Blog posts on customer service

Posts selected fromManagement Blog - Engineering Blog - Investing Blog and other blogs

• There is Much to Improve in How We Use the Internet to Serve Customers

  Webinars can have great interaction. They can provide very useful archived webinars covering some content (live webinars could be provided for free too if the reward was worth the cost) . If the public finds that free content valuable it can be about the most effective marketing in many ways including for gaining customers for live interactive webinars on more advanced topics.

  Webinars also allow the presenter to do multiple two hour sessions for different clients anywhere in the world in the same day. So you could customize your content to specific client needs. Also each of those sessions could include employees from multiple sites around the globe.

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• Deming’s Ideas at Markey’s Audio Visual

  Mark Miller, General Manager, Markey’s Audio Visual spoke on Markey’s experience adopting Deming’s ideas.

  • Markey’s needs to anticipate the changing needs of customers and anticipate those needs
  • Unknown and unknowable – not really unknown just un-measurable (again taught to all employees)
  • Gemba – where the real work gets done (the customer interaction – he stressed time and again that the key to their success was Markey’s employees interaction with customers – Markey’s aims to provide the best customer experience the customer has with any company)
  • Break down barriers between departments – Markeys doesn’t charge internally. Indianapolis looses money – they own the high end equipment used by the other offices.
  • Intrinsic motivation v. Extrinsic motivation – he has the chart from page 122 of New Economics in Deming’s handwriting on his wall.

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• Superior Customer Experiences Start with Respect for Employees

  Oakley found that there is a direct link between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction, and between customer satisfaction and improved financial performance. Employee satisfaction is a key antecedent to employee engagement. He also found that organizations with engaged employees have customers who use their products more, and increased customer usage leads to higher levels of customer satisfaction.

  This is not a zero-sum game. Good managers grow the pie so all the stakeholders can get more benefit (customers, investors, employees…).

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• Customer Service is Important

  My experience did not give me the impression they were focused much on what was important to me as a customers. The service I received seemed to be what I would expect from a company very focused on the idea that the objective of the company is to increase profits at the expense of everyone else. Two models of organization provide a very different customer experience.  One that sees customers as fools to be fleeced seems common among USA arilines, health care providers, cable companies, large banks, car dealers and phone companies.  The idea that organizations exists to provide customers value and the company takes a profit for providing that value sadly seem rare in the USA (though some organizations behave this way: Trader Joe's, many credit unions, many small restaurants and Apple (though some may disagree with me placing them here).

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• Good Customer Service Example

  Recently I bought a new digital camera, Canon A700. Part of the reason I bought it was I had heard they actually provided customer service – you could call them and they answered and helped (plus they have long practiced good management improvement concepts, in general).

  Well I received my camera and I could not open the battery compartment: which was quite frustrating. I tried following the instructions but I couldn’t get it to open. So I tried calling Canon and I got a person on the phone within 30 seconds (there was system to direct me to the right person but it was as speaking the answer to a couple questions).

  Within a couple minutes the service person (based in Virginia and a Canon employee, as I understand it) had picked up a Canon A700 and explained how to open the door.

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• Dell, Reddit and Customer Focus (2006)

  I think most of Dell's users do not notice what Dell is doing, exactly. Reddit readers, however, by and large, do, which is one thing that makes reading Reddit fun. I find Reddit's users can point out, not just problems, but the systemic causes of those problems (so they vote up the links that do exactly this).

  Most customers might not see the chain leading to their frustration but the do know they don't like that the computer is slow and they have to wade through all sorts of software (much of which they don't need or want). I think the author was exactly right that the source of the problem is Dell's monetary incentive is to get paid to add more and more stuff not to give the users what they need.

  ...

  Mainly I think these critical looks at practices are fun reading, but there is also a management issue to understand.  There are many smart people who know how to voice their opinion (and the internet can connect that voice to large numbers of people).   In this day and age, if you think your imperial halo with protect you from the masses you had better hope none of these people get a look at what you offer.  If you are figuratively naked, they will see, and they will shout that fact from the mountain top.

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• Airline Quality (or Rather, Lack Thereof)

  I flew JetBlue Airways last week. The help at the counter was polite and friendly. While this is only one data point (and hardly a “high bar” to meet) it contrasts with most of my flying experience (in my experience Southwest has a good likelihood of providing good service but few other airlines do). It would be nice if more airlines could be like Southwest...

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• Companies in Need of Customer Focus

  My brother has suggested several times I should arrange for companies to pay me to point out their weaknesses (and suggest improvements). I wish I could get them to do so.

  Often 1 interaction with their customer service is enough to provide examples of several systemic weaknesses in how customers are treated.

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• Our Policy is to Stick Our Heads in the Sand

  The failure to adapt to a changing world (the internet is here to stay folks) is amazing. Most companies would benefit from just adapting to the changing world without elaborate innovation plans. Innovation is great, but challenging. Don’t ignore the possible improvements short of innovation.

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• Customer Focus at Ritz Carlton and Home Depot

  Ritz-Carlton’s motto is “We are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.” And they actually turn those words into reality. They are not platitudes with no action. The system is guided toward achieving that vision.

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• Poor Service – Industry Standard?

  I find it very frustrating how poor the service is most everywhere these days. Have you shopped in a Trader Joe’s? The contrast is amazing. I am used to most employees, on the phone, or in person, seeing the customer as a bother.  At Trader Joe’s, in stark contrast, the staff always seems happy to have customers. Which seems like a good indication that management is doing a number of things right.

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• Change Your Name to Work With Our Software

  My advice. Don’t create stupid restrictions (in IT systems or otherwise). What do you care how long people’s names are? There are many people with 2 character names (even if your software says they are invalid, and + are a valid email character even if your software doesn't think so).

  Also, have customer service personnel who are trying to improve the system, not trying to get the customer off the phone to meet some arbitrary numerical target. Most often the representatives seem most concerned with getting you off the phone. An effective system to discover what needs to be improved is not something that management has bothered to design into the system. Big mistake.

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• Looking in the Mirror at Customer Focus

  Most organizations say they are focused on meeting and exceeding customer needs. But, as a customer, this often isn’t what I experience.

  Delighting customers is critical to long term business success. Satisfied customers will remain your customers until they see the opportunity for something that might be better or is cheaper. Delighted customers are loyal and much more likely to remain customers.

  Delighting customers is often about paying attention to the small details. Paying close attention to customer’s jobs to be done is a powerful tool. Then apply creative thinking and a knowledge of your industry, technical possibilities and business realities to provide solutions that delight customers.

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• What Loss Will a Business Suffer Due to a Dissatisfied Customer?

  You can’t know how much a dissatisfied customer will cost your business in the long run. You can make statistical judgements about how costly dissatisfied customers are to a business but those are loaded with many guesses. They can give a general indication of the magnitude of the costs but they are largely guesses, not something you can measure.

  Sometimes a business largely gets away poor quality for a long time. The customer doesn’t change behavior, doesn’t complain to others and doesn’t punish the company in the long term. But you never know when one small failure will cause the luck to run out and turn a customer against the business and costing it dearly.

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• The Quality of the Entire Customer Experience

  Product quality, in many ways, has been raised in the last few decades and this naturally results in raised expectations. This pattern was well known in the 1960s (and before). Kano’s theory of customer satisfactionexpressed how new features moved from being “delighters” for customers initially and eventually became minimum expectations (you gain no credit for delivering them but will upset customers if you fail).

  It is also true that raising the overall customer experience is more difficult than raising product quality (due to the nature of the systems that deliver the results in each case).

  I do think there is truth to the idea that customers have raised expectations for businesses to improve the entire experience. Customers are less willing to accept excuses about how the provider is not responsible for various aspects of the experience...

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