Expectations: How Consistent Is Your Service?

Recently I encountered a disparity of Customer Service that pointed up the necessity of consistency. I was on my way to the HDI 2010 Conference in Orlando, and had chosen to fly into Sanford, Florida, because I could get a direct flight from Bangor, Maine and save 4 hours and a connection. My plane arrived about 20 minutes early. (Yes, you read that correctly.) I had arranged for a shuttle ride from Sanford to the conference. I had the instructions on where to find the shuttle when I emerged from the terminal. I looked, but found no shuttle in the lot.

I walked over to the friendly-looking taxi stand and asked if they knew whether I was in the right place for the shuttle. They said that I was, and suggested I go to the shuttle company booth nearby. I did, and found a very friendly woman named Debbie. She was surprised I was early and suggested that I could get out of the wind and grab a soda or coffee inside the terminal. Then she said, "I'll come and find you when the shuttle gets here." Now, that's a good service attitude, I said to myself.

I didn't go inside, but sat out in the breeze and enjoyed the sunshine. A short while later, the van with the company's logo appeared and parked. I stood up to let the driver know I was there. Quickly, he put up his hand in the "talk to the hand" position and called across the lot, "We're not going anywhere yet," in a less than friendly manner. What a letdown!

We were apparently waiting for another flight to come in, and that one was running late. I say "apparently" because I overheard some other people talking, not because the driver informed me. I was very disappointed. Then, after I got into the van, the driver was missing some papers, and told (not asked) me to get back out so he could check the seat where I was sitting. (I knew there was nothing there and told him as much.)

So, the next time I fly into Sanford, should I take that shuttle? Would I recommend it to my friends? I don't think so. Did I get from the airport to the hotel? Yes. Was it a good experience? No.

Too bad Debbie wasn't driving.

Give it some thought.

Climbing

It was my great privilege this year to be one of the judges for HDI's Team Excellence Awards. The award is meant to single out IT support organizations which exemplify the very best in the industry.

The application process is rigorous, and the criteria are wide-ranging and numerous, covering three major areas: the people, the processes and the technology. Ergonomics, tools, team structure, use of metrics, and the volume of support tickets all count toward the judging criteria.

All the teams who made it to the final rounds were exceptional, and had many characteristics in common. They are focused, thoughtful, trained and dedicated; they know industry best practices. They work together.

Above all else, the very best teams are all committed to two ideas:
• Customers are their purpose
• Continuous improvement is mandatory

Notice I said that the teams are committed. (You probably know the line about commitment being like bacon and eggs: The chicken was involved; the pig was committed.) These teams have a laser-like focus on the reason they exist: To serve the Customer. Whether that Customer be a patient in a healthcare facility, or the user of a credit card, or a company needing data storage, or someone  depending on information from a lawyer, the teams all knew who was at the end of their support chain, and all knew they had to keep working to provide the very best support possible.

I saw the man who applied the HDI logo to the stairs shown in the picture. He took great care to make sure that everything looked right to the thousands who would walk up those stairs this past week. None of us knows his name, though we all know his work. And that's the other part of the lesson: It's not our name or fame or wealth that matters. It's the work and its ultimate purpose, which is to serve the Customer, and to keep getting better and better and better at it. We know we're climbing toward perfection, which is a goal we cannot attain. To climb, to keep climbing and to continuously climb, must be our mission.

Give it some thought.

A Little Human Contact

Even though I write about Customer Service and think about it a lot, I'm not really very hard to please when I shop or go to lunch or dinner. I'm only looking for a few basic things to happen, and it's only when I get none of them that I go away unhappy.

1. Greet me somehow - When you see me, either say hello, or make some eye contact and maybe give a smile. I find nothing more disconcerting than doing business with someone who never looks at me, and only speaks to tell me the price or ask if I have any coupons.
2. Help me if I need help - If I have a question, either answer it, or find someone who can. This sounds incredibly basic, but I'll wager you can think of an instance where you were brushed off, or told, "I don't think we do that."
3. Give me a little space - Don't "service" me to death. If I have a question, I'll ask. There's a disturbing trend in the restaurant business to have servers ask, "Is everything OK?" about every five minutes. That tends to make things not OK.
4. Thank me - Let me know that you appreciate my business. A bland "Have a nice day" doesn't really cut it, but it's better than the complete absence of acknowledgement.

If you make me feel like a human being through those four phases of our contact, I'll be back. If you get everything right and then some, I might be telling my friends about your business right now.

Give it some thought.

Last Minute Lunch Order: A Customer Service Quiz

A department of roughly 50 people was going through week-long training, due to end on Friday. The training was being held in two sessions—morning and afternoon—so that only half the desks would be empty at any given time. The morning session ran from 7:30 to 11:30 and the afternoon from 12:30 to 4:30. On Thursday afternoon, the heads of the department decided to buy lunch for everyone on Friday. Their question to the administrative assistant was:
Can you—at 2 PM Thursday—find someone to provide lunch for 50, delivered at 11:30 AM Friday?

The AA started making calls to caterers the department had dealt with before. The first said, "No way." The second conversation went like this:
AA: You might not be able to do this.
Caterer: Try me.
AA: Can you get us lunch for 50, delivered tomorrow at 11:30?
Caterer: No problem! I can give you the same things you ordered last time. Would that be OK?

The AA also made quick arrangements with the facility to have a buffet table and a cart for beverages brought in, and someone to escort the caterer to the location.

Wow. Big points on the board. The caterer said "Try me," indicating a willingness to work with the customer. The caterer said, "No problem," indicating a can-do attitude. The caterer also said, "...the same thing you had last time," highlighting an existing relationship to the customer, and good records.

Flash forward to Friday at 11:30. The facilities people came in with the table and cart. No caterer, no lunch. 11:40. 11:45. The management says, "We'll wait another 10 minutes and then break and go ahead with the afternoon session." At 11:50, the caterer arrives with the food. But there seems to be a problem. There are no plates, no utensils, no napkins. The AA is off and running, and arrives a few minutes later, breathless, with the missing components. (Note: The caterer said "...the same thing you had last time," and last time included plates and utensils.)

1. What was the first link in the chain of events that could be changed to improve the outcome?
2. How did the caterer set the expectations of the customer?
3. What questions could the AA have asked that would have improved the outcome?

Leave a comment with your answers. I'd love to hear from you.

Give it some thought.

And Sometimes Ugly

Funny thing, Customer Service. We all need it from time to time. Sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's bad. And, yes, sometimes it's ugly.


Last week, our home Internet connection simply disappeared. Our Internet Service Provider (ISP) had an outgoing message on their support number that announced a statewide outage of all DSL service. (To me, an IT guy, this screamed "single point of failure" which is never a good thing.) Luckily, my iPhone gets enough signal at our house to keep my email, news and Twitter going. About 2 days later, our service was announced "restored."


None of my connected devices were able to obtain a useful connection. No email in or out, no Web. I followed the directions they gave on their announcement, but to no avail. Nothing worked. I called support.


After being polite and confirming some information, they got me back online when connected directly to the DSL modem, but that was it. (I understand this entirely. Support has limits, and they were making theirs clear. They would have to pass me over to their "advanced support group" to get any help for my network setup. Let's just say that that side of the call quickly got to "I can't help you."


What the heck—I was due for a router upgrade anyway, so I bought one and ran the setup. I still cold not establish a connection to the Internet. Modem worked. Router worked. Configuration went correctly. No net. 


So, I called the router company's support. I got some of the best support ever. The agent walked through every setting on the modem, suggested what some causes of the issue might be, and worked through the entire setup with me until I was satisfied that everything was working correctly.


The ISP's support was OK. Limited, narrowly focused, and just OK. They threw in the towel as soon as their job was technically done. The router company provided me with all the information and help I needed to get to the desired end: Everything worked.


Often, companies are ready to pull the plug on support because they forget that the object of that support is to get the customer happy with whatever product they are using.


The object of business is not opposed to the object of Customer Service. They are the same: Create and keep Customers.


Give it some thought.

The Outcome Is Not Guaranteed

I have always thought of people as fundamentally optimistic. If someone tells us something, we usually believe it. When we buy something, we expect that it will work. We have a symptom, we see a doctor, we get a prescription, and we believe that we will get better.


I've also always thought that this is a naïve approach. Not everyone gets better. Things don't always work as advertised. And this is as true in computer support as it is in health care. No matter how we may wish to make everything perfect, fast, easy, and reliable, we can't always do so. Sometimes the outcome is a frustrated person on each end of the phone or help chat. The support person wants to make things work as the end-user expects; the end-user or expects that it's going to be fixed right now.


As hard as it is for many of us to absorb, not everyone gets well, or has their symptoms ameliorated. Some medical conditions fail to improve; likewise, some computer issues don't respond even after hours of work. There are so many variables in each case.


So, when you are faced with a computer issue and contact your support provider, bear in mind that the outcome may not be as you wish, but you can help minimize the chances that this will happen. The better communication you have with either your health care provider or your computer support person, the more likely you are to get your particular issue resolved.


Some helpful hints for getting the best results from computer support:

• Be honest - if you dropped the laptop, admit it. You'll save yourself and the support person lots of time.
• Be patient - lots of variables mean lots of questions and maybe some failed fixes.
• Be understanding - if you are trying to connect to your office from a hotel, be aware that the service desk at your company has no control over the hotel network, and may not be able to make things work for you
• Be compliant - if you're asked to restart, or unplug, or call the hotel front desk, please act in your own best interest.
• Be trusting - don't immediately call your "cousin Bob, who knows a lot about computers" after the support person tells you that you need to do x, y, or z. The support person may, in fact, not be as smart as "cousin Bob," but may have information that Bob does not have about the network, or model of computer, or the state of the Internet at that particular time.

One more request: If you do figure out what the problem was, or if the symptom stops happening, let the support folks know. Believe it or not, we worry about these things, and often spend our off-hours reading and researching the fixes for unresolved issues.

Now, reboot and don't forget to take your medicine.

Give it some thought.

Now Is the Winter of Our Discontent

The pointed firs stand in defiance of the weight of the snow here in Maine, just as they are designed, fundamentally, by nature to do. It's the beginning of 2010.


This year, I believe that economic conditions will make it imperative for businesses to pay even more attention to the fundamentals. Those fundamentals include quality of product, value, and quality of service. Customers will also be thinking in fundamentals such as price, quality, value, and the Customer Experience. I'd like to think that 2010 is the year that businesses really start to believe that retaining a Customer really is less expensive than winning a new one. (Some sources say it's 5x, some say 7x more expensive to gain than to retain.) The Reference for Business also says:

...a company that increases its number of new customers by 20 percent in a year but retains only 85 percent of its existing customers will have a net growth rate of only 5 percent (20 percent increase less 15 percent decrease). But the company could triple that rate by retaining 95 percent of its clients.

What's the most powerful way to retain customers? Say it with me: Good Customer Service! So, ask yourself why Customer Service is not at the very, very, very (very!) top of every business's list of way to increase revenues and hold costs in check. Customer Service needs to be taught, spoken about, featured, tweeted, IM'd, written, inculcated, and ingrained into every aspect of organizational culture.


Good Customer Service not only means treating your customers with all the respect due to your prime source of revenue, it also means designing every aspect of your business to make the customer experience better.

• Check to see if your Web site is designed for your Customers' benefit, or for yours. If it's the latter, change it, and change it now. Do not try to tell me (the Customer) what I want from you by planting a limited number of dropdowns or radio buttons. Give me the opportunity to express my concern, frustration, gratitude, rage, or interest. 
• Have a trained, professional Customer Service representative at the receiving end of every Customer Service transaction.*
• Treat every single Customer as if they are the most important person your business will ever encounter. (Know what? They are!)

Customer Service extends far beyond the sales counter, the Returns desk, the IT Service Desk, and your Web site. It's a way of life.

Do not let the weight of harsh economic realities snap the branches of your business: Learn how to build your business to adapt, like the pointed firs, to the Winter of Our Discontent.

Give it some thought.
* Considering outsourcing your Customer Service to the lowest-bidding call center? Would you do that to Investor Relations?