Let's talk shoes

How long could you talk on the telephone with a stranger? 5 minutes? Half an hour? One hour? More?

What about if the conversation was about shoes?

How about 10 hours 29 minutes?

This was the 'world record' set for the longest customer service phone call by Zappos, the online shoe retailer with a very unique definition of good customer service. And they are so proud of this record as its spokesperson was delighted to explain,

' Zappos first core value is to deliver wow through service and allowing team members to stay on the phone with a customer for as long as they need is a crucial measure of fulfilling this value'.

I am not sure what was talked about for 10 and half hours though I believe that one pair of Ugg boots was in fact sold. However it does demonstrate Zappos legendary dedication to its customers.

Now this example might be a tad excessive. And the business case for this call might not be  financially sustainable. But it does raise one important question in my mind-how effective are call handling metrics and targets?

Too often call centres target average call handling times. In other words the average length of the call, or conversation with a customer or prospect, must not exceed say 90 seconds. And colleagues whose average exceeds this target will be subject to 're-education'.

So what happens in this environment-colleagues on the phone rush to finish the call as soon as possible to avoid breach. It must be like watching the Countdown Clock. The priority is to finish the call, not resolve the customer problem. Is this good for business? Is this good for the customer? No and most definitely no.

Last week I heard of a utility company, though I'm sure this tale is equally applicable to banks and anyone else with a large and even small call centre operation, whose rate of efficiency as measured by average call handling was amazingly high yet whose C-Sat scores were depressingly low. And there is a correlation.

For to keep down call handling times call centre colleagues were rushing through the calls with a high tendency to action single requests for service even though the customer might want to do more than one service action. And so this led to unhappy customers and the customer needing to call back. And so the number of calls into the call centre increased too. And you call this efficient?

This is a lose lose. It's not a great customer experience. Nor an efficient business model.

Now I am not advocating that 10 hour conversations about shoes should become the norm in our call centres. But I do say that by allowing our call centre colleagues to take the time necessary to help customers without the need to watch the clock, our call centre conversations will be more rewarding, more fruitful, more engaging, more customer focused and yes more productive and efficient.

If Zappos have found this out surely it is time that everyone out there with a call centre which imposes time limits on calls found this out too.

Trust me-talking about shoes can make for happy smiley customers and happy face accountants too.

How to improve airline food

I have a real problem with call centres.

And I don’t suffer the people who work in call centres gladly. And even though I know it is not the fault of those answering the phones, too often these people get the sharp end of my tongue. If you are one of these people, I am sorry.

Last week is a case in point.

I had to phone a call centre to sort out my insurance. An innocuous request but once again the illogicality of a call centre process left me fuming. And even though the customer service rep I was dealing with could see the sense in my position she was unable to do anything for me as she had ‘to follow orders’- a defence rejected by the Nuremburg courts! No matter. Nothing was going to budge her and so I was left back where I started, annoyed, enraged and frustrated.

It was not her fault, nor the fault of her colleagues. They did not get up in the morning and come into work to deliver bad customer service. Instead I blame the senior management of the place. These are the ones that dictated and built the process but they rarely get the chance to view their handiwork.

But how do you get these people closer to the customers who pay their wages and away from the financial reports, strategy papers and the other bumf that absorbs senior management time?

If you want to improve the food served on airlines, serve it up in the boardroom for the Board’s lunch. And, in recent work I’ve been doing to help businesses across the region think about their customer journey and the experience their brand delivers to its customers, I have collected 5 ideas that other businesses have implemented with their senior executives.

Simulation…In one very large business senior executives take a weekly turn to simulate the complete customer experience by going through a transaction or business process as a customer. Through this they are asked to log their thoughts, feelings and emotions, positive and negative This really does help the executives walk in the shoes of the customer.

Executive Complaints…get your top team to investigate and answer one complaint a week from start to finish. They are not allowed to dictate the task to secretaries, PAs or some other flunky. It is down to them and this gives them the opportunity to uncover the cause of the complaint and any defects in the processes, the journey, and the experience.

Speed Dating…the executive get to team meet a group of customers and each executive has 10 minutes with each customer on different topics. After their time is up they move onto the next customer. I think it is important in this context that the team work off the customer’s agenda as well as their own.

Hanging on the telephone… the senior management team to randomly phone customers on a  regular basis (even those who have provided low customer satisfaction scores) to ask them what they think of the experience or how it could be improved.

 ‘Meet the Manager’/ ‘Tweet the Manager’…sessions which allow  to contact or meet directly with the management of the business on a regular basis. It might be scary but it does show great commitment to your customers and your people.  

These ideas take time and courage, commodities which can both be in short supply, but the willingness of the management team to adopt ideas like these show real and genuine commitment to improving the customer experience and to walking in the footsteps of your customers.

 

Love story

I was really interested to hear Warren Buckley, BT’s Customer Service Director, tell a recent event that ‘marketers need to embark on a love affair with their customer service counterparts or risk failing their brands’.

I couldn’t agree more. I may have had some issues in the past with BT and its customer service teams but on this occasion Mr Buckley, a man who does respond to customer e-mails, has got it spot on.

Mr Buckley’s comment was that by having a dialogue with the customer service teams, marketers could save a whole load of money on customer research. Yes they would but I think there is far far more to it than that.

It always amazes me that marketers don’t pay more attention to the brand experience being delivered day in, day out through their customer service teams. For too long this has been seen as the preserve of the customer service chief while marketers take the line of least resistance and focus on their brand wheels, their ads and the other visual symbols of their power but it is on the ground where their brand hits the road where they can make a real difference. This is where marketers need to start to fall in love.

Mr Buckley wants marketers to work with their colleagues to determine a consistent tone of voice for marketing campaigns and responses to customer queries. I would want marketers to go a lot further.

As you know it never ceases to amaze me how few marketers and customer service chiefs actually put their customer services teams to the test and actually experience the service through a customer's eyes. You will be amazed what you might find out. If you want to improve the quality of airline food, serve it in the Board Room, is my principle.

I did hear last week of one CEO who spent the weekend putting his customer service to the test and then spent Monday firing off a series of e-mails to his operations and customer service bosses with required fixes. Good on him. More of us need to do that to get our own direct and real impressions of the service our business delivers.

Speaking as a marketer, and a customer, here are my top 5 things that we need to be looking for in our customer service departments:

#1 Is the IVR system intuitive and easy to use? If we adopt a principle online that the customer should be within 2 clicks of the service they way, why not follow this principle on the phone and make it easy to get to speak to someone.

#2 How customer friendly is the tone of voice? It is always best to use personal and not impersonal pronouns, scrap jargon and three letter acronyms, use the active and not the passive case. And why don’t people sign letters and put a name to them instead of using the corporate squiggle?

#3 Why not take the name of the customer before asking for an account or an order number? I am a person not a number. Take the name and use it. It will make the call sound more personal.

#4 Why not scrap call duration targets? Targets forces call handlers to aim to hurry the call. Scrap the target and more calls will be resolved.

#5 Why tell customers that the Marketing Director or Customer Services Directors doesn’t speak to customers? If your job is to stop your business doing dumb things to customers, you should speak and listen to customers.

And one final thought, give the customer service people some empowerment to do the right thing for the customer instead of slavishly following a script or a process. In many instances I have no doubt that people do their job properly but fail to deliver a satisfying customer experience. This might help.

Obviously there is more to the love affair than this but hopefully this is a start.

Next week is Valentine’s Day, a perfect time for marketers to fall in love with customer service...and vice versa.

Getting shirty

I have a problem with call centres and one by one I’m determined to improve the way these centres deliver a better customer experience.

A few weeks back I bought some shirts online. For reasons with which I won’t bore you these shirts failed to be delivered, obliging me to deal with their call centre. As call centres go it wasn’t too bad, I have seen and experienced a lot worse, but one thing did irritate me.

In the period between my original order, which had got lost, and my subsequent re-ordering, the price had gone up and by quite a bit. Naturally as a careful Scot I queried this and pointed out that I did not think it right to be charged at the new higher price when it was not my fault that the order hadn’t been processed.

This was a great opportunity for my shirt maker to really wow me. And they really blew it. Or at least they didn’t make the best of the opportunity they had.

My request for my order to be processed at the cheaper price was not surprisingly above the pay grade of the person I was dealing with and after consulting with a supervisor came back and told me that they would agree to sell the shirts to me at the lower price. Although pleased at the outcome I was rather miffed by the tone which made it sound as if they were doing me a great big favour. I did resist the temptation to point out that it was me doing them the favour by agreeing to buy their product in the first place.

I remember once being told, and it may be apocryphal, that at Marks & Spencer if you asked for a size that wasn’t on the shelf, the assistant even though she knew everything was out on the floor, would go away and pretend to look, thereby giving the impression that they had made every effort to meet your needs.

Consider this too.

Imagine your 11am flight to London is cancelled and you need to be in town tomorrow morning. There’s an evening flight that’s open. Where most call centres might simply say “I can put you on a flight leaving at 9pm tonight'' other call centres might say “well I know I can put you on the 9pm flight tonight, but let me see what I can do to get you on the 7am flight in the morning”. A less desirable option creates a mental anchor, making the best alternative seem more acceptable. Which approach do you think has the greater impact on loyalty and customer buying habits?

These are the moments of truth for anyone dealing with customers, the point where the rubber hits the road, and when it is vital to get it right. This is when a good customer service person can make life easy for the customer and in so doing build loyalty the right customer buying behaviour. It’s not the big things that make the difference in the customer experience but the little things. Marks & Spencer seem to understand that. My online shirt shop didn’t.

I know it’s not rocket science but surely if our call centres get the small things right life becomes more bearable for us all.

But what do you think?