Tag: customer service

Categories
Uncategorized

What does Halloween have to do with Customer Service and Satisfaction? Quite a bit actually…

Max as Master ChiefAs I mentioned previously, our taller son decided on dressing as Master Chief from Halo for Halloween, with his younger brother adopting the persona of a Pokemon Ranger. And, as luck would have it, both costumes were made from scratch, as neither are mass produced.

So we completed our first (and last 😉 Pepakura model, this of the Master Chief’s spartan helmet. All it took was sixteen sheets of card stock, white glue, a roll of Scotch tape and a week’s worth of after-the-kids-go-to-bed patience.  And don’t forget the epoxy resin with fiberglass, camo spray paint, foam inserts and electrical tape.  

CJ is a Pokemon Ranger, not Michael Flatley ;)As for Pokemon Rangers? Let’s just say if my wife never sees a sewing machine ever again it will be too soon.  That and the hot glue gun, fabric tape and the late nights searching for just the right images in the Internet. 

What does this have to do with customer satisfaction?

Everything.

I found that for every piece of research done at the hardware store, craft shop and fabric supply, we found nothing but helpful staff ready to assist us with ideas, guidance and how-to’s.  On the web we found plenty of examples and detailed step-by-steps written by people eager to answer our questions, either with suggestion on how to scale Master Chief’s helmet to a fourth grader’s mop top or the best hi-res Pokemon Ranger images. 

And all this at a time when stores are brimming with people searching for many of the same things: help, direction and assistance.  It amazes me that the customer service staff at the craft stores are able to keep from shutting down and locking the store when the storm of last-minute shoppers come in search of that perfect accessory or pattern for a full on Valkyrie costume. They’ve heard the same question asked a thousand times, and generally answer it each time with a smile, often taking you by the hand to the exact place in the store where you’ll find the tube of Styrofoam glue you have been searching for since September.

Of course, as a result of all the effort we put into these projects, we met and exceeded the needs of our core customers: our kids.

It strikes me that online and telephone customer service agents go through much of the same thing: answering the same questions, taking the same information and dispatching the same answers each and every day.  Sometimes the mere action of having someone to walk through the steps helps to solve the problem.  And just like the store staff at our local plastics speciality store, they love it when a tough problem comes in the door: something to dig into and tackle a problem that hasn’t been seen previously, or solve a problem that’s been plaguing a customer for far too long.  As I work with our customer service representatives and escalation engineers, I’m reminded of this and happy to see the passion in their interest to solve customer issues… er, I mean problems. 

And speaking of customer satisfaction, let me also say this: knowing your customer and meeting their expectations is key to winning their hearts and minds.  In the case of Hallowe’en, this includes knowing just where to take your kids to maximize the candy benefit and allure of visiting dad’s office… what kid doesn’t like tagging along to where your parent’s work?  This evening, the kids not only had the chance to trick or treat with their friends in the neighbourhood after dinner, they had the chance to visit me at the end of the day and hop from office to office gathering candy as so many squirrels gathering nuts.

And the employees in our buildings got a kick out of it as well: taking pictures, decorating offices, donning costumes and laying our candy for the munchkins roaming the hallways.

Happy Hallowe’en.

Tags: Microsoft, Customer Service, Customer Support.

Delicious Bookmark this on Delicious Bookmark and Share

Also available via http://bit.ly/3wqLdi

Categories
Uncategorized

Sometimes, you should fire your customer

It has been a good but busy week (complain, complain) between work and home. 


One evening I returned a purchase at a local big box store, without a problem — the clerk was friendly, helpful and fast.  Whilst in line, I overheard a discussion (it was difficult not to hear) a return transaction gone wrong, where the clerk could not say anything to appease the customer attempting to return something for cash without a receipt.


Hello, McFly?  Where have you been?  Return something without any receipt?  Surely, you’re joking.


Then I thought that sometimes, the customer is not always right. 


And it’s OK to fire your customer.


BusinessWeek has an article on how one small firm did just that… and made for more profitable business.



“Not every client can be your favorite. That’s what Debra Brede, an investment adviser and owner of five-person D.K. Brede Investment Management in Needham, Mass., used to think about one of her most demanding customers. For 20 years, the woman showed up at appointments with bags stuffed with every slip of paper connected with her investments—proxy statements, annual reports, dividend notices—expecting Brede to go over each one with her. Brede did. She wanted to offer good service, and this woman had a $1 million account. That’s a healthy amount for Brede’s company, which has about $1.7 million in revenues each year.”


The article notes that when customers begin costing you money, then it’s time to cut the cord… a move that may even boost revenues. In this case, the investment manager ‘fired’ about a dozen of her clients (less than 2% of the total customers) and found that “profits rose 25% last year, compared with about 9.5% in each of the past few years.”


Last year, Seth Godin wrote that sometimes you have to fire a customer.



“Politely decline to do business with them. Refer them to your arch competitors. Take them off the mailing list. Don’t make promises you can’t keep, don’t be rude, just move on.”


Our own Heather Hamilton looked at this in her blog last year, garnering several comments, one noting that…



“I think one can fire customer if and when it makes sense. Best Buy ranks all of its customers by profitability. They “fire” the lowest ranking customers by not sending them direct mail that contains promotions or special offers. They are not overtly telling the customer to go away; they just aren’t encouraging them to come back.”


So, if you want to fire a customer, just don’t call them back. 😉


Tags: Microsoft, Customer Service, Customer Support, whack.

Categories
Uncategorized

Poor Customer Service Ethics is more than just Outsourcing, it’s a lack of understanding the customer’s needs

In the last issue of BusinessWeek there is an article on “The Ethics of Outsourcing Customer Service” by Bruce Weinstein.



“It’s a familiar scenario: A product you purchased recently has developed a problem, so you call the company’s toll-free number and are connected to a “customer service associate” in India or the Philippines. You describe your problem but have a hard time understanding what the company representative is saying. You try several more times to communicate why you are calling but cannot get information that you can comprehend. You ask to be transferred to someone in the U.S. and are then put on hold for what seems like an eternity. You hang up in frustration and vow never again to purchase anything from this company.

“More and more businesses are outsourcing not just manufacturing jobs but services ones too. On the face of it, this seems like a smart financial move: By slashing labor costs 25%, 50%, or more, companies that have had slim profit margins are now able to enrich the bottom line and keep shareholders happy.

“Outsourcing customer service, however, is not only unethical. It’s bad for business.”


For a moment, let’s also distinguish between overseas staffing and outsourcing internationally.  Yes, I certainly have been on the receiving end of less-than-perfect customer service when calling a company, but this is not just a factor of outsourcing. Here’s an example of where it worked recently:

This past week we had a problem with a consumer electronic (a TV) so I called the manufacturer yesterday, on a weekend, expecting to get a message saying “call back as we’re off for the weekend.”

Guess what: someone answered, on a Saturday afternoon after lunch.


“Hi, this is John for Sharp Electronics. How can I help you?”


After giving all my information to John and detailing the problem, he said that I should call back the same number on Monday with my case number, and that a Sharp representative would have more information after looking at my case. Having read the above article, I asked: You don’t work for Sharp?”


“No, I am a representative for [Sharp] and staff the weekend lines to make sure that the company responds to your needs. We take customer calls, send them to resources on the web and if we need to, we take down their information so Sharp can work on it first thing on Monday.”


Very cool. 

I recalled why I purchased devices from Sharp in the past and how this influenced our latest: the company is responsive.

[Follow up: Following my weekend call, I was on the phone with a rep on Monday morning who had already triaged the problem and had a set of things for me to try with the set.  After going through the list, Sharp quickly arranged to dispatch a repairman who diagnosed the problem and authorized for a replacement to be shipped to me.  In less than a week, I had a new set, and Sharp followed up to ensure that my needs had been met.]

(Disclaimer: I have worked closely with Sharp Electronics in the US and Japan during my career and always found the company to be very customer focused, innovative and hungry for my business.)

Sure, you’re sure to run into poor customer service experiences as a result of outsourcing, as I have with one large PC manufacturer, a peripheral company and household appliance company — these past issues are clearly in my memory.  In two cases the service was from North American operators who clearly had no clue what was what or even the basic details of the product (or the company for that matter, mispronouncing the name of the stovetop manufacturer).  And in another case, I couldn’t make out a word the operator was saying, due to the poor connection (as if I were calling the outback via a string and two tin cans) and the unintelligible accent.

I agree with the author above that “working on the front lines of customer service means, first and foremost, being able to understand what the customer needs and then meeting those needs efficiently.” In some cases, outsourcing works, and in others, it doesn’t.  Companies that place a premium on meeting the needs of their customers will enjoy better extended relationships that will encourage greater word of mouth support, repurchase and as in my case, consumer loyalty.  These are some of the reasons we’ve purchased and repurchased products from Dell, HP, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba… as well as Microsoft.


Tags: Microsoft, Customer Service, Customer Support.

Categories
Uncategorized

Customer support representatives: the job, not-so-easy

Earlier this summer, Jason Daley wrote in Popular Science (June 2007 issues) about the Worst Jobs in Science 2007, noting that worst job #6 was that of a Microsoft Security Grunt.

“Teams of Microsoft Security Response Center employees toil 365 days a year to fix the kinks in Windows, Internet Explorer, Office and all the behemoth’s other products. It’s tedious work. Each product can have multiple versions in multiple languages, and each needs its own repairs (by one estimate, Explorer alone has 300 different configurations). Plus, to most hackers, crippling Microsoft is the geek equivalent of taking down the Death Star, so the assault is relentless.”

I imagine that the Security team loves that — it’s a badge of honour and I’m sure that it doesn’t hurt around review time. 😉 (For more info, see the Microsoft security site.)  Let me say that the folks in security are incredible, dedicated and tireless.  They rock.

I’ll submit that there are a few more jobs that are right up there, jobs that are often as tough as an oceanographer (where there’s “nothing but bad news, day in and day out”), as harrowing as hazmat divers and as dirty as a whale-feces researcher. Under appreciated jobs that I salute and couldn’t be successful at work without include field technical account managers, software build and test teams, escalation engineers and most of all…

Microsoft Customer Support Representatives.

Customer service at Microsoft is often a thankless job: imagine being on the front line representative for Microsoft’s products and services quality. As noted on our site, customer service “is our primary line of assistance, where our customers first turn for troubleshooting help and answers to questions.” 

No kidding. 

Whether by e-mail, telephone or regular snail mail (we still receive letters from customers, believe it or not), Microsoft CSR’s as they’re called are our first line representatives of the company, handling everything from every day issues (“where’s my control panel?”) to complex network configurations requiring a well-orchestrated connection across multiple support professionals and product engineers. There are reams of data, details, product information, procedures and processes that these people execute day after day, solving problems of nearly 50 million people over the phone (not to mention 600 million people a year via our online services).

So you can imagine that the calls are not always glowing love-fests. I mean, c’mon: when was the last time you took the time to send an email, write a letter or call a company to applaud their customer service or product quality?

For example: today in a meeting, I relayed how the last time I contacted a company (this morning, in fact) was to complain about the product I received in the mail. (To their credit, Photoworks, the photo finishing company has been very responsive and quickly accommodated my requests for a refund.)  In fact, most of my interaction with companies related to their products is around a defect, limitation, incompatibility or something that’s just plain silly.

A disclaimer here: responding to one of the popular “how’s my driving?” stickers on the rear of many large trucks these days, I recently placed a call to our local recycling company. I reported that their driver was following the speed limit and waited cautiously whilst children crossed the road at a sidewalk.

In the times I have called Microsoft customer service, I have had good responses, CSRs have been patient, attentive and helpful. Only two out of the I-don’t-know-how-many-times I’ve called incidents where the agent wasn’t able to resolve the issue or solve the problem I was calling about.

Funny how I can clearly recall the negative experiences with our CSRs and have a difficult time remembering the positive ones. Psychology Today notes that there is a five-to-one ratio in positive to negative experiences in personal relationships… 

“Due to the brain’s “negativity bias”; it is simply built with a greater sensitivity to unpleasant news. The bias is so automatic that it can be detected at the earliest stage of the brain’s information processing.”

That would mean that I’ve called our normal customer service lines for help about ten times or so. 😉

In any event, here’s to the CSRs: the next time you think that you’ve got a tough job, think about the dedicated folks who take the calls, do the research and work hard to solve your service and technical problems (sometimes risking life an limb in the process, as reported by Jessica Marszalek down in Oz).

Also of interest…

Tags: Microsoft, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Service.

Categories
Uncategorized

New study out from Ken Blanchard on customer service, which is really everyone’s job

I have a couple of quotes that I hang on my office cork board, one of which is this one from the customer service guru, Ken Blanchard:



“Customer service should not be a department, customer service is everyone’s job.”


Customer service is everyone’s job. (Repeated for emphasis 😉  It’s not just the job of the customer service agents or the field sales representative, it’s everyone’s job.  We all serve customers of one sort or another, whether they’re internal (as the people in my product group I work with and for every day) or the more traditional external customers and partners who use our products each and every day.


Forbes has a link today to a news release [link updated 012809] to a new study from Blanchard’s company on customer service and customer loyalty, surveying nearly a thousand line managers, human resources and training executives.



“Blanchard research over the past five years places customer loyalty as the fourth most important management challenge. In the same studies, customer relationship skills were cited as the second most important employee development skill, ranking just behind managerial skills.


“Most participating organizations agree that customer loyalty is a powerful driver of organizational success and one that ties directly to the bottom line. Statistics show that it can cost six to seven times more to gain a new customer than to retain an existing one. Expenses related to customer losses cause many companies to recognize the need to channel resources toward retention.”


Blanchard’s research showed that skills that were in most need of improvement were…



  1. Developing systems and processes that make it easy to do business with the organization

  2. Improving the skills of customer-facing employees to diagnose the customer issue

  3. Improving problem solving skills

  4. Empowering people to utilize their scope of authority

All good points. I maintain that you have to go farther, and do more, which I refer to a jumping through hoops for your customer.  It’s all of the above and more, the extra effort that people take because it’s the right thing to do, as noted…  



“The findings from the customer loyalty survey support earlier Blanchard research which documented that there is a direct connection between leadership, employee passion, and customer devotion.


There’s a Web site I refer to from time to time, customer service manager.com (aka CSM), edited by Ian Miller, a former (you guessed it) customer service manager. Mr. Miller has an interview with Ken Blanchard here, and in which he talks about how customer service leaders put others before themselves…



“What needs to happen is for the pyramid to be flipped over, so that frontline people – the people who are closest to the customers – are at the top. Leaders become servant leaders and are responsive to employee’s needs and allow them to accomplish the company’s goals and create Raving Fans.

“… I had one final question for Ken: “I understand you deliver a voicemail each morning to every one of your three hundred employees. If I asked you to send a voicemail to the readers of this article, what would it say?” Ken thought for a moment, then left me with this message: “You become an adult when you learn to serve others not yourself. Look at the job you do and think, who can I serve today?”


I make an effort to focus on that each day, to think about the people I can assist. And it’s something I work to improve upon.


Here’s a recent example.


I invited a customer to email me (using the email link at left) as they left a comment on my blog post about Xbox 360 repairs. (They had a poor experience with their Xbox repair and return.)  I haven’t heard from that customer (yet) but I have heard from others and I answer their mails (to the best of my knowledge) and pass their mail onto our customer service staff for formal responses if it involves a product issue or repair. 


It doesn’t solve all the problems that customers run into — and as a customer service line I certainly don’t scale very well — but I trust that it helps.  As a group example, Windows is nearing the release of Vista SP1 which will address areas we identified through our customer feedback channels, including improved reliability and performance, support for new hardware, and generally offer a better/ improved customer experience. 


(For more on contacting support at Microsoft, see this past post. And to contact Microsoft Customer Service, visit http://support.microsoft.com/.)


Additional links: You may download copies of Blanchard’s most recent white papers…



  • “The Key to Customer Loyalty” that looks at how customer loyalty can impact success, and the often cited notion that it’s much more expensive to acquire a new customer than to hold on your current customer.

  • “The Leadership-Profit Chain” which outlines how leadership skills are closely tied into to an organization’s P&L: “The key to organizational vitality is creating an environment that allows employees to win and be passionate about what they do. By taking care of employees, leaders establish an environment in which the employees take care of the customers at a level that causes the customer to want to return year after year.”

Additional Microsoft support options:


  • Contacting Microsoft – Phone Numbers, Support Options and Pricing, Online Help, and more.
  • Microsoft Customer Service – For non-technical assistance with product purchases, subscriptions, online services, events, training courses, corporate sales, piracy issues, and more.
  • Microsoft Newsgroups – Pose a question to other users. Discussion groups and Forums about specific Microsoft products, technologies, and services.

Tags: Customer service, Ken Blanchard, customer feedback.


Delicious Bookmark this on Delicious   Bookmark and Share


http://tinyurl.com/bu9z3t