers.

I won’t reference companies that do it poorly, but I will reference a company that does it well. Comcast has a very strong presence on Twitter. The person behind their presence on Twitter is one guy, Frank Eliason. I’ve exchanged emails with Frank before and he is a personable guy. Even though he is usually “strictly business” on the company’s Twitter account, Frank is by no means a robot and will interact with customers and be personable at least several times a day. Zappos has a pretty sophisticated Twitter site and has also embraced the medium well.

As someone who has worked with companies developing a presence on Twitter and other social media sites, I will say that some of the questions you’ll end up seeing are odd. However, there is nothing wrong with that. Tell customers about some weird things that your company does or about the way the CEO of the company does this or that. It lets customers see a different side of your company.

The companies that just use Twitter to post links to blog posts, promotions, etc. are missing the point. Twitter is a place to get to know your customers better and to interact with them in a different way.

You absolutely want to use it to reserve customer service issues and let customers know about updates and promotions, but you also want to take advantage of it to let customers know that there are people behind your marketing department and that your company has a personality. There aren’t that many places to do that in the corporate world and a presence on a site like Twitter or on your corporate blog is a perfect place to do that.

To everyone in the United States, have a Happy Thanksgiving! Eat a lot and be safe! If you aren’t in the United States, have a great Thursday.