I recently had an email exchange with the “support” department of a company that has a Twitter client, which is currently in a closed beta.  I put support in quotes because I didn’t receive any support at all, only a bad attitude.

Here’s an excerpt of one of the emails I received from them:

its a closed beta in development we have zero time to answer any emails yet we do.  each user costs us money today…so to be very clear here providing this service to you costs me money.  you are not our customer we were kind enough to provide you with a useful service.

There are two immediate problems here:

1. Offering a popular product and then complaining to one of your customers that they’re costing you money and leave you no time to answer emails is shooting yourself in the foot.
2. Users of your free products are, in fact, your customers.  In this case, the customers are also de facto employees since they’re testing the product and providing feedback, and thus should be treated as the valuable asset they are.

And also notice how poorly the email was formatted.  The punctuation is poor, and each sentence begins with a lower case letter.  Perfection is not required, but competence is.

What sense does it make to launch a startup and offer a product if you’re going to resent the users of that product?  This experience reminded me of the Demotivator titled Apathy: If we don’t take care of the customer, maybe they’ll stop bugging us.

This customer certainly did.

I’ve been doing a lot of shopping at Lowe’s and Home Depot recently, and I’ve noticed an interesting behavioral shift in the employees at these stores.  I’m very seldom asked if I need help finding something.  (Face it, after the fourth offer it starts to get annoying.) Instead they greet me with a simple, “How are you today?”  Now this, this doesn’t get annoying.  Quite the opposite, it makes me feel welcome in the store.  It also opens the door for me to ask for help should I need it, leaving me in control rather than putting me on the spot.

This is a perfect zero-cost improvement in customer service.

AT&T is annoyed with some of its smart phone customers. They’re saying that three percent of smart phone users are consuming 40 percent of total available bandwidth on their cellular network.  AT&T is saying that they’re looking at incentives to get these high-bandwidth users to "reduce or modify their usage."

Of course, “incentive” is almost certainly going to mean “higher fees.”

Every company and service has its power users, and this is especially true in the tech sector.  This is not something that should have caught AT&T by surprise.  They partnered with Apple on the iPhone, which can (technically) only be used on AT&Ts network, offer so-called “unlimited” data plans (which are finally revealed to have a 5Gb cap, nevermind that “unlimited” in fact means “uncapped” ), and then get upset that people actually use their data plan.

Should Time Warner Cable charge people who leave their TVs on 24/7 more money?  Should your gym charge you more because you use the gym twice per day when most of their customers go three times per week?

This is a bit of an apples to oranges comparison, but bear with me a moment.  Time Warner and your gym (and countless other companies) decided on a fair market price for their products and they charge that price.  AT&T should have done the exact same thing, but they didn’t, and that’s where the problem lies.  AT&T, rather than stepping up and improving their service, is choosing instead to change the rules and punish their most devoted customers.

At the other end of the spectrum, let’s talk about propane.  I recently moved into a rural home that has a propane tank, which is used to run the furnace and tankless water heater.  The company that fills our tank charges a sliding “tank usage fee” for customers who use less than a certain amount of propane in a calendar year. This fee is substantial, equal to roughly a fifth to a quarter of a full tank.  We strive to be very energy-efficient, so we’ll almost certainly be hit by this fee.

We’ll get charged more because we don’t use enough of their service, which makes no sense whatsoever. Following the logic behind this fee, doesn’t it follow that non-customers, who don’t use any of their product, should be charged even more?  I have to wonder what they’d charge us if we stopped using their service altogether.

Imagine if Citgo or BP did the same when it came to fuel for your car.

If you’re going to offer a product, offer a product and charge a fair price for it.  Punishing your customers for using too much, or too little, of your product just tarnishes your reputation, breeds resentment, and encourages them to take their business elsewhere.

I see this happen nearly everywhere I go.  Voice mails go unanswered.  Email messages too.  Tweets, if your company uses Twitter. Every communication from every customer should be responded to in a timely manner. Prioritize, sure, but you have to respond.

The worst is when this happens face to face.  A restaurant patron waits and waits to get a table.  You’re in a checkout line at some retail store and the cashier never acknowledges your presence, preferring instead to chat with a coworker about their weekend.

Problems don’t go away when ignored, but your customers just might.

I served on a quality control committee at one of my employers.  In the QC meetings the various department heads would report on how many mistakes were made in their areas, the impact of those mistakes, and what was being done to prevent the mistakes from recurring.

Except that they refused to use the word ‘mistake.’  Instead they used the word ‘variance,’ even when speaking with each other informally.

‘Variance’ completely eliminates any sense of urgency when it comes to resolving problems.  It sounds great if you want to make a good impression when talking to someone outside your company, but removing urgency is the last thing you want internally when it comes to solving problems.

I’ve never liked the saying, “The customer is always right.”  If you work in customer service for more than a few days, you’ll discover that this is untrue.  Some customers will run over their cell phone with their car and expect a free replacement.  Others will greatly overdraw their bank accounts and be adamant they shouldn’t be charged a fee. You get the idea.

When the customer is wrong, it does no good to remember the old saying I quoted above.  In fact, it can be frustrating to do so, and that frustration could get in the way of providing good service.

I propose we scrap that old chestnut completely and replace it with, “The customer is always welcome.”  The chances of this new maxim being wrong are exceedingly small, and brings with it a positive attitude that says, “We value your business. Let’s get this problem resolved.”

Let me know what you think.

1 – Make sure your customer can find your contact information very easily.  Place it prominently on your website and in your email signature.

2 – Exchange contact information, especially telephone numbers, with a customer when making an appointment with them.

3 – Where possible, give them a direct phone number or telephone extension instead of a main number where they might have to wait on hold, even if the direct number is not toll-free.

4 – If you’re going to be late to an appointment, let them know BEFORE the scheduled time.  Call if it’s an in-person appointment, email if you can’t make the conference call, etc.

5 – If you have a customer on hold update them every five minutes, even it’s just to say you’re still waiting for an answer.  Through email, update them at least once every business day.

6 – For telephone queues, the automated attendant should inform your customers how long the projected hold time will be.  This should be updated at least every three minutes.

Proactive communication is the single most important aspect of any relationship you will ever have, and nearly all of these techniques can be implemented at essentially zero cost.  Always be on the lookout for situations where a customer is left on hold, figuratively speaking, and use some proactive communication to get them off hold.

If you’re running late for an appointment with a customer, the onus is on you to get that information to your customer.  If you show up late with no notice – or, even worse, they call and ask where you are – you’ve set a negative tone for future relations, even if the appointment goes well.  For every future appointment, assuming you didn’t lose the customer, they’ll be thinking to themselves, “I wonder if they’ll show up on time this time.”

You can easily avoid this negative bias by calling your customer.  And next time, don’t be late.

I drove by a small automotive repair shop recently.  Outside the shop was a large marquee sign board of the kind you see in front of gas stations and such. The sign simply read, “OBDII HERE.”

Some quick background on the term OBDII: “OBD” stands for OnBoard Diagnostics – a vehicle’s engine computer monitors various functions related to the engine and pollution controls.  The “II” (that’s the Roman numeral two) refers to the second generation of OBD.

OBDII has been with us since 1996. Wouldn’t you be astonished to find a shop that didn’t work on 1996 or newer vehicles? The repair shop could use their marquee sign to tell us something remarkable – a current special they’re running, or perhaps that they’re experts in Mazda Miatas – but instead they’re using it to tell us something that doesn’t help us at all.

I recently had to change an airline ticket.  The original ticket, from Greensboro to Seattle with a layover in Houston, was about $230.  A pretty good price, really.

The ticket was booked through Orbitz.  The airline used to get to Seattle was Continental, and USAir was to be used on the way back to Greensboro.  I called Orbitz to change the ticket and I was told they couldn’t help me because Continental “owned” the ticket or somesuch – I forget the exact term they used.  I called Continental and was able to get the ticket changed without much hassle.

Now, the fees.

There was a $25 fee for Orbitz, a $150 change fee, and a “difference in price” charge of $177, for a total of $352.  Recall that the original ticket was only $230.

The “difference in price” charge? Can’t really dispute that.  But the Orbitz fee?  They’d already made their money on the original purchase, and they couldn’t help me with changing the ticket.  What makes them entitled to any kind of extra fee?

And the $150 change fee?  Highway robbery, plain and simple.

If we, as passengers, have to change our ticket, doesn’t that by definition imply circumstances beyond our control?  When was the last time you were compensated by an airline for a delayed flight? No, airlines can’t control weather.  Weather is a circumstance beyond their control, just like with passengers needing to change their ticket.  If passengers have to pay for altered circumstances, isn’t it only fair that airlines do the same?

Why is the relationship between airlines and customers so lopsided?  Is there any better collective example of companies that get customer service so completely wrong than airlines?

The best customer service interactions I’ve ever had, both as a customer and as a customer service provider, have been those in which a somewhat personal connection was made.  Professionalism is a requirement for both customers and providers, definitely, but only to get things started.

People are people.  What I mean is, never forget that it’s an individual, a human being, on the other end of the phone.  Professionalism is a layer we wear on top of our ‘personalness.’  Peel back that layer from time to time, make a connection with the human being underneath.  A little goes a long way.

I often see this phrase on websites for retail companies that have brick and mortar locations.  This is not a helpful practice because it raises more questions than it answers, and it sets up your customers for disappointment.

If your company uses this practice, here are some questions you should be asking:

• If a customer calls their closest store and they don’t have the product, are they going to bother calling the next closest store or are they going to give up and shop elsewhere?
• Why aren’t we putting the extra effort forward to proactively tell our customers which stores carry which products?
• Can every product at least be ordered at every store? If not, why not?
• Do we at least tell our customers on our website whether or not products can be ordered at any store?

Always remember that the basic function of any website is to answer questions.

1 – Enforce accountability at all levels of your organization.

Nothing kills customer satisfaction faster than unaccountable or unwilling employees.  This goes double for members of your management and executive teams – they set policy and expectations even if they don’t have direct contact with customers.

2 – Never, ever overcommit.

Failing in the eyes of a customer is bad, but failing after overcommitting – which your customer will realize is what you’ve done – is worse and even harder to recover from.  Your customer would be right to be upset with you because overcommitment is a lie, plain and simple. Rather than overcommitting, use your customers for beta testing a new product or service.

3 – Give your employees the responsibility and authority to solve problems.  Responsibility without authority delays resolving problems.

Example:  In the checkout line at the grocery store, an item rings up at the wrong price.  Your customer points this out to the checker.  The checker has to call for a supervisor to come to the checkout stand to correct the price.

Question: Is making your customer wait the best way to handle this?  They’re not causing the problem, after all.  The problem lies elsewhere in the store.  In fact, they’re doing you a favor by pointing out the problem.  Your customer’s time is not yours to use.  Instead, allow your employees to resolve these issues on the spot (reason codes, anyone?) then monitor the register logs to identify and fix the causes.

An aside: You could argue that requiring supervisor approval keeps your employees honest.  One: If you’re concerned with the honesty of the people you employ, you shouldn’t be employing them at all, and Two: Your customers are not on your payroll.  It is not their responsibility to help you enforce accountability and honesty at your company.

4 – Always look for new ideas.

Your customers and your employees are chock full of ideas.  Ask them to share their ideas often.  This will help make your company stronger.

5 – On the telephone, focus on one-call resolution more than hold times.

Hold times really aren’t that important.  Customers want their problems fixed with a single phone call.  Also, once you get them on phone, don’t transfer them unless it’s absolutely necessary.  (The next step is to determine why is was necessary and, if possible, make it unnecessary in the future. See #3.)

In a word: Access.  Your customers will often tell their friends about a problem they’re having with your company, increasingly using tools like use Twitter and Facebook, while never bothering to communicate with your company directly.  Tapping into Twitter and Facebook, as well as all the other social media applications, gives you the kind of access to your customers you’ve never had before.

Right now, your customers can contact you via telephone and email.  The nature of reactive customer service is that you generally only hear from your customers if there’s a problem.  Social media lets you turn that on its head.

Example: You work for Ford.  You’re searching Twitter for instances of the word ‘Ford’ and you see a tweet: "Ford sucks! They denied my warranty claim!"  You can send that person a reply on Twitter offering to help.

Or you work for a cell phone company and you’re experiencing an outage.  A little proactive communication here will go a long way toward reducing calls, emails, and customer complaints.  Post a quick update to Twitter and your Facebook page: "We’re investigating a tower outage in Nashville, TN. Updates as we get them." Then, obviously, keep people updated.

By doing so you’ve proactively (there’s that word again) told your customers you’re aware of the problem and are working on it.  You can’t easily do that with email, and you definitely can’t do it with the telephone.

You can also use social media for quick and easy promotions. A restaurant could post this: "Today only, $5 off any dinner bill of $30 or more."  You could put together an entire campaign for essentially zero advertising costs.

Use it to thank customers. Let’s say you see a tweet: "I love my new Blackberry. Thanks Verizon!"  If you work for Verizon you could can thank the customer and tell them you’re pleased that they’re happy.  Then send them a link to some free Blackberry apps on your website.  (It should go without saying that the apps will be very good ones.)  You’ve just created a positive customer experience in real-time that your customers will very likely tell their friends about.  You definitely can’t do that with the phone or email.

The possibilities are endless.  Having said that, however, it’s important to understand that your use of social media needs to be genuine and personal.  You must interact with people and not merely use social media as a one-way conduit to promote your brand.  That game doesn’t work in social media circles.  You must, simply must, be open and honest for your efforts to be successful.  If yours is a company that likes to hide behind barriers and make your customers jump through hoops to get problems resolved, your efforts will fail.  Customers see through these attitudes in a heartbeat.

I’ve been using the popular term ’social media’ in this post, but I prefer to think of it as ‘personal media.’  Everyone who uses Facebook, Twitter, and all of the other social media tools, have complete control over what they see in their feeds.  It’s up to them, not you.  You’re welcome to join in, but realized that you’re playing this game by their rules.  This is nothing to be afraid of, just be aware of it.

Face it, your customers are having conversations about you.  The easiest way to influence these conversations is by joining them.

One last thing to consider:  There’s a very good chance many of your employees already use various social media tools.  This is increasingly going to be the case over the next few years.  That’s an incredible pool of social media expertise – expertise that didn’t cost your company a dime to foster – just waiting to be tapped.

Just about any large company you could name – Microsoft, Apple, Verizon Wireless, Chevrolet, etc. – has their share of haters. You know the people I mean, the ones who will never have anything to do with this company or that company because they were treated poorly or their products are crap or for some other reason.

I’ve listened to a number of people share their stories about companies they want nothing to do with, and nearly all of them had one thing in common: they didn’t have an ongoing series of bad experiences with a particular company, they had one single bad experience. All it took was one bad experience for them to write off a company forever.

This is why it’s so critical to follow-up positive impressions you have made with more positive impressions. Never forget that each encounter with a customer is a chance to either make them happy or mess things up completely.

Here’s the second part of 100 Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do from the Small Business section of the New York Times.  As before, many of them are adaptable to any customer service situation.

Here are some of my favorites:

• 51. If there is a service charge, alert your guests when you present the bill. It’s not a secret or a trick.
• 63. Never blame the chef or the busboy or the hostess or the weather for anything that goes wrong. Just make it right.
• 73. Do not bring soup without a spoon. Few things are more frustrating than a bowl of hot soup with no spoon.
• 77. Do not disappear.

What are some of your favorites?

There’s a great blog post from October 29th in the Small Business section of the New York Times.  Many of the tips are adaptable to any customer service situation.  Even more are about kicking service up a notch in a way that’s completely invisible to customers. This kind of invisibility is one of the secrets to bar setting customer service.  Definitely worth your time to read.

Here’s a few of the easily adaptable ones:

• 1. Do not let anyone enter the restaurant without a warm greeting.
• 5. Tables should be level without anyone asking. Fix it before guests are seated.
• 14. When you ask, “How’s everything?” or “How was the meal?” listen to the answer and fix whatever is not right.

Some friends and I went out for Halloween. We saw a play, and afterwards decided to go out for dinner and a drink. We walked to a local pub nearby and was told by an employee that the bar was open but the kitchen had already closed. He then suggested that we go to another pub nearby because their kitchen stayed open until one in the morning.

He could simply have said, "I’m sorry, the kitchen is closed. Would you like a seat at the bar?" This is, I believe, what most employees would have done. Instead he unapologetically admitted that he could not accommodate our needs and gave us an option that would. My friends and I spent the next couple of minutes remarking on how unusual and refreshing it was for an employee to own a situation like that. We’ll definitely be going back there soon.

Zappos, the online shoe seller, does this on a regular basis. If they don’t carry a particular shoe they will refer a potential customer to a competitor. This frequently works out in their favor because that customer will often end up buying other shoes from them at some point. Properly serving customers must sometimes include admitting that you don’t have what they need.

It is far too common for people to talk about your company because you’ve done something wrong. Always be on the lookout for opportunities to give your customers something good to talk about.

You’re working with a customer.  Perhaps there’s a problem that needs to be resolved.  Maybe you work at a bank, handling the mortgage paperwork for someone.  The specific situation isn’t that important.  There will likely come a time when you have to have to say to the customer, “Let me get back to you.”

Make a commitment to your customer right then and there on a date and time you’ll follow up.  And this is the critical thing – actually do it. Even if you have nothing more to report, call them. Lack of communication, especially when a specific time has been agreed to, says to your customer, “I don’t really care, and I’m not sorry, either.”

I follow Gary Vaynerchuk on Twitter.  This morning he sent this tweet:

ComingTONIGHT in Brooklyn 4 book launch party? Deets & please leave notes & pics on Springpad:http://sprng.me/2art #crushit

The link in his tweet goes to a page on SpringPadIt.com, where Gary is a board advisor.  I’d seen a number of other tweets going to SpringPad, but I hadn’t yet investigated the service.  One reason I hadn’t is the blurb at the top of their page (if you click on a link like in Gary’s tweet”) merely says this:

springpad is a free service that lets you collect, organize and share information to help simplify your life

Ok, that doesn’t really tell me anything.  They do have a video on their website, but it’s been broken every time I’ve tried to view it. (Two computers and a total of seven browsers – it was definitely broken.)

I replied to Gary’s tweet with this:

@garyvee @SpringPad needs a “What the heck is this for?” page. The little blurb at the top doesn’t really tell me anything.

Five minutes later I received two separate tweet replies, one from @springpad and another from @jeffjaner

@jeffharbert – Here’s a video that might help: http://bit.ly/EteyS

@jeffharbert: Springpad is a free online personal organizer. Check out this video overview: http://bit.ly/l5ucN

Jeff Janer is the cofounder and CEO of SpringPad.  This is a great example of how a business can use social media services like Twitter. Here I am, not even a user of their service yet, and I received two replies about a minor criticism of their website. This just doesn’t happen with telephone or email.

The video was very helpful. It convinced me to sign up with their service. Their video states that you can use Springpad from a mobile web browser by going to http://my.springpadit.com/m. It doesn’t work in the default BlackBerry browser, but it does work in Mobile Opera.

I sent a tweet about that, too:

@springpad http://my.springpadit.com/m doesn’t work in the default Blackberry browser. Does work in Mobile Opera.

And again, just minutes later, I received a reply from another person(s) at Spring Pad, @DevinEmily:

@jeffharbert Hi! if you post this issue to http://www.getsatisfaction.com/springpartners I can email you directly with support

This Twitter account seems to be shared between two SpringPad employees, Devin Brahmall and Emily Shumsky. (BTW, check out their About Us page. I love their employee descriptions.)

I’m definitely impressed with their responses.  I’ll follow up with them as they’ve requested to address the Blackberry browser problem. (Not ‘issue’, remember. It’s only an issue until a customer notices it. After that, it’s a problem.)

 

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I’m reading Gary Vaynerchuk’s new book Crush It! Why Now is the Time to Cash in On Your Passion.  I’m really enjoying it so far.  One section from the twelfth chapter, Shape Your Story, particularly jumped out at me.  Gary has kindly given me permission to quote it here:

“Every employee of every company should have a Facebook account where they can talk about their work and the company (in addition to whatever else they want). Let  people gripe, let them air their frustrations. Don’t wait for exit interviews to find out what your staff really thinks; tap into the pulse of the company and start making changes right away. Yes, there are websites dedicated to allowing  people to air their dirty laundry, but  people should be allowed to hang their dirty laundry on their own clothesline.  Empowering your employees to communicate is a great thing. If you suppress their urge to talk, you’re only weakening your brand from within by limiting your access to information.

When you know what people are saying and thinking about your brand, you can address it. If you see falsehood, you can correct it. If you see praise, you can show appreciation. If you see confusion, you can inform.”

Wouldn’t this level of transparency just be… astonishing?  Imagine a work environment where this level of communication is actively encouraged.  Such an environment would eliminate places for Yes Men, bullies, and slackers to hide, enforce accountability, and foster the sharing of new ideas.

Would your customers be scared away if you let them see the inner workings of your company like this?  Hint: They shouldn’t be.

 

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I stumbled across an auction website the other day that I’d never seen before. Near the top of the site was a graphic that contained the following sentence:

“Online auctions of your favorite products for less than retail price.”

I had to shake my head after I read that. Why? The sentence serves no purpose.  All it does is point out the obvious. What else should a customer expect from an auction site? Paying more than retail price?

If you work in a bookstore and you see that a stack of books has fallen over, you’re going to do the obvious thing and restack the books. You’re not going to tap a customer on the shoulder, point at the stack of books and then say to the customer, “I’m going to restack that pile of books.” You’re just going to do it.

If you’re working a cash register at Target and a customer walks up with a cart full of items, you’re not going to say to the customer, “I’m going to ring up your purchase for you.” You’re just going to do it.

Pointing out the obvious is a complete waste of time for your customers, a waste of time for your employees, and a waste of money for your company.  A better idea: Take the time to say something great – something interesting, amazing, substantive, or remarkable.  Put some thought into it. Gather ideas inside and outside your company.  You can think of something great to say about your company, right?

PowerPoint has been around forever it seems. Is the de facto tool used for presentations of every variety. However, that is not to say that PowerPoint is always used effectively. I doubt there’s a single person reading this post that hasn’t sat through a handful of truly horrible PowerPoint presentations.  Bad presentations seem to have one thing in common – a presenter that does little but read the text on the slides.

If this is your style of presentation, allow me to let you in on a secret: No one likes those particular presentations. We all know how to read, and we can all read faster than you can speak. If all you’re doing is reading the text on slide after slide, you are wasting peoples time.

PowerPoint is best used to present talking points for a discussion, to provide a guide for the presenter and the audience on the subject being discussed. People want to hear what you know about the subject. If you don’t know anything more about the subject than what appears in the text on the slides, your presence is not necessary.

I’m not referring to death in the literal sense of course, but rather the death of morale, motivation, and customer satisfaction.

There are two kinds of Yes Men in the working world – employees who suck up to their bosses, and bosses who only want to be told ‘yes’ by their employees. Let’s go over some reasons why Yes Men are bad for your company:

• Their primary motivation is selfishness, and selfishness is unreasonable.
• Because they are selfish, they are not dedicated to the best interests of your company or your customers.
• Because they are unreasonable they obviously cannot be reasoned with.
• They’re far more interested in being at the center of attention than doing a good job.
• They overcommit, whether it’s an over-eager employee trying to please a boss, or a boss making unrealistic demands on his employees.
• Overcommitments nearly always end in failure and leave a string of dissatisfied customers in their wake.
• The best advice available on improving your business and increasing customer satisfaction is completely useless if a Yes Man gets in the way.

Yes Men are not necessarily bad people, not at all, but they are bad employees, no matter what position they hold in your company.

There’s a saying that’s been floating around the business world forever: "You never get a second chance to make a first impression." This is a very true statement as far as it goes, but I don’t like it because it has two,, scary hidden meanings. One, that you can’t recover from making a bad first impression. Two, that making a positive first impression is more important than anything else.

Both of these hidden meanings are absolutely wrong. You can recover from making a bad first impression – all you need is a chance, humility, and a good dose of honesty. It’s really not that hard. And even if you make an outstanding first impression, you knock it out of the park when you land a new client, your job has just begun. You must continue making positive impressions in order to cement your reputation. If you make enough subsequent bad impressions your reputation is going to be negative one, making your out of the park first impression completely wasted.

Once you’ve made your first impression, good or bad, forget about it. Your focus should always be your next impression and making it a positive one. Next impressions build your reputation.