Customer Service Simplified

The great Sethmeister himself, Seth Godin, says to transform your business, you have to do something remarkable. Well, fast-food coffee has now been done remarkably well.

I just had my first cup of the new Premium Roast coffee at Mickey D’s. I didn’t even have to put in the 2 sugars and 2 creams that I wanted …. they did it for me, so I wouldn’t have to fumble with the packets.

What’s the big deal with that ? Well, as I see it, I’m on the road 5 or 6 days a week. If I stop at a drive-thru and grab a quick bite, I take the chance of getting crumbs all over my double-mercerized golf shirt or my micro-fiber slacks.

You have to either drink bad coffee black or hope they remember to put some packets in your sack.

Not anymore. McDonald’s has gone above and beyond the road warriors expectations. They have great coffee and a great lid, which we’ll get deeper into in a minute, and they make it like you want it.

Their new premium roast coffee is the best I’ve ever tasted at a fast-food establishment. The absolute best.

Do I know anything about coffee ? Yes, if I say so myself ( and I will ), I worked at one of Millstone Coffee’s roasting facilities eons ago and I’ve tasted the best coffee’s from around the world. This new stuff is pretty good for the time and cost. You pay about a buck and they hand it to you, with the amount of cream and sugar you ask for, in a few seconds.

Better philosophy, for the consumer, than at that big ‘Buck’s place.

Life is good.

What they’ve done will force those that want to be players in the breakfast market to counter with their own take on kicking customer service up a notch.

Instead of that other place having their king, at McDonald’s YOU, the customer, are the king. Life as royalty ain’t all that bad, despite those wretched tabloids.

And that new coffee cup lid is the stuff of dreams. Have you seen it yet ? A little doomafloggit that hinges back and forth. Domed a bit to relive the peripheral pressure that only accumulates in suburban coffee climates. Almost impossible to spill onto your Dockers.

Life is good.

You want to be treated like royalty ? You want 2 sugars and 2 creams, without having to rip, tear or squeeze ? You want great coffee with your morning breakfast sandwich ?

Then head on over to Mickey D’s and feel the love.

Now if we could just get them to make their sandwiches a little better …

Did anyone else happen to see the article in the Money section of today’s USA Today about banks offering credit card perks to only their clients ?

It’s about time that an institution took care of those who already give them business, rather than offering the biggest incentives to new customers.

I wish all businesses/banks would do this. I have no problem getting less of a discount than a current customer. And I have a big problem when my cell phone carrier offers some shmoe a deal for $20 less per month than I’m paying, when I’ve been a loyal customer for 1o + years.

I’ve paid you well over $25,000 in those 10 years and you want me to pay more per month than somebody who’s gonna jump ship for $5 a month when they get a chance at a better deal ?

My bank constantly ( monthly ) sends me a postcard offering me $75 if I’ll just use Direct Deposit. That’s all well and good, except I took advantage of that over 2 years ago. And you only gave me $50. Either quit mailing me the damn postcards or give me another $25 !

It’s high time that ALL businesses wise up and take care of CURRENT customers. Why ?

1) We have no acquisition cost

2) We’ve shown loyaly, even thru your worst of times

3) We’ve probably trained half your employees … you sure don’t !

Now show us the good times ! Show us some loyalty !

Here’s what I want to see out front of a business/bank tomorrow - a sign that says :

Make sure that I, as a current customer, feel like you want my business more than you want new business and you’ll mine gold that’s nearer the surface than what you’re diggin’ for now.

Help me out here, somebody jump in and add to this conversation.

Seeing the great response to the last guest blogger, via email, I’m heading down that path again.

I met today’s guest blogger thru some thoughtful comments on a couple of my posts. His comments were at least as good as my post, if not better. I immediately emailed him and asked ( begged was more like it ) him to please grace us with a post of his own. He graciously obliged us and today I give you a great read from Tom Vander Well. Tom’s blog, QAQnA is part of the media produced by the c wenger group.

From Tom’s About page :

” Tom Vander Well has spent the last 12 years helping companies with their call center quality assessment (QA) and training efforts. Tom is partner and Vice-President of c wenger group, a consulting firm in Des Moines, Iowa that specializes in helping clients measure and improve customer service in their contact centers. “

I’m absolutely sure we can all learn something from Tom and I’m glad he shared his expertise with us here at Simplenomics. Here’s his post…….

In my role as quality coach, I’m often faced with a dilemma. On my handy-dandy Service Quality Assessment report, I have a whole laundry list of issues that this agent (or this team) needs to address. So where do I start ? How do I successfully motivate this agent to improve ?

The problem is that people will easily walk out of the training or coaching session with a “deer in the headlights” look if I give them the whole laundry list. Some will be motivated to try to improve, but once they’re back at their post the long list of skills will all blend together and, overwhelmed, they will soon be back to their old bad habits.

Simplify. It’s important to give people a manageable ” to-do” list when it comes to improvement. If I’m going to ask a Customer Service Representative (CSR) to work on some of her skills between now and our next coaching session, I’ll typically limit it to three items. Depending on the situation, I may give her just one skill that I want her to focus on until it becomes a habit.

Prioritize. Make a priority of those things that will have the greatest impact. Since our group typically does Customer Satisfaction Research, we know what is going to drive the customer’s satisfaction. For example, when the research shows that customers put a premium on product knowledge, I may put product training at the top of the list, asking the CSR to increase his knowledge on the features and benefits of certain products. If courtesy and friendliness is a big driver of customer satisfaction, then soft skills like using the customer’s name or using “please” when requesting the customers account number may be the priority for improvement.

Focus. Once you’ve set the priorities, stay “on message.” In fact, you need to be willing to put up with inconsistency in other areas, as long as the agent is showing improvement on the requested issues. If you only give a couple of priorities for improvement, then make sure you focus your subsequent coaching sessions or performance review on the improvement or lack of improvement in those areas. It’s unfair and discouraging to ignore the skills you’d previously mentioned and blind-side the CSR with some new issue.

Remind. If an agent has trouble remembering to use the customer’s name, I may make a little game of always greeting the CSR by name and using her name frequently in conversation. An Outlook reminder is helpful in prompting a quick e-mail or voice mail: ” Have you offered to help the customer with other needs today ? ” When a CSR continually forgets to thank the customer for holding, I may put a sticky-note on his phone next to the hold button that says ” Thank you for holding. ”

Reward. Positive reinforcement is simple, powerful and costs you little or nothing. Celebrate the CSR’s improvement. Verbalize your excitement and pride at the improvement they have made. Sometimes a small, tangible reward can add to the encouragement. Try a certificate of achievement, an e-mail of congratulations from a top executive, or even a candy bar.

Simplify, Prioritize, Focus, Remind, Reward. It’s always great to watch the excitement of CSR’s when they improve and know they’re doing a good job. It also has a positive effect on customer satisfaction and team morale. Sowing these simple seeds have consistently led to a harvest of CSR success and customer satisfaction !

I’m about as busy as a human can legally be and I’m being bailed out by a guest blogger. My good friend Debbi Bressler of The Home Business Review has responded to my plea for help and has written a fantastic article for us today.

You can follow the link to Debbi’s blog and site and find her About Me page and see all that she can do for you.

Take it away Debbi and thanks for helping me out. You guys go check out Debbi’s site/blog and leave her some comments here and there. Maybe we’ll be lucky enough, if you’re nice to her, to get her to come back on a regular basis.

I continue to preach about how easy it could be for companies to differentiate themselves from the competition with one simple technique. This tactic will not only create referrals and increase retention, but it is absolutely FREE to implement !

It’s called Customer Service.

Yes.

I know you’ve heard it from me before.

But here it is again.

Here’s the deal: As a small business person, you cannot compete with huge corporations with multi-million dollar advertising budgets. At least you can’t compete on their turf. But you can bury these faceless bureaucracies with the proper care and feeding of your customer.

Today’s case in point are wireless carriers.

My mom called me yesterday to tell me that she had just discovered her Sprint bill was wrong. Now, mom only has a cell phone for emergencies and when she and dad travel. She’s had a Sprint cell phone for SIX years. Now, she’s probably not their biggest customer by a long shot, but she’ll probably stay with them forever.

Unless they blow it. Which they did.

Should I point out my mom’s a redhead ? And you KNOW what they say about redheads and their tempers !

Anyway, my mom calls Sprint customer service (or as Clark Howard likes to say, “Customer No Service”) to find out about this new charge. (She’s had the same plan for the past six years so the price doesn’t fluctuate much.)

” It’s because you added international calling. “, the operator says.

Well, I’ve known my mom a pretty long time. And she has NEVER even placed an international phone call ……much less added interntional calling to her cell or landline phone. EVER. They’ve never travelled internationally and don’t have friends or relatives who live abroad.

” Well, this charge has been on here for months. Why don’t you look and see how many international calls I’ve placed in the six years I’ve had this account ? “, she said.

Sprint replies, ” Never. But that doesn’t mean you didn’t order it. ”

Well, this goes on and on. They couldn’t tell her WHO had taken this international order. Only that THEY don’t make mistakes and she did it. Later in the conversation, the lady intimated that because she’s up in years that she may have forgotten that she called to order this.

The Customer Service Rep and the supervisor told her there was nothing they could do. And it was obvious this was a mistake on their part. Someone just keyed in something wrong. (My daughter works for Cingular and she said that is quite common and Cingular CORRECTS the error for their customers.) But they told her that SHE had the problem….not them.

Here are the facts:

- The total cost for this “service” over the months she had it was around $32.

- This was a six year customer.

- The average cost to acquire a new cell phone customer is $300-400. It takes approximately 6-12 months to break even on new customer acquisitions.

Can you say STUPID ?!

Many years ago I had a cell phone with Houston Cellular. Similar circumstance.

One month I found my bill was $37 higher and found that they had instituted a policy that, if you did not specifically sign up for a new plan after one year, your plan would divert to their highest rates. With most companies, you continue on the original plan until and unless you change plans.

When I called to say I was never notified, the CSR told me ” too bad “. The supervisor told me they would not reverse the charges and there wasn’t a darn thing I could do.

So I wrote the Better Business Bureau.

And the Public Utilities Commission.

And the Attorney General’s Office.

Not only did I get my $37 back, but they had to tie up time in their legal department to answer to all three of these cases. Hmmm…..think that might have cost them more than $37 ?

Oh…and….I’m not the quiet type. So you can be assured that I warned everyone about doing business with them. For years.

If you will make exceptional Customer Service your mantra, you can find and keep customers that those big budgeted corporations can never touch.

‘Cause to those big corporations, you are Account #109073403. But to a small business person, you are ” Mr. Jones ” or ” Mary “.

‘Cause loyalty and respect are reciprocated.

And you can’t put a price on that.

I just read a post about good customer service that turned into poor customer service over at The Home Business Review.

Debbi Bressler had a nice then not so nice episode with Peter Montoya’s people and did a great job of analyzing the situation.

Click thru and feel her pain.

I had the distinct pleasure on January 18th of hearing Hal Becker speak on the topic of Customer Service & Sales.

He was our keynote speaker at the Carolinas Brick Forum 2006. His topic was ” Success In Customer Service “.

His might have been the best presentation I’ve ever heard on the topic, and I’ve heard, read and given over 100…easy.

The guy was just down to earth, common sense, plain and simple. He’s been there, done that and sold the shirt for charity. Which by the way is where the proceeds of his books go.

Hearing this, I bought the 3 ( and got him to autograph them ) pictured below :

Here’s a snippet of his world, to try and entice you to click thru to his website and hire him to come and make your world a better place :

Xerox’s #1 salesperson among a national sales force of 11,000 at the young age of 22…

Founder and former CEO of Direct Opinions, one of America’s largest customer service telemarketing firms…

Author of the national best seller “Can I Have 5 Minutes Of Your Time?,” “Lip Service” and ” Get What You Want “…

Received the Toastmasters International Communication and Leadership Award. He is one of only eight people in the world to be given this honor…

Inc. Magazine voted Hal as one of the nation’s top speakers in the areas of sales and customer service…

Hal is a CSP - or Certified Speaking Professional - which is the highest earned Designation presented by the National Speakers Assocication…

Devoted over 25 years to the science of sales and customer service…

Survived terminal cancer at 28 years old and now helps other patients and their families cope with their disease…

Founder of the Cancer Hotline of Cleveland and donates proceeds of his books to this cause…

Now, do yourself and your organizationa favor, call him, write him, email him or drive to Solon, OH and visit him, but get him for your next meeting. You will not be sorry.

Hope we get to see you again next year, Hal, you were great.

Seems to be a lot of mistakes being made in the customer service-o-sphere of late, so I thought I’d jump on the chance to help us all learn how-to and how-not-to.

For a few days, I’ll post about one particular mistake and see if some of you can add some advice to the fix.

Todays customer service blunder is:

I’m not a true believer in that old saying about the customer always being right, but they are always the customer and they just might be right.

Never, never, never try to out argue the customer. You might be fighting with bad info and that would make you unarmed, in actuality.

Just because someone in your company told you something, that may or may not make it the truth. Your coworkers are not infallible and some may be plain old stupid or liars.

Don’t try to out scream, outwit or outmaneuver a customer.

Take all their info, their concerns, their contact info and give them a time when you’ll have all the info you need to make an intelligent decision and get back with them.

If you cannot make a decision by the appointed time, call them and tell them so. Never let a deadline go by without communicating with the customer.

When you no longer need customers, then and only then can you get away with telling them to take their business elsewhere.

In todays market, you take a real chance that they might have a blog or newsletter that goes out to 50,000 people that will listen to their one-sided view of the situation and you just lost 50,000 potential customers.

A lot, let’s say the majority, of middle managers, let’s call them the great unwashed and foolish ones, are too stupid to even fathom this and will let their customer service personnel be rude and condecending to customers. The marketing department has no idea and the sales force can’t understand why they can’t sell icewater in the desert.

If your company is struggling to make any headway in your market, maybe you should hire someone to be a customer of your company and tell you what they run into when dealing with your customer service.

A lot of times, all it takes is a very basic approach like this to find the root of your failure to grow.

Sometimes word-of-mouth badvertising will override any and all efforts you make to grow your company.

Believe me, you can tell a customer to shove it, but they’ll tell a helluva lot more people than you can ever imagine and then those people will tell some people and those people will tell some people and those ……..

Here’s a link to Customer Service Experience. Glenn Ross looks at a site where customers can go to complain and the common thread he found in all the complaints.

I thought it fit in with a few of my experiences of late.

I just read a post by Seth Godin that said everything I’ve tried to say in almost every post in my Customer Service Simplified Category.

Here’s the only 2 “Rules” you need for every employee that deals with customers.

Per Seth :

1. Take Responsibility

2. Pay attention to detail

Now, that wasn’t so tough…or was it ?

Every single day I’m appalled at the lack of responsibility that employee’s take for the service you receive in their place of business.

An office I worked in once had this same infection. It was almost fatal.

I started preachin’ and yellin’, on occassion, as soon as I started work there about their seeming desire to always look for someone to blame, rather than looking for a way to make the customers experience a good one and work out the details of how to keep it from happening again later, as in when the customer was gone.

I knew I’d gotten to them one day when one of the employees asked me to take a call on line one and I had no idea why the person on the line needed to speak with me, much less any idea as to why he called our office to begin with.

I put the caller on hold for a second and asked rather loudly, ” Why in the heck did anyone give me this call ? ”

A voice from out the nether regions of the office said, ” Don’t look for anyone to blame, just get ‘er done. ”

Slapped by my own hand and I loved it.

Just when you think you’ve heard it all, there’s more where it used to come from.

When I read about customer service like this, I want to RUN ! not walk, away from that company as fast as I can.

Over at A Day In The Life Of A Persuasion Architect, you can read a sad, sad story about FedEx/Kinko’s or whoever they are today.

I would have paid money, and Howard Kaplan did, to have been the customer in this instance.

Can you even imagine the fun you could have had with these people ?

Man, I’d have been so loud and pushy ! I would have been snarky and dry ! I might have even been a little sarcastic ! You Think ?

Imagine the many, many ways you could have shoved a little marketing know-how down their throats. Revel in all the ways you could have pointed out the sheer stupidity of their process.

Here’s the best part, the part where I would have come un-freakin’-glued :

” An Associate Manager returns some time after with my printed, bounded report. He kindly explains to me, next time I should consider simply coming into the store, because it’s much easier for them to print things out on time that way. As I left the store, I thought about sending Tamara’s Conversion Tip off to the FedexKinkos corporate HQ, I just wasn’t sure if I should send it to Dallas c/o Kinkos, or Memphis c/o Fedex “

Come in to the store next time…don’t send it in advance so it will be waiting on you…bring it in and wait while we do it. Oh My God ! Wonder if the Marketing wonks at corporate know he’s telling customers to do that ?

Kinda defeats the whole freakin’ purpose of creating File, Print, FedexKinkos, doesn’t it ?

Click on over to the post that Howard lived thru and leave him some nice encouraging words of wisdom.

Tell him Mike sent you.