Tag Archives: customer service

6 Obstacles to customer focus paradise

in Customer Service

A year and a half ago I had a huge customer service issue with Dell. This issue was ultimately fixed for me, but the experience left a stingy feeling. Not to mention a burning desire to change it.

Fast forward to an article on the New York Time’s about a guy who is living through a three month customer service odyssey with HP. It is a very similar situation to mine, and it brought back those terrible memories of  not being able to do anything and feeling like you are being ignored.

The article got me, and a few other people, thinking about the gap between what matters to customers and what matters to organizations:…

If you can’t answer these questions, your business is irrelevant

in Innovation

We recently met with representatives from one of the largest energy utility providers in Mexico to talk about their current issues and how we might help them transform themselves.

Before we met, I created a list of 20 questions to ask them. These questions, which went into detail about their their current strategy, could give us a inside look of this company’s thinking and what we might be up against.

Here are a few questions that went unanswered and thus got these executives to shake their heads:…

Customer service sucks in Mexico

in Customer Service

I’m currently in Mexico meeting with executives from a few large companies, including the nations largest telecommunications company, to talk about social media technologies and what this means for them. Let me say this, it’s incredible how separated from the current reality these companies are.

While some companies in the U.S. are already taking advantage of social media for both external and internal activities (think social business), in the Mexico it isn’t so. For example. I asked a female executive from this telecommunications company if she knew if her company had a Twitter account. She said no.

They do.

But what I really wanted to know is if she knew that her Twitter account gets dissed the most by customers. In other words: there is a lot of hate towards your company on Twitter.

I told her she should check it out because it would be eye-opening. She did and immediately directed me to another female executive who had more ‘decision power’. I asked her the same thing. Same response. I told her to open up her browser, go to www.trendsmap.com, put in her company name in the search box and click search to see the magic.

Bang!…

Why every customer service “success” on social media is really a customer service failure

in Customer Service

One of the main benefits of social media is to provide instant customer service. While this might be true, I think we’re seeing it from the wrong angle. Companies are looking at it as a way to put out fires, to delay an customers eventual frustration.

Simplr’s blog post exploring how social technologies might change customer service. But first, we should look at how we actually conduct customer service away from social media.

A few weeks ago, as soon as Google+ was unleashed, Michael Dell asked people if they would like to connect with Dell Service teams via Google Hangout. Lots of people thought it was a great idea, but one comment in particular caught my attention:

Danny Sullivan  –  Jul 18, 2011  –  Public
No +Michael DellI don’t want to use Hangouts to connect with Dell customer service. What I want, from you or any company, is to ensure I actually get the best customer service experience possible when I actually use your “normal” customer service channels.Eventually, I’ll finish my long-planned blog post on how every customer service “success” on Twitter, Facebook or Google+ is really a customer service failure. In short, consider this.If I walked into a store and started yelling about how bad the store was, to get my problem resolved, who would consider that a successful customer service model? But that’s basically what we are encouraged to do through social media, yell there as an attempt to get problems solved as a last resort.OK, it’s more nuanced than that. I have have great respect for the people who do perform huge customer service through social media channels. But these shouldn’t be end runs your customers need to use because your regular customer service channels are so convoluted and so often backed by people who aren’t enabled to just solve problems.That’s where I’d like to see you or any company put your energies, before we get more social media candy.

And that (in bold), is the point.

People are using social media as a last resort to vent their frustrations. And businesses are reacting to it by asking customers to post positive reviews online to counter the hate. Sure, businesses will react positively after an unhappy customer (who is well connected) posts his frustrations on Twitter and Facebook. It’s common sense. But this doesn’t help things, it just creates a never ending loop of reaction.

They’re not delighting customers, they’re merely delaying frustration.

What we really need to do is look at social media as another way to win the hearts of customers. To delight them. Not as a way to put out fires.

While you may see Zappos using social media for customer service, they don’t really see it that way. For them it’s another way to connect with their customers and as an opportunity to win their hearts. One more way to ‘Deliver Happiness’.

Problems will arise no doubt because no company worth mentioning never makes a mistake. Just don’t keep on making the same ones over and over again because that is what frustrates customers.

Bottom line is delivering customers service through social channels should not be seen as a silver bullet solution, simply adding more touch points to your mix but not solving the customers problem isn’t going to to save you. The customer doesn’t care if you experiment on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin or Google+, what they care about is being treated with respect and getting their issues resolved.

And lastly, don’t ignore them. I repeat, don’t ignore them. If you’re on these channels, they expect you to be there for them.

P.S. I’ll leave with a few more comments to reinforce the point:

customer service dell google+

Related articles
  • Is social media marketing causing you to lose money? (smartblogs.com)
  • Yes, Customers Are Willing to Use Social Media for Customer Service [Infographic] (readwriteweb.com)
  • How social media can save your business from a customer riot (smartblogs.com)

Customer service matters as much as innovation

in Customer Service, Innovation

This past week I read two amazing customer service stories. First, there’s Sarah Green’s story on how she left her friends house keys with an Amtrak employee because she forgot to deliver them herself before she left for Boston. The Amtrak employee delivered the keys of course.

Then there’s Rick Broida who’s two HP desktop PC’s died within two weeks of each other, and ended up getting both PC’s repaired for free without a warranty.

Go ahead and read them, they’re well worth it.

While both stories are shocking, it’s a shame they have to be shocking. Why can’t these types of stories be the norm?…

Why you shouldn’t ignore your customers

in Customer Service

My blog was offline for two days because my former hosting (got a new one, hurray Blue Host!) shut me down. According to them my blog was using excessive resources and so had to be shut down immediately. In other words, is getting a lot of traffic and we can’t handle you.

The problem is, I didn’t get any warning beforehand. Nothing. They just shut me down and provided me two options: Pay or get out.

Here’s the email:

From: Daniel .net <contacto@danielmercado.net>
To: Jorge Barba <jorge_a_barba@yahoo.com>
Sent: Tue, March 8, 2011 12:55:36 AM
Subject: Fwd: [#DLY-383077]: Abuse -> Excessive Use

Que onda wey te suspendieron el Hosting los de mi Hosting por que ya jalas muchos recursos. Checa eso. Ya ocupas un servidor dedicado. Como la vez?

Daniel Mercado

Begin forwarded message:

From: “GreenGeeks Support” <support@greengeeks.com>
Date: March 7, 2011 10:25:46 PM PST
To: contacto@danielmercado.net
Subject: [#DLY-383077]: Abuse -> Excessive Use
Reply-To: support@greengeeks.com 

Hello,

It has come to our attention that your sub-account gamecha has been using excessive resources and your account has been suspended to prevent further service interruption for other customers.

###
User    Domain                    %CPU    %MEM    MySQL Processes
gamecha    game-changer.net 8.15    4.32    7.1
###

Right now, you have the option of optimizing or fixing the issue to prevent this from occurring again. If optimizing/fixing the issue doesn’t prevent the issue from reoccurring, it means that your account is no longer suitable for the shared hosting environment and you will need to find another web hosting provider. For this, you have two options:

#1. You can be provided with a pro-rated credit and upgrade to our Virtual Private Server service which will allow your heavier site to run on its own segmented virtual slice of a server. See full details here: http://www.greengeeksvps.com/. This means that other customers cannot affect you, and you cannot affect other customers. This is your best option as you’ll only end up having further issues with other shared hosting providers. We will also provide you with full migration service to the VPS free of charge.

#2. We can provide you with a pro-rated refund and a full backup of your account which you can take to a web host of your choice. I strongly suggest going with #1 as it’s the best option for your web site.

Please let us know how you wish to proceed.

Please get back to us if you need any further assistance and let us know how else we can help.

Thank you and have a great day,

Artur K.
GreenGeeks Support Team

****
TELL US ABOUT YOUR EXPERIENCE WITH GREENGEEKS:
http://www.greengeeks.com/why-us/testimonials_submit.php
****

I didn’t take the bait. Getting my information from them took 1 day. And then another day of importing and problem solving on my new hosting. That’s two days without email. Email which got lost in the internet somewhere. I’m still without email today because of the name server propagation.

Lots of time wasted.

Don’t you think this is complete BS? One thing about delivering great customer service is that if you ignore customers and waste their time they’ll be pissed off and stop doing business with you.

It’s safe to say that I’m not recommending them to anyone because they suck!

So GreenGeeks if you’re reading this, nobody likes being ignored. You can have a wonderful network infrastructure with all the bells and whistles but if you ignore your customers, you suck!

 

Fast response is the new normal in customer service

in Customer Service, Marketing

Do you know what kind of service drives people crazy? Poor attention.

According to research from Zendesk 82% of people stop doing business with a company because of poor customer service. And poor attention is in my opinion is where it all starts because nobody likes being ignored.

Here are a few things that happened to me last week…

This morning I received an email from Sxipper, a password management program for Firefox that I used, replying to a ticket I submitted over a month ago. Yes, that’s right. It’s been over a month and they just answered.

But get this, it’s just a reply that they’ve seen my email. Not a solution. Well guess what, they’re too late.

Since I submitted my inquiry and didn’t get a fast answer I changed to another provider, LastPass.

Result: Ni modo, you lost out. If you would have answered quickly I would still be using your product.

Earlier in the week I noticed that bit.ly was not functioning when clicking on links through Tweetdeck. So I asked if anybody else was having the same issue and two minutes later I got a response from the folks at bit.ly:

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/bitly/statuses/38689020481372160″]

Result: Now I know what’s going on. Great! It wasn’t that hard.

Another example, this past week I switched the ‘share buttons’ on this blog to AddThis. Not everything went smoothly, the buttons were not showing up initially. I checked with them on Twitter but they don’t seem to use it as a customer service channel, so I went over to their forums and posted my inquiry and got a response within a few hours. They pointed out that I was missing some code for it to work, told me what I needed to do and they fixed it for me. This wasn’t their problem, it was my themes problem.

Yes, AddThis fixed a problem that wasn’t theirs so that I could use their plugin. BEA-utiful!

Result: I post about how cool their plugin is and recommend you use it too.

Worst is not responding

When you don’t respond, people are going take it as a ‘‘we don’t care about you’ signal. The result is they’re going to tell their friends about how much you suck and will switch products to someone ‘who does care’ about their needs. It’s that simple!

Even if you have a high cost to switch (telcos), people will put their money down to switch because in the long run they much prefer not to deal with you. High switching costs are no longer an excuse for ignoring people. Get over it.

Getting it right

Customer Service is the new marketing because your customers don’t live on your time, they live on theirs. You have to acknowledge that they have control to tell others if you’re the best or the worst. And if you have a web presence (which you should), customers expect you to be there for them if an issue arises. There are countless ways to provide support and answers such as forums, Twitter, phone and email but still, in most cases people still prefer to talk to a live person for customer service.

Do you really want to talk to them? How committed are you? Do you see customer service as an added cost or as a difference maker?

While fast response is not a new idea, it’s execution is. The world has changed and so has customer service. People are on social networks talking to their friends about either what a great or bad service they got with you. One of them can win you loyal customers, the other one can make you look like the worst business on the face of the planet. Which one do you want to be? The balls on your court.

Fast response when we have a problem. Today and tomorrow, that’s what we expect from companies who’s products or services we use.

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