Archive for the ‘Random service thoughts’ Category
“You are tenacious like bull… I like.” – Peggy
"Peggy" and his staff... at your service!
Saw this this morning and had to post it. Pretty telling, and, frankly, these ads should be effective… and it’s all about service. Go figure. How many of us have gotten to speak to “Peggy?!?”
Too many… Enjoy the article, and be sure to view the new spots at the link at the end of it. You’ll laugh… you’ll cry… and you will RELATE…
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Discover Launches New Advertisements Featuring Customer Service
“Peggy” Ads Highlight Discover’s Superior Service, Taps into Consumer Frustration with Industry
RIVERWOODS, Ill., Aug 16, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Discover Financial Services today launched a new advertising campaign that highlights the superior, award-winning customer service Discover offers its cardmembers. The new advertisements will strike a chord with consumers who have endured poor customer service across industries while highlighting the best-in-class customer service that Discover cardmembers experience.
“Customer service is a key component of Discover’s long-standing commitment to delivering the best rewards, service and value,” said Julie Loeger, senior vice president of brand and product management at Discover. “These ads portray the common, frustrating experiences we’ve all faced with customer service calls and emphasize the difference good service can make. We believe that by featuring our promise to answer calls in 60 seconds or less by real people who are trained to solve problems on the first call, we will continue to differentiate ourselves to existing and prospective cardmembers.”
The television advertisements, which portray a likable but incapable customer service representative named “Peggy,” are the focal point of a marketing and communications strategy designed to convey the value of Discover’s superior customer service. The ads will remind viewers of some of the most common and frustrating experiences with customer service calls, such as long hold times, excessive call transfers and the inability to solve problems. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: call center service, customer service, Discover Card, outsourcing, poor customer service, service
Personal Service. The Mom and Pop Shop lives on… Enchante, Austin TX
I have taken up the revered mens pastime of shaving with a “real” razor over the past few months. The Double Edge, or DE razor has been around for a loooong time, and gives me a better shave – closer, less razor burn, and more fun than what I’ve been doing for the last twenty or so years – using a Gillette Sensor in the shower.
As with any hobby or niche, you find that the internet is a vast wealth of information on about everything. I quickly realized this with traditional wet shaving, and with a process called “Method Shaving.” Method Shaving is basically a pattern of shaving that is supported by a series of unique products that, bottom line, will give you the closest, most comfortable shave of your life. Seriously. I won’t get more in to it here, but will give you this link if you want to learn more: Clickety.
Charles Roberts, the man who created the Method Shaving system (or the RMWS, Robert’s Method of Wet Shaving) and the Hydrolast products is passionate about his craft and his business. Charles is a paramount example of how true passion about one’s work contributes exponentially to exceptional service. He and his wife Jean own Enchante, a store devoted to Mens wet shaving, Womens fine fragrances, candles, and other related items.
My experience with Charles starts with my wonderful wife and kids wanting to get me a new badger hair shaving brush for Christmas. This was an incredibly thoughtful gift, and quality badger brushes are not cheap, and are also somewhat difficult to find. They searched high and low – really low, in some cases, as often, men’s wet shaving supplies are in Pipe, Smoke and Cigar shops… places we do not usually support or visit. They were unsuccessful in their quest for a fine badger brush, until my eldest son came to the realization that Charles Roberts’ shop, Enchante, was actually here in Austin where we live. They decided to take me down there – a sort of pilgrimage to meet the man behind the Method…
My wife called the store one Saturday to see if it was open, as Weekend hours were off-and-on. There was no answer. She was going to try again, when a few minutes after her initial call, the phone rang. I didn’t know it at the time, but that was Charles calling back to let her know they were open, and there. How’s that for personal service?
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Charles Roberts, customer service, Enchante, RMWS, Wet Shaving
Sales as a service… buying a car
I haven’t bought a car for a decade. For me, my experience with the process of car buying has been akin to a bad root canal given to you by some shady character in a back alley. I detest the whole “let me waste your time and play little emotional sales games with you and go check with my sales manager who’s watching you from the other side of that mirrored glass on that” game. I just don’t enjoy it, but the time had come for us to either keep feeding a ten year old SUV’s aches and pains or get a new vehicle. Through the whole process, I’ve been taking a few notes… of course.
The bottom line, is that sales is a service. A good sales person makes the sale an enjoyable experience for the buyer. Support after the initial sale, however, is what truly makes or breaks a deal.
The internet has changed car buying, at least the initial part. We did most of our looking online. Reading countless safety reviews and weeding choices out based on their number of safety stars. That eliminated a LOT of cars, surprisingly. From there, I filled out the online forms – often it seems, auto dealers will not give you a price, even a sticker price online without you providing contact information. For me, that is a disservice – if you want me to save your salespeople the time, give me a price online.
I settled in with three distinctly different sales people on three different dealer sites… and things got interesting.
Act One: The dance…
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: poor service, sales, San Marcos Honda
Berry Cool Yogurt, Cedar Park TX
Service – I’ve often thought that it doesn’t matter what the business is, every business is capable of bettering their relationship with their customers. What matters is just that – the relationship. An honest, caring relationship with your customers is an absolute key to success.
My wife and I have a long term relationship with froyo – frozen yogurt. More than twenty years ago, we used to go to Country Culture yogurt in San Luis Obispo in college – that store is still there, a testament to good business… but that’s not what this is about – We live 2500 miles away now, but our love for good frozen yogurt is still there. The trend these days is the self serve, pay by weight frozen yogurt “bar.” There are a number of them in the local area. We had been frequenting one of the more popular ones in a trendy multi-use apartment/restaurant/retail space for a while when our daughter found a new one opening up in Cedar Park TX, just a few miles away via the blessing and curse that is our local toll road. We figured it would be a fun little family dessert to go try… The rest is funny family history, as we have never been back to the other one… Berry Cool is where we get our yogurt. Our daughter had found a gem.
Berry Cool Frozen Yogurt is a franchise – well, sort of. There are two stores (there is another one in California.) Aside from that, the store is what I would call “All Jay.” Jay is the owner/proprietor of Berry Cool. He has a great story about being an unfulfilled corporate attorney looking for meaning in life… and finding it as the owner of a frozen yogurt shop. I firmly believe that is part of the key here – he loves doing what he’s doing. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Berry Cool, Caring, Frozen Yogurt, Great Service, personal
A paramount example of Customer Service complicated by Corporate Policy…
Photo from the Austin American Statesman photo blog.
Strip away process and policies that do not allow your employees to serve customers… I say it all of the time. There are also times when you need to make exceptions to policies that are meant to protect both customers and employees. This is one such example. See the link below.
Tags: Policy, poor customer service, Randall's, Safeway
Treat me like a valued customer and I’ll stick around…
Customer loyalty is really important in today’s world. There have been numerous studies done on the cost to source new customers versus the cost to keep the ones you have, and the results are ALWAYS that keeping customers is easier and more profitable. That makes sense, so why is it so difficult to do?
There is a reason I (and thus my family) have been a member customer of AAA for over eighteen years. Way back when, we were brought to the company by a family friend who was an agent in Porterville California. Duane was a guy we went to Church with, that my wife knew since birth, and he took care of us as family. It’s easy, or easier, when you are a friend or family member, but we left California shortly after that and have lived in four or five places since. Oddly enough, every interaction except one over eighteen years has been a good one. The one that wasn’t was more about a phone agent who didn’t know the rules in the state we were in, as she was in another one. The service after we got that runaround was timely, well mannered and accurate, as expected.
Whenever I call, I am thanked for my years of being a customer. I think that’s cool, and more so because, well, I write things like this about serving customers, and IT MATTERS to me as a customer. I like that they recognize I’ve stuck with them. Hopefully my rates reflect that, too. I’ve never checked… hmmmm.
A few weeks ago, my eldest child was involved in a mutual backing parking lot kiss. He was, a bit freaked out, as every driver in their first (however minor) fender bender is. He called and was doing everything he should have, and to make matters worse, the other driver just left, not wanting to exchange the pertinent information (which, by the way, is technically hit-and-run in Texas… but that’s another story.)
His little endeavor has exposed me to another insurance company – I won’t mention any names, but there’s this little green gecko that is on TV… Well, that company’s adjustor and agent have been flat out rude, in writing and in person. Amazingly so. Suffice it to say I will never entertain their services if I ever am in the market for insurance. Ever. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: AAA, Auto Club, customer service, service, Service Experiences
This makes sense…
I found this on the NPR website after reading a little about this book elsewhere. Looks like a must-read.
You can listen to the NPR article there – Head over to NPR and listen!
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Facts And Tips from ‘Your Call Is (Not That) Important To Us’
by Emily Yellin
10 Unexpected Facts About Customer Service
1. Americans make an estimated 43 billion calls to customer service per year. That’s an average of 143 calls per year for every man, woman, and child in the United States. That means every second of every day, 1,363 Americans are making a call to customer service.
2. Mark Twain wrote one of the first letters complaining about customer service in 1890. He called his local telephone service “the very worst on the face of the whole earth.”
3. The Customer Rage Study found that about 70 percent of customers feel rage toward companies about service problems. And they react in one or more of these ways: 57 percent never do business with the company again; 28 percent yell or raise their voice at a company employee; eight percent curse, eight percent threaten legal action. Fifteen percent say they want revenge on the company, but only one percent report getting it.
4. In 1882, a Cincinnati man’s phone privileges were revoked for shouting “damn your telephone” when an operator connected him to the wrong number. He sued and lost. Swearing at telephone operators became illegal in many places in the U.S. And in 1902, a doctor in St. Louis was arrested, put on trial and found guilty of using abusive language toward an operator. He was fined $5. Read the rest of this entry »
Social media and customer service…
I just had a tweet hit my phone. Okay, I have lots of them hit it… but this one was different. It wasn’t Darth Vader trash talking the Rebels, or McCain commenting on the latest meeting he’s in. It wasn’t the usual prose from a fly fishing writer buddy pondering the meaning of life on a small stream somewhere in the world… or even my daughter’s facebook status update that she posts via twitter.
The tweet I am referring to came from Dan Haseltine (scribblepotamus), who’s job is to sing for Jars of Clay. He has a modest following on the social phenomenon that is twitter of just under 2,700 followers.
The message was simple, and to the point – a factor of the 140 character limit imposed by twitter:
scribblepotamus “Is confident that the airline industry is the least customer friendly and they don’t care… More to come”
So there his subscribers were, hanging on the “more to come…” Sympathetically pondering something we all likely have experienced in one way or another. Six minutes later, more did come:
scribblepotamus “AA wouldn’t give a flight credit to our crew member who had to change a flight cuz his wife went into labor. Hmmm… Not helpful at all”
That simple message hit roughly 2,700 people within seconds of the event that inspired it. One random act of poor service, and WHAM! We now have a situation, and a company, and the seed has been planted.
This chain of events got me thinking. What is the real implication of the new Social Media and customer service? Can it be measured? Even more importantly, for a truly exceptional service company or provider, can it be LEVERAGED? I recently asked a good friend in the business of studying leadership and the continuum of human behavior about how his company is using Web2.0 media. Then this happens with twitter. I’m not sure where my mind is going, but feel free to join me.
This also jogged my memory – I have my own AA story that I may share someday that would begin with “There’s really no good place to sleep in the airport in New Delhi…”
Social Media and Customer Service. I’ll get back to you on this one. In the mean time, feel free to post or email your thoughts.
Dan, I’m really sorry about the lack of service your crew member received, but really appreciate the tweet. I hope Dad, Mom and baby are well.
Tags: American Airlines, Jars of Clay, poor customer service
7 Ways Leadership Training Helps to Recession-Proof Your Company
This article is relevant… and posted here with permission from my friends at the Center for Leadership Studies (www.situational.com - the single most influential management and leadership training program I have come across in the seventeen years I’ve been doing this…)
In a recession, many leaders tend to freeze up, leaning toward indecisiveness even when bold action is required. As a consequence, they not only deal with the downturn poorly but also are not prepared to take advantage of the inevitable upswing in demand that occurs when the economy recovers. If leadership falls down, companies fall behind. Here are seven ways leadership training helps to recession-proof your organization:
1. Adapt to the “New Normal” — Eventually all great strategy translates into work – take action before analysis paralysis sets in. Don’t let a short-term trend or a sudden disconnect derail your strategic thinking. Innovative companies do not abandon promising strategies; they adjust to the times. Adaptation to the “new normal” is an essential leadership skill.
2. Leadership Wins – The number one reason people stay motivated through tough times is the same as the number one reason why people abandon hope – the leader. People are tuned into their boss, not the organization.
3. Identify Customer Pain – If there is a “new normal” your leadership must recognize that pain shifts or new types of pain may arise in your customer base. From the board of directors to the delivery dock, your people must be sensitive to these changes. Your leadership must have the skills to absorb input and take proactive measures to address the changes in customer pain.
4. Stick to Your Values – Do the right thing – short cuts and compromises may be tempting but don’t abandon the values, the quality gains, the core processes that built your business. Play your best strengths better and honor your history.
5. Believe in Your Leadership – Remember that effective leadership training generally focuses on your most talented and valued employees in high-impact roles. These are the key people to lead you out of a recession and the people at the helm during prosperous cycles, but if people don’t believe in your leaders they won’t follow. You need to believe in them first and show others that you do by investing in them.
6. Believe in Your People – Maintain and support the right staff with the right attitude. If layoffs need to occur, don’t go purely by seniority – now is the time to get rid of the saboteurs and the dementors. Will your people break in the face of adversity…or will they break records?
7. Take Advantage of Opportunities – A downturn in the economy means that many doors are slammed shut. However recessions bring a wealth of opportunities as markets shift. Well trained leaders are able to see the larger picture and drive innovation.
Catch the Next Wave:
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WORLDsourcing?
An interesting article shared with me by a friend – who, by his own admission, does NOT like globalization, but has homes here in the US and in his native country of India…
“We have entered … an era where the most successful companies will look for ideas and innovation anywhere to meet customer needs everywhere.”
Beyond Outsourcing, to Worldsourcing
Tags: customer needs, outsourcing
Some thoughts in an image…
I created this a few years ago, thinking about the service one receives from contact centers all over the world. To me, the fundamentals of Service in contact centers are pretty simple, and common sense. I tried to summarize those in this image. Thought I would share this with you…
Wal-Mart, winning me back, one associate at a time.
I was digging through a dresser junk drawer that has followed me around for years the other day when I ran across some old pins – Wal-Mart Distribution Center pins that I used to wear on my badge fifteen plus years ago. My “Trainer” pin was there. That particular pin marked the beginning of this career in Learning and Development. “Back in the day” when I started with Wal-Mart, the service culture permeated the entire organization. Sam had just passed, and the reverence for his way of doing things was still fresh, almost to a fault. I believe I have mentioned it here, but the very first time that the Wal-Mart Board of Directors met in a Distribution Center was in the facility I was based in, and I got to coordinate the meeting. The exposure to people like Rob Walton, David Glass and especially Don Soderquist really left an impact on me.
I’ve never forgotten sitting on the tarmac with Lee Scott in Porterville after the Board Meeting waiting for “the jet” and him saying, “If you ever need anything, give me a call.” Of course, he wasn’t the CEO then. I still have yet to call for that chit… I wonder if it has expired. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: customer service, Wal-Mart
Required Reading: The BBB/Gallup Trust in Business Index
I recently read a survey done by Gallup for the Better Business Bureau. The study focuses on TRUST in Business. I like that. If I trust a business, that is really saying something. Trust is one of those very elusive things that I struggle with in many aspects of my life – getting it, giving it, keeping it. I’m pretty tight with my trust distribution to companies I am a customer to. I have learned via loved ones in my life and traveling down my own roads that trust is earned, not freely given.
In the Gallup survey, it is reported that good customers service is the primary prerequisite for one in five people to trust a company. If you add honesty and integrity to customer service, the numbers skyrocket to a composite 50-60% of what make people trust companies. That’s not a surprise, really, but if you look at what people look for in a company, the data falls nicely in to the Pareto principle, or 80/20 rule. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: customer service, research, survey, trust
Get a human!
I’m conceptualizing a post about surviving service in the world of Interactive Voice Response (IVR, an oxymoron and acronym all rolled neatly together.)
In the mean time, I’ll share one of my favorite links, the “gethuman list.” Read the rest of this entry »
The outsource dilemma: It’s your ears.
Thank you for calling XYZ Company, welcome to Gurgaon!
A primary focus of my roles in the last twelve or so years of work has been training agents in contact centers.
My first interaction with call centers was in Sandpoint Idaho, when Coldwater Creek was a small company of 250 people. I was the training department in its entirety. We trained our agents then to be virtually ominpotent uberagents – the calls were answered within three rings (or less than one ring much of the time) by a well spoken, happy, smiling human being who could handle all of your product questions, place or track your order, basically help you with anything you could think of, including supplying the returns address for our major competitors of the time.
Fast forward a decade or so, and I find myself traveling through the bustling streets of Delhi, Bangalore, or Hyderabad. The industry has changed, as now the agents my team is supporting are supplying technical support to consumers in the US rather than selling clothes to the “Land-Rover Woman” but the premise is the same: People on the phone serving customers. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: call center service, India, Philippines, service
Six Sigma and Service…
I currently work in a six sigma shop… and while I understand and use the process, there are some places it just is NOT the right thing to do… That said, this is a favorite article of mine. Enjoy.
Six Sigma Doesn’t Belong in Customer-Centric Environments
Some tenets of a Service Culture
If I collect these momentary brain dumps in to lists of Service Tenets, who knows, maybe someday I’ll have a good list. Here are two to start.
Service Culture Tenet: Everyone serves each other first.
I started my professional career as a training manager for Wal-Mart logistics. Back in those days, Sam’s philosophies were still very much alive and well. My job was to train new supervisors and managers in the distribution centers, and whatever else, of course. There are a few memories I have of that job that have helped shape my philosophy of service interactions. The interesting part and point of this post is that those experiences were provided me by the leadership of the Company at the time.
I don’t remember how or why I ended up there, but a group of fellow training managers and I were at Sam and Helen Walton’s modest home in Bentonville for some sort of event. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: culture, customer, service
Quick thoughts on Service & Leadership
“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you.”
Max dePree wrote that in his “Leadership is an Art” book over fifteen years ago. I once wrote a training class based on the contents of that book, and it is still one of the definitive pieces of leadership literature in my mind and library.
While this site is about service, I have to relate service to leadership and management. Leadership and management have been an integral part of my career from the beginning. I remember the first management training class I led as a brand new Training Manager in a huge company. There I was, a kid in his early twenties, trying to tell battle hardened frontline managers how to get the most out of their receiving dock workers… it was really intimidating. It would have been much worse had my new boss not sat me down and told me that “as a Training Manager, you have to be the ideal. You of all of the managers here MUST walk the talk, or you will have no credibility.” Then he handed me a copy of Robert Greenleaf’s paper “Servant as Leader”… Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: culture, leadership, service
Opening thoughts…
This will become the “About” page, but…
I have this passion for serving customers, and thus, very high expectations when it comes to service interactions. Some of the Companies I have written programs for and trained in are known as industry leaders in serving customers – I have stories – legendary stories about employees doing what it takes to make customers happy.
Unfortunately I also have plenty of stories that illustrate quite the opposite. Poor service always dumbfounds me.
I was raised watching what I call “Hometown Service” in the small town, wood-floored hardware store my Grandpa owned. The coffee was always hot, and even on a bad day, you were polite and gracious. There was never something so pressing that you couldn’t stop what you were doing and get what Mrs. Swanson or Mr. Adrian needed, or ask them about their family or chat about the ball game.
Which leads me to wonder… Why is it SO HARD to get people to give positive service interactions? I’ve asked this question of many very powerful and influential business people in my career – one of them, Betsy Sanders, was a GM and VP of Nordstrom. She has made a post-Nordstrom career of, in part, trying to make people GET IT. Betsy coined the phrase that “Fabulous Service is ordinary people doing ordinary things, extraordinarily well.”
Think about it. That’s bang-on. Serving customers should be easy, but it’s not. If it were, your waiter or waitress would get 15-20% every time.