Tag Archives: customer service

Fast response is the new normal in customer service

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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Empathy drives experience innovation

The Walt Disney Company

Image via Wikipedia

Recently I was in Mexico to have lunch with a friend. I went to pick him up from from a meeting but had to wait a few minutes outside of his offices. As I was waiting for him I parked in front of a pharmacy and it dawned on me that in this particular area there where five pharmacies in about a half mile radius. These pharmacies all looked alike, they were not from the same brand and the only distinction was the color of their walls. I have no doubt they operate the same way. It got me thinking about how I could differentiate one from the others…

Experience innovation is a difference maker

Innovating an experience improves or reinvents the customer experience in the purchase or usage of a product or service. Companies such as Disney stand out as a prime example of what it means to innovate a customer experience. Apple is right there too with their Apple store. The reason both stand out is because they’ve , says Scott Gould.

Another great example of a company that stands out is Umpqua. We all know what a traditional bank looks like, well :

Umpqua’s 15-year track record of growth has little to do with the products it markets, which are virtually identical to the products offered by other banks. What’s distinctive about Umpqua has to do with how it offers those products — its commitment to reimagining the experience of interacting with a bank. Davis puts is this way: “If you took a person, blindfolded them, sent them to a bank, and took the blindfold off, 99% percent of them would say, ‘I’m in some bank somewhere.’ We want our customers to say, ‘I’m in an Umpqua bank.’ We don’t want the experience of banking here to feel like banking anywhere else.”

That’s why Umpqua designs its branches to appeal to all five human senses.

What Umpqua understands it that to be and stay relevant, you have to be different in every sense of the word. Not just ‘be different’ as marketing ploy, but ‘do different’ and make a difference. In the video below, Fast Company Co-founder, Bill Taylor starts talking about Umpqua around the 9 minute mark to help clarify my point (watch the whole talk, it’s worth it):

See what I mean?

What Not to be

Slice Perfect is another fine example. They’re not your typical pizza place. Just like Umpqua they started by asking ‘’. The result is a different kind of pizza place that goes deeper than just looks. When searching for a sustainable competitive advantage, experiences are the hardest to copy. No experience is the same. How many have tried to copy Disney and failed? Starbucks?

The Killer App of Trust

Trust is an often overlooked competitive advantage. The Ritz Carlton knows this very well and have been creating trust with it customers for a long long time. They understand than . This means that that by creating a level of trust between a companies employees and it’s customers, authentic value in the form of better service can be delivered. That’s not manufactured value, it’s real authentic. Zappos also understands that by empowering employees to develop their own customer relationship breakthroughs it makes the customer experience more authentic. The result is more trust with customers.

Experience innovation is also difficult to accomplish. Jeffrey Phillips of OVO Innovation says:

Customer experience innovation requires understanding what customers value in the “touch points” and interactions with your products, services and your firm, and placing the right investments on the most important and valuable touch points.  Customer experience needs to consider each “channel” a customer may use to interact with your firm:  retail locations, telephone, web, email, direct mail, advertising, etc.  The total customer experience cuts across a number of vertical silos within many organizations, including sales, marketing, products and customer support and service.

Authenticity is the result of human innovation

If you’re familiar with the Experience Economy, then all of the above is nothing new. But if you’re not, in the video below Joseph Pine talks about how customers really want an authentic experience:

So how do you start thinking about innovating your own experience?

Remember the What Works Matrix? Here’s the time to use it. I’ve already given you some examples of companies that have distinct customer experiences, you can pick them apart for ideas. You can then .

wrote a great presentation of the 4 practical steps he took to create . You can use the customer experience cycle map to look at where a ‘shake up’ might come useful to deliver a better experience to the customer. Once you identify those critical touch points you have your challenge that needs to be addressed, it’s time to go to the What Works Matrix and start searching for alternatives that you can the bring over and implement yourself.

Though going through these steps will not result in instant results, it’s an exercise in opening your mind on how your customers experience you. Once your mind is open you’ll be a lot more concerned about your customer experience and start thinking up ideas in no time.

Remember: Empathy drives experience innovation

Break out of orbit!

Disney, Apple, Ritz Carlton, Starbucks all provide a distinct experience when compared with the ‘old way’ of doing things. If you sell commodities (like Starbucks) you can change how your customers purchase or use your products or services to create a distinct customer experience.

The point is to understand this. Ask yourself: What don’t you want to be? Do you want to be like your competitors?

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You should never have to worry about…

Not having to worry about ‘x’ sounds too good to be true. Yet what if your value proposition was really focused on doing exactly that for customers or clients?

There aren’t a lot of companies ‘doing’ it so I was surprised to see what Box.net founder Aaron Levie said about his company’s intent:

“We’re moving toward a future where storage isn’t an issue,” Levie said. “You should never have to worry about how much storage you use.”

Take this example and apply it to something else. What if you never had to worry about having bad customer service? Ever! Wouldn’t that proposition really intrigue you? Of course it does.

Radicalize your strategy

Now apply it to your own offering. Think about an extreme version of your offering and stretch it to the point you may go bankrupt because you’ll be so focused on ‘eliminating worries’ that your customers will thank you for it!

Next, scale it back a little to the point where it generates interest and you can come up with ways to make it work.

Radical doesn’t mean risky, it means impact!

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An undeniable truth is an opportunity for innovation

rather get punched in the testicles than call customer service

punched in the testicles than call customer service

Undeniable truth: a statement that almost everyone could agree with that has natural effect of causing people to nod their heads in agreement.

With that out of the way it’s hard not to agree with the statement on the picture above. I think most of us dread calling customer service, we find it annoying and a waste of our time. But I’m not going to bore you with my ongoing assault on customer service, instead I’m going to remind you that a way to spot opportunities for innovation is to recognize when the system is stuck.

Customer service is clearly stuck, it hasn’t changed one bit and just the fact that somebody took the time to draw a cartoon about how badly it sucks makes it an undeniable truth.

And boy is it a worthy challenge!

To @Dell: Please pay attention to your customers

I apologize in advance, this is a rant.

I’ve been a loyal Dell customer for 7 years now, never had a problem until a few weeks a go. In the last month and a half I’ve been without my laptop for 4 weeks. A laptop that is only 10 months old has been to Dell twice. It’s had the mainboard, the fan, the heatsink and even the keyboard replaced. Can’t figure that last one out but ok thank you, too bad the real problem I sent it back to you isn’t fixed yet.

jorge's xps 1640

BEA-utiful!

Don’t want to get into details as to why my laptop has been to repair center twice but let’s just say that XPS 1640’s have ‘loud fan’ issues and mine got the bug after I sent it the first time to Dell. Getting a bug on your laptop isn’t a very nice thing. I had to go to the Virus Removal Australia company to get the bug removed. It didn’t have this problem when I bought in December so why all of the sudden does it load the system fan even when idle? You have no answer. Worse yet this has been going on for awhile so it’s not like it’s a new issue, yet you didn’t let me know about it. You said you would fix it, didn’t tell me how but ok sounds good I’ll wait it out again since it’s under warranty.

A few days after I requested a dispatch to send my laptop back for another round I got an email from one of your XPS tech support reps asking me to send detailed information on what the problem is, which I gladly did. Anyway, I get my laptop back today and the problem persists and it makes me feel as though you changed the parts and sent it back to me without taking the time to see if the problem was fixed.

What’s worse about all of this is how you’ve wasted my time and yours too.

Why don’t you call me and ask me what’s wrong with it while you have it with you to make sure you’re covering all the bases? Why don’t you send me an email to tell me what you’re going to do to it similar to when a person goes into surgery? Why do you just send it back to me with the problem knowing that I’m probably going to call you back and request it get fixed again?

I could go on and on with questions but the point is you’re ignoring me, your loyal customer. And that my dear Dell is a BIG no-n0!

Anyways, tomorrow I’ll be calling you back with the same request. I hope you’re in it for another round because I plan on getting  my laptop back to the state it was when I bought it, flawless!

Good nite for now, I’ll let you catch your breath and meditate on how this affects your future relationship with me 😉

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Innovation posts of the week: Ideas big or small?

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What matters: Don’t waste your customers time

In the past month I spent close to 9 hours with support representatives from a couple of companies with whom I’ve had issues with. One is Sprint and the other is Dell.

While 9 hours in a month doesn’t seem like a lot, believe me it’s a lot. When I was in high school I worked at a call center as a tech support representative for Verizon Wireless, so believe me when I say that spending a lot of time on the phone trying to resolve an issue is incredibly annoying for both the customer and the support representative. Especially when you (the customer) doesn’t get the issue resolved. As a support representative you can either make a customers day or you can become the focus of their anger.

One question I ask representatives all the time, which they have no idea how to answer, is: Why do I have to repeat myself every time I’m transferred from one representative to the other?

Wouldn’t it be easier if the first person you talk to took your information, entered it onto ‘the system’ once and it remained there for everyone to access until your matter is solved? This way the next person who gets to talk to you knows what’s going on before you even open your mouth. No seriously, we’ve got the technology to do it we just need someone to start acting differently and do it. Vendor and clients messaging system in Woocommerce has figured this out and does it in their own kind of way! by having wordpress chat- fastest way to respond to your customers.

Believe me when I say that people take these calls for granted. As customers we know that whenever we call customer support we’re probably going  to spend a good amount of time on the phone. What if you (the biz) broke this expectation and actually made it less annoying when we call? Customers are annoyed before they even call! We often find ourselves too busy to deal with answering the phone too so we have started to use an answering service. It’s been a huge help, so if you’re strapped for time then give a service for that call answering a go.

The issue I had with Dell also got me thinking about the element of time. I was without my laptop for 2 weeks and more is coming because another hardware issue came with the fix so I have to send it back.  As I was telling my friend Arnold Beekes about it he suggested that Dell should have provided me with a temporary laptop while mine was being fixed, similar to how car dealerships do when you bring your car in for a check up.

These are the types of things that make a difference in the customer experience but some companies don’t figure it out until it’s too late. What if companies got annoyed when they felt they’ve wasted their customers time? What type of behaviors would emerge? In what ways would their business strategy change? How would their business model change?

Personally the issue of wasting people’s time does not sit well with me, so whenever I feel others (can be company or person) are wasting my time it annoys me. It also works the other way, if I feel that I’m wasting your time it bothers me.

My point is that time is such a precious resource and if you (the biz) mindlessly waste the customers time, you are ignoring a valuable opportunity to exceed their expectations because now more than ever we are more time constrained; we have more activities vying for out attention. If you can make the time customers do spend with you more valuable, you will make a small difference in their lives and that really matters 🙂

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