Posts Tagged ‘customer expectations’

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You can’t make all customers happy all the time … but try

December 8, 2009

One of things I teach is customers are more apt accept your answer or your policy if you explain why. But what happens if the customer decides not to accept your reason?

Shirley (not her real name) called me one day to tell me she had done exactly what I had told her, avoiding saying “policy” and instead explaining the reason. This particular customer refused to accept the reason and was very angry after Shirley said there was nothing more she could do.

The watch company Shirley works for accepts repairs in two ways: through the jewelry stores that sell the watch or directly from the customer. Both repairs end up in the company’s repair center, but the company doesn’t accept credit cards for repairs while the stores do. However, the stores also charge more than the company does for the same repair.

For this customer, Shirley explained that the number of direct repairs they get doesn’t justify the money the credit card company charges them. In other words, she was telling the customer he wasn’t worth the extra cost. Not only didn’t he buy her reason, he promised never to buy one of their watches again.

I understood her reasoning but asked her, “How do most people pay for things these days, especially when it involves sending something or ordering something through the mail?”

She agreed that most people pay with credit cards. She also agreed that they had a right to expect the watch company to accept the cards for repairs. But then she reiterated the reason.

The company didn’t encourage owners to send the watches directly because it wanted the jewelry stores to get the repair business – the direct repair was just a courtesy. So, the company made a conscious decision to accept repairs, but not to accept credit cards for the repairs, despite most people charging such things on their cards.

“I believe your reason is a good one,” I said. “But that doesn’t change the fact that most people expect to pay for repairs with their credit cards. The customer’s expectations are everything. People will decide whether they want to continue to do business with you based on whether you met, exceeded or didn’t meet their expectations.

In the end, every decision a company makes regarding policies and procedures has a consequence. You may be perfectly right in your reason but the customer didn’t think so. In the customer’s view, you weren’t being very customer-centric. Your reason said you cared more about the company’s bottom line than making it convenient for the customer.”

When faced with these types of situations, you’ve got to make a decision: Will I lose more money by disappointing a certain amount of customers than I will by doing what the customer wants? This company apparently decided they would lose more money if they did the latter. That’s perfectly okay, but the customer will still be unhappy.

Every organization has to strike a balance between making the customer happy and not giving away the store. Sometimes, the reason for the policy is valid and will hurt the company if you don’t enforce it. Other times, it’s worth giving up something to make the customer happy. You can’t make every customer happy all the time. But you do have to measure the consequences of not doing so.

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Facebook Violates the Basic Rules of Serving Customers

October 26, 2009

Facebook users were surprised this weekend to find that their Facebook news feed had changed. It wasn’t just a cosmetic change, it was a complete change in the way Facebook users get their information from their “friends.”

The change left users completely confused and baffled about why Facebook made this overwhelming change. In short, Facebook took the old “News Feed,” which is where Facebook users got their information, and split it in two – a “Live Feed” and a “News Feed”.

The Live Feed now details every post your “friends” put on Facebook, including some information that was never on the News Feed before, like who your “friends” are “friending.” The News Feed, according to Facebook “Aggregates the most interesting content that your friends are posting” Facebook decides what’s most interesting through an “algorithm (that) bases this on a few factors: how many friends are commenting on a certain piece of content, who posted the content, and what type of content it is (e.g. photo, video, or status update).” In this case, algorithm means “technical stuff you’ll never understand so trust us.” Some of your friends’ posts are on both, some are on only one with no rhyme or reason why.

So Facebook users spent the weekend into Monday trying to figure out how to manipulate the home page so that they can get something close to what they used to get from Facebook (Facebook said they changed everything due to “user input.” Really?). And by the end of Monday, many of us had found a way to get around the changes.

Facebook violated several rules of outstanding customer service and relationships:

1)      It didn’t tell users the change was coming. People like to be prepared for change, and Facebook ignored that. Oh yes, I now know that in the techie community it was known Facebook was making a change, but most users didn’t know.

2)      They didn’t clearly explain the reason for the change. The page just changed in the middle of the day leaving users saying, “Huh? What is this?”

3)      They confused their customers. As a writer once said, “If the reader doesn’t understand what you’re writing, it’s not the reader’s fault, it’s yours.” We are still confused.

4)      They didn’t know their audience. They did not take into consideration that the fastest growing part of their audience are people over the age of 40. We don’t have time to figure Facebook out. It’s fun. It’s enjoyable. We like connecting. I’m just trying to imagine how my 80-year-old mother, who just goes on Facebook to keep up with her children and grandchildren, is going to figure this out. What if they decide my comments aren’t important enough to land on her “News Feed?”

5)      They didn’t keep it simple. Which feed should I read, the News Feed or the Live Feed? Where are my kids’ pictures? Oh, they’re on the News Feed. Wait, no they’re not. They’re on the Live Feed. No, they’re on both.

6)      They made their customers work unnecessarily. As I teach in my customer service seminar, customers sometimes have to help, but most times, try not to make the customer do any work they don’t need to do. I shouldn’t have to feel triumphant because my niece told me how to get around the new system and I even improved on her instructions.

As companies grow, there is a tendency towards arrogance. Facebook is growing in leaps and bounds and its leadership is already saying it’s going to change the way we all communicate. Making changes that are confusing is no way to communicate.

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Customer Service Hero: Lori Ray, Olympus America, Ltd

October 14, 2009

Lori Ray, customer service representative for Olympus America saved my day. For that, I have named her a Customer Service Hero.

I had just finished recording a client’s words for a writing project I’m working on and went to transfer the remarks from my Olympus VN-4100PC digital voice recorder to my PC. The Olympus Digital Wave Player showed it recognized the recorder but was being very stubborn about transferring the files.

I checked out the recorder’s manual and found nothing. I even looked under “troubleshooting” because I was in trouble, though when I didn’t find my answer, I thought of shooting something else other than trouble. When a telephone number for customer service was not immediately findable on the Olympus website, I began to feel like someone dropped in the middle of a strange city without knowing how to get out. As the sweat began to appear on my brow, I found a number and called it. The voice recording indicated I had called Olympus Imaging products (Cameras) and I hung up. I rechecked the number and though it was the same, I tried it again. This time I stayed on long enough to hear the prompt for voice recorders.

Lori answered the phone and demonstrated everything I teach in my customer service course. She answered with a pleasant greeting and expressed a desire to help me. She asked me what the situation was and when I told her about the frustration of seeing that the software recognized my device but refused to transfer the files, she replied with an attitude of “Well, let’s see what we can do about that.”

Though I thought I must be missing something myself, she never made me feel like I was technically ignorant. She asked me several questions and had me repeat the various steps I had taken before I called her. The way she asked made me feel as if she was feeling the same frustration as I was, but she was going to figure it out no matter what. Her voice never showed the frustration but did show empathy. It probably helped that I remained calm, but I think she would have remained calm in any case.

Lori stayed on the phone with me for an hour (or so it seemed), tried this, tried that, and then, unlike so many others, she actually asked me if she could put me on hold and went to check with someone else. She made the conversation totally about me. She had asked what version of the software I had and apparently, there had been an update to solve the problem.

While she was telling me about the update, she was writing an email with links to the software and the update. She could have had me go to the Olympus website, navigate through the pages and find it myself. But no, she sent me the link while she was explaining so that when she got finished, the link was there for me to use.

I uninstalled the old software as she said and downloaded the new software and the patch. When my computer took a long time to shut down and reboot, I apologized and she assured me it was no problem (twice). After I rebooted, she had me reconnect my recorder, which opened the new software. Then she told me to try to transfer the files again and it worked.

Then she again exceeded my expectations while the files transferred. Apparently, I still had quite a few files on the recorder from previous uses and it was taking quite a while to transfer. Suddenly, I realized there was probably no reason for her to stay on the phone with me and offered to allow her to call me back after the transfer. She commented, “I probably won’t be here.” I looked at the clock and saw it was just after 5:00, but she had given me no indication that she wouldn’t have stayed with me for the duration. Finally, we agreed that I would email her when I saw it was alright. And it was.

In my customer service class, we show a video with a character, Maria, who does everything right. Some of the people in the class tell me Maria is “too perfect.” I ask, “Are there people who do what she does?” and they sheepishly say yes. After working with Lori Ray, our Customer Service Hero, I can honestly say I have met Maria in real life.  She is a customer service hero.

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Don’t make employees deal with stupid rules

September 8, 2009

People in my customer service classes always ask me, “What makes customers so angry?” Here’s an example.

According to the New York Times, flyers on some recent flights have been told they cannot place any items in the seatback facing their seat. When asked why, flight attendants have blamed the FAA for the rule, which seemed strange since nobody had ever run into this rule before, especially on the same airline.  After numerous inquiries, the FAA admitted that when an airline enforces such a rule, it is following FAA guidelines from a 2007 directive on cabin safety.  Most airlines contacted by the Times said they weren’t aware of the ban, with one United Airlines spokesperson saying, “The seatbacks are absolutely there to be used for personal items.”

Why would this bother customers? One, because the rule doesn’t make any sense.  Frequent flyers had never heard of such a thing and had been using the seatback to hold books, newspapers, and other items forever. To our knowledge, no item ever went flying out of a seatback, hit a pilot in the back of the head and caused the plane to crash. And a hijacker isn’t going to grab my copy of Newsweek and threaten a flight attendant with it.  Two, because flyers already are feeling more and more helpless being told they have to pay to check items, having no overhead room to store items they want to take on board, and being asked to take off their shoes when they go through security.  Now they can’t use the seatbacks. Third, and last, the FAA admitted it has such a directive, but didn’t say why.

It’s enough to make you scream – at the next airline employee you see.  I feel for the airline employee who has to take the brunt of a stupid rule.

One of the things I’m always sharing with my audiences is how companies (and government agencies) make rules that affect employees and customers and don’t explain why they came up with the rule. First, companies come up with the rule without asking whether it makes any sense at all or asking what impact it will have on the customer experience. The rule is not vetted to any great extent before it is foisted upon the employees who have to enforce it.  The managers have to tell employees about the new rule without having a good explanation, so they take an attitude of “Hey, they told me we have to (or can’t) do this. I’m just telling you what they said.”

The person who the rule affects most is the customer. And the person with whom the customer has most contact is the customer-facing employee. The customer-facing employee is given the responsibility to enforce the new rule, not knowing what to say to the customer who asks “why?” Then the customer gets upset, screams at the employee, who feels betrayed by her boss who didn’t give her the tools to make the customer happy.  The employee has lost any connection to the company she works for, argues with the customer and drives him away.

Who doesn’t feel the effect of this problem? The person, department, or agency that made the rule. They just go on their merry way thinking of new rules that make customers angry and drive customer-facing employees to treat customers poorly, go through the motions, or quit, both figuratively and literally. And who can blame them?

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Social media should terrify you and your business

August 19, 2009

Chew on this – “80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices … people update anywhere, anytime …imagine what that means for bad customer experiences.” (www.socialnomics.com)

Now, remember the last time you got really angry about something and were so glad later on that nobody was around to see you lose control. Then, ponder the above statistic again and think about all the people who will tell everyone who follows them on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and everything else that they had a horrible experience, way before they calm down.

Now, imagine that the name of the company or person they are texting, posting, or talking about is you. If you don’t find this terrifying, you must be awfully customer-centric or you’re fooling yourself.

The idea that people will post their anger about their customer experience while it is still happening is terrifying. How many times have we had to deal with the wrath of an angry customer who contacts us or our call center and lets loose with high-octane screaming and frustration about what happened? The only person who knows about that extreme anger is the CSR or other employee who is talking to them. Also, if we fixed the situation, their stories to friends about the incidents would be tempered by time and would include a happy ending.

The worst time to have somebody complain about your product or customer service is when the anger and frustration is still white-hot. And today, using social media to tell others about their anger is equivalent to somebody standing in the middle of your office or store and calling everybody they know to complain. In the old days, the anger might have calmed down by the time they got to the tenth person. Now, they can tell thousands (My daughter, Hannah, has 590 “friends” on Facebook. If Hannah complains about your product, 590 people hear about it instantly. Terrifying).

Even if they cool off a little, the customer you just ticked off may be one of the 200,000,000 bloggers out there. And statistics show that 54% of these bloggers post new information daily and 35% of bloggers post their opinions about products, services and companies.

What can we do about this?

  • Make a firm commitment to become customer-centric by implementing new procedures, systems and processes where the customer is the most important person in the conversation or the process. If you’re not sure how to do this, here are two books you can start with: Passionate & Profitable: Why customer strategies fail and 10 steps to do them right by Lior Arussy and The Best Service is No Service: How to liberate your customers from customer service, keep them happy & control costs by Bill Price & David Jaffe.
  • Make a major effort to map your customer processes. Identify the dozens, if not hundreds of touch points where your company touches the customer in any way (even those where the department or person doesn’t touch the customer directly). Identify which are most important and find out where you need the most improvement by talking to your customers. If you can’t do the surveying yourself, hire somebody (Arussy’s Strativity Group is a great consultant on these issues)
  • Get on Twitter NOW and set up a way for your customers to reach you there.
  • Train, train, train your customer-facing people in techniques to diffuse situations when they are in the white-hot stage. A calm customer with a problem is less likely to tell the world than an angry customer with a problem.

People now trust their peer’s recommendations over advertising by a factor of more than five-to-one. You should be terrified.

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It’s not rocket service!

August 17, 2009

Here’s a great exercise you can try to create outstanding customer service.  Get an easel chart with a pad. If you’re a manager, gather your people together. If you’re not, you may want to do this with some co-workers or friends.

Break the group into two or three smaller groups and ask each of the groups to remember when they were customers. Then tell them to write down the things they hate about dealing with customer service or customer situations, whether on the phone, in person, on email or anything else. Tell them they have to come up with at least 10 things (this should be pretty easy considering the stories I hear every day). If they can come up with more than 10, that’s even better.  Make sure you join in with one of the groups to add your two cents.

Stop the group when it seems they’ve listed enough items or when five minutes passes. Then go to the easel chart and taking one item at a time from each team, list the items on the pad. I want you to take one at a time because there will be repeat items. If the items fill up the easel chart page, hang it on the wall and start another page.

Once you have exhausted everybody’s list, ask them if there are any other items they want to add.  After you are sure there are no more items, have somebody (if not you) read the items aloud. Then say the following:

“These are the actions you said annoy you to no end when you deal with customer service. They drive you up a wall. So when dealing with your customers, DON’T DO THESE THINGS! Why? Because these things annoy people!”

It’s not rocket service. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist or any other genius to figure out how to treat customers. We all know what it’s like to be a customer. We all know what it’s like to get good service. Most importantly, we all know what it’s like to get bad service, and as the great Hebrew sage Rabbi Hillel said in the 1st century, “What is hateful to you, don’t do to other people.” The golden rule of “treat people the way you want to be treated” is all well and good, but even more important may be “don’t treat people the way you don’t want to be treated.”

Most problems with customer relationships would go away if most people and companies followed that rule and did the exercise above. People who deal with customers aren’t stupid and they know what’s right but are too often affected by poor work environments, lack of authority, and policies that force them to decide whether to treat the customer well or treat the customer quickly. Most people I know would like to have their problem solved quickly, but if given the choice, they would appreciate it more if it was done right.

What do your customers say about you when you’re not listening? Are they accusing you of the same things you put on your list? Here’s what you should do:

  • Take the list you made from the exercise above.
  • Turn it into a code of commandments (you can even use the “thou shalt not …” expression). Make the list extremely difficult to avoid in your office or other workplace.
  • Review the list at team meetings.
  • Show customers the list and ask them to let you know when the team (or you) has fallen down on the job.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure this out. It’s not rocket service.

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Survey says: Great customer experiences are more profitable

August 10, 2009

For 14 years, I’ve been preaching the benefits of creating outstanding customer experiences. The companies I work with seem to understand on an emotional level that better customer experiences bring loyalty from customers. But then they ask, “What is loyalty? What does it mean?” Behind those questions is skepticism that there isn’t really much to the whole concept. I’ve heard the line, “Our customers only care about price and they’ll remain loyal as long as our prices remain low” more often than I can count. In this economy, I’m hearing it more often than ever.

Now comes the 2009 Customer Experience Consumer Study from Strativity Group, Inc.  (http://bit.ly/GVH8I) which backs up the emotional understanding of exceptional customer experiences with one based on consumer opinions of their own experiences.  Based on surveys of 1,994 consumers, Strativity found that “Consumers … indicated they penalize companies that fail to deliver the desired experiences either by demanding discounted prices or by terminating their relationship altogether.”  The numbers show that:

  • 52% of unhappy customers say they will continue doing business with the company that made them unhappy only if it offers a discount of 5% or more. When we make customers unhappy, they want something in return.
  • Even in today’s difficult economic times, 40% of loyal customers (customers significantly happy with their customer experiences) are willing to pay an additional 10% or more to continue purchasing from the companies delivering great experiences. And while the study says only 9% of unhappy customers are willing to pay more, I see it this way: 91% of customers who are continuing to do business with you even though you’re not making them happy will bolt for the door if you raise your prices for any reason.

The study also notes that exceptional customer experiences result in significantly lower customer attrition. According to the report, “Loyal customers with exceptional customer experiences are almost three times as likely to continue doing business with companies for another ten years or more than the dissatisfied customers.” In addition, “Customers who received an inferior customer experience are ten times more likely to cease doing business with companies within the next 12 months than loyal customers.”

What does all of it mean? As Strativity puts it, “consumers want the maximum value rather than the lowest price.” If exceptional customer experiences are not among your competitive differentiators, you’re going to find yourself losing customers or selling your products and services at a lower price than you would like. In this economy, when revenues are down significantly already, can you afford to charge one penny less for your goods and services than you should? Deliver exceptional customer experiences and you not only won’t have to, you’ll probably be able to charge more.

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Are companies throwing marketing dollars out the window?

August 3, 2009

I ran across an article in Telephony Online with the intriguing title, “Are marketing billions being wasted?”(http://telephonyonline.com/global/news/service-provider-customer-retention-0803/)  It told of a survey of Chief Marketing Officers at telecom service providers in which the CMOs admitted that their efforts to gain and retain customers (are being) crippled by internal barriers (and) IT inefficiencies.”

Yes, they are. And it’s not just telephone and wireless companies who are doing it. It’s what I call being “pennywise and billions foolish.” The article might as well have been called, “It’s Not Rocket Service: You’re Wasting Your Marketing Dollars.”

A few years ago, I was teaching a customer service course to a wireless telephone company. The company had 23% turnover in customers over the past 12 months. I told them, “Having 23% churn means that at least 23% of your marketing dollars are being spent to replace customers you already had and could have kept!” What a waste! Telcos and other organizations skimp on hiring the right customer-facing people, keep wages of those people low in an effort to cut costs, create bureaucracies that stop customer-contact people from having any authority to fix the customer’s problem, and have no idea what the customer expects. And then when churn is higher than they want it to be, what do they do? They increase the marketing budget and invest in advanced CRM systems that tell them everything about the customer except the way he or she wants to be treated.

Three things popped out at me from the survey by the CMO Council and its Customer Experience Board: One, more than half the CMOs said “their companies need to improve their responses to customer pain points” two, 89% said they need to handle and respond to customer problems better, and three, “more than half believe their organization is not culturally or organizationally aligned around the customer.” And they wonder why they’re seeing higher rates of churn.

Sadly, these numbers are not unique to the telephony business. The same range of numbers comes out in survey after survey in industry after industry.

The answer is twofold:  One, figure out what roadblocks are stopping your customers from having the experience they expect and deserve. People buy again and again because they like the experience – the experience of using the product and the service they get when they buy and need help with the product. In the article, writer Carol Wilson talks about using news forums, blogs and other social media to track what people are saying about the issues with the products. Customer surveys won’t tell you half as much as finding out what people are saying online.

The other answer is to invest in hiring and training truly customer-caring people and paying them well. Then, give them the authority to fix customer problems the way the customer expects. Yes, it’s going to cost more, but if you don’t spend it on increased service levels, you’re going to waste the money on marketing anyway.

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Customer Service is better than it used to be; But our expectations have changed

June 16, 2009

Customer service is better than it used to be. It’s just that people expect more.

I know, you think I’m crazy. After all, don’t we all agree that customer service isn’t what it used to be when we used to visit Mr. Hooper in his store? People used to be soooooo nice and so prompt! Weren’t they?

Well, not really. If you think really hard, you’ll remember department stores that made it very, very, difficult to return things, deliveries that really took 4 to 6 weeks to come, long lines at return- and complaint counters, checks that took a week to clear, and restaurant employees who would look at you as if you were from another planet if you asked for a refill on your Coca-Cola. If we wanted our car’s oil changed, we either did it ourselves, or left the car with the mechanic all day. If you mailed something across the country, it took four or five days, if not more. And not every storeowner was the saint we remember him to be.

Actually, customer service is either better than it used to be, or about the same. We are the ones who have changed. We expect more. We want more. We have a different concept of value. We look at things differently. Our definition of good service has changed. Our expectations are based on how the world has changed and what we know is possible.

The corner men’s clothing store that my grandfather and my father owned couldn’t survive today in a culture of strip shopping centers and enclosed malls. Of course, most people who shopped in their store were neighborhood residents who walked to get there. They didn’t shop around much, so they knew my grandfather. If he carried four different colors of dress shirts, that’s what they chose from. If you lived in a city, going to the downtown department store was a royal pain. You had to take the bus or the subway. If you drove there, you looked for a parking space for what seemed like forever. And those people who worked in the department store? They were so impersonal. When you think about it, those department store employees were similar to what we find today.

The definition of good service has changed because it is rare to find a true neighborhood retailer anymore. How many people today would shop in the 15,000 square foot supermarket of the 1960s or 1970s? We want the Super Wal-Mart or the Costco. We need the Men’s Wearhouse or department store where we can choose from dozens of suits in our size. And if they don’t have the suit we want in the size we want, they can call another store. My grandfather couldn’t do that. We can go online and order something from our local Best Buy and it will be waiting for us when we get there.

Speed is everything today. We don’t tolerate the slow pace of yesterday’s service. It used to take me a total of 45 minutes to walk to my local stationary store, select a 45-RPM record of my favorite song, walk home and place it on my turntable. Today, if my daughter wants a current hit song, she downloads it in seconds. If you ordered something from the internet, would you wait 6 weeks to get it? I don’t think so. Without the internet, we used to wait that long.

However, this doesn’t let you off the hook when you deal with your own customers. We don’t rate customer service on how it used to be. We rate customer service on how we expect it to be now, and your customers have higher expectations than they used to have. It’s just the way it is. Your job is to find out what your customer’s expectations are and meet or exceed them. It doesn’t matter how good customer service is or was. What matters is what your customers expect.

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Customer Expectations Drive Everything!

June 11, 2009

Customer Expectations drive everything! A customer’s expectation is the chief determining factor in customer happiness and loyalty.

During the past 15 years or so, I have spent time in the offices of more than 100 different companies and organizations. One of the first things I notice are the messages management sends its employees. One of the messages they often send is “exceed expectations.” Several companies have gone so far as to include “exceed expectations” in their mission statements or values statements, which they then put on a large plaque which hangs somewhere in the front of the office. Yet after I see those plaques and messages on the walls and bulletin boards, I take a walk around the office looking for the plaque that lists the customer’s expectations.

And I never find it.

How can you exceed customer expectations if you don’t know what they are? It’s like shooting at a target without being able to see it.

Most companies and people have no idea what their customers expect from them. Few people take the time to ask the customer to identify his or her expectations. The scary thing is your success depends on knowing that information.

No matter if your customers are internal or external, they have certain expectations. How they feel about you, your product and your company is based on how well you meet or exceed those expectations. Frankly, our expectations determine the way we feel about almost anything. Everything in life is about expectations.

During the past few years, gasoline prices have been all over the map. One day, the price was $4.20 a gallon. Outrageous! So, imagine what my reaction would have been if a couple of days later, I went into the gas station and found that the price had dropped to $3.15. I would have been thrilled! The price is $3.15 after the price had been $4.20 just a few days before? What a great price! With that kind of a difference, I’m running home to get my wife’s car and fill her tank too before the price goes back up!

A few months later, the price had dropped significantly to about $1.75 a gallon. So, imagine what my reaction would have been if a couple of days later, I went into the gas station and found that the price had gone up to $3.15. I would be so angry! The price is $3.15 after being $1.75 just a few days before? Outrageous!

Same price, different expectations.

If you expect the price to be $4.20 and it turns out to be $3.15, you’re going to be very happy (especially if the price had been in the $4.00 range for a while). If you expect the price to be $1.75, you’re going to be livid if the price jumps to $3.15.

If you want to exceed my expectations, you’d better find out what those expectations are. Expectations drive everything, from your business relationships to your personal ones. They drive your customers to your business and can drive them away if you don’t meet or exceed them.

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