Skip to content

Posts Tagged ‘customer service’

Customer Feedback Dissatisfaction - Web 2.0 Style

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

dissatisfiedIn a recent post titled, “The Customer Service Satisfaction Gap” I presented that the key to customer service is getting as close as possible to a customer’s expectations. Well yesterday I became very dissatisfied with the store location search at Pizza Hut.com. Here is what happened and the reason for my displeasure.

I had a full day of coaching and returned home without a plan for dinner, so I asked my son what he wanted. Well, he wanted to try the new take home pasta dishes he’d seen on TV from Pizza Hut. I quickly opened up my laptop, looked up Pizza Hut’s home page and then clicked on their location tab. The page had an entry form for my street location and zip code. Well I put in my zip code and it demanded that I enter my street address. I thought to myself, “why do they need my street address?” And, what if I were traveling down the road and trying to find a location for let’s say Woodbury, do I put in, “I’m traveling 70 MPH down I494″ - find a location. So here is the first lesson of Customer Service:

Lesson #1: Keep it simple - the less information a customer needs to provide to complete the service request, the better.

After being turned off by their persistance to provide my street address to them, I decided to check out their customer complaint form. Guess what? They wanted more information to process my complaint - aka. advice. What did they need now. First, they wanted to make certain that I was at least 13 years old (not certain what that was for) and now they required that I provide them my full name, my address (street address - they must like street information), city, state, zip code, phone number and email address - I was somewhat surprised that they didn’t also require credit card information for me to process my complaint. That is probably coming in the next version. So I asked myself, “Why would they want all of this personal information just to process a customer’s feedback?” The only thing I could surmise was that “Marketing” interfaced with “Customer Service” and the two created a hybrid. So here is lesson #2.

Lesson #2: Customer Service is customer service, and Marketing is marketing. Keep them separate, because marketing’s input will simply complicate and hinder effective customer service.

Well, when they demanded more information, I simply input B.S., with an email address. And here is the computer response I received.

Dear Customer,
Thank you for taking time to share your feedback with us. We are continually looking for ways to improve your online experience and we value your input.
We appreciate your business!

- Pizza Hut Customer Service

In the end, Pizza Hut did not provide customer service, even when I took the time to provide them customer feedback. Secondly, I did not place an order with Pizza Hut, and therefore is facetious for them to state that they “appreciated my business.” I actually took my business elsewhere. And lastly, this leads to lesson #3.

Lesson #3: Customer feedback is a valuable component of the customer service equation. Make the customer service interface as simple and uncomplicated as feasibly possible.

Bottom Line: In today’s marketplace, customer service is more important than ever, and therefore, the value of good customer feedback is also heightened. Don’t allow customer feedback become a reason for Customer Dissatisfaction.

What is your customer dissatisfaction story?

Tags: , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Beware - The Customer Service Silent Problem Looms

Friday, July 24th, 2009

Customer Service is an entity that resides inside every business. In small companies, this responsibility may handled by individuals across the organization. In mid to large sized companies, dedicated customer service departments are in place, which may reside inside the organization or out-sourced to a third party provider. For a customer, the customer service department is possibly the touch point of greatest frustration. Why is this?

The reason is quite simple. Too many customer service departments are not set up to service the customer, but rather, they are set up to service the company and its legal obligations. And this is what sets up the silent problem phenomenon. Here is the scenario.

A customer is having a problem with a product or service they acquired from Company XYZ. So according to directions, the customer contacts Company XYZ’s service line. This is where the customer commonly receives their first line of frustration - the phone tree. While this might be frustrating, its not a significant barrier. Here is the challenge and opportunity.

The Customer has a expectation of how the problem should be solved before the phone call is ever placed!

Consequently, anything less than what is expected is construed as being mediocre or poor customer service! Unfortunately, customer service isn’t set up to meet, much less ask “what do you expect” questions. Instead, the dialogue follows the path of:

  1. You tell us what your problem is.
  2. We will tell you what we can do to resolve your problem.
  3. Customer becomes disenfrancised, frustrated and at times outraged by the low level of customer service.
  4. Customer escalates the problem asking for their supervisor, with the intensity of the conversation and demands growing by the second.
  5. Customer becomes outraged with the experience and tells everyone they know how they were taken advantage of, and…

In recent years, customer service has become an increasingly hot topic inside the organization. Too many companies still view customer service as an expense item, and allocate for it accordingly. In the void, customers are lost, brand value is diminished, and future business viability is jeopardized. Companies from Apple to Zappos  have learned the art of great customer service and their businesses reflect it.  Take a lesson from them and emulate what makes their customer service excel.

Bottom Line: Customer service is a business risk and a silent problem for many organizations.Realize upfront that your customers have an expectation of how their problem should be solved. Customer service agents must identify what this expectation is early in the conversation and then exceed it, or get as close as possible to meeting it. Anything less will put your business at risk into the future.

 

 

 

.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Silent Problems | No Comments »

The Complaint Button

Monday, July 20th, 2009

 The office supply supermarket Staples introduced the Easy Button to their marketing campaigns with great effectiveness. The message being, Staples makes buying easy. A simple and easy message. In recent days I’ve been pondering the Easy Button, especially as relates to customer service. Partly because so many companies are suffering from it and so many customers are talking about it. For instance, I continue to have a problem with mail delivery service. It appears that my local post office is having great difficulty in telling the difference between Quant and Quehl (my street name). I know the difference may be small, and it may be confusing, however the impact is huge. In fact just yesterday I received a piece of mail that went to the wrong address, so the receiver of my mail posted on the envelope, “This is so sad, I have been to the post office 5X. Please look closer when delivering your mail, ‘Do your job right.’”
This morning I was reading Jeff Jarvis’s BuzzMachine blog, and he was discussing the terrible service over at CableVision. Jarvis states,

 I returned after three days away to find our internet not working. I called Cablevision and after a few obvious steps, I’m told they can’t see the modem and they offer to send someone out … in three days… Oh, just got email from someone at Cablevision who saw the discussion 12 hours ago. He works in media relations. Hint to all companies: Now that we’re all in media, everybody in a company is in media relations.

And recently, I saw this over at Futureblog, The Invaluable Stories Inside Customer-service Calls.

Much of the story work I’m familiar with involves asking people to tell stories about their experiences on a particular topic. I do some of this myself. But I’ve also done work with a completely different class of story. This story is created out of the spontaneous meeting of two people - a customer and a customer-service rep - over the telephone.

A customer-service call is less an anecdote than it is like a play unfurling in real time. There’s nothing but dialogue, yet there’s conflict, emotion, suspense (will she get the credit she’s demanding for the series of dropped calls? Or will she have to escalate to the supervisor?). Listening to these recordings gives you an intimate view into the relationship customers have with their products and with their service providers.

And within these calls there are almost always sub-stories–the sequence of events that led to the person calling in the first place. There are also moments of human connection… and of estrangement.

The difference between good customer service and mediocre customer service is night and day. Most companies profess the goal of happy customers. They use monikers like, “Our goal is to exceed our customer’s expectations.” Yet in today’s world, many companies fail miserably at the customer service game. And along the way, brands are being damaged and companies are being destroyed from the inside out.

Bottom Line: Companies need customers more than ever. Customers need their supplier companies less than ever. The world is growing increasingly connected and vocal.  Solution: Provide you customers an “Easy Button” that delivers results!

Tags: , ,
Posted in Silent Problems | No Comments »

Silent Attrition

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

Organizations, their suppliers and their customers are constantly morphing and changing.  New products enter the marketplace, new value propositions tested and fresh incentives designed to stimulate demand created. The marketplace is in a constant state of flux.  Add into the mix today’s uncertain economic landscape What was good yesterday is considered mediocre today.  By the time a business figures this out, the markets moved.  The result, a Silent Problem that becomes costly on so many fronts.  For instance, I just came across this article over at Forbes titled, Executives Have No Idea What Customers Want. Here are but a few tidbits.

Nearly half of consumers (47%) say they don’t believe company executives understand their experiences, citing problems such as rude customer service staff or employees who provide the wrong information or never solve the customer’s problem. More than one-third (41%) of the customers who take the time to complain don’t think companies listen to or act on their feedback.

But that doesn’t mean customers are doing nothing. On average, more than half will defect–leaving a company flatly–based on bad customer experiences, without ever telling the company why.

And the problem doesn’t end there. Nearly nine out of 10 customers will tell their friends and colleagues about their bad experiences, creating a negative ripple effect in the prospective customer base that has serious implications for a company’s future success. Yet the executives we surveyed thought that only 20% of customers shared the news about their bad experiences–a significant mismatch with the customer view.

And the biggest misunderstanding among executives? If customers don’t complain to them, it means they don’t have a problem and everything is fine. This is the silent but deadly company killer.

It’s the last paragraph that captures the essence and danger of silent problems, “If customer’s don’t complain to them, it means they don’t have a problem… This is a silent but deadly company killer.”

Surprised? You shouldn’t be. Today, many companies discourage customer feedback by putting in phone systems that are difficult to navigate and virtually impossible to lodge a complaint. They create corporate websites that promote their products, yet don’t have a section to lodge a complaint . Companies create customer service departments, yet complaints fall into a black hole. Yes, many companies live in a ”feel good” environment where complaints are not sought, much less allowed.

If you want to know what your customers are thinking, provide them access by allowing for their voices to be heard. If you don’t, a Without Warning Event is likely just around the corner. Beware!

Tags: , ,
Posted in Silent Problems | No Comments »

Be the one to see it coming!

The first leadership book to point out the problem, then hand-deliver the solution.

Without Warning - Rondey Johnson

Learn More

Order Info