Service is not an expense
Feb 15
Marc
Automation, Blog, Service
We keep reminding ourselves that customer service is our best marketing channel we have. Saasu acquires a lot of new business via word of mouth. We make every effort to ensure we don’t get caught in the enterpise level traps of customer service. We attempt to generate a customer service ‘automaton’ approach where we map how the customer wants to interact with us (user story) then we set an automated process in place for dealing with answering questions, logging feedback or bugs and providing the medium of communication they want without forcing them in a direction they don’t like.
Service is a sales channel
A key failure point of many enterprises is to put a price on customer service as an “expense”. This is denying its ability to be one of your best sales channels. It amazes me that companies spend millions of dollars on sales teams while they let the side down on the service side. We know that if you look after the customer they simply tells lots of people about the amazing experience.
Service is a chance for humans to help other humans
Denying your staff the opportunity to really help people because it costs money to do so is a real crime. I mean this in a emotional way. Humans like to help other humans. If you don’t build that within the service culture of your organisation you aren’t creating a giving, compassionate attitude toward customer needs. These values shouldn’t just reside in the realm of relationships at personal, family and community level, they should pervade the business community also.
Service must be Authentic
Much anger and frustration towards larger telco’s and banks exists in the community because of this issue. A lot of banks produce nice looking adds to try and make you like them but fail at customer service. There is no authenticity present around the relationship.
Service needs to be a human approach supported by technology
We have resisted moving to having a computer answering the phone. We expect some day we will split our phone numbers into support, accounts and sales to help manage the incoming calls which are building daily, however we will always strive to have Human involvement in communication. Our view is that if you want to force people to talk to a machine then they would probably be happy to use the net instead. They use the phone because they want human help, the customisation it offers and the speed of interaction. Wasting 5 minutes surfing a phone menu system only to be put on hold really kills your customers perception of your organisation.
Service includes managing customer requests for features and product
We always document customer requests for features and notify them when they have been built. Why? Many enterprises pay huge money so survey customer needs and experience. Customers, even prospective ones will give you this information for free if you simply help them to give it to you via different channels to supply the information. Talking to a human on the phone, a feedback form, a new feature/product email all acquire voluntary feedback.
Good service is often as simple as answering the question asked
We answer the vast majority of email support questions within a couple of hours but we don’t always answer support questions the same day. We tend to open the email or answer the call by following a simple approach of logging what questions were asked and simply working through each with either (a) answers or (b) an action we plan to take to get an answer. I get frustrated a little when we can’t answer the question but sometimes we don’t have the information to answer them or the legal authority to do so (tax questions). Access to the right person who knows the answer isn’t always possible. That said, we are about to implement a new process involving 3rd parties to allow users to treat us as a one stop shop which should improve this.
Great post. I got stuck on the automated phone system thing today with two separate companies. One of them was “experiencing a high volume of calls” and then proceeded to tell me I was fourth in the queue. I stayed fourth in the queue for a good five minutes. Then, once I’d moved to 2nd in queue, the voice service then proceeded to tell me I’d called outside of office hours (in the middle of the day) and hung up on me. Hopeless.
The second put 2 minutes between me and a person. Then I was bounced around 3 times before I got someone who told me my request would be completed “some time within 5 days” - but couldn’t tell me when or notify me, or their other department (who needed the information), when the action had taken place.
In both interactions I was blocked by technology, not assisted by it.
I think the telling thing is that I am no longer a customer with either of these companies (well, technically I am with one, but not for want of an alternative) - in part because of poor service like that.
Bad service means I’m waiting for the chance to switch to something better. Unfortunately “something better” is not always available.
Comment by Grant — February 20, 2007 @ 10:29 am
Great article. I just wanted to share with you another organisation with great customer service: PayPal. The things that stood out were: A long and full explanation of what was causing the delay; email was signed by an individual; very polite; an alternative way of solving my problem.
Comment by Anne — February 25, 2007 @ 1:35 am
Thanks Anne. I think you just proved the point I was making about service generated referrals by mentioning PayPals good service
I didn’t mention it in the post but when something isn’t quite right with the netaccounts application we usually get some “sentiment recovery” with the customer through good support. Good customer support will help customers tolerate missing features that aren’t quite available or existing features not optimised for performance.
Comment by Marc Lehmann — February 25, 2007 @ 3:43 am
Thank God there’s somebody out there who feels like I do!
A couple of extra points:
Service is a sales channel
Everybody in the organisation is a sales person (i.e. contributing to the customer’s perception of the product/service and their relationship with it). Good customer service makes the customer a repeat buyer. But excellent customer service turns the customer into a champion for your offering. Many organisations seem to have forgotten the old metric that it’s five times as expensive to find a new purchaser as it is to resell to a current customer.
Service is a chance for humans to help other humans
And that’s the other thing they’ve forgotten. Your employees are your customers too - they’re customers for your remuneration services of course, but also for your workplace culture, and if you make it attractive to them, for your strategy and vision as well. What those banks and telcos are calling “Customer RELATIONSHIP Management” should more honestly and accurately be called “Transaction Management”. They don’t want a relationship, they just want you to transact (preferably at minimum cost & maximum margin) with them.
Here’s my story - one of many. Standing at the checkout at the supermarket the other day, I’m 2nd in line with about 5 items, behind an elderly woman. Who wants home delivery. That’s okay, shouldn’t take long. But it does - I don’t know why, but it seems to require a lot of writing things down, swiping a card and asking questions for the simple outcome of tagging the bags with the delivery address. About five minutes later, it’s my turn. WHen the cashier gets to the two packs of light bulbs that were labelled on the shelf $2.55 or 2 packs for $4.00. They go through for $2.55 each. I object. She goes for the intercom (couldn’t possibly assume we’ve got an honest customer could we?) and I point out that the shelf I got them from is ‘just there’, 5 metres from the cash register. Which she’s not allowed to leave. Fair enough though, I’m already trying to gyp them out of $1.10, I’d probably be just the type to raid the cash drawer, never mind the instore surveillance cameras. So we wait for ‘Grocery, price check on aisle 6′ and the customer behind me points out to the cashier that there’s a shelf-filler in that aisle right now. “Can’t he check it for you?” ‘Oh, I think he’s just on work experience’ Oh, yeah - a Year 10 education these days means you can’t read or add up.
It took me more time to wait in the queue than it did to find the 5 items. Next time I need milk I’m going to the milk bar. And I’ll get my lightbulbs at the hardware store.
Comment by Julian McNally — June 11, 2007 @ 10:11 pm